THOROUGHBRED BOULEVARD

THOROUGHBRED BOULEVARD

Thousands of acres along Old Frankfort Pike have a connection today to the early 20th century’s inf uential Idle Hour Stock Farm.

An acknowledged gambler, Col. E.R. Bradley played a winning hand when it came to Thoroughbred racehorses.

or most of the f rst half of the 20th century,

Fthe leading T oroughbred horse farm on Old Frankfort Pike was Col. E.R. Bradley’s Idle Hour Stock Farm. Bradley bought the core of the farm in 1906 and over 40 years raised four Kentucky Derby winners. Af er his death in 1946, the farm property and close surroundings continued as sources of Derby winners and other star runners.

Edward Riley Bradley was a character whose life made a great myth — and vice versa. He was born in Pittsburgh of Irish heritage in 1859 and went to work in steel mills. Restless, he ventured westward from his home state. Gambling appealed and would carry a burgeoning career in the turbulent Southwest to posh casinos from

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THOROUGHBRED BOULEVARD

Texas to Chicago to Palm Beach. Bradley once testif ed in a Senate hearing as follows: Having identif ed himself as “a gambler,” he was asked what he would gamble upon. Answer: “almost anything.”

One thing he toned down on gambling with was his health. He was in middle age when advised by a physician that the world of smoky gambling halls could shorten his life. Whereupon, Bradley might have mused: “Hmmmm. How can a man be outdoors more and still f nd some action? Aha! Horse racing!”

Bradley purchased his f rst racehorse late in the 19th century. His initial purchase of 300 acres of Kentucky land would grow to more than 1,200. His wife, Agnes, named the property Idle Hour.

Olin Gentry, himself an iconic horseman, managed the Idle Hour property for Bradley and then for other owners under dif erent farm names. Gentry recalled that Bradley knew he could not af ord the better race f llies from England, so he set out to acquire close-up relatives to Oaks winners and the like.

Bradley zeroed in on the Kentucky Derby as a special target, and when the fashionable f lly Regret won the event in 1915, the Derby soared in national prestige.

His f rst Derby winner was bred through a pattern that bypassed any theories or genetic knowledge that might have been explained to him by sage horsemen. T e mare that foaled 1921 winner Behave Yourself had come onto the market some years before because her owner was killed by the showgirl who was his paramour. Naturally, the owner was a crony of Bradley’s. He was a California bookmaker with the central casting name of Frank T. “Caesar” Young.

T e “Colonel” (a contrived appellation) won the Kentucky Derby again in 1926 with Bubbling Over, then added back-to-back wins in the next decade with Burgoo King (1932) and Brokers

SHOWPLACE Idle Hour Stock Farm Idle Hour Stock Farm was as beautiful as it was productive.

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MATRIARCH Bradley’s foundation mare, La Troienne, exerted immense inf uence on the breed.

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Tip (1933). T e four Derby wins was a record for an owner at that time and garnered fame for Bradley’s trainer as “Derby Dick” T ompson.

With stallion Black Toney leading the way (despite the cringeworthy name as seen from today’s standards), the list of 15 champions bred by Bradley commenced in 1919. Black Toney, who had been bred by James R. Keene and purchased by Bradley, sired Miss Jemima, regarded as co-champion juvenile f lly. Other champions sired by Black Toney are Balladier, Black Helen, and Bimelech. All were of lasting signif cance, and all illustrated the pattern of naming horses starting with the letter B.

Bimelech was a son of La Troienne, who was the greatest of the Bradley pluckings of good European bloodlines existing within an indif erent runner. La Troienne was bred in France by Marcel

E.D. WEDDLE

BROKERS TIP Won the infamous ÒFighting Finish DerbyÓ of 1933

BIMELECH Won the 1940 Preakness and Belmont and became an inf uential sire

TURF PIX

TURF PIX

BUBBLING OVER Won the 1926 Kentucky Derby

Boussac and born in 1926. She was purchased at a Newmarket sale for $6,250 and imported to Idle Hour. La Troienne foaled Bimelech, Black Helen, and three other stakes winners. Nine of her daughters became important broodmares, and the f ow of hundreds of stakes winners from La Troienne’s female family continues as the completion of a century since her birth approaches.

Bradley maintained a broodmare band of about 30 through most of his career as a breeder.

When Bradley passed away in 1946, he had bred 128 stakes winners.

A Legacy Lasting and Shared

Bradley was a widower with no children, and his brother, John, his executor, had made it known he was not interested in carrying on the Idle Hour breeding operation. By the Nov. 16, 1946, issue, BloodHorse was able to report the details of the distribution of Bradley’s property and horses.

T e key f gures were three major breeders: King Ranch (under the leadership of Robert J. Kleberg Jr.), Ogden Phipps, and John Hay Whitney. T at trio went in together to purchase as a syndicate the breeding stock and farm property. BloodHorse reported that tax stamps indicated the 1,292-acre property was valued at $901,000. Maj. Louie Beard, an associate of Whitney who represented the syndicate, stated that published reports placing the horses’ total value at $2,681,545 were “approximately correct.”

T e partners negotiated among themselves for mares, yearlings, and weanlings, and each received major bloodstock for his own already highclass operation. King Ranch received 11 mares, Phipps received f ve, and nine went to Greentree Stud, which Whitney had inherited along with his sister Joan Whitney Payson.

T e syndicate partners resold a major draf of 14 mares to Edward S. Moore, along with 10 yearlings and 10 weanlings. Seven horses were sold to Charles S. Howard, renowned since the 1930s as owner of Seabiscuit, and Elizabeth Arden Graham’s Maine Chance Farm bought a special weanling for a special price. A full brother to 1945 Horse of the Year Busher, the young son of War Admiral—Baby League, by Bubbling Over, was priced at $50,000, a record for a weanling at the time.

Of the syndicate members, only Kleberg was interested in retaining acreage for a Kentucky farm, and he established a Kentucky division of King Ranch. Other parcels were sold, but they continued as the birthplace of distinguished T oroughbreds.

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Bluegrass Heights and Good Neighbor Bradley

Bradley had ways of supporting the present and future during his lifetime as well as af erward. Four years af er his purchase of a f rst Idle Hour parcel in 1906, he had a new neighbor. In 1910 Horace N. Davis Sr. bought land on the southern side of Old Frankfort Pike, across the road from what became the main portion of Idle Hour. Davis was knowledgeable about horses but did not intend his open agricultural land to become a horse farm. His new neighbor, though, prevailed on him to board some mares, as Bradley’s bloodstock holdings increased more rapidly than his land acquisitions.

In time, Davis developed his own broodmare band and, doing business as Bluegrass Heights Farm, began marketing yearlings annually at Saratoga in New York. Bradley once of ered the mare Minawand to Davis free, to get her of the Idle Hour roster. As recalled by author Peter Chew in T e Kentucky Derby, the First 100 Years (Houghton Mif in Co., 1974), Davis responded by “looking his gif horse in the mouth.” He would take the mare only if she came with a season to Bradley stallion Bubbling Over, the 1926 Derby winner. Further, Davis stipulated that he and Bradley would go shares in the resulting foal. Minawand produced a foal Bradley liked more than anything else she had produced, so he bought full interest. T ree years later, in 1932, Bradley had his third Derby winner, Burgoo King, who was listed as bred in partnership with Davis.

T e same year Burgoo King won the Kentucky Derby, a BloodHorse article noted Gladys Mills Phipps had visited Bluegrass Heights. She was checking on her young stallion prospect Hard Tack, whom she had placed at stud on the farm. Hard Tack had just four foals in his f rst crop the following

KEENELAND LIBRARY/MEADORS COLLECTION EARLY PARTNERS Bluegrass Heights founder Horace N. Davis was an early partner of Bradley. Son Horace Jr. (pictured center) was a veterinarian who continued the farm’s winning ways.

TONY LEONARD PHOTO

CLASSIC SUCCESS

Horace N. Davis Jr. bred Amberoid, winner of the 1966 Belmont.

Horace N. “Colonel” Davis was the third generation of the family to operate the farm.

ANNE M. EBERHARDT

ROOM WITH A VIEW Dr. Horace N. Davis Jr. in his off ce on the farm

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SKEETS MEADORS

POWERHOUSE Clockwise from top left: John W. Galbreath leads in 1963 Derby winner Chateaugay; a view of Darby Dan Farm; inf uential sire Ribot; Proud Clarion’s 1967 Derby trophy

CLASSIC YIELD From left to right: Another parcel of the former Idle Hour Farm became Mr. and Mrs. Dan Rice’s Danada, which bred and raced 1965 Derby winner Lucky Debonair.

ANNE M. EBERHARDT

ANNE M. EBERHARDT

KEENELAND LIBRARY/MEADORS COLLECTION UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY PHOTO ARCHIVES SKEETS MEADORS

BLOODHORSE

spring, but one of them was Seabiscuit, a future Hall of Famer bred by Mrs. Phipps and foaled at Claiborne Farm near Paris, Kentucky. Seventy years later, the major motion picture “Seabiscuit” was produced, and by that time movies connected to Bluegrass Heights were old hat. In the 1940s there had been an earlier movie, “T e Story of Seabiscuit,” as well as the movie “Black Gold.” T e 1924 Derby winner Black Gold had been foaled and raised at Bluegrass Heights. His breeder and owner, Rosa Hoots (whose mother was an Osage Native American), had beseeched Bradley to accept her mare Useeit for Black Toney. Hoots did so to honor her late husband, who had been ruled of racing when he refused to relinquish Useeit af er a claiming race. Black Gold was the result of the mating with Black Toney. (In his Kentucky Derby book, author Chew recalled that the ever-craf y Bradley had spotted Useeit as a runner and told Mr. Hoots to be in touch when he was ready to breed her.)

One wonders if the committees that assess “cultural” aspects of scenic highways routinely run across such episodes of American life!

Darby Dan to the Fore

In 1944, T oroughbred breeder John W. Galbreath purchased 100 acres adjacent to Idle Hour from W.P. Veal. A soul dedicated to his beloved Ohio, Galbreath had established Darby Dan Farm in that state. He needed a headquarters for mares to send to Kentucky stallions in his goal of upgrading his stock. Bradley had been an early adviser to Galbreath and had sold him some horses.

Two decades af er Bradley’s death, Galbreath won Kentucky Derbys with Chateaugay (1963) and Proud Clarion (1967). Sandwiched between those classics was the 1965 Derby of Lucky Debonair, bred and owned by Mr. and Mrs. Dan Rice’s Danada Farm, the name of another parcel of Bradley’s former farm. Moreover, the 1966 Belmont Stakes was won by Amberoid, whose home was the neighboring Bluegrass Heights.

Galbreath had achieved a unique climb from f nancial obscurity to enormous corporate standing. He had led a great many citizens with him on upward paths of their own dimensions. T e pattern began when, as a young man, he had discerned investment opportunity during — of all times — the Depression. He contrived a plan in Columbus, Ohio, whereby homeowners could make

THOROUGHBRED BOULEVARD

COURTESY OF KING RANCH

TEXAS-KENTUCKY CONNECTION

Texas-bred Assault won the 1946 Triple Crown for Robert J. Kleberg Jr.’s King Ranch.

The Kentucky division of King Ranch once was part of Idle Hour Stock Farm.

additional investments that they not only prof ted from but also helped others get on their f nancial feet, as well.

Galbreath’s subsequent success ranged from building skyscrapers to helping New York racing enter a modern phase by rebuilding Aqueduct and renovating Belmont Park.

Galbreath named Darby Dan Farm in Ohio for Big Darby Creek, on his farm property, in conjunction with the name of his son Dan. He used the farm name in Kentucky, too, and by the middle to late 1950s the name was taking on considerable international prestige.

Chateaugay, the 1963 Derby-Belmont winner and 3-year-old champion, was sired by Darby Dan stallion Swaps and was out of Banquet Bell. During the next decade, a homebred stakes winner, Bramalea, emerged as a major mare when her son Roberto won the famed Epsom Derby in England. Roberto was named for Roberto Clemente, a star on the Pittsburgh Pirates, a team Galbreath owned and that won the World Series. Galbreath was the f rst to own winners of both the Kentucky Derby and Epsom Derby.

For Darby Dan’s stallion roster, Galbreath leased Ribot, the great European champion whose unbeaten career included back-toback runnings in the 1950s of France’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Galbreath reached out to Europe again when Sea-Bird II came along in the 1960s to earn comparisons to Ribot in the minds of some horsemen. Ribot and SeaBird II both stood at Darby Dan with signif cant results for Galbreath and for many other breeders.

Galbreath’s 1974 Preakness and Belmont Stakes winner, Little Current, was a son of Sea-Bird II, while his major stallions Graustark and His Majesty were sons of Ribot.

Galbreath died at 90 in 1988. His last major triumphs had included Proud Truth’s victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic in 1985. T us, a career that emphasized tradition also embraced the signif cant new series of races that had been inaugurated only a year earlier. Galbreath was the breeder of 77 stakes winners,

Asnapshot of Old Frankfort Pike during those mid-1960s when Chateaugay, et al., were winning classic races: Farms fronting the byway included Big Sink Farm, Blue Grass Heights, Bonnie Braes Farm, Circle M., Darby Dan Farm, Deepwood Farm, Elkchester Farm, Highcroft, King Ranch, Matron Farm, Shadowlawn, Wolf Run Farm, etc.

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FERTILE ACREAGE

King Ranch produced numerous stakes winners in Kentucky. 1936 Derby winner Bold Venture stood for a time at the Kentucky division of King Ranch before going to Texas.

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including 10 bred in partnership with Mrs. Galbreath (who bred 25 separately).

Darby Dan continued under Dan Galbreath, but he passed away seven years later. T e family developed a plan for carrying into the 21st century. Darby Dan is now run by John W. Phillips, whose mother was John W. Galbreath’s daughter. Under Phillips, Darby Dan indeed crossed into a new century and, as will be covered in the f nal segment of this series, is an ongoing chapter in the broad sweep of history embracing more than a century.

King Ranch Kentucky

While the mid-1970s saw such moments for Darby Dan as Little Current’s classic wins, that era was identif ed with somber conclusions for neighboring King Ranch and Bluegrass Heights. T e year 1972 saw the death of Dr. Horace Davis Jr., who had succeeded his father as head of Bluegrass Heights. Kleberg of King Ranch passed away in 1974.

A practicing veterinarian as well as operator of the farm, Davis was the breeder of Amberoid, winner of the Wood Memorial and Belmont Stakes. Following Davis Jr.’s death, Bluegrass Heights passed to a third generation of Horace N. Davises, Horace III, known as “Colonel.”

Kleberg had bred improvement into the Quarter Horse breed for its use on a cattle ranch. Also, in the 1930s, he was so impressed by the T oroughbred stallion Chicaro that he not only bought the stallion but also traveled to Kentucky to learn more. He acquired breeding stock and bred to race in the King Ranch silks. By the time the Idle Hour stock became available, Kleberg’s mark in the T oroughbred world include his Texas homebred Assault, winner of the 1946 Triple Crown.

Kleberg bred a total of 86 T oroughbred stakes winners. T e last champion Kleberg bred was Gallant Bloom, a Gallant Man f lly who reigned as champion of her age at 2 and 3 in 1968-69.

Since Kleberg’s death, his daughter, Helen K. Groves, continued prominently in racing until her passing in May 2022, and all of her f ve daughters have made a mark in the sport. One of her daughters, Helen Alexander, had been designated by Kleberg for management of the King Ranch T oroughbred sector. Converting what had been primarily a private breeding operation, Alexander shif ed King Ranch to a boarding farm, also providing yearling breaking and sales preparation. She took it to the heights as a consignor, topping the prestigious Keeneland July yearling sale four times in the 1990s. Alexander also established her own Middlebrook Farm on Old Frankfort Pike and has continued as a major breeder, individually, and in partnerships with her mother and sisters.

In 1989, the King Ranch Kentucky breeding stock was sold to Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum of Dubai, whose

THOROUGHBRED BOULEVARD

Ownership of some of the farms along Old Frankfort Pike has changed over the years but the land remains a consistent source of top horses.

family had established an expansive network of international farms and racetracks. In 1998 the farm itself was sold to T ree Chimneys Farm, which had emerged to be one of the leading farms on Old Frankfort Pike under Robert Clay.

Ten years later, the relationship of old Bradley property to Bluegrass Heights took an additional turn. Horace Davis III sold Bluegrass Heights in 2008 to Satish and Anne Sanan, who had established Padua as the name of their breeding operation. T e 275-acre farm was designated to be managed as an operational division of the adjoining T ree Chimneys Farm. KM

(Author’s note: T e f nal segment of this series, in addition to providing updates on farms mentioned herein, will include newer farms and developments. Also the expansion of nearby Calumet Farm now gives Old Frankfort Pike additional connection to another of the celebrated names in T oroughbred history. T e f nal chapter will also circle back to the property known in the 19th century as Woodburn. Former Kentucky Gov. Brereton C. Jones and his family have added a continuing modern chapter of that epochal farm which was owned by Mrs. Jones’ ancestors.)