Career After The Derby
After the Derby, Hall of Fame trainer John Nerud sent Gallant Man out to decimate the field in the Belmont Stakes, winning by 8 lengths, beating the favorite Bold Ruler. The track and race records Gallant Man achieved that day stood until Secretariat's 1973 Belmont Stakes. Subsequently, Gallant Man beat Bold Ruler in the Metropolitan Mile, and his Jockey Club Gold Cup was achieved against older horses.
Gallant Man raced as a three- and four-year-old at the same time as Bold Ruler and Round Table, who both became Horse of the Year.
Gallant Man, who had at one time or another beaten each of them, was never awarded a racing honor or a championship of any kind. He ranks #36 in Blood-Horse magazine List of the Top 100 U.S. Racehorses of the 20th Century. (Round Table ranks #17 and Bold Ruler ranks #19.)
A small brown horse by Migoli (the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner) out of Majida (winner of both the Irish Oaks and the Irish 1,000 Guineas), Gallant Man stood a little over fifteen hands and was afflicted with bad ankles.
If Ralph Lowe had listened to his vet, Gallant Man would not have been bought in the group of nine horses acquired from the Aga Khan ($220,000 for the crop of Irish yearlings). However, Lowe's bloodstock agent, Humphrey Finney, thought the little horse might be perhaps the worst of the lot, but was still a good buy.
Read more about this topic: Gallant Man
Famous quotes containing the word career:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)