Tall Tales of the Track: Whose Horse Is He Anyway?

Owning a racehorse is a point of pride for many a racing fan; owning one who wins stakes races and competes in classics like the Kentucky Derby takes that investment to another level. For one Derby contender, the story behind the name on his papers turned out to be one laden with controversy and intrigue. 

Jim French’s career, including a near-victory in the Kentucky Derby, cemented his place in racing history, but understanding the tangled web of names behind this Thoroughbred intrigues racing fans to this day, a strange tale that overshadows this stakes winner’s time on the track. 

Meet Jim French

Two decades before he bred Arazi, Ralph C. Wilson, Jr., the founder and original owner of the Buffalo Bills, bred a bay colt by Graustark out of the Tom Fool mare Dinner Partner, Jim French. Named for a groom who worked for his Oxford Stables, the small solid bay’s pedigree promised excellence: his sire had been the favorite for the 1966 Kentucky Derby before an injury in the Blue Grass Stakes ended his career, his dam was a stakes winner, and his damsire had won the New York Handicap Triple Crown (Suburban, Brooklyn, Metropolitan) in 1953. Wilson raced his homebred colt at age two, sending him to trainer John Campo in 1970. 

As a racehorse, Jim French was seemingly indestructible. Between his debut in late July and the end of the 1970 season, Wilson’s colt raced twelve times! Racing about every two weeks, he finished fourth in a one-mile race at Belmont Park and then raced again six days later and won at six furlongs. Jim French was third in the Champagne Stakes and then won the Remsen before finishing his two-year-old season with a win in the Miami Beach Handicap at Tropical Park. During that season, Wilson sold a third of the colt to his friend Frank Caldwell, a Long Island furniture executive; before the year was done, Caldwell had bought Wilson out and was listed as the colt’s sole owner. 

Campo continued Jim French’s torrid racing pace through the first half of the colt’s three-year-old season. Again racing around every two weeks, he started 1971 with a win in the Dade Metropolitan Handicap and then the Bahamas Stakes; finished third in three subsequent preps, including the Florida Derby; and then shipped out west to Santa Anita where he won the Santa Anita Derby. Campo shipped Jim French back to the East Coast, where he finished fourth in the Wood Memorial two weeks before the Kentucky Derby. 

With twenty-one starts and eight wins behind him, the Graustark colt arrived in Louisville with enough support behind him to go off at 4-1 in the Derby. It was time to see if Campo’s philosophy worked.

Untangle the Web 

Though he tracked the pace throughout the race, jockey Angel Cordero Jr.’s move on the far turn was not enough to catch the Venezuelan colt Canonero II in the stretch. Jim French was second by 3 ¾ lengths and then followed that up with a third behind the Derby winner in the Preakness two weeks later. In the Belmont Stakes, Jim French closed fast in the final furlong to finish just behind Pass Catcher; Canonero II was fourth. 

He ran four more times that summer, winning the Dwyer, and then finishing fourth in the Monmouth Invitational. After his poor showing at Monmouth, Campo discovered that Jim French had a bone spur that had broken off in his right knee. As the colt recuperated, the trainer entered his stakes winner in the Travers Stakes, expecting to face off with horses like Canadian champion Kennedy Road and Bold Reason, who had defeated the Graustark colt in the Hollywood Derby. As Campo prepared the colt for the Travers, an unexpected visitor showed up at the barn: the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department. Jim French was impounded and his entry for the Travers was denied.

The catalyst for the impoundment was a loan that Caldwell had taken out at a Lexington, Kentucky bank, Citizens Union Bank and Trust Company; Leslie Combs of Spendthrift Farm, where Jim French was foaled and had a possible stallion deal, was a director there and had signed off on Caldwell’s loan. The bank called the loan because he had falsified an affidavit that he was the colt’s sole owner. With that discovery, questions about who actually owned Jim French arose. Authorities learned that Caldwell supposedly had sold 70% to Etta Sarant, the wife of a Long Island car dealer, in whose name the colt had run at Monmouth. When Campo tried to enter his colt in the Travers, officials discovered that she did not have a New York owner’s license and did not intend to apply for one. So without a licensed majority owner and no formal partnership agreement, the colt could not run in the Travers.

Then it was discovered that Sarant did not want to apply for an owner’s license because she had already sold her share to Fred R. Cole, a Long Island construction executive who did have an owner’s license in the state. However, stewards had suspended his license pending an investigation into who actually did own Jim French. In the midst of all of this, trainer John Campo fell during a softball game and broke a kneecap and wrist, compounding the misery of the situation. 

The Travers’ entry date came and went with no clarity as to Jim French’s actual ownership. A probe by the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau, an investigative arm of the Thoroughbred Racing Associations of North America, showed that Caldwell apparently had silent partners in the colt, but had not filed any paperwork to establish a partnership. One of those supposed partners was a man named R. Robert LiButti, doing business as Robert Presti, who had been barred from racing in 1968. However, Presti’s niece raced horses in Florida and Presti still wined and dined and befriended a number of persons in racing, including John Campo. With rumored ties to organized crime, Presti was trouble for Campo, Ralph Wilson (who had reportedly bought back into Jim French earlier in the year), and others. 

The investigation ended with suspensions for Campo, Wilson, and George Poole, who trained for C.V. Whitney, for their role in the cover-up of Jim French’s ownership. Frank Caldwell was called before the New York Racing Commission to discuss his role in the cover-up as the Commission decided if his owner’s license should be revoked. Jim French never raced again, that bone fragment leaving veterinarians concerned that his knee could fracture if he tried to race on it. He was retired and purchased by Daniel Wildenstein, a French art dealer, who sent the Graustark colt to Haras de la Verrerie in northern France. A few years later, Jim French was sold to a Japanese breeder and stood there until his death in 1992. 

The owner of record on Jim French’s sale never was officially revealed.