Gambling in American History

The Racing Hall of Fame and Museum

The National Museum of Racing and the Thoroughbred Racing’s Hall of Fame have been established and located in Saratoga Springs, New York, near the historic Saratoga track. The museum opened its doors in 1950, and the Hall of Fame was created at the site in 1955. As of 1998, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the Hall of Fame included 154 thoroughbreds, 77 jockeys, and 71 trainers. They are selected by a special panel of 125 experts from nominations made by leading media writers and commentators. Among the leading members of the Hall of Fame are the following horses and competitors.

A Selected List of Leading Thoroughbred Horses

Affirmed
Affirmed, the great-grandson of Native Dancer, won the Triple Crown in 1978 under the saddle of Steve Cauthen. In a three-year career, Affirmed won twenty-two of twenty-nine races and finished out of the money only one time. Affirmed was owned by Louis Wolfson and trained at his Harbor View Farm in Florida.  As two-year-olds, Affirmed and Alydar began a series of ten races that captured the attention of all horse enthusiasts. They raced six times as two-year-olds, with Affirmed victorious four times. As three-year-olds, Affirmed finished first and Alydar second in all Triple Crown races – the only time two horses have done that. In a subsequent race, Affirmed won again but was disqualified. Affirmed also finished his Triple Crown year with a loss to the previous year’s Triple Crown winner, Seattle Slew, and then had an out-of-the-money finish in a race where his saddle slipped. Nonetheless, Affirmed was proclaimed to be the horse of the year. As a four-year-old he repeated the honor of being horse of the year.
Cigar
Cigar ran to nineteen victories in thirty-three starts over a four-year career. His mark of fame came in 1996 as a six-year-old when he galloped to his sixteenth consecutive win, tying a record set by Citation. Cigar was raised at Allen Paulsen’s Brookside Farm in Kentucky, after being born in Maryland. He was the great-grandson of Northern Dancer. The future record-running horse did not race until he was three years old, and he bypassed the Triple Crown. He won only two of nine races as a three-year-old, and it was discovered that he had chips in the bones of each knee. Arthroscopic surgery corrected the trouble, but he still won only two of six races as a four-year-old. The wins were his last two races that year, and they were the beginning of a streak. In 1995 in the Donn Handicap, his leading challenger was Holy Bull, the horse of the year for 1994. Holy Bull took a misstep and incurred a career-ending injury. Critics discounted Cigar’s victory even though he was leading when Holy Bull’s accident happened. Soon, however, Cigar was defeating other “Grade I” fields in the Pimlico Special Handicap, the Massachusetts Handicap, and the Hollywood Gold Cup Handicap, also the Woodward Stakes, the Jockey Gold Cup, and most impressively, the 1995 Breeder’s Cup Classic. The season was a perfect ten for ten, and Cigar’s winning streak was at twelve. Cigar won horse of the year honors as well as the Eclipse Award as the older male champion. In 1996 Cigar raced to four straight victories at the Dubai World Cup, the Donn Handicap, the Massachusetts Handicap, and the Arlington Citation Challenge. That sixteenth win came in a race especially created for a national television audience.
Cigar tied Citation’s record, but the chance for seventeen victories in a row was lost when his jockey, Jerry Bailey, could not slow his pace, and he succumbed to exhaustion and a second-place finish three and a half lengths behind Dare and Go in the Pacific Classsic at Del Mar. He won one more time before being turned out to stud. His career produced prizes of $9,999,815. The prize money was his crowning glory, as he was a failure at stud. He was sterile. Cigar was moved to the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington so that his many admiring fans could come and look him over – another kind of pleasurable retirement.
Citation
Citation, a bay colt, won the Triple Crown for Calumet Farms in 1948.  He competed four years: 1947, 1948, 1950, and 1951. He ran 45 times, with 32 firsts, 10 seconds, 2 thirds, and only 1 out-of-the-money run. Injuries kept Citation off the track in 1949, and the horse never regained his Triple Crown form afterwards, but his owner, Warren Wright, requested that he keep running in order to become the first one-million-dollar purse winner. He did that for his owner, retiring in the middle of the 1951 season. In the course of his race career, Citation put together a string of sixteen wins, a record that held for over five decades until it was equaled by Cigar. Citation was a horse with both speed and staying power and a “killer’s instinct” that craved victory.
Count Fleet
Count Fleet ran only two years, competing in 21 races, winning 16, placing second in 4, and third in 1. Among Count Fleet’s victories were the Triple Crown races in 1943, in which he was ridden by the legendary Johnny Longden. Count Fleet was the offspring of the 1928 Kentucky Derby winner, Reigh Count, and Quickly, a sprint filly. Because he had suffered a hoof injury during the Wood Memorial, Count Fleet was challenged by several horses in the Kentucky Derby. He was still the favorite, and he won over Blue Swords by three lengths. That did it for most of the others. Only three challengers showed up at the Preakness, where he galloped to a win over Blue Swords by eight lengths. That made the Belmont only a three-horse race, and Count Fleet flew by the competition, winning with a twenty-five-length lead, unsurpassed in any Triple Crown event until Secretariat’s Belmont run of 1973. Count Fleet’s time was a record for the Belmont, and he actually won with an injured ankle. He was immediately retired to stud. There he continued his greatness, as he became racing’s leading sire. He fathered thirty-eight stakes winners, as well as female offspring that produced another 119 stakes winners, including Kelso. Count Fleet was retired from stud in 1966 and lived until age thirty-three, dying in 1973.
Eclipse
The “first champion” English thoroughbred, Eclipse, was foaled in 1764. Eclipse was a great-great-grandson of Darley Arabian. He began training and racing at age five and ran matched heats of four miles each. He won every race he entered, but his true fame is for posterity. Over 80 percent of all racing thoroughbreds today can trace their bloodlines to this champion.
John Henry
John Henry started 83 races over an eight-year career. He won 39 and was second 15 times while amassing $6,591,860 in prizes. He was not a fast starter as a career horse. While a three-year-old, he was purchased sight unseen for $25,000. He was born in 1975 at Kentucky’s Golden Chance Farm, and seemingly no one wanted the horse. In 1980, however, he hit his stride as he won 6 straight stakes races. In 1981, he won 8 of his 10 starts. In the most recognized of his runs that year, he was ridden by Bill Shoemaker as he won the first Arlington Million. John Henry won the Eclipse Award for older horses and also was named horse of the year. Over the next two years, injuries kept his starts down, but in 1984 he returned to prominence with 6 victories in 9 races. In 1985 he retired to the Kentucky Horse Park, as the leading money winner of all time.
Kelso
In 1960 Kelso was voted the champion male three-year-old and also the horse of the year. He won 8 of 9 races. The honors came even though he did not run that year until after the Triple Crown cycle had ended. But once running, he kept running for six more years, amassing a total of 39 victories, 31 in stakes races, as well as 12 seconds in his 63 starts. He won $1,977,896 in prizes. Kelso was durable, winning a record five designations as horse of the year. He also set track records at eight different courses. Often he ran with the disadvantage of extra weights as race organizers tried to give the competition a chance. Kelso was born in 1957 on the Claiborne Farm of Paris, Kentucky. He retired after running only one start in 1966 at the age of nine. He lived to be twenty-six, dying at the du Pont’s Woodstock Farm in Maryland in 1983.
Man O’War
Man O’War was designated to be the greatest horse of the twentieth century by Blood-Horse Magazine. All agree that he was the “super horse” of 1919 and 1920, winning all of his eleven races the latter year. As he was not entered in the Kentucky Derby, he did not achieve the Triple Crown. Nonetheless Man O’War, called “Big Red,” is still considered by some to be the greatest racehorse in history.  In his two-year career he had twenty first-place finishes and only one second place. His second-place finish came in the 1919 Sanford Stakes. He lost to a decided underdog by the name of Upset. As a result of that race a new word, upset, was introduced into the vocabulary of sports enthusiasts and applied to victories by underdogs. Man O’War’s record of twenty victories in twenty-one starts has only once been surpassed. In his final race, the Kenilworth Gold Cup, he defeated Sir Barton, the previous year’s Triple Crown winner, by seven lengths. Man O’War also was accomplished in stud, as he fathered War Admiral, the Triple Crown winner of 1937. Man O’War lived to be thirty. He died in 1947, and his funeral was broadcast by radio to the nation. The site of his grave, now at the Kentucky Horse Park, is marked by a 3,000-pound sculptured likeness.
Native Dancer
In 1952 as a two-year-old, Native Dancer ran to nine straight victories, sharing horse of the year honors with One Count. Native Dancer was born on the Scott Farm near Lexington, Kentucky, in March 1950, and he was raised on his owner’s – Alfred Vanderbilt’s – Sagamore Farm in Maryland. He won his first race at Jamaica in April 1952, and his second race only four days later. The speed of his entries was probably a training error, as he had to be rested for three months with bruised shins. He again picked up his frantic pace, however, winning the Flash Stakes at Saratoga and then three more victories within the next three weeks. He added four more victories before the end of the season. In 1953 he picked up the pace with two more victories in the Gotham Stakes and the Wood Memorial. He became the heavy odds-on favorite to win the Kentucky Derby going away. That victory proved to be elusive, however. In the first turn of the race he was bumped by a long shot, and he ended up in heavy traffic. Finally he burst loose from the crowd and charged at the leader, Dark Star, gaining on him all the way. Alas, “all the way” was not long enough; the finish line came too soon. Native Dancer finished second by a head. Two weeks later, Native Dancer defeated Dark Star and the field in the Preakness. He kept on winning – the Belmont Stakes, the Dwyer Stakes at Aqueduct, the Arlington Classic, and the Travers Stakes. At age four, he added three more victories, and he was designated as the horse of the year, after which he was retired. He had won a record twenty-one of twenty-two races. At stud at Sagamore Farm, he sired forty-four stakes winners, including Kentucky Derby winner Kauai King. Native Dancer was the grand sire of Mr. Prospector—the greatest sire of all time, and he also sired the mother of Canada’s greatest horse, Northern Dancer. Native Dancer died in 1967.
Secretariat
Secretariat was a very strong chestnut colt born on 30 March 1970. He was known as “Big Red”, the same nickname as Man O’War had. Secretariat’s father was Bold Ruler, horse of the year in 1957, and his mother Somethingroyal, a horse who never ran a race. The greatest horse of the last half-century was owned by the Penny Chenery and Meadows Stable and carried blue and white colors. He was trained by Lucien Laurin and ridden by jockey Ron Turcotte. As a two-year-old he lost his first race but then showed dominance in the next eight runs, winning all but the last, which he lost as a result of a disqualification. He was named horse of the year in 1972, the first two-year-old to win the honor. In 1973, he was ready for the Triple Crown. His warm-up races went fine until he had a weak performance in the Woodward Memorial owing to a painful abscess. Although many doubted that he had the stamina, he was ready for the Kentucky Derby. He won going away with a Derby record time, 1:59:40, the only time a horse has run the one and one-quarter miles under two minutes.  In the Preakness he won by two and a half lengths, in what would have been a record time had the track clock functioned. His competition was intimidated. There were only five horses in the Belmont. Secretariat left them in the dust, winning by a phenomenal thirty-one lengths, in a record time of 2:24, more than two seconds faster than the track record. His final race was at the Canadian International at Woodbine Track in Toronto, after which he again was named horse of the year. He retired to stud at Claiborne Farm in Lexington, where in addition to the mares, he attracted over 10,000 visitors a year until he died in 1989. The source of Secretariat’s extraordinary stamina was discovered after his death, when an autopsy revealed that his heart was 50 percent larger than normal size.