Horse racing has long been known for its ability to attract and unite a wide variety of participants from all walks of life, even those that you wouldn’t normally expect to be involved in the sport.
The upper echelon of horse racing purses has come a long way in 100 years, but the entrepreneurial spirit and promotional creativity of those tasked with putting on the sport’s biggest races burns as brightly now as it did when the racetrack boom of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries brought many of today’s most popular venues into existence.
Stephen Foster is an American icon; in fact, you can argue he’s the definition of Americana. The legendary songwriter (fittingly born on Independence Day in 1826) penned such famous songs as “Camptown Races,” “Old Folks at Home,” and “Oh! Susanna,” but in the sport of horse racing, Foster is best known as the author of “My Old Kentucky Home,” which is played every year before the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum!
Perched high on the bluffs above the Susquehanna River and at the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay sat one of America’s most revered racetracks, Havre de Grace. Racing history was minted here.
When it comes to sports stars and achievements in sports, it’s common to hear that numbers can’t tell the whole story, and indeed they cannot. But when your career statistics are mind-boggling and tower over those recorded by any other member of your sport … well, numbers are as good a place as any to start.
