The Kentucky Derby: How the Run for the Roses Became America’s Premier Sporting Event

Chapter 2. The "Southern" Path to National Prominence: 1910-1930

2 The “Southern” Path to National Prominence 1910–1930 On the heels of the reintroduction of the pari-mutuel machines in 1908, Matt Winn again took a page from the book of M. L. Clark and returned the free infield policy to Churchill Downs on Derby Day in 1910. It was a fitting start to what would be the most important two decades of growth in the Derby’s history. The “free field” had been an important part of the Derby’s charm and identity in the early years but had been discontinued by the turn of the century in a shortsighted attempt to increase revenue. In the early years, the infield possessed a country fair atmosphere on Derby Day. Spectators could drive their buggies and wagons right into the middle of the racecourse and be part of a gathering that the Courier-Journal had described as “a regular Fifteenthamendment crowd, for everybody was there, without regard to age, color, sex, or previous condition of servitude.”1 Though the crowds in the free infield were small and tame by modern standards, they were a precursor to the unique infield environment that would begin to take its modern shape and feel in the 1960s, eventually earning a reputation as a world-class site of unbridled revelry. Winn himself would put the free infield policy on permanent hiatus in 1920 (a decision announced the year before), when the Derby’s status as a major sporting extrava-  47 The Kentucky Derby 48 ganza was more secure and demand for tickets was too high to justify free admission. But during the 1910s crowds filled the free infield on Derby Day, creating a festival atmosphere that connoted a significance of the race that transcended the world of horse racing. The 1910 crowd witnessed a front-running victory by lukewarm favorite Donau for his owner William Gerst of Nashville. Besides his win in the Derby, Donau was best known for making a scarcely fathomable forty-one starts as a two-yearold and for a disagreeable temperament that once manifested itself in a starting line tantrum that ended with Donau lying in the dirt, refusing to budge. In 1912, with American racing decimated by antigambling laws, the Daily Racing Form declared that “there is no disputing the preeminence of the Kentucky Derby.”2 The Kentucky New Era proclaimed that the Derby stood “virtually alone as the sole survivor of the great classics of the American turf.”3 The following year its position would be further strengthened when the English Jockey Club passed the Jersey Act, named for its sponsor Victor Child Villiers, seventh Earl of Jersey, that effectively disquali fied horses bred in the United States from being recognized as “pure” Thoroughbreds.4 In the early 1900s England had become a popular destination for wealthy American racehorse owners like James Ben Ali Haggin as racing and gambling became increasingly unwelcome in a growing number of American jurisdictions. The English did not appreciate the influx of new horses, which caused the supply of racehorses to outpace demand and led to a drop in the prices of English bloodstock. English authorities addressed the issue by raising questions about the American horses’ purity of blood. The condescension toward American stock in England, combined with the onset of World War I soon thereafter, made European racing an unattractive option for most American owners . The Kentucky Derby was an indirect beneficiary of this turn of events as it was one of the few high-profile races in America The “Southern” Path to National Prominence 49 that had survived the reform movements aimed at eliminating gambling and horse racing across the country. The Jersey Act would be modified in 1949 to recognize American Thoroughbreds . But by that time, American racing in general—and the Kentucky Derby specifically—were on much firmer footing than they had been in 1913. As the Jersey Act was being finalized in England, long-shot Donerail won the Kentucky Derby in track-record time. Parimutuel wagering was still something of a novelty at that time, having been reintroduced to Churchill Downs only five years earlier . A $2 win ticket on Donerail paid the princely sum of $184.90, a figure that made headlines around the country and is still a record payout for the Derby. One of the thousands in attendance that day for the...