Racing
He was one of the driving forces behind thoroughbred racing in America for most of the 20th Century. His mother, Margaret Emerson, took him to his first race, the Preakness Stakes, in 1922. He often said, "After that, I was hooked." On his 21st birthday, his Mother gave him Sagamore Farm, her racing operation in Glyndon, Maryland. In the early years Vanderbilt often slept in the barns, overseeing the breeding and training of his stable. He was President of Pimlico twice, the first time when he was just 20. As a stable owner his first major acquisition was Discovery, one of the great handicap horses of the age who became his foundation sire. Vanderbilt was elected to The Jockey Club as the youngest member in its history in 1935 and eventually campaigned four Eclipse Award champions: Discovery, Next Move, Bed O' Roses and the Native Dancer. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, he owned and ran Pimlico Racetrack outside Baltimore, and arranged the famous match race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral in 1938. He was President of Belmont Park and Pimlico at the same time before joining the Navy. During the Second World War, he captained a PT boat in the South Pacific and was awarded The Silver Star for bravery under fire. He returned to racing with characteristic zeal, bringing his greatest champion, Native Dancer, to the track in 1952. The "Grey Ghost" won all 9 starts as a 2-year-old and was named Horse of the Year. He won every start as a three-year-old too, except the Kentucky Derby, which he lost by a head to Cain Hoy Stable's Dark Star and was named 3 year old Male Champion. The Dancer was Horse of the Year again in his 4th year. All told, he won 21 of 22 starts, with the single second-place finish in the 1953 Kentucky Derby his only career loss. Many consider the Grey Ghost of Sagamore to have been the first Thoroughbred television star and TV Guide ranked him as a top icon of the era". Alfred G. Vanderbilt continued racing throughout his life and served as Chairman of the Board of the New York Racing Association from 1971 to 1975. The New York Turf Writers voted him "The Man Who Did The Most for Racing," a record four times, posthumously renaming the award in his honor.
In the early 1950s, he was a regular panelist on the NBC game show, Who Said That?, along with H. V. Kaltenborn, Boris Karloff, and the American actress Dagmar.
Read more about this topic: Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt II
Famous quotes containing the word racing:
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)