The 1920s: The Golden Age of Thoroughbred Racing
As with the baseball stars of that era, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, the names of the greatest horses of the decade of the roar are still with us, decades after most of those who witnessed their glory have died. Who hasn’t heard of Man O’War? In an iconic decade, great racehorses became icons, and icons continue.
Exterminator
The 1922 Horse of the Year was originally intended as a mother sparring partner for rival Sun Briar. Willis Sharpe Kilmer, who bought the Exterminator before his three-year-old season, thought he had been duped when his trainer Henry McDaniel paid far more than was allowed for the chestnut gelding. But there was a problem: Exterminator was still matching Sun Briar, a champion junior horse, speed for speed in training.
The horse also seemed to have an instinctive understanding of racing strategy, speeding up when necessary and stopping when McDaniel told it to. So when Sun Briar developed ringbone, McDaniel encouraged Kilmer to enter his alternate in the upcoming Kentucky Derby. At first, Kilmer rejected the plan, until the president of Churchill Downs, who had seen the Exterminator training, intervened.
Suddenly, the inexperienced, unraced Exterminator found himself facing a particularly muddy Derby morning. But his furious final kick took him from the back of the pack, where he had waited comfortably during the race, awaiting his moment, to the fountain, where he won by a length.
He continued to mature, racing to the unusual age of nine and beating horses that, in previous years, had bested him. In all, he had 33 stakes wins, a record that no North American Thoroughbred has broken.
mad hatter and mad game
Although they tend to be overshadowed by the more famous half-brother, Man O’War, these Thoroughbred siblings, both sired by Man O’War’s sire Fair Play and the mare Mad Cap, earned top racing honors. important in the early 1920s.
During his two-year-old season, older brother Mad Hatter took the Bellerose Stakes, while developing a reputation as a temperamental, occasionally testy horse best understood by jockey Earl Sande. After his junior season loss to Sir Barton in the Maryland Handicap race, these two horses struck up a rivalry, which added sweetness to Mad Hatter’s Pimlico victory over Sir Barton. But it was as a mature racing thoroughbred that Mad Hatter really shined, winning the Jockey Club Gold Cup and continuing to win classic races throughout the twenties.
Mad Play, the younger of the two brothers (born 1921), also benefited from the expert guidance of the great Earl Sande. The three-year season saw impressive third-place finishes in the Preakness Stakes, but at Belmont (the last Triple Crown event) he earned lasting fame, outscoring his closest rival by a length and a half.
Both horses, after retirement, were found to be barren, ending the possibility of a mad dynasty.
Man O’War
Was Man O’War (1917-1947), as many have argued, the greatest Thoroughbred racehorse of all time? It depends on the criteria you use. Consistency? (Man O’War won 9 of 10 races in his two-year-old season. His only loss came in the Sanford Memorial Stakes, where his jockey failed to turn him over at the start of this pre-era race at the gates of start, and in which he was boxed at least three times and still came second.
The following year he won every race he entered, going 20-1.) Blazing speed? (He set several world and US records.) Willingness to compete? (See that 20-1 record again.) General effect on sport? (Man O’War sired 64 stakes winners, despite horse fanciers’ complaints that he was paired with inferior mares. He was also the grandfather of Seabiscuit.)
No matter how you judge it, it’s hard to argue too much with Blood Horse magazine’s statement, in its list of the 100 Greatest American Thoroughbred Champions of the 20th Century, that Man O’War belonged at the top of that list.