Thoroughbred Horse Racing
Always a lover of animals, Allaire du Pont operated Woodstock Farm in Chesapeake City, Maryland and raced under the nom-de-course Bohemia Stable. She hired future Hall of Fame trainer Carl Hanford to condition her horses for racing.
Bohemia Stables produced a number of top horses such as multiple stakes winner Politely and Shine Again, winner of the 2001 and 2002 Grade I Ballerina Handicap. However, it was her gelding Kelso who brought her wide recognition during the 1960s when he was voted U.S. Horse of the Year honors for an unmatched five consecutive years from 1960 through 1964 and was a 1967 Racing Hall of Fame inductee. A Fox hunting participant, after Kelso was retired Allaire du Pont rode him in hunts.
A member of The Jockey Club, the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, and the Thoroughbred Charities of America, she was also a founding member of the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation. Good friends with Canadian business magnate and Thoroughbred owner and breeder E. P. Taylor, when he visited her home she convinced Taylor to build his planned American branch of Windfields Farm in the area. A preservationist, du Pont was among the first to commit some of her property to Maryland's Agricultural Land Preservation Program. Following the death of E. P. Taylor in 1989, Allaire du Pont was instrumental in having 2,500 acres (10 km2) of his property go into permanent preservation rather than be sub-divided into building lots by real estate developers.
Du Pont was also a co-founder and member of the Board of Directors of Thoroughbred Charities of America, an organization whose activities include raising funds to save retired horses. Among the other charitable causes to which she devoted both time and money were Paws for Life, Mid-Atlantic Horse Rescue, Greener Pastures, and the Union Hospital of which she was an honorary member of the Board of Directors.
In 1983, Allaire du Pont, Martha F. Gerry, and Penny Chenery became the first women to be admitted as members of The Jockey Club.
The Grade III Pimlico Breeders' Cup Distaff Handicap at Pimlico Race Course was renamed the Allaire du Pont Breeders' Cup Distaff in her memory.
Allaire du Pont died January 6, 2006 at her Woodstock Farm near Chesapeake City, Maryland.
Read more about this topic: Allaire Du Pont
Famous quotes containing the words thoroughbred, horse and/or racing:
“There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“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)