Tall Tales of the Track – A Bargain Mare Yields a High Class Horse

Between the end of the 19th century and the record payout of Donerail’s 1913 Derby came what some considered a few mediocre Kentucky Derbies, contests featuring horses that may not have had the talent racing fans had come to expect from this classic. However, in 1900, one brown colt came to Churchill ready to run and leave his mark on the Run for the Roses.

The product of an unwanted mare and an unheralded stallion, Lieutenant Gibson was a record-breaking Kentucky Derby winner and a beloved horse, his too-short life unable to give him the legacy that his performances might have merited. 

Underestimated Quality

Sophia Hardy had not been a great racehorse. Featured in selling races throughout what was called the West, from Chicago to New Orleans, the chestnut mare retired as property of turfman Lawrence Curran. The Louisville railroad man died in 1894, and the following year, Sophia Hardy went through the sales ring as part of the dispersal of his stock. 

Present at the sale was the Benevolent Protective Association, a group of horsemen who bought horses that owners no longer wanted and then sent them on to new jobs in other areas. Sophia Hardy could have gone on to become an anonymous workhouse, but instead, she caught the eye of B. Smith Gentry and his brother Richard, both prominent horse traders who raised their hands when the mare went through the ring. She hammered down to the brothers and their racing partner, Robert Baker, for $25, a bargain price for what she would go on to produce.

Purchased in foal to Pardee, Sophia Hardy produced the colt Hardy Pardee in 1896, and then they bred her back to the stallion G.W. Johnson, a stakes winner by Iroquois, the first American horse to win the Epsom Derby and the St. Leger Stakes. In 1897, this bargain-priced mare foaled a brown colt with white socks and a thin blaze of white from his forehead down to his nose. Baker and Gentry would name him Lieutenant Gibson.

Unique Excellence

The son of G. W. Johnson got a fast start at age two, notching a neck victory in his four-furlong debut at Churchill Downs. By late June 1899, he had already started five times and won three of those with a second and a third. His victory in the Sensation Stakes at Latonia caught the attention of Charles Hughes, trainer for Chicago businessman Charles Head Smith, who offered the colt’s owners $10,000 for their burgeoning star. Soon, Lieutenant Gibson was running in Head’s colors, starting a whopping 13 more times that season before Hughes gave him a freshening ahead of his three-year-old season. 

The 26th Kentucky Derby was scheduled for Thursday, May 3, and trainer Charles Hughes opted to train his G. W. Johnson colt up to the race. The field was small – only six others would join Lieutenant Gibson at the post – but he was set to meet a familiar foe in Kentucky Farmer, whom he had defeated twice the previous season. He met the starter in front of a crowd of 30,000 on a sunny spring day at the classic racetrack. 

From post three, the even-money favorite with Jimmy Boland in the saddle broke fastest and soon was two lengths in front of Kentucky Farmer by the first quarter of a mile. Over the ten furlongs, Lieutenant Gibson had the lead, and none of his competitors were getting close enough to threaten him. He crossed the wire alone, three lengths in front of Florizar, and completed the mile and a quarter in a record 2:06 1/4. Both owner and trainer were thrilled with their charge’s win, the newspapers full of praise for the son of G. W. Johnson and grandson of the first American Epsom Derby winner.

A week later, Lieutenant Gibson was back at Churchill Downs for the Clark Stakes, with only two others challenging him. The victory in the nine-furlong stakes was another wire-to-wire romp, Boland letting his mount sail through the race with no urging. At Latonia two weeks later, the four other horses set to face the Derby winner in the 12-furlong Latonia Derby all scratched, leaving Lieutenant to run the course alone in a walkover. He followed that up with a third in the American Derby at Chicago’s Washington Park, where he bowed a tendon, an injury that both ended the Derby winner’s career and later his life.

In this era, heat was thought to help heal the affected muscle, so a firing iron was applied to the colt’s injured leg. Soon, that area became infected, and for months, Lieutenant Gibson tried to recover, but to no avail. Charles Head Smith reported the death of his prized colt in early December, more than a week after they let him go. The owner told the New York Times that “His sufferings were far more a matter of regret to me than could have been any pecuniary loss I experienced by the disabling of the colt. He was a brave horse, a well-bred one, and when he died, I wanted him buried with just as little publicity as possible,” a sad end for a dear equine athlete.