Faded Glory: Forgotten Kentucky Derby Winners (Jet Pilot, 1947)

Kentucky Derby Day 1946 opened with a five-furlong maiden race for two-year-olds, a field of six entering the gate for the 12 p.m. post time. Three were making their first start, including Jet Pilot, a chestnut colt by leading sire Blenheim II. In front of a sleepy crowd trickling in for the 72nd Kentucky Derby, the young racehorse took control from the break and won his first start by nine lengths. 

A year later, Jet Pilot would be back at Churchill Downs for another race, this one a 10-furlong classic test with a place in history as its prize. In a year sandwiched between Triple Crown winners, Jet Pilot capitalized on his good fortune and brought home a rosy victory for his famous owner and Hall of Fame trainer. 

She’s All In

The owner of that winning colt started life as Florence Nightingale Graham, but modern audiences would know her better as Elizabeth Arden. The daughter of English immigrants, Graham was a progressive figure, a lifelong horse lover who used the fortune she built through her salons and cosmetics to create Maine Chance Stable, following in the footsteps of other prominent female owners like Isabel Dodge Sloane and Helen Hay Whitney. 

Racing under the name Elizabeth Graham, she bought her first Thoroughbred in 1931 and later hired Tom Smith as her trainer in the mid-1940s. Most famous for conditioning superstar Seabiscuit for Charles Howard, “Silent Tom” had left that famed owner’s employment when Smith needed back surgery and then took over Maine Chance in 1944.

A believer in spending money to make money, Graham’s bloodstock consultant Leslie Combs II of Spendthrift Farm represented the cosmetics mogul at the 1945 Keeneland summer yearling sale. There, he spotted that Blenheim II colt in the Claiborne Farm consignment and put him on the shortlist for Maine Chance. Like his Epsom Derby-winning sire, the colt’s dam Black Wave was a stakes winner as well, winning the Test at Saratoga in 1938. The colt hammered down at $41,000 and joined Graham’s stocked stable of young horses. 

An alleged dosing of a Maine Chance horse with ephedrine led the Jockey Club to suspend Smith’s license for a year. As a result, Graham moved her two-year-olds to Arlington Park rather than start them in New York and tapped Smith’s son Jimmy to take over preparing her newest racers. He shipped Jet Pilot to Louisville for that first start on Derby Day, a fortuitous decision that saved the colt from a barn fire that claimed 23 horses. Upon seeing his nine-length victory on Derby Day 1946, Combs declared Jet Pilot as the next year’s Derby winner.

Four stakes victories in his juvenile season, including a win in the prestigious Pimlico Futurity, marked Graham’s colt as one to watch in 1947. 

She Gets the Win

Another year meant a new set of names to know ahead of the next Kentucky Derby. Calumet Farm had Faultless, who had notched victories in the Flamingo and Blue Grass S. C.V. Whitney had Phalanx, winner of the Remsen at two and then the Wood Memorial ahead of his turn in Louisville. For the 1947 Derby, Phalanx had Eddie Arcaro in the saddle, while Faultless would have Doug Dodson on his back. 

Jet Pilot came to Louisville with two starts, including a win in the Jamaica H., under his belt. On Derby Day, the newly unsuspended Tom Smith boosted jockey Eric Guerin onto the third choice as the field of 13 trickled out onto the racetrack. In the stands, the mistress of Maine Chance sat confident that her colt would come out on top. She watched as Jet Pilot broke alertly and gunned for the lead on an off track. 

Behind him Phalanx and Arcaro tarried at the back of the field while Faultless and Dodson sat midpack, each waiting for the stretch to unleash their final drives. As the field swung into the straight, Guerin focused on managing Jet Pilot’s energy while Faultless and Phalanx made their moves. 

Convinced that Arcaro had cost him a chance at the Preakness the year before, Dodson focused on holding off Phalanx while Arcaro pushed his colt. Neither seemed concerned about Jet Pilot still winging away on the lead. 

Guerin sensed the two favorites bearing down on them but knew that he could not tap his colt with the whip; Jet Pilot had reacted badly to the whip in past races, and Smith had instructed the jockey to avoid using it. He desperately pushed the Blenheim II colt with hands and heels as the finish line loomed yards away.

At the wire, only a head separated the Maine Chance colt from Phalanx, who was another head in front of Faultless. It was one of the closest finishes in Derby history and the first decided by a photo, a moment echoed over 75 years later in the scant margins between Mystik Dan, Sierra Leone, and Forever Young in the 150th Kentucky Derby. 

Faultless would bounce back to win the Preakness over both Jet Pilot and Phalanx, while the latter would take the Belmont S. weeks later. A lingering injury suffered during the Preakness forced Jet Pilot into an early retirement; he went to stud at Combs’s Spendthrift Farm, where he would become broodmare sire of My Charmer, dam of Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew. Both Eric Guerin and Tom Smith would eventually become part of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame on the strength of their connections to horses like Native Dancer, whom Guerin rode to victories in the 1953 Preakness and Belmont, and the underdog-turned-champion Seabiscuit, who helped immortalize Smith in the book and film of the same name.