Gallant Sir (foaled 1929) was an American Thoroughbred racehorse bred by renowned horseman Arthur B. Hancock at his Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky. He was sired by the outstanding American Champion sire, Sir Gallahad III. His dam, Sun Spot, was a daughter of Omar Khayyam, the 1917 Kentucky Derby winner and Co-Champion 3-Yr-Old Colt.
Norman W. Church purchased Gallant Sir and raced him under his Northway Stable. Trainer E. L. "Lying Fitz" Fitzgerald, in the 1932 Kentucky Derby Gallant Sir was ridden by Hall of Fame jockey George Woolf but was never in the race. He broke from the 19th spot and could only manage an eight-place finish, more than a dozen lengths behind winner Burgoo King. After that, though, the colt began to win consistently and by 1933 had won eleven straight races in the American midwest until finishing second to Equipoise in the Hawthorne Gold Cup Handicap.
Gallant Sir won two consecutive runnings of the Agua Caliente Handicap; the first as a four-year-old in 1933 when he broke the Agua Caliente track record set by Phar Lap the previous year. He was retired to stud in 1935 but met with limited success as a sire.
Famous quotes containing the words gallant and/or sir:
“What a terrible thing has happened to us all! To you there, to us here, to all everywhere. Peace who was becoming bright-eyed, now sits in the shadow of death; her handsome champion has been killed as he walked by her very side. Her gallant boy is dead. What a cruel, foul, and most unnatural murder! We mourn here with you, poor, sad American people.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“People are too apt to treat God as if he were a minor royalty.”
—Herbert Beerbohm, Sir Tree (1853–1917)