I first saw Saratoga in December, 1936, two years after its founding. Life, like delirium tremens and abstract-expressionist painting, can afford some startling visual experiences. I recall a day in Paris when my metabolism had not yet adjusted to European time. I awakened as dawn was breaking over the Seine and wandered out on a Left bank balcony and caught my breath with wonder at the spectacle. The Paris dawn does not come up like Kipling’s thunder; it spills down, like pastel colors from an upset paintpot. Suddenly, from far across the river in Montmartre, an alabaster balloon shaped like a Christmas pudding, rose through the rainbow mists, and it was the holy place called Sacre Coeur, suspended for one miraculous moment between heaven and the city’s ancient chimney pots. There was another time when a ship was sailing through a slate-grey northern sea at dusk and the copper domes of Copenhagen, richly weathered to an unearthly patina, came floating through the watery twilight. There is a special color to the air of Denmark at dusk, a color that is neither quite green nor quite blue, that fades into grays as soft as kitten fur and glows with rosy sunset-pink. It is the color of Royal Copenhagen porcelain. (p70-1)

wtf? I’m not even sure what either tremens or patina means or what Kipling’s thunder refers to. This paragraph is over the top and luckily the rest of the book isn’t so overdone.

David Alexander obviously fancied himself as something more than just a racing columnist (The Morning Telegraph, NY Herald Tribune, Thoroughbred Record). His short biography on the cover jacket acknowledges that Alexander is America’s leading turf writer but goes to say that he is “a man of great charm and wit and erudition, qualities which are in splendid evidence throughout this book.” Indeed. If you can stomach Alexander’s affected language than this is a worthwhile read. It is an excellent history of the thoroughbred from the foaling of Eclipse by the Duke of Cumberland (also breeder of Herod) to Kelso, the horse the author deems the greatest of all-time. Alexander’s work has not achieved the recognition of Joe Palmer, Red Smith, or Bill Nack (the cover jacket indicated that he had written fifteen novels and fifty short stories but I could find none available for sale). He was however an invaluable source for Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit. He was close friends with jockey Red Pollard and offers details of Pollard’s and Woolf’s prerace plans to for the match race against War Admiral. Mr. Alexander was at that meeting. He was also in the penthouse with controversial Narragansett Park owner Walter O’Hara in 1937 when the state militia came to arrest O’Hara. Alexander was everywhere and knew everyone, at least when racing was concerned.

I’m not sure there is a better history of horse racing yet written. However, I had a hard time getting started and put it down for a month after reading half of the first chapter. I am glad I decided to persevere. It was worth it. 

A final interesting note – Alexander ranks Kelso as the top horse he ever saw followed by Exterminator and Man o’War. A Blood Horse panel rating the top horses of the 20th century put Man o’War first followed by Secretariat, Citation, and then Kelso. Exterminator was #29 behind a more than a dozen horses that ran during Alexander’s racing consciousness (Regret’s Derby in 1915 to Kelso’s retirement). Exterminator and Man o’War were the two most beloved horses of the first part of the century. Unfortunately we have forgotten about the greatness of “Old Bones”.