Wasn’t Supposed to Win

By Mark Shrager

Reprinted with permission from Eclipse Press

TO SAY THAT ARISTIDES BEGAN his two-year-old season inauspiciously would have been understating the matter.

The consensus was that the son of the imported English stallion Leamington and the Lexington mare Sarong was an exceptionally well-bred colt, and also a fine-looking one, a bright red chestnut with a prominent star in the center of his forehead. “Not a large horse,” wrote racing executive and historian Walter S. Vosburgh in 1922, but “exquisitely moulded [sic].”

But then, every winning racehorse looks exquisite. The crucial issue is the one that has attached to every goodlooking and well-bred thoroughbred since people began using horses for sport: Can it run? Fortunately, after a handful of losses, the little red colt figured things out. Yes, Aristides could run. Again quoting Vosburgh, “Aristides improved with age.”

He also improved with distance. He would conclude his career with just one win in seven races of less than a mile, but eight in fourteen at eight furlongs or further, with a real possibility that some of the losses might have become wins under different circumstances. It is known that owner H. Price McGrath, who viewed races as contests to be won by the thoroughbreds in his stable—unless he could realize more profit by wagering on another horse— occasionally directed Aristides’ jockeys to lose purposely with the colt.

McGrath’s trainer, Ansel Williamson, surely recognized that Aristides would improve as he raced longer distances, and during the early months of the 1874 season would have advised McGrath to enter his two-yearold colt in sprints strictly as training runs. It was Williamson, after all, who watched Aristides work out daily at McGrathiana, and could observe his strengths and weaknesses firsthand. After decades as a trainer, working for men who wagered assertively on their thoroughbreds, Williamson knew only too well that McGrath would have treasured closely held insider knowledge. And with his vast store of experience and expertise, Williamson was an ideal conduit for the information McGrath craved.

Aristides was ready to race in early May, a time when distance races for two-year-olds were nearly nonexistent. Williamson must surely have recommended that McGrath keep his wallet in his pocket until the distances increased, and perhaps McGrath even paid attention. Williamson’s wisdom on the issue became clearer as the early racing season progressed, and Aristides gained conditioning while absorbing a string of defeats.

The little red colt was sent postward for the first time on May 12, 1874, in the second of just two races on that day’s card at the Lexington Association track. While in retrospect the future Kentucky Derby winner’s initial start was an event of historic importance, Aristides’ performance in the four-furlong dash was not the sort that would have left the crowd buzzing in awe as they exited the premises at the close of the abbreviated afternoon. If they were buzzing about anything, in fact, it would have been the day’s other race.

In the day’s first contest, future Hall of Famer Tom Bowling, another member of the powerful McGrath stable, had faced a single opponent, a runner called Jean Valjean in honor of the protagonist of author Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, and had run his