Secretariat. William Nack

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      Scores of stallions, coming off superior racing careers, failed as stud horses, some more ignominiously than others. Sir Barton, winner of the 1919 Triple Crown, failed to transmit much of his speed to his offspring, and he finished out his stud career at a cavalry remount station in Douglas, Wyoming. Grey Lag, one of the most gifted runners in the early 1920s—winner of the 1921 Belmont Stakes and the prestigious Brooklyn Handicap—was virtually sterile when sent to stud. Returned to the races at age nine, he had trouble beating horses that could not have warmed him up in his younger days. He was retired a second time, given away, and a few years later was discovered again, at the age of thirteen, running against cheap $1000 claiming horses in Canada. Harry F. Sinclair, who raced Grey Lag in his prime while leasing oil fields at Teapot Dome, was in no need of more adverse publicity. Quietly, he dispatched an agent to Canada, bought the horse, and retired him to his Rancocas Farm. Grey Lag never raced again, living out his life as a pensioner. The other famous impotent, 1946 Triple Crown winner Assault, did the same, as did many fine geldings, such as Exterminator and Armed.

      But most of the horses sent back to the farms, the many fillies and mares and the few colts and horses, were pressed into the service of breeding enterprises, of large stud farms such as Hamburg Place and Himyar, Rancocas and Idle Hour and Calumet Farm. The fortunes of the farms and their owners, in some ways, ran with the fortunes of the horses and the bloodlines they produced. All of them would rise to prominence in their day, wane, reemerge, or die away. There is no great Himyar anymore, no flourishing Idle Hour since Colonel E.R. Bradley died, though the land still raises horses. Sinclair sold the last of the Rancocas horses in 1932, all but Zev and Grey Lag. Hamburg Place, once the showplace of American breeding, bred its last Derby winner, Alysheba, in 1984. And Calumet Farm is no longer the 1927 Yankees it was when Bull Lea filled the farm’s stable with so many high-classed runners, three Derby winners and all those nimble-footed tomboys. But what is behind them, behind all the young horses and the new owners and breeders of thoroughbreds, is the land.

      While Christopher T. Chenery was piecing together the shards of his family homestead, the descendants of Richard J. Hancock emerged as the leading breeders of thoroughbreds in America. It had taken seventy years.

      R. J. Hancock founded Ellerslie Stud and within ten years of the war had bought his first stallion, Scathelock, and his first broodmare, War Song. That was the start.

      Hancock’s rise to prominence as a Virginia breeder actually began after he acquired the stallion Eolus from a Maryland breeder, swapping Scathelock in an even trade. The transaction revealed Hancock’s shrewd eye for horses. Eolus sired a number of winners, giving a measure of prestige to the Hancock name among Virginia horsemen. Among the best was Knight of Ellerslie, who not only won the 1884 Preakness Stakes, but also made a name as the sire of Henry of Navarre, the chestnut colt who battled Domino, the Black Whirlwind, in one of the most celebrated struggles in the history of the American turf. High-rolling Pittsburgh Phil bet $100,000 on Domino and calmly ate figs out of a bag as he watched the two horses struggle to a dead heat.

      Eolus died three years later, in 1897, but by then Ellerslie had become a major thoroughbred nursery in Virginia, selling its yearlings every year at auction, buying and raising its own bloodstock. And by then, too, Richard Hancock’s son, Arthur, had graduated from the University of Chicago, a reedy young man, six feet six inches and 165 pounds, who came home in 1895 to be about his father’s business. He became his father’s assistant, attending yearling sales and doing his novitiate on the farm. And then, within one three-year period, a series of events occurred in Arthur Hancock’s life that enlarged its scope and potential, multiplying the possibilities open to him as a breeder.

      In 1907, seeking a man without local ties or friendships, Senator Camden Johnson of Kentucky invited Hancock to judge a class of thoroughbreds at the Blue Grass Fair in Kentucky. Hancock accepted. While he was there, he met Nancy Tucker Clay, one of the many Clays of Bourbon County. Like the Harrises of Virginia, the Clays of Kentucky were landed gentry, owning lots of land, acres of some of the choicest real estate in the Blue Grass country. Nancy Clay and Arthur Hancock were married the following year, in 1908, fusing a family owning one of the finest estates in Virginia with another owning miles of rolling greenery in Kentucky.

      In 1909, Arthur Hancock took over the operation of Ellerslie from his aging father.

      In 1910, within a span of four days, Nancy Clay Hancock’s father and mother died. Nancy Hancock inherited 1300 acres of property in Paris, Kentucky, rich farmland set off Winchester Road. So the events of the year made Hancock the steward of two manors, and they left him an heir to his fortune and name. Earlier in the year, Nancy Hancock had given birth to a son, Arthur Boyd Hancock, Jr., a man whose influence on American bloodstock would one day exceed that of his father. Arthur Hancock, Sr., did not take long to coordinate the operations at Ellerslie and Claiborne Farm, the name they chose for the land in Paris. The Hancock stud at Ellerslie survived the horse-racing blackout of 1911–1912, when the sport was outlawed in New York during an outburst of moral fervor, but Hancock had to cut back the broodmare band to all but about twelve mares. Over the next twenty-five years, Hancock’s long climb to preeminence as a breeder began. He moved his family permanently to the Kentucky farm in 1912, a move suggesting that he knew Kentucky would one day be the home of thoroughbred breeding in America.

      A year later he bought the stallion Celt, a son of Commando, for $20,000 in a dispersal sale at Madison Square Garden. Under Celt, the Hancock stud regained the vigor it possessed in the days of Eolus. Hancock’s interest in foreign bloodstock heightened when the prices dropped in Europe at the start of World War I. In 1915 he bought the English stallion, Wrack, for $8000 from Archibald Philip Rosbery. It marked Hancock’s first major acquisition of a foreign stallion, and it launched a breeding operation at Claiborne Farm, where Wrack was sent to stud. Barns were built near Kennedy Creek. Part of the land was fenced with planking. A grazing paddock was built for Wrack to loll away his idle hours. And the farm itself expanded, growing in size from 1300 to 2100 acres.

      The Hancock studs flourished in the 1920s, grew in influence and prestige. In 1921, Celt was America’s leading thoroughbred sire in the amount of money won by his offspring, his fifty-two performing sons and daughters winning 124 races and $206,167 in purses. Hancock reached out for more foreign blood. His acquisition of foreign bloodstock reached its zenith in 1926, when he formed a four-man group—composed of Hanover Bank president William Woodward, Marshall Field, Robert Fairbairn, and himself—and bought Sir Gallahad III, a French stallion and a son of Teddy, for $125,000. Sir Gallahad’s impact at the stud was felt almost at once.

      Bred his first year in America to Marguerite, a daughter of Celt, he sired Belair Stud’s Gallant Fox. “The Fox of Belair,” as he came to be known, won the Triple Crown in 1930, the second horse to do it. Sir Gallahad III was the leading American sire that year, with just sixteen offspring winning forty-nine races and $422,200, a record in purses that stood until 1942. He led the sire list three more times, his horses winning more than the horses sired by any other stallion.

      Through the importation of the potent Teddy blood, through Sir Gallahad III and later his full brother, Bull Dog, American and other imported blood was freshened and invigorated. Sir Gallahad III’s influence became unusually pervasive in his role as a “broodmare sire,” so pervasive that he led the annual broodmare sire list for twelve years, ten years in a row, from 1943 to 1952. The broodmare sire list is a special category that singles out stallions whose daughters are exceptional producers. For twelve years the daughters of Sir Gallahad III produced racehorses that won more money than the racehorses produced by the daughters of any other sire. No horse in American history, before or since, ever dominated that list so long. He sired La France, dam of the 1939 Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes winner, Johnstown; and he sired Gallette, dam of champion handicap mare Gallorette; Fighting Lady, dam of the speedy Armageddon; and Black Wave, dam of the 1947 Kentucky Derby winner, Jet Pilot.

      In 1936, Hancock was instrumental in bringing Blenheim II, the 1930 СКАЧАТЬ