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GLORIOUS RACING FIGURES OF PAST PEERLESS MISS WOODFORD AND HER WONDERFUL CAREER HER SUPREMACY CHECKED BY THE MIGHTY FREELAND TROUBADOUR THE GREAT CONQUERED BY LONGFEL ¬ LOWS GREAT SON THE BARD BySALVATOR BySALVATORIf If present conditions continue there will never be another case of i great race mare bred under similar circumstances to those responsible for the coming into the world of Miss Wood ford the largest money winner of her sex that America thus far has produced she won hirtyseven out of fortyeight races and a total of 118270 in stake and purse money Miss Woodford foaled 1SSO was bred by G W Bowen fc Co of Lexington Ky her sire wing imp Billet and her dam Fancy Jane by Neil Robinson son of Wagner As the story goes Fancy Jane was considered of so little account that she was traded to Bowen for a barrel of whisky and by him put to breeding Her career was a short one as a brood mare as she produced but four fpals the first in 1877 and the last in 1SSO dying about he time she weaned it This was Miss Woodford which as will be seen narrowly escaped having to be brought up by hand handHow How extremely oldfashioned the maternal pedigree of Miss Woodford reads nowadays The extension is as follows Dam Fancj Jane by Neil Robinson granddam by imp The Knight of St George third dam by imp Glencoe fourth dam Yarico by Sumpter fifth dam by Northumberland sixth dam by imp Speculator seventh dam by Godolphin eighth dam by Pegasus ninth dam by imp Bolton tenth dam a mare bought at Flemings sale With the exception of Yarico the fourth dam none of this line of mares except Fancy Jane ever appears to have produced anything of record They are all unnamed and so far as the Stud Book guides us had no lists of foals What is more it is difficult if not impossible to truly identify one of the sires There werpsaveralflldt5mc stallions called Rpjrasjjs i nJ which was which and which yas tother so for as Miss Woodfords ancestry is concerned is indefinite indefiniteNevertheless Nevertheless this very unfashionable and until Miss Woodford and her yearolder own Mter Belle of Runnymedc appeared unproductive family is responsible for the only race mare in the history of the American turf that has gained a place among its ten largest winners she stands eighth on the roster Considering the fact that before and since her day we have had thousands of mares infinitely better bred with pedigrees bristling with famous sires and dams and of the most approved orthodox extension she provides a salient in ¬ stance of those enigmas which confront us on every hand in our attempts to attain either systematic or scientific breeding On a blood basis there is absolutely no excuse for Miss V oodfords occupying the exalted position that is hers and moreover was so splendidly earned by her She retired from the turf in 1885 that is to say thirtyfour years ago and in all that time with all the materials indigenous and imported at the command of the American breeder he has not turned out a performer of her sex to equal or excel her record Would the English General Stud Book today accept Miss Woodford as thoroughbred according to its established standard If her pedigree were to be ransacked we can hardly believe so lor it cannot be extended throughout to animals duly recorded in the English books booksMISS MISS WOODFORD CONQUERED BY MIGHTY FREELAND FREELANDYet Yet Miss Woodford trailed in the dust the colors of Iroquois our only Americanbred winner of the English Derby when a couple of seasons later he returned to the land of his birth and endeavored to establish his claim to supremacy here What a wonderful mare she was Tremendous things were asked of her and season after season when confronted by new aspirants for the highest honors she defended herself with u resolution and an ability that left no doubt in any mind regarding her greatness Near the end of her career it is true Freeland definitely got the best of her But whether at this time she was just the same Miss Woodford as of old that is perhaps to be doubted doubtedIn In all the years that since have come and gone we have had nothing to quite equal that series of duels between Freeland and Miss Woodford in the summer of 1885 There were other horses in the fields but the public took no account of them its interest being riveted olely upon these two mare and gelding respectively the champions of east and west They jjict four times and Freeland won three of these races and the mare the other So closely were they matched that on two occasions only a short head separated them with McLaugh lin on Woodford and Murphy on Freeland giving superb exhibitions of the jockeys art The pitch of enthusiasm to which the entire sporting world became worked up over these desperate combats was intense They were true sporting events in the best sense of the term and not only did shouting thousands witness them from one ocean to the other the continent was ablaze People who otherwise knew nothing about racing and cared nothing jor it became absorbed in the rivalry between the daughter of Billet and the son of Long ¬ fellow and in thousands of cities and towns remote from the scenes of battle waited anxiously for the results to be Hashed over the wires Partisanship ran high Truly there were tons of money wagered on the rivals Auction pools were sold on running races in those days ami on one occasion Miss Woodford and her stablemate Richmond brought 1100 as first choice against 1000 to Freeland and his coupled mate Modesty as fast as the auctioneer coulcl call the bids The fanaticism of admiration imbued the admirers of both The east could not believe that Miss Woodford could be humbled The west would not believe but that 1rceland could humble her herIf If Miss Woodford was a wonder what then was Freeland Perhaps more wonderful 4511 though as a whole his career did not compare with hers He raced sixty times won thirty races and his earnings amounted to but 4301o only about a third as much as the mares He was a year older and his career had been a checkered one At the very time he dethroned her he was a glorious cripple He had never enjoyed the adroit handling the expert maneuvering the perfect placing which she was given But at his best he did not possess her sturdiness and vigor which in her fouryearold form had enabled her to race rwomile heats in 333 331Vi today a worlds record and one which without doubt will permanently remain so soYet Yet there was something indescribably gallant about the figure of Freeland The closest critics analyzing their duels carefully reckoned him a shade the g mcr if to say that as re ¬ garded such a mare as Woodford were not hypcrcriticism hypcrcriticismIn In the end Freeland descended to a stage which had he been human must have been almost the last humiliation The season after he conquered Woodford he broke down and disappeared forever from the race course But a few years later a racing drama called as I remember The Derby Winner made the circuit of the popularpriced theaters and a part of its publicity was a daily parade by a little bunch of thoroughbreds with jockeys up in silks and satins a sufficiently unfamiliar apparition in the streets of a city to attract all and more attention than was the calculation At the head of this parade was the once mighty Freeland king of the turf He had been picked up for the purpose for a few hundreds of dollars and in this way for the last time acted as a breadwinner And in this role I had my farewell glimpse of him one that still lingers in my memory for with the last remnants of his pristine gamencss he endeavored to bear himself gallantly as if to show that once he was a king kingMiss Miss Woodford went to the stud at Rancho del Paso and her record as a matron did not equal that she had established as a racing tool George Kessler by Salvator was her best Coutiuuid 011 sucoud page GLORIOUS RACING FIGURES OF PAS Continued from first page and for a moment during his twoyearold career he looked like something of high class But it was a Hash only and a breakdown soon removed him from the turf Then he went to the itud but his career there was undistinguished On the whole Belle of Runnymede Miss Wbodfords elder sister was a much more successful matron and quite a number of good winners were foaled by her and her daughters daughtersTHE THE GREATNESS OF CAPTAIN BROWNS TROUBADOUR TROUBADOURThe The last season spent by Miss Woodford at the races that of 1886 brought her but one defeat that which she sustained in the match with Troubaddur Who remembers Trouba ¬ dour nowadays Yet this son of Lisbon and Glenluine by imp tGlenelg was surely one of the best horses that has ever graced the American titrf Few colts have ever survived such an ordeal as his two and threeyearold campaigns and gone on to achieve the highest honors As a twoyearold he ran fourteen times and as a threeyearold no less than twentytwo making thirtysix times in all in these two seasons Hanover is often cited as a marvelous example of wearing power because he raced twentyseven times at three but as a twoyear old he had sported silk but three times Troubadour was no such two or threeyearold as Hanover but he was right along with the best colts of his years at that and had less use been made of him at two there is no telling what he might not have accomplished the next season He did not reach his best estate until he was four and then he was practically above ordinances Making one preliminary start he came out in the Suburban and won it in a common canter from a field of nineteen giving weight to everything that started but Joe Cotton As a result of this victory he was matched against Miss Woodford the two meeting ihree weeks later at a mile and a quarter weight for age Troubadour was ridden by Fitz piilrick who had also ridden him in the Suburban while McLaughlin as usual rode the mare Troubadour took the track at Hagfall made his own pace led all the way and won rather easily by threequarters of a length But this finished him for the season as soon after he vent amiss The next one 1S87 he came out like a giant refreshed and ran a series of sensational races against The Bard They met first in the Coney Island stakes at a mile and a furlong and The Bard won but Troubadour beat him back in the Ocean Stakes at the same distance and then rubbed it in by defeating him for the Monmouth Cup at a mile and threequarters For the fourth and last time they met in the Freehold Stakes at Mon ¬ mouth Park and Troubadour a strong favorite broke down in the race The Bard winning vith Barnum second secondTroubadour Troubadour never raced again He went to the stud with the glory of having conquered both Miss Woodford and The Bard and much was expected of him as a sire but these dreams of his owner Captain Sam Brown of Pittsburgh were never realized Lookout was probably the fastest of the get of Troubadour but was too cunning a rascal to here be a classic hero There was one stage of that historic 50000 American Derby of 1803 in which Domino went djwn to such inglorious defeat and Boundless achieved so unexpected a victory when Look ¬ out looked dangerous But just about that moment he decided that the effort was not worth while and stuck his toes into the ground and faded Can we read the moral of Troubadours lack of success as a sire in Bruce Lowes verdict upon the No 0 Family to which the son of Lisbon belonged No G has always been a poor sire family says Lowe You may or may not care much about the Figure System to me it docs not mean much except as a handy guide to common lines of descent on the maternal side but in this case it worked out outLONGFELLOWS LONGFELLOWS GREAT SON THE BARD AND HIS POWER POWERThe The Bard who triumphed over Troubadour in their last encounter and by so doing made the score between them an even one belonged to the No 12 Family which according to Bruce Lowe is the best sire family of them all The son of Longfellow and Bradamante was never the sire that so great a performer and one so well bred might or should have wen but in Gold Heels he did get one of the most brilliant cup and handicap horses of the first years of the twentieth century Incidentally it may be remarked that Bradamante the bin of The Bard was for years accredited with the worlds record at twomile heats namely o32ii 320 made at Jackson Miss Nov 17 1S77 she being then a threeyearold and carrying 87 pounds The performance was made at the Mississippi State Fair for the year in ¬ dicated and upon the last day of the racing thereat For a purse of 2GO think of that ye modern turfmen Bradamante Docility and Lambay contested heats of two miles Brada ¬ mante winning each by two lengths in 332 329 Docility second Lambay distanced in the second heat heatIn In his Guide to the Turf for 1877 Krik H G Crickmore states in a note that The time as given for this meeting is from The Times of that city Later on the cor ¬ rectness of this time was questioned and finally the compilers of racing statistics decided not to allow Bradamantes mark to stand it seeming to them too fast to be true Hence Miss Woodfords performance became and remains the recognized record Yet who shall say that the dam of The Bard did not really run as fast as reported She was certainly a mare of quality she had only a feather on her back and on other occasions that season she ran in close to record time at other distances What is more a few years ago there appeared in one of the turf journals an article in which a turfman who had been present at Jackson Miss the day that Bradamante ran her muchdiscussed twomile heats protested against her bring deprived of honors which he stated were rightfully hers There was he wrote no question but that she actually ran as fast as the time with which she had been accredited Perhaps at this distance from these events now a part of ancient history almost whether she did or whether she didnt may not greatly matter Yet one thing is certain it seems both arbitrary and foolish to cancel the record of Bradamante nd continue to credit as a bona fide record that mile and a quarter of Whisk Brooms in 200 when as is conceded his actual time was from two to three seconds slower there being no doubt in ihe world that a mistake and a glaring one was perpetrated when the official figures were jiven out
