Oct. 20, 1923: Zev, winner of the 1923 Kentucky Derby, defeated England’s hero Papyrus, winner of the 1923 Epsom Derby, in a $100,000 match race at Belmont Park. The race, the International Special, marked the first time an English champion had been sent to the U.S. to race. For his victory, Zev was awarded $80,000 and a gold cup valued at $5,000. Public interest in the race was so great that it was broadcast on the radio—a first. Within two days, films of the race were distributed at movie theaters in New York City and,eventually, across the nation.
Oct. 20, 1954: Bill Shoemaker rode his 2,000th winner, Florence House, at Tanforan.
Oct. 20, 2007: Ten-year-old McDynamo won the Breeders’ Cup Steeplechase for the fifth consecutive year at the annual Far Hills Race Meeting in Far Hills, N.J.
Oct. 21, 1961: Eddie Arcaro won the Jockey Club Gold Cup for a record tenth time. His mount, Kelso, won the Gold Cup five straight years, 1960-64, setting the mark for most consecutive victories in a stakes race.
Oct. 22, 1945: El Lobo and Featherfoot became the first Thoroughbreds to be transported by airplane. They were flown from Los Angeles to San Mateo in a twin-engine Budd transport plane piloted by Maj. William Hoelle of the Flying Tiger Line, who landed the plane in the parking area at Bay Meadows. On Oct. 27, El Lobo won the Burlingame Handicap at Bay Meadows, proving that horses could fly (and win).
Oct. 22, 1955: A rare triple dead-heat for first took place at Mexico’s Caliente in the eighth race. Stormsorno, Chance Speed and Beaufair were the three winners.
Oct. 22, 1964: Jockey Bill Shoemaker won the 5,000th victory of his career aboard Slapstick at Aqueduct Race Track.
Oct. 22, 1973: Secretariat was flown to Woodbine Racecourse, where he would compete in his final career race, the Canadian International Championship Stakes.
Oct. 24, 1877: Congress adjourned to see a race between Parole, Ten Broek and Tom Ochiltree, which was held at Pimlico.
Oct. 24, 1953: Tom Fool won the Pimlico Special Stakes by eight lengths, capping a perfect four-year-old campaign with 10 stakes wins in as many starts. The Special was his fourth consecutive race run as a non-betting exhibition. Tom Fool was voted Horse of the Year for 1953, edging out Native Dancer, who lost only one of his 10 stakes races that year, the Kentucky Derby.
Oct. 24, 2008: Breeders’ Cup conducted its first all-female card, with the colts and geldings races all being held on the second day of the two-day event at Oak Tree at Santa Anita.
Oct. 25, 1870: Pimlico, the nation’s second-oldest Thoroughbred racetrack, began its inaugural meet.
Oct. 25, 1947: After winning the Gallant Fox Handicap at Jamaica, a former $1,500 claimer, Stymie, became the world’s leading money-winning Thoroughbred, with earnings of $816,060. Stymie raced two additional years and retired in 1949, at age eight, with lifetime winnings of $918,485.
Oct. 25, 2003: Trainer Richard Mandella set a single-day record winning four Breeders’ Cup World Thoroughbred Championships races at Santa Anita. Mandella saddled Halfbridled to victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies; Action This Day in the Bessemer Trust Breeders’ Cup Juvenile; Johar to a dead-heat win in the John Deere Breeders’ Cup Turf; and Pleasantly Perfect in the $4 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, Powered by Dodge. The Johar dead heat with High Chaparral in the Turf markedthe first dead heat in Breeders’ Cup history. And in guiding Halfbridled to victory, jockey Julie Krone became the first woman to ride the winner of a Breeders’ Cup flat race.
Oct. 26, 1949: Bill Shoemaker rode to his first stakes victory, the George Marshall Claiming Handicap at Bay Meadows, aboard a five-year-old horse named Al.
Oct. 26, 1990: Jockey Julie Krone rode her 2,000th career winner, aboard John Forbes-trained Rainbow Quartz, at The Meadowlands.
Oct. 26, 1996: The Breeders’ Cup was held outside the U.S. for the first time, at Woodbine Racecourse in Toronto, Canada. At Woodbine, Jenine Sahadi became the first female trainer to saddle a Breeders’ Cup winner when she sent Lit de Justice to victory in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.
Oct. 27, 1870: Preakness won the Dinner Stakes at the newly opened Pimlico Racecourse. In 1873, the first Preakness Stakes, a race was named in his honor, was held at Pimlico.
Oct. 27, 1990: Bayakoa (ARG) became the second horse to win two consecutive Breeders’ Cup Championship races. Both of her victories came in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff.
Oct. 27, 2001: Tiznow, 2000 Breeders’ Cup Classic champion and Horse of the Year, won the $4 million Breeders’ Cup Classic for a second straight year, outdueling European sensation Sakhee in the stretch at the Breeders’ Cup World Thoroughbred Championships at Belmont Park. Total wagering on the 10-race program was $104,145,186, the second highest Breeders’ Cup total in history, just behind the 2000 total of $108,603,040.
Oct. 27, 2001: Participants in the Breeders’ Cup World Thoroughbred Championships donated more than $2.7 million from their purse earnings to the NTRA Charities - New York Heroes Fund, established to benefit the children and spouses of the firefighters, police officers, emergency workers and other victims who perished in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Sheikh Mohammed’s Dubai-based Godolphin stable, which pledged 100 percent of its Breeders’ Cup earnings to the Heroes Fund, donated approximately$2.5 million on the day, thanks in part to wins by two of his horses, Fantastic Light and Tempera.
Oct. 27, 2001, Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel saw his 0-for-38 streak in Breeders' Cup races come to an end when Squirtle Squirt won the Breeders' Cup Sprint.
Oct. 28, 1972: Secretariat, sent off at odds of 1-10, won the Laurel Futurity by eight lengths at Laurel.
Oct. 28, 1973: With jockey Eddie Maple substituting for Ron Turcotte, who was sidelined by a suspension, Secretariat concluded his racing career with a 6 1-2-length victory in the Canadian International Championship Stakes at Woodbine Racecourse. It was his second victory in as many tries on the turf.
Oct. 28, 1983: Jacinto Vasquez had his 4,000th career winner, aboard Sunshine O’My Life, at Aqueduct.
Oct. 28, 2000: Laffit Pincay Jr., then the world’s winningest rider, gained his 9,000th career victory aboard Chichim in the $150,000 California Cup Distaff at Santa Anita Park.
Oct. 29, 1948: Calumet Farm’s three-year-old Citation entered the Pimlico Invitational Special Stakes unopposed and won in a walkover, earning $10,000 for galloping the 1 3-16 mile course in 1:59 4-5. Another great Calumet runner, Whirlaway, also won the Special in a walkover in 1942.
Oct. 29, 1955: Charlie Whittingham and Bill Shoemaker scored their first stakes victory as a trainer-rider team with Mister Gus in the William P. Kyne Handicap at Bay Meadows.
Oct. 29, 1998: Triple Crown winner and 1970s icon Secretariat was selected as one of 15 subjects to be honored with a commemorative postal stamp in 1999.
Oct. 30, 1937: Sir Barton, the first American Triple Crown winner, died at age 21. After an undistinguished career as a sire, Sir Barton was sent to the U.S. Army’s Remount Division in Nebraska, and then to a ranch in Wyoming, where he remained until his death.
Oct. 30, 1988: After the blinkers on his mount, Roaring River, worked loose, jockey Francisco Torres grabbed them and placed them between his teeth to keep his hands free for riding. Roaring River won the race, at Hawthorne, by three lengths.
Oct. 31, 1944: The saddle cloth numbers of the first five race winners at Jamaica corresponded to the number of the race in which each horse started.
Oct. 31, 1964: Seven-year-old Kelso won his fifth consecutive Jockey Club Gold Cup, a record. In each of those races, Kelso was the odds-on favorite.
Oct. 31, 1987: Jockey Chris Antley became the first rider to win nine races in a single day. He rode four winners from six mounts at Aqueduct and five winners from eight tries during The Meadowlands’ evening program.
Oct. 31, 2002: Hall of Fame jockey Julie Krone returned to race riding after a two-year absence. She finished fifth aboard both of her mounts on the day at Santa Anita Park.
Oct. 31, 2003: Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel broke D. Wayne Lukas’ North American single season earnings record of $17,842,358 set in 1988 after saddling Golden Rahy to victory in the seventh race at Santa Anita.
Oct. 31, 2007: Trainer Scott Lake registered the 4,000th win of his career when he saddled Hickory Trick to victory in the 8th race at Penn National.
Nov. 1, 1944: Racing returned to Hollywood Park after a three-year hiatus, which followed the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Nov. 1, 1938: Before a crowd of 40,000 spectators, Seabiscuit, under jockey George Woolf, defeated odds-on favorite War Admiral in the Pimlico Special, run as a winner-take-all match race with a purse of $15,000.
Nov. 1, 1947: Man o’ War died at Faraway Farm, Lexington, Ky. He lay in state for three days before being ceremoniously buried on Nov. 4.
Nov. 2, 1968: The John Nerud-trained Dr. Fager, carrying 139 pounds, won the last race of his career, the seven-furlong Vosburgh Handicap at Aqueduct, by six lengths. Dr. Fager was subsequently named champion handicap horse, champion sprinter, turf champion and Horse of the Year.
Nov. 2, 1985: Trainer D. Wayne Lukas won his first Breeders’ Cup race, the Juvenile Fillies, with Twilight Ridge, whose entrymates Family Style and Arewehavingfunyet finished second and eighth, respectively.
Nov. 2, 1991: Arazi unleashed a powerful move on the far turn at Churchill Downs to capture the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile by five lengths over Bertrando.
Nov. 2, 2008: Broodmare of the year Better Than Honour (dam of Jazil and Rags to Riches, the 2006-07 Belmont Stakes winners, respectively) was sold for a record $14 million at the Fasig-Tipton sale in Lexington, Ky.
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