Racing Career
Trained by Charles Patterson, Omar Khayyam was sent to the track in 1916 as a two-year-old. His most important result that year was a second to Campfire in the Hopeful Stakes. In his three-year-old season, no U.S. Triple Crown series had yet been formalized; the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes were held on the same day. Choosing to run in the Derby, Omar Khayyam was unplaced in the Derby Trial. As a result, he was sent off at 13–1 odds in the Kentucky Derby. Ridden by jockey Charles Borel, Omar Khayyam unleashed a powerful stretch run to come from tenth place to win over the favorite, a colt named Ticket.
Three weeks after his Derby win, Omar Khayyam was sold as part of his owner's multi-horse dispersal auction held on the grounds of New York's Belmont Park. He was purchased by Canadian biscuit manufacturer Wilfrid Viau. For his new owner, the colt went on to win the Prospect Handicap at Jamaica Racetrack; the Brooklyn Derby at the old Aqueduct Racetrack; and (at the Saratoga Race Course) the Kenner Stakes, the Saratoga Cup and the Travers Stakes. In Maryland Omar Khayyam won the Havre de Grace Handicap and – despite a 30-pound handicap – set a new Pimlico Race Course track record in winning the Pimlico Autumn Handicap.
After the other entrants were scratched, the October 18, 1917 John R. McLean Memorial Championship at Laurel Park Racecourse turned into a match race between Omar Khayyam and August Belmont, Jr.'s Belmont Stakes winner, Hourless. Earlier that year, Omar Khayyam had beaten Hourless in the 1½ mile Lawrence Realization Stakes and in the Brooklyn Derby. This time, however, Hourless won by a length. Despite Omar Khayyam's earlier wins over Hourless and the fact that he had earned $20,000 more than Hourless in purses that year (in more starts with greater consistency), Omar Khayyam shared American Champion Three-Year-Old Male Horse honors with Hourless.
As a four-year-old in 1918, Omar Khayyam's chances of winning were limited due to his high weight assignments; however, he won the Marines' Liberty Bond Handicap. The following year, at five, he won the Rennert Handicap at Pimlico under Clarence Kummer before being retired to stand at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky for the 1920 season.
Read more about this topic: Omar Khayyam (horse)
Famous quotes containing the words racing and/or career:
“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)
““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)