Look Back: An Oaks-Derby Sweep for Calumet in 1949

This week is a BloodHorse BackTrack story on the 1949 Kentucky Derby won by Calumet Farm's Ponder and a stakes story on the 1949 Kentucky Oaks won by Calumet's Wistful. The story, written by Alex Bower, and stakes story ran in the May 14, 1949 issue of BloodHorse magazine with the headline, "Ponder's First, Wright's Fourth, Jones's Fifth." 

Before the Derby, along about the fifth race, one of the trainers lounging in the paddock at Churchill Downs remarked that if he had a horse in the big heat, he wouldn't bring him over for saddling "until Ben Jones got his horse started. He'll keep you waiting every time. When he started his horse over, then I'd start mine, but not before."

Under that system, the trainer would have started his 1949 Derby candidate toward the paddock surprisingly early, but not for the same reason Ben Jones had. He would have been using the Jones formula, but he wouldn't have had quite the same ingredients.

To the surprise of those who might have glanced up from the past performance charts to see what Calumet and Jones were doing, Ponder walked out onto the Downs track, at about the seven-eighths pole, with a boy on his back. The saunter around the right way of the course, to the grandstand tunnel leading to the paddock, took 20 minutes or more, an unconscionably long time to have weight up before a ten-furlong race.

There was a solid reason behind the move that probably would have passed for daffiness on the part of another trainer. Ben Jones, who studies horses like a bacteriologist peers at bugs, had deliberately chosen to put weight up on Ponder because the colt's back muscles had tied up ten days or so before that, following a workout at Keeneland. The slow walk, under saddle, would serve to flex those muscles and limber them up for the race to come, Jones reasoned.

Before leaving the stable that afternoon, he had worked out a precise schedule with Harold Ward, the Calumet agent: so much time for saddling, so much time to walk the colt over to the gap in the fence along the backstretch, so much time for the stroll over to the tunnel.

Whether or not he ever heard of Michaelangelo, Ben Jones knows that trifles make perfection, and that perfection is no trifle. The handling of Ponder during the half hour or so before his arrival at the paddock was one of the trifles that led to the perfection of the winner's circle in the 75th Kentucky Derby.

In the paddock, Ponder joined the slow parade of horses awaiting the hour.

There was the accustomed throng of owners, trainers, grooms, and well-wishers. There was laughter and joking, but under that was the tenseness that surrounds an important race. There was a final testing of saddle girths, and the low pitched confidences between trainers and riders.

Tommy Oliphant, the paddock judge, gave the word. "Riders up!"

WAYS AND MEANS

On paper, the Diamond Jubilee Derby was at Olympia's mercy. Fred W. Hooper's colt had done about everything that a horse could do. After his second to Old Rockport in the Santa Anita Derby, he had won the Flamingo Stakes, both divisions of the Experimental, the Wood Memorial, and as a last fillip, the Derby Trial, a race in which he had simply kidded with the opposition. He looked to be the Derby winner, unless something could run him out of breath. And that seemed as feasible as choking a cat with cream.

On paper, again, the horses which seemed best fitted for the job of belling Olympia, if he could be belled, were Johns Joy and Wine List. Strategists-without-stables delegated Johns Joy to latch onto Olympia, a very successful front runner, because Johns Joy had proved himself able to take a track and hold it. They liked this idea because Johns Joy was trained by Monte Parke, who had expressed a hankering to beat his brother Ivan, trainer of Olympia.

Wine List was a tentative choice for the job because he also had been willing to go to the front, and he might kill off Olympia for the benefit of Capot, his stablemate under the Greentree Colors. Or for the benefit of Palestinian, Old Rockport, Halt, or another late-comer.

There were so many variations on the theme of knocking down the favorite (Olympia was 4-5). None of them involved Ponder, because he obviously was a not-too-buoyant straw. 

When De Luxe had failed to train satisfactorily for the race, Ponder had been drafted to represent Calumet. But he was not in the best Calumet tradition, if you thought about Whirlaway and Citation and forgot about Pensive.

FRACTIONS

For nearly two minutes of the running of the Derby, it looked as if trainer John Gaver, of Greentree, had the soundest tactics of all: When the field drummed past the grandstand for the first time, it was Olympia in front, with Greentree's pink and black running easily in second place. But it was not Wine List which was second. It was Capot, which had been figured to lie off the pace to be ready to scoop up the shards if Olympia proved brittle.

Wine List was third, slightly ahead of Lextown, Johns Joy, Jacks Town, Ky. Colonel, Palestinian, Model Cadet, and the others, which were in a fairly tight bunch. Warren Wright had no trouble locating his color bearer: Ponder was last of the 14.

On the first turn, after tossing off furlongs in :11, :11 2/5, :11 1/5, Olympia had built himself a lead of about two lengths. Capot was second. Johns Joy, Wine List, and Lextown were close behind, running abreast. Another panel back were Palestinian and Jacks Town. Then Old Rockport.

Eddie Arcaro, riding Olympia, metered out furlongs along the backstretch in :12 4/5, :13 1/5, 13, then a brisk :12 2/5. This should have taken care of Capot or others which thought to make a race of it and still have legs under them for the climax. But Capot bobbed relentlessly alongside. He was, it was apparent by this time, going to have as much left as Olympia, if not more. John Gaver had been correct in deciding to give Olympia the big barrel without delay, instead of holding fire.

Palestinian, which Hirsch Jacobs had flatly declared to be a runner, not a stand-in, by this time had moved to third, on the outside of Model Cadet and Johns Joy. In the next section, less than a length behind, were Wine List and Old Rockport. Then Jacks Town and Lextown. Calumet's red and blue were still far behind the leaders.

At this stage Steve Brooks, astride Ponder, followed the next step in the Jones formula: He reached back and whacked his mount a good one, felt a responsive surge as the son of Pensive unfurled some sail. Slowly he began to pick up horses until, when the field was aiming for the wire, he had not 13 horses ahead of him, but only six.

Just about where Citation rushed past Coaltown in last year's Derby, Ted Atkinson sent Capot past Olympia and Eddie Arcaro's fifth victory. Palestinian, which Hedley Woodhouse had kept in the clear, was a free-running third. Old Rockport was fourth, Model Cadet fifth.

Olympia began to stop swiftly. Just as swiftly, Ponder began his rush. There was a quarter-mile to go. The elapsed time for it was :25 3/5. Ponder covered the distance a second or so faster than that, since he was about seven lengths behind when the leaders were at the quarter-pole.

The Calumet colt passed his rivals one by one, until only Capot was in front of him. He too was put away, and Ponder went under the wire safely by three lengths. Capot, though unable to stave off the winner, had no trouble with the others. But Olympia did. Palestinian, Old Rockport, and Halt passed him as he struggled down the stretch.

After the race, Arcaro remarked that Olympia was not the horse he had been in his earlier races. Neither were some of the others.

ROSES & DIAMONDS

Next to Matt Winn, no other man has been in the Derby winner's circle as often as Ben Jones. The Diamond Jubilee Derby was his fifth appearance. The other times were with Woolford Farm's Lawrin, and Calumet's Whirlaway, Pensive, and Citation.

Ponder kept out of blind switches on his way to the presentation stand, but Warren Wright was not so fortunate. Accepting the services of a policeman who volunteered to show him a short cut to the track, the master of Calumet was led into two or three cul-de-sacs, and consequently missed the ceremony.

NOTES

Fractional times for the race were :11, :22 2/5, :33 3/5, :46 2/5, :59 3/5, 1:12 3/5, 1:25, 1:38 3/5, 1:51 2/5, 2:04 1/5. By furlongs it was :11, :11 2/5, :11 1/5, :12 4/5, :13 1/5, :13, :12 2/5, :13 3/5, :12 4/5, :12 4/5. The Derby record is Whirlaway's 2:01 2/5.

After the race, someone asked Eddie Arcaro if he had used his whip on Olympia. "Jeez, what a question! I'm ridin' in the Kentucky Derby and he asks me did I hit him. I whaled hell out of him! Jeez!"

Best story of the day came from Johnny Carrico, of the Courier-Journal sports department: "Hurrying through the paddock after the race to gain the winner's circle." Carrico wrote, "I was rudely staggered when the stubby pilot of Seneca's Coin shout out 'Who win?'

"I started to splutter 'But you were in the race,' when I remembered."

The rider was Jimmy Duff, who had pulled up his mount on the far turn, when he was hopelessly beaten. When Ponder went under the wire, Duff was a quarter of a mile from the finish.

In the jockeys' room afterward, when the Derby riders were washing their faces and taking inventory, Ted Atkinson said "I thought I had it won. I think everybody thought I was home except Ben Jones."

The 75th Kentucky Derby was the first to be televised. Among the thousands who watched the horses flicker around the track was Buck Weaver, veteran Turf editor of the Louisville Times. It was the 33rd time he had watched a Derby, but the first time since 1917 that he wasn't at the Downs.

Mr. Weaver had been seriously ill for some weeks before the Derby, and had not recovered sufficiently to leave his hospital bed.

Kentucky Oaks: Coaltown's Half Sister

Wistful was foaled March 1, 1946, at Warren Wright's Calumet Farm, Lexington. She started only twice last year at 2, won one race. Most of the Calumet Farm 2-year-olds were bothered with coughs last year and were raced sparingly.

Her first victory of 1949 came at Hialeah Park, where she won at seven furlongs on Jan. 27. Later she won again at Hialeah Park and was second to Woodvale Farm's Tall Weeds in the Ashland Stakes at Keeneland on April 16. On opening day at Churchill Downs she beat Woodvale's Lady Dorimar at a mile. The Kentucky Oaks was her fourth win, first stakes win, and second stakes placing in 1949. It was the second victory in the race for Calumet, which won with Nellie L. in 1943.

Wistful is from the first crop of the Calumet stallion Sun Again, stakes winner of 15 races and $154,375. Other stakes winners for Sun Again are Palestinian, Illuminable, and Irish Sun.

Easy Lass, dam of Wistful, also is the dam of Coaltown. She has a yearling filly by Pensive and is due to foal this year to Bull Lea.

In conjunction with Tom Hall's Throwback Thursday features in BloodHorse Daily, BloodHorse.com each Thursday will present corresponding race stories from the pages of the magazine. The story will be saved to the website's BackTrack channel.