Ghost Dancers by Brian Craig5/13/2023 There, in the span of just 15 days, she thrashed the best young colts three straight times. Regret was majestic and powerful and brilliantly fast from a very young age, and so in the summer of 1914, she was sent to Saratoga Springs, New York, to make her racing debut in front of the East Coast’s fashionable set. The tycoon Harry Payne Whitney named his young filly Regret, it is said, because he had really been hoping for a colt. The first of them dates back 108 years, when a striking chestnut filly with a big white blaze on her face walked into the starting gate at Churchill Downs and put the Kentucky Derby on the map. Some are more about the backstory, or the aftermath, than the race itself. And we figured in the run up to this year’s race – to be held this Saturday – the 50th anniversary of Red’s exploits makes as good a time as any to look back at those classics. On a sheer brilliance scale, no other Kentucky Derby winner, before or since, stacks up.īut there have been, of course, countless great Derbies over the years. The big red colt stopped the clock in record time that day: one minute, 59 and two-fifths seconds. It’s been 50 years since Secretariat rocketed past his overmatched rivals on the far turn at Churchill Downs and captivated a nation.
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