Readers Up #13: Sir Barton
“Turf writers might have had short attention spans,” Jennifer S. Kelly quips in her racing biography Sir Barton and the Making of the Triple Crown, “but they had long memories.” She’s referring to sports journalists homing in on the perceived sins of jockey Johnny Loftus over the course of 1919--but this succinct call-out remains applicable in the current day. A lightly-raced three-year-old crests and subsides quickly, wins the Preakness and retires before the Belmont, capitulates to the rising class while his name is still on people’s tongues. Every flashy win makes a headline, while the paragraphs beneath extol the virtues of that horse’s biological history and the resulting comments lay out visions of a withered sport, a breed drained of vitality. The headlines themselves and the turf writer’s catalogue of stock epithets are steeped in mores and say less about the horse than about their provenance. Into Mischief Filly. Son of Whipper. The gap between racing's last golden age and its horizon widens. Legacies leave the starting gate each time, history riding tight with the jockeys.
I made the brilliant move of entering a so-called graying profession between the 2008 stock market crash and the 2011 housing crisis. Graying is a set of goalposts in constant motion: a field in which a significant percentage of employees are poised to retire should be a job-seeker’s market; a sport in which a significant percentage of enthusiasts are lifelong fans should be more concerned about its future than its past. At the same time, a past as rich, bizarre, and dynamic as racing’s is the natural entry point for any neophyte (dig, if you will, a picture: me reading Duel for the Crown in one sitting, baffled and rapt and a total fucking goner). In an era where even the most hallowed benchmarks still leave greatness open for discussion, books like Sir Barton remain key to unlocking the sport's appeal and providing historic context for its contemporary concerns. What place does the Triple Crown occupy in modern racing? It might be the place that racing occupies in modern US society. How far ahead of his time was Sir Barton? We’ll say five lengths.
Like the best sports history books, Kelly’s title weaves an ensemble and an era into a multi-act play. Like the best racehorse biographies, Sir Barton gives voice to an animal without speech. Like the best racetrack literature, this volume bursts with larger-than-life figures, glorious bloodstock, and the highest stakes. From my angle, Kelly does her compatriots one better still by privileging Sir Barton’s story as one of moving parts, an interconnected web of bipeds and quadrupeds, microcultural norms and sporting expectations. Most any biography of a racehorse will deliver on the trainer, owner, and breeder fronts--but even Three Strides Before the Wire is sometimes curiously unwilling to root Chris Antley in his professional world. Sir Barton is up-front with its intrigue; the relationships between Ross, Bedwell, Loftus, and their horse are the book’s bedrock. Kelly is fearless with her scope, cannily recognizing that Sir Barton’s was both a personal triumph for the colt and his connections as well as the fundamental hinge of a blossoming sport. Despite another decade of obscurity for the nascent Crown after Sir Barton's wins, hindsight is rose-tinted twenty-twenty vision. A horse wins three races. Humans weld those races into a gold standard. Racing--like the Form, like the occult--is an interpretation of text.
Jennifer Kelly, Sir Barton's author, was kind enough to interpret her text a bit for us. Below you'll find her thoughts on historical racing greats, writing for dual audiences, and much more.I taught writing at the college level for more than a decade, but it became clear in 2013 that I needed a change. My kids were getting older and our lives as a family were evolving. For my husband and me, we found that having one of us at home helped the whole family work better. A change in my career would be the easiest way to achieve that. About the same time, I knew that the 100th anniversary of the first Triple Crown was coming up and I knew I had never seen a book about Sir Barton in all of my years as a fan. I have loved the sport since I was a young person so I knew I had the passion to do it; my academic background ensured that I had many of the skills needed to approach a project like this one. Sure enough, a search yielded no books on Sir Barton so I thought I would take the chance that I could do it. Once I finished that first draft, I saw the book was doable.
As a Sir Barton enthusiast, you must have started off with a solid base of information about our first Triple Crown winner. What’s a surprising fact you learned about the horse or his career as you researched?
The most surprising thing had to be the amount of enthusiasm for Sir Barton coming into the 1919 Kentucky Derby. I figured the rabbit narrative we’ve all been familiar with had to be somewhat inaccurate, but I was not prepared for the repeated enthusiasm for him prior to the race. The president of the Churchill Downs picked him, as well as the sports editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Sam McMeekin. News reports that even trainer H.G. Bedwell was overt in stating that he thought Sir Barton was their best chance at the Derby was mind-blowing. It was definitely not what I had read over the years.
The other surprising fact was that Sir Barton was not originally intended to run in the Belmont Stakes. For those of us who know the sport in this modern era, the Triple Crown is the thing, with the Breeder’s Cup a close second. People who don’t know anything about horse racing know the Triple Crown and the horses that have won it, like Secretariat. The idea that the first Triple Crown winner wasn’t going to run in the Belmont Stakes initially was mind-blowing. The reason why he ended up in the Belmont Stakes instead of the Latonia Derby is one of those small things that seem so simple on the surface and become monumental in history.
Catching the attention of the publishing world can be difficult for writers working in the Thoroughbred vein. Was University Press of Kentucky always your publishing goal, or did you shop Sir Barton around?
I had shopped Sir Barton around to several agents prior to finding the University Press of Kentucky. I honestly was not aware that a university press would work on something that wasn’t a textbook so I had not considered that route until two separate people suggested them to me. We had even considered self-publishing, but I was not willing to take on the risk on that. I knew that someone would take a chance on the project if I were able to bend the right ears and that instinct proved to be correct.
How do you balance writing for racetrackers versus a wider audience who may not be familiar with the ins and outs of Thoroughbreds?
I did it by bringing in beta readers who were not familiar with the sport. My husband is learning by osmosis – a la being married to me – but he still retains that perspective of being outside of the sport because he did not grow up with it as I had. I also had a friend of mine who had taught writing in the same department I did read the book, especially early on when I was still getting my footing on how to tell this story. If you are writing something that has dual layers of audience like this, it’s best to have readers of both types look at your work to make sure that you’re balancing the needs of both.
The Triple Crown as an institution seems to have come full circle, from Sir Barton nailing the trio before the Classics were seen as connected to Justify’s win sparking a Horse of the Year debate. Do you think the Triple Crown will continue to be the yardstick by which racehorses and the sport are measured?
Despite the naysayers I’ve encountered in these last few years, I still think that the Triple Crown is the best way to both draw in new fans and then measure horses. People who are not hardcore racing fans know the Triple Crown Classics and will see a horse that descends from a Derby winner, for example, and understand that kind of a pedigree is important and carries quality and potential. We need these races to preserve the history and traditions of the sport, and to help educate those on the outside looking in on the many highlights of the sport. The stories of horses like Afleet Alex, for example, can show audiences what impact horses have on the lives of those around them, from the owners to the jockey and more. The Classics bring an opportunity to tell those stories and have the eyes of potential fans on them. Without the Triple Crown, what traditions would we have to build off of? While the Triple Crown may not the only measuring stick for horses, they are recognized around the world as representing what many an owner, breeder, trainer, jockey, and fan are looking for in a horse: stamina, speed, and heart. They can showcase the quality of a horse on a big stage.
If you could see Sir Barton race against any current Thoroughbred in training, who would you pick? Alternately, a greatest-hits field of historical racehorses?
I have a list of horses that I love, but I have had a hard time comparing them all. I tend to think about them in terms of their context instead. Sir Barton ran the 1 ¼-mile Saratoga Handicap in 2:01 4/5 and Man o’ War equaled that in the Travers. Now, the average Kentucky Derby is just a shade faster than that. But, in 1920, that time was lightning fast. For his time, Sir Barton was extraordinary and that’s part of his charm for me.
What was the first piece of writing you ever created, fiction or non?
Geez, I don’t even know how to answer that – I’m in my 40s! I think the first organized narrative I ever wrote was the novel about a female jockey that I wrote when I was about 12. I don’t have it anymore, but I distinctly remember being in 6th grade and writing it out by hand in a pink notebook. Her name was Alexandria (Alex) and she marries a harness driver named Alec. (Creative, right?) She wins the Triple Crown on a white horse named Alystar; I had a whole set of horses and humans that I created from scratch for the story.
What’s next on your project list?
I have this long list of potential projects, with the intent of staying in the Triple Crown and ensuring that each winner has a book of his own as well as chronicling the history of the concept itself. I have other projects I would like to do as well, but I am working on a book proposal right now and I’m not yet ready to go into detail about specifics until I am a little farther along in the process.
What’s a book in the racing canon that you’d recommend to any reader?
Whew, that’s a tough question. I think it all depends on the person you are talking to. I had people buy my book for relatives who weren’t horse racing people, but were into history in general. If you like horse racing history, I love Dorothy Ours’s Man o’ War: A Legend Like Lightning. For someone looking for a more recent story that captivates, Linda Carroll and Dave Rosner’s Duel for the Crown sucks me in every time I read it. For a book on the people of the racetrack, anything by John Perrotta, especially Racetrackers, can bring the culture of the racetrack beyond the horses to a reader who might be interested in people watching.
If Jennifer's deep-dive into Triple Crown history sounds enticing, you can find Sir Barton and the Making of the Triple Crown online and in stores. Check out more about Jennifer's writing and appearances, and follow her on Twitter for all things Sir Barton!
Still recovering from the Belmont,
Diana