Judges Stand: Stoutest Bred Horse Won Run for Roses; Cosmic Missile Proves Class in Defeat; Nellie Saw the Boys Home in Preakness; Tudor Minstreal Bred to Go Epsom Route, Daily Racing Form, 1947-05-06

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JUDGES STAND by charles hatton CHURCHILL DOWNS, Louisville, Ky., May 5. — Of course all Derbies are more or less unforgettable races down here in the Blue Grass, but by no means all of them are won from end to end, as Jet Pilot won the seventy-third Derby here Saturday. The cosmetics lady likes to see her cyclamen colors in front, and they were never anywhere else, as Jet Pilot did alone what her highly-fancied three-horse entry failed to do last May. Before the race it was said that he had been running in bars, that he was not a whip horse, and there was a dim suspicion that lack of stamina explained his somewhat spotty record. But he was perfectly rated and it was noted here last week that pedigree students would find him the stoutest bred horse in the field. Jet Pilot is by Blenheim II., who sired Whirlaway, Mahmoud and Donatello, out of a stakes-winning mare by Sir Gallahad III., who sired three Kentucky Derby winners and his grandam was a stakes winner and half-sister to Myrtlewood. This is the world famous Frizette family you know. If this all did not make Jet Pilot win the Derby, it certainly didnt get in his way. It was his pedigree which encouraged Maine Chance to buy him as a potential sire, even though a column of one leg isnt quite plump. It took four men to give him a dose of medicine as a yearling, but he doesnt now have any of the Blenheim II. zaniness. Bull Hancock has a share in his two-year-olcf brother, while he is grooming another for the Keeneland sales and reports that the fourth of the series is a really corking colt foal. Most of the Hardboots feel that Jet Pilot will surely win the shorter Preakness, but wonder if he can beat the lumbering Phalanx in the longer Belmont. AAA If it interests you, the first three in the Kentucky Oaks are eligible for the Pimlico Oaks, on Friday at Baltimore. Cosmic Missile was a sort of heroine in defeat Stoutest Bred Horse Won Run for Roses Cosmic Missile Proves Class in Defeat Nellie Saw the Boys Home in Preakness Tudor Minstreal Bred to Go Epsom Route in the Downs race, in which she was second at five pounds the worst of the weights, after she was given a perfectly disgusting going over leaving the gate. Each of the entrants in the Pimlico stake will carry 121. Bull Hancock told us at Claiborne House last winter that he liked to think Blue Grass might turn out to be an Oaks filly. Of course, you know that she won the Debutante in the mud at Louisville last spring. Blue Grass is by Blue Larkspur out of Camelot, and we think that Marshall Field gave her to young Hancock, when the Thoroughbred Clubs president decided to start a stud of his own. Cosmic Missile is awfully small but she is of great courage, which was the most admirable thing about her dam, Misty Isle. They are inbred to Maggie B.B., you know, and the ancients tell us she was undersized, too, but she foaled the only American-bred winner of the Epsom Derby in Iroquois. AAA Pedigree pundits used to amuse themselves by comparing the Derby, Preakness and Belmont in the light of what these events contributed to breeding, but they now draw pretty much the same fields, and sometimes are won by the same horse. One of the best Preakness winners, from a breeders point of view, was Bud Fishers filly, Nellie Morse. She won the 1924 "Run for the Black-Eyed Susans" in the mud, then produced the stakes winner, Nellie Flag, who is in turn the dam of Mar-Kell and the Oaks winner, Nellie L. As the story goes, Nellie Morse was a very early foal and spent the first month of her life in the gloom of an empty tobacco barn, then was turned out in a paddock that was enclosed in barbed wire, but had the amazing luck to escape all of the dire possibilities. We suspect that Nellie Flag is Warren Wrights favorite broodmare. Her two-year-old filly. Whirling Girl, seems to be his best prospect for spring stakes in the East. Bewitch is not in any of the Belmont events. AAA Several visitors from England had said that Tudor Minstrel struck them as the likeliest prospect for this years Epsom Derby, so it was not really surprising to read that he won the 2,000 Guineas with such an impressive flourish of speed to spare. If you care to know, Tudor Minstrel is a brown son of Owen Tudor, and he was bred by John H. Dewar. He was rated at the top of the Free Handicap last season, and he is a rather strongly-bred colt, we think, for his sire won the 1941 English Derby and he is out of the good mare, San-sonnette, who is in turn by the 1924 Epsom Derby winner, Sansovino. The next dam was Lady Juror by Son-in-law. Owen Tudor was himself a clever two-year-old and after he won the Derby he went on to account for the Ascot Gold Cup, which is a gilt-edged bond of stamina. Owen Tudor came along in what are called "the War years," and there has been some little hesitancy about the worth of the form abroad at that time, but in Tudor Minstrel he has sired one that is unmistakably a Derby horse. AAA Turfiana: Christianas filly, Sea Snack, has rather a curious record. She now has won six stakes and some 0,000 without ever going to the post as a public choice. . . . There is a suggestion that the Derby Trial and Derby might be combined for nominating purposes. It is as logical as the combination of the Belmont Futurity and Matron on the same blank. . . . Balheim once ran for ,000. . . . Cornish Knight, a supplemental entrant in The Preakness, is another bred in Virginia, before his sire Tintagel was moved to Kentucky.


Persistent Link: https://drf.uky.edu/catalog/1940s/drf1947050601/drf1947050601_32_2
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Library of Congress Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/unk82075800