Championship Seasons
Kelso's three-year-old season began after the Triple Crown races of 1960 were run. Dr. John Lee had returned to his veterinary practice, and Kelso's new trainer was Carl Hanford (inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 2006), who handled him for the remainder of his career. Bill Hartack was his jockey for a short time, followed by Eddie Arcaro, who rode Kelso from mid-1960 to November 1961, when he retired as a jockey. In 1962, Ismael Valenzuela became Kelso's principal rider for more than three years.
Kelso's first start as a three-year-old (and first win for Hanford) was at Monmouth Park. Hanford said, "He was an extremely determined horse. If he saw a horse in front, he wanted to get to him. You could take him back or send him to the front. He was an extremely sound horse who was light on his feet with incredible balance. Kelso could wheel on a dime, spinning round in a circle and never letting his feet touch each other." After the Monmouth race, he won eight of his next nine starts: a mile race at Aqueduct Racetrack in a record for a three-year-old at that distance, the Choice Stakes, the Jerome Handicap, the Discovery Handicap, the Lawrence Realization Stakes, the Hawthorne Gold Cup Handicap and the Jockey Club Gold Cup (the latter two against older horses). In the Lawrence Realization, he equaled Man O 'War's time of 2:40-4/5 for 1⅝ miles. In 1960, Kelso was voted Three-Year-Old Champion Male and received the American Horse of the Year award ahead of Bald Eagle.
At age four in 1961, Kelso won seven of nine starts. That year, he was voted Champion Older Horse and again Horse of the Year. In 1962, he won a third Horse of the Year title, taking 28 of the 32 votes in the Daily Racing Form poll. A year later, he was even more dominant, being a unanimous choice for his fourth DRF title, as well as taking the Horse of the Year awards of the Thoroughbred Racing Association and Turf and Sport Digest magazine. Kelso again swept the Horse of the Year awards by all three organisations in 1964.
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