BOOK EXCERPT

overmatched rival into the ground with a 1:41 opening mile, a brazen display of speed that was at the time the fastest eight furlongs ever recorded.

Tom Bowling, offered as the 1-to-5 favorite if one could locate a bookmaker willing to accept the wager, went on to complete the mile and-a-half in a record-setting 2:34, winning by what was estimated to be “at least three seconds”—fifteen lengths or more—but Tom Bowling’s speedy circuit of the Lexington oval was not yet complete.

Strictly to satisfy their curiosity as to just how fast Tom Bowling was, McGrath and Williamson had received the judges’ permission to continue Tom Bowling at racing speed for an additional half-mile and receive an unofficial clocking. The colt flashed past the two-mile mark in 3:27, which would have qualified as another world’s record if the sport’s rules allowed multiple records from a single run. In 1877, Ten Broeck would be credited as the two-mile record holder with a time of 3:27, from a flying start, at Louisville, a faster track than the one at Lexington. Tom Bowling’s torrid sixteenfurlong run would have been a tough act to follow for a collection of unknown two-year-olds racing a half-mile in the day’s next race.

The crowd had sent Aristides postward as the betting favorite in his first effort, but back-to-back wins were denied the orange and green McGrathiana silks when a chestnut filly called Leona swept instantly to a two-length lead that she held throughout, completing the halfmile in :49, said by some to be the fastest time ever recorded for the distance (the Lexington course was obviously playing fast that day). Aristides finished second, about two lengths behind in the field of nine colts and fillies, earning his owner a check for $50.

Although the fact that Aristides was the wagering favorite suggests that

McGrath had some involvement in the public betting pools, it is impossible to know to what extent he had backed his colt, for there is no record of the wagering on the race, and McGrath, choosing (as would any professional gambler) not to divulge such privileged information, was not saying.

But one can only imagine that McGrath finished the Lexington meeting a happier and wealthier man. On Monday, May 11, his three-yearold Aaron Pennington had won the Phoenix Hotel Stakes and his mare Jury had taken the second race of the two-race program. On May 12, Tom Bowling had run Jean Valjean into the ground. Jury had come back to win the second race on May 13, and another McGrath runner, Lucy Jackson, had carried McGrathiana’s colors to a victory over hurdles in the first race on May 14. Aaron Pennington returned to the races on May 16 and could manage only a third-place finish, but by this time, McGrath should have been awash in freshly earned currency.

The purse money won in these efforts was anything but incidental, but for McGrath the game was about winning wagers, and here was a nearly perfect weekend, one in which almost every McGrathiana entrant sent postward enhanced the owner’s bankroll. And although McGrath’s chestnut twoyear-old Leamington colt had run only second, McGrath and Williamson had sent him out with almost no expectation of victory. Aristides had shown ability, which was all that could be asked of a first-time starter competing under unpromising conditions.

Following the colt’s hopeful first effort, Aristides and the other members of the McGrath string—among them superstar Tom Bowling and Aristides’ fellow two-year-olds Calvin and Chesapeake—journeyed to New York’s racing showplace, Jerome Park, for the upcoming race meeting. The group reached the elegant racetrack on May 23—and McGrath and Williamson were, if the press was to be believed, thrust immediately into a crisis.

“Aristides,” newspapers reported, “injured himself on the way to the Park by backing against and kicking the wagon, by which his hocks [the portion of the hind legs that readers would probably describe as the knees] were injured very badly, and it may retire him from the turf for some time.”

This proved to be an exaggeration, perhaps even one that McGrath or Williamson fed to the press—who else would have bothered?—in the hopes of improving Aristides’ odds when he next raced. Whatever the source of the incorrect report, however, on a brilliantly sunny June 13, 1874, just over two weeks following his alleged injury, Aristides was one of fifteen runners lined up for the inaugural running of the Juvenile Stakes, an event that would remain a fixture on the New York racing calendar until 1984, when the first edition of Breeders’ Cup brought about a number of changes to the stakes schedule.

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From The Plaid Horse managing editor Rennie Dyball, a picture book that encourages kids to accept and celebrate ALL bodies …

Rennie is the co-author of Show Strides with Piper Klemm, competes in the adult amateur hunter and equitation divisions, and is a passionate believer that all bodies are good bodies.

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