KENTUCKY JUST OWNS THE TRIPLE CROWN

The Commonwealth of Kentucky doesn’t really claim ownership of the Triple Crown races; but it can claim a very close connection with each of the races that the other tracks involved cannot.

CHURCHILL DOWNS AND THE KENTUCKY DERBY

The state’s connection with the Kentucky Derby is well known, of course. Colonel Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr.²²² established Churchhill Downs on land he rented from two uncles, John and Henry Churchill, in 1875 and the Derby was first run that year. The one-mile elongated oval track is known for its long home stretch, with a distance from the last turn to the finish line being 1,234.5 feet.

After the bankruptcy and closure of the Woodlawn Racecourse in 1870, Louisville was without a track. Despite Louisville being the largest city in Kentucky, all the major races were held in Lexington at the Kentucky Association Course. In 1872, a group of horsemen approached Clark to see if he could fashion a solution and restart racing in Louisville. Clark had no racing experience of his own, so he left for Europe to study racing, tracks and stakes. He returned in a year with a plan to start a track with stakes races patterned after the famous English races. In particular, he proposed a Kentucky Derby fashioned after the English Epsom Derby. As reported in The Kentucky Encyclopedia, he told a group of horsemen that in ten years the winner of the Kentucky Derby would be worth more than the farm on which the horse was born.

The Downs initially had a small wooden grandstand on its east side, which was replaced in 1885 by a larger grandstand on the west side of the track with a seating capacity of 1,500 and standing room for another 2,000.²²³ This is in great contrast to the current ability to accommodate more than 165,000 for Derby Day.²²⁴

The Kentucky Derby itself is a mile and one quarter long and, with one exception, has been run on the first Saturday in May since 1938. The exception was in 1945, when a wartime ban on racing was not lifted in time. That year, the Derby was held on June 9.²²⁵

THE PREAKNESS AND THE WOODLAWN TROPHY

The Woodlawn Vase is the trophy awarded to the winner of the Preakness each year; or, more accurately, a small-scale silver model of the Vase is awarded. The original is kept on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art between runnings of the second leg of the Triple Crown at the Pimlico course. Between 1917 and 1953, the winner actually got to take home the Vase, to be returned as a traveling trophy the next year. But by the 1950s, the Vase, thirty-six inches tall of solid silver crafted by Tiffany’s, was too valuable for an owner to take the risk. Joanne Murray Vanderbilt, wife of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, and the 1953 winner declined taking the Vase and instead started the tradition of the winner getting to keep a smaller replica at fourteen inches tall. The winning jockey and trainer get a slightly smaller version.²²⁶

So, what is the Kentucky connection?

In 1859, the Woodlawn Race Course was established on the east side of Louisville, Kentucky, near the Louisville & Frankfort Railroad for easy access by the public.²²⁷ The track opened to great success, more than $23,000 was sold in betting pools and there was an overflow crowd. A feature of the track was a grove of trees in the infield, which obscured the horses partway through a race.²²⁸

In 1860, Robert A. Alexander of Woodford County, Kentucky, commissioned a “challenge vase” from Tiffany’s of New York City to be presented as a traveling trophy by the Woodlawn Association. Thomas G.

The Woodlawn Vase. Baltimore Museum of Art.

Moore’s filly Mollie Jackson won it the first time in 1861 and his mare Idlewild won it the next year, which put the Vase in Moore’s possession when the Confederate army invaded Kentucky in 1862. Moore buried the Vase, together with other family silver and jewels, on his Woodford County farm for safety. After the Civil War, Moore unearthed the Vase and returned it to Woodlawn, which continued to award it until that track closed in 1870.

Now known as the Woodlawn Vase, it was awarded in 1878 at Churchill Downs for the American Stallion Stakes. The winners, from Brooklyn, took the Vase east and presented it to the Coney Island Jockey Club. Over the years, it traveled from track to track—Coney Island, Morris Park, Sheepshead Bay and Jerome Park—until finding its new home at Pimlico in 1917.²²⁹

The winner of the Preakness each year gets a copy of a trophy designed for and presented first at a Kentucky racetrack.

THE BELMONT STAKES AND AUGUST BELMONT

The third and final contest in the Triple Crown is the Belmont States, run at the Belmont Park each year. One might be excused for thinking the race is named for the track, but that is not the case.

August Belmont was born in what is now Germany and as a young man entered into the employ of the Rothschild banking company in Germany. In 1837, he came to New York City to serve as agent for the Rothschilds and, ultimately, start his own bank. He was one of the richest men of his day and a banker, diplomat, political leader, patron of the arts and a horseman.²³⁰ He was among the founders of Jerome Park, a track near the Bronx, in 1867 and was president of the track association. Due to his financial support and social prestige, an early stakes race that first year was named the Belmont Stakes in his honor. In short order, Belmont had established breeding and racing stables of his own.²³¹

August Belmont’s Nursery Stud, Lexington (postcard). Lexington History Museum, Inc.

Reverse of postcard describing the view. Lexington History Museum, Inc.

In 1885, in a move Wall describes as adding “an entirely new dimension to the map of existing horse farms,” Belmont decided to move his breeding operations from Long Island to Kentucky.²³² Belmont leased a farm on the Georgetown Road just north of Lexington and established his Nursery Stud there. Belmont’s arrival in Kentucky signaled to the horsemen of the North and East that Kentucky was the place to breed and race horses and began a Bluegrass Revival, as others followed him.²³³

Belmont died in 1890; his son, also named August, bought several of his father’s horses at the estate sale and continued the breeding operation at Nursery Stud as well as the family’s deep involvement in thoroughbreds. Belmont II²³⁴ eventually bred 129 stakes winners and is credited in saving horse racing in the East.

In 1905, Belmont II opened Belmont Park on Long Island, New York, naming it in his father’s honor. The Belmont Stakes had continued at Jerome Park until 1889, then at Morris Park starting in 1890. This year, it was moved to the new Belmont Park track.²³⁵

Belmont II served in the U.S. Signal Corps during World War I and, due to his absence, decided to sell most of his 1917 crop of yearlings. One of those colts was named My Man-o-War by Belmont’s wife in recognition of his military service. Before the 1918 Saratoga sales, Belmont dropped the first word of the name. The soon-to-be-famous Man-o-War sold for a “good but not spectacular price” of $5,000.²³⁶ Belmont II continued his Kentucky operations until his death in 1924.

So, while Kentucky only has the Derby, it has a very special and unique connection with each of the other two legs of the Triple Crown.