Whitney, Vanderbilt honored as Pillars of the Turf

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – It’s fitting that the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame is located a stone’s throw from Saratoga Race Course, but it’s especially fitting this year. Owners and breeders John Hay Whitney and Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, contemporaries who made extraordinary contributions to the sport for more than half a century and whose family names are fixtures on the New York calendar, were enshrined in the Hall of Fame’s Pillars of the Turf category at Friday’s annual induction ceremony.

“[Saratoga] was his slice of heaven,” said Vanderbilt’s son, Alfred Vanderbilt III.

Inducted immediately following the Pillars of the Turf were flat and steeplechase jockey Vincent Powers and Thoroughbred Billy Kelly, both of whom had ties to New York racing.

The National Museum of Racing created the Pillars of the Turf category in 2013 to honor industry participants who “made extraordinary contributions to Thoroughbred racing at the highest national level.” Both Whitney and Vanderbilt, most prominent in New York racing, were longtime stewards of family legacies honored with Grade 1 events at Saratoga. Fittingly, the Whitney Stakes was set to be renewed the day after the Hall of Fame induction.

Whitney, born in 1904, was prominent through his mother’s famed Greentree Stud operation. He privately purchased and campaigned Hall of Famer Tom Fool and bred champions Capot, Stage Door Johnny, Late Bloomer, and Bowl Game.

Whitney founded the American Thoroughbred Breeders Association, the forerunner of today’s Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association. He was a longtime steward of The Jockey Club and served on the New York Racing Commission. He died in 1982.

“Pop’s greatest love, second only to my grandma, was his beloved Greentree Stable,” said Whitney’s grandson, Peter di Bonaventura, who spoke on the family’s behalf.

He recounted that every night, Greentree trainer John Gaver and Whitney “would talk for what seemed like hours.”

Vanderbilt, born in 1912, inherited his family’s Sagamore Farm in Maryland at age 21 and purchased handicap star Discovery that year. Among the other champions bred and campaigned by Vanderbilt was the once-beaten Native Dancer. The Hall of Famer was among racing’s first stars of the television era and went on to be a widely influential sire. The stallion now is honored with a statue at the end of Saratoga’s Union Avenue.

Vanderbilt purchased Pimlico Race Course at age 24 and is credited with brokering the 1938 match race in which Seabiscuit defeated Triple Crown winner War Admiral. He also spent time running Belmont Park early in the parimutuel era and later served as chairman of the New York Racing Association. He also served as president of TOBA and of the Thoroughbred Racing Associations. He was presented with the Eclipse Award of Merit in 1994.

“I think if you had wanted to live a racing life in the 20th century, the life you would have wanted to live was my father’s,” Vanderbilt said. “From 1923, when his grandfather took him to his first race, until 1999, when he died coming back from the morning workouts, I don’t think anybody lived a life that was more deeply ingrained in the sport of racing.”

Powers, born in 1891, was North America’s leading flat jockey in 1908, when he won the Kentucky Oaks aboard Ellen-a-Dale, and 1909, when he won the Kentucky Derby on Wintergreen. He was the leading steeplechase rider in 1917, and according to the Hall of Fame, he is the only rider to top the national standings in both categories. He went on to become a trainer and led the steeplechase standings in 1927 while conditioning Hall of Famer Jolly Roger.

“It is especially fitting Vincent Powers is inducted in the same year as John Hay Whitney,” said Randall Anderson, president of the Chautauqua Sports Hall of Fame, noting that Powers, a native of Chautauqua County, N.Y., rode and trained for Greentree.

Billy Kelly, a foal of 1916, was widely considered among the greatest sprinters of his era, winning 39 of 69 starts, including 19 stakes, and finishing in the money 60 times. He finished second to stablemate Sir Barton – the first Triple Crown winner – in the 1919 Kentucky Derby but finished ahead of his rival in eight of their 12 meetings. He also defeated Hall of Famer Old Rosebud in the Hartford Handicap in one of his three consecutive wins in that event. He died in retirement in 1926.

Clark Bedwell Shaffer Jr., the great-great-grandson of trainer H. Guy Bedwell, said he was “deeply honored and thankful” to be on hand to represent the family.