The Facts, the Standards, and the Fun

This feature originally appeared in the August 6, 2016 issue of BloodHorse.

Years ago Reader’s Digest launched a series called “The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met,” in which contributors harkened back to someone remarkable in their lives. Fortunately, for us, there have been a number of unforgettable characters we have been privileged to know, at least a little bit, and of those who would contest for that anointment of “most,” one would certainly be Kent Hollingsworth, former editor of The Blood-Horse.

From the summer of 1963 until he left his post in January 1987, we worked for Hollingsworth, save for five months of active military duty and a two-year stint as editor of The Canadian Horse. Although he gradually increased our responsibilities for the editorial content and layout as managing editor, he remained a hands-on force. He was seen as a mentor by everyone on the editorial staff while also dealing with all manner of the fiscal aspects of an enterprise at times struggling and undergoing a stunning growth.

Hollingsworth became editor in 1963, and he had great admiration and respect for the gentleman he succeeded, Joseph A. Estes. The latter had accepted the challenges of creating and nurturing The Jockey Club’s entry into the era of databases via its new statistical bureau. Hollings-worth brought to the editor’s desk the conflated disciplines of a former army officer with a law degree, plus the experiences of prolific writing about racing for the Lexington afternoon paper, the Leader. He had grown up around horses, as his father was a small breeder, and he had broken horses and galloped them at the racetrack.

Hollingsworth had vast knowledge of the history of the sport, having read Joe Palmer, Walter Vosburgh, and John Hervey, in addition to Estes. He did not lack for appreciation of the beauties and traditions of the Turf, but—perhaps sensing an overly focused horse worship in his young hireling—he counseled us early that his own deep interest also derived from the vast range of characters that horse racing attracted.

Thanks to Hollingsworth’s willingness to entrust us with a variety of assignments over the decades, the playing out of that element in our own life ranged from personal connections with The Aga Khan and Paul Mellon to an individualist Marylander who had designed a trough feeding system that allowed him to make his horse farm virtually a one-man operation. The Thoroughbred was their common theme.

Undergirding Hollingsworth’s wisdom and merit as a teacher was integrity. This could be taught, perhaps, but it also lent itself to being implanted by osmosis when he was our leader. For the sport and business of racing, in Hollingsworth’s mind, integrity was essential for success, but it also was just as essential because it represented doing the right thing.

While he did not always win his editorial battles against the ongoing spread of permissive medication or the political trickeries of off-track betting legislation, he never gave in to pessimism.

It occurred to us more than once that he would simply have left the game to its own devices had he concluded it could not be made better. Still, he had a sense of the pragmatic that somehow could co-exist with the perfectionist in him. He could see other sides of things.

His trip to see Nijinsky II in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in 1970 introduced him to how France’s racing industry benefited from that country’s form of off-course wagering. In an era when American racing leaders had a sort of visceral reaction against off-track betting, he turned instead to writing on how it should best be structured to support purses than how it should be forever resisted.

Hollingsworth’s training, reputation for integrity, and persuasive powers placed him in roles not commonly associated with journalists. He was in on the formation of the American Horse Council and in the wording of the Interstate Horse Racing Act. He provided the outline for a Congressional change in depreciation schedules, and he drafted the Kentucky Racing Act.

Through it all, though, perhaps what he was first and foremost was a writer. He was well-read, sophisticated, and erudite, but he recognized that humor and casual comment had their place, as did the rhythms of the language. A concept, he realized, might be expressed in a sort of lyrical way by a sequence of three points, but a fourth made a sentence unwieldy and lacking grace.

He struggled over his weekly column, “What’s Going On Here,” and the editorial department often had completed our every other task before he would, at the end of the day, pad over from his own office in his stocking feet and drop the column on the desk. As the first one besides himself to read it, we routinely were aware of its having been worth the wait.

Hollingsworth moved with the times, converting the editorial staff from our familiar old typewriters to mysterious new word processors, introducing us to such arcane phrases as “replace file, execute.” As early as the dawn of the 1980s, he and executive editor Charles H. Stone had an inkling of how technology would bring change. Soon The Blood-Horse launched its first daily news product, at first alone and later in affiliation with The Jockey Club. This was at a time when the Fax machine was seen as a modern marvel. Nevertheless, for his own writing, Hollingsworth took advantage of a boss’ prerogatives and clung to his beloved typewriter—a manual one, at that.

After leaving the magazine, Hollingsworth wrote for other publications, returned to law, and taught at the University of Louisville. He died in 1999. Memories of our decades with Hollingsworth are an amalgam of respect and fondness, a whirling admixture of news to report, glorious horses for us to write about, and weighty issues on which he was wont to dig in and never waiver.

There was, too, that quality of his prose, with the facts, the standards, and the fun. A favorite riff from KH’s antique typewriter: Musing on the pattern of James R. Keene’s having found something not to like about the young Domino and Colin and the dam of Commando but being convinced to keep them, he wrote, “It has been said opportunity knocks but once, and then softly. Opportunity rattled Keene’s door as a constant irritant, occasionally breaking through. Great horses were thrust upon him...”

Edward L. Bowen is a former editor of Blood-Horse.

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