Churchill Downs/Kentucky Derby History, Part III This section offers the story and accomplishments of one of the Derby's greatest legends. The Legacy of Matt Winn At the end of the 1902 Spring Meet, newsman Charlie Price, secretary of the New Louisville Jockey Club, offered local businessman and topnotch handicapper Matt Winn the operation of Churchill Downs for $40,000. Without a buyer, Churchill Downs would have become the fourth unsuccessful racetrack in Louisville's history, a pretty bad record for a city only 75 miles from the heart of thoroughbred country. Winn was the last hope. At 41, married, the father of eight daughters, Winn was in no position to take risks. He called a few of his friends: hotelman Louis Seelbach (the Seelbach Hotel still sits on Fourth Street in downtown Louisville), brewer Frank Fehr and manufacturer Charles F. Grainger. Together they came up with the $40,000, chose Grainger as president and began planning for the 1903 Derby. They sold 200 memberships at $100 each by promising buyers exclusive seating. With that $20,000, Winn built a clubhouse on the finish line, next to the grandstand; his aim was to turn the track into a place where people felt welcome. The clubhouse and grandstand were full the following spring and the track showed a profit for the first time in its history. Winn's partners asked him to manage the operation, but with a family to support he turned them down. But they persisted, and late in 1903 Winn sold his interest in his tailoring business and became the track's vice-president and general manager. As Winn wrote later in his memoirs, "I immediately ceased being a horse player. I never bet as much as a cigar on the outcome of any race since that time." From the start Winn knew what he was doing. As a seasoned traveler in times when travelling meant unheated trains, dirty dinners and lots of walking, Winn felt comfortable and had connections all over the country. He was also very familiar with the workings of Kentucky politics. Winn developed a strategy that set the Downs apart from the usual approach to racetrack utilization: one time he payed $5,000 for John Philip Sousa's band to perform at the Downs for entertainment. But it was his influence that reigned supreme and most effective. In 1904 rival Western Turf Association tracks ignored Winn's request for more and better racing dates. Winn pulled out of the Association, taking nine other disgruntled track owners with him. They then formed the American Turf Association with Winn as president. Stable by stable, horsemen and jockeys defected to Winn's group during a two year struggle that ended in the creation of a Kentucky State Racing Commission empowered to licence tracks and award racing dates. Over the next two years Winn fought three major "turf wars," each time outmaneuvering major opposition, including the powerful New York Jockey Club, whose members he converted into some of his staunchest allies. As president of the American Turf Association, he managed racetracks from New Orleans to Yonkers--merely practice for what loomed ahead. Over the next few years Louisville saw some tough anti-gambling measures passed by local government, including ordinances that barred bookmakers from plying their trade within city limits. Winn even had to cancel the 1907 Fall Meet because Sheriff Alexander Scott Bulitt announced he would raid the betting ring each day and arrest everyone attempting to make a book. Winn responded by stating that only pari-mutuel wagering would be permitted at the 1908 Derby, yet city officials quickly pointed out that gambling machines violated a 19th century Kentucky law aimed at outlawing roulette wheels. Winn, who had attended every single Kentucky Derby (lucky dog) remembered cashing pari-mutuel tickets in the 1880s; he knew that Colonel Clark (see Part I) had imported pari-mutual machines before the first Derby, but hadn't actually used them unti 1878. Something accounted for that three year delay and Winn needed to find out what it was. He found the answer in an 1878 amendment to the Kentucky Statutes prohibiting machine wagering, the words that saved the Kentucky Derby: "This act shall not apply to persons who may sell combination, or French pools, on any regular race track during the races thereon." Louisville business leaders had lobbied hard to slip that exemption through the Legislature--besides the Downs and the Derby, it is "probably the Churchill family's greatest contribution to American racing." The 1908 Derby was the first true test. On March of that year 11 pari-mutuel machines were delivered to Churchill Downs. When Matt Winn ran full-page newspaper ads explaining the mathematics of pari-mutuel wagering, City Hall threatened to arrest anyone caught placing a bet at the track, although at the last minute a Circuit Court judge granted an injunction against such governmental intrusion. The headlines brought a full crowd to the Derby, if only to see the potential fight between Winn and the authorities as well as the race itself. What Derby attendees saw in the betting shed were pari-mutuel machines, each equipped with a telephone and staffed with a clerk selling pari-mutuel tickets bearing Winn's signature. When the windows closed before each race, ticket sellers phoned in the number of wagers made; men in the cashier's room figured the payoffs while the horses were on the track. The following day the Kentucky Court of Appeals held that pari-mutuel wagering was legal on a racetrack during a meet. As reported in The Thoroughbred Record, "The future of thoroughbred racing, which had hung in the balance for months, was settled and would continue undisturbed." For Winn's service to the Commonwealth, Kentucky governor Cripps Beckham appointed him to the state's honory militia--Winn was now a real Kentucky Colonel. As anti-gambling sentiment swept the country, the ban on bookmaking spread, causing pari-mutuel wagering to grow. Churchill Downs president Charlie Grainger manufactured new and improved machines at his foundry and started to distribute them across the country. In 1911, the cost of a bet was lowered from $5 to $2, enticing even timid bettors to try their luck. Matt Winn's Public Relations Machine After the utilization of pari-mutuel machines Matt Winn worked to change the public's concept of what a racetrack was, becoming "to racing what showman P.T. Barnum had been to the circus. Under Winn's direction, the southend Downs became a rallying point for the whole community: Derby 36 (1910) Glenn Curtiss, founder of Curtiss-Wright Aviation, shipped two unassembled airplanes by rail to the Downs, reassembled them and flew around the infield at a special two-day meet. Between the 60 mph dashes in front of the grandstand, 175 feet above the ground that still threw smoke in the spectator's faces, there were motorcycle races for the 10,000 Louisvillians who braved rain and 90 degree heat to find out what aviation was all about (these flights, which began at least as early as 1909, were among the first recorded flights in the state of Kentucky). Derby 37 (1911) After the 1911 running, The Thoroughbred Record reported that moving picture men got footage of every incident preceding the running of the big event, plus the race itself. "The pictures will be exhibited all over the country as soon as they are developed," the article concluded. Derby 40 (1914) Winn was even able to perform magic with the weather. After a week of heavy rains, Winn's track superintendent and crew went out at dawn with buckets and literally sponged the track dry enough so a gelding named Old Rosebud could set a track record. Old Rosebud's owner was the Churchill Downs' auditor, and son of one of the local bookmakers who had bought the track back in 1895. Old Rosebud went on to become one of the best horses in America at that time, winning 15 of 21 starts in 1917. Derby 41 (1915) In 1915 the Derby had its first filly champion, Regret, who beat out the largest Derby field ever. Winn had bent over backwards to get H.P. Whitney's stakes-winning 2-year old filly's name in the entry box. He even sent a letter to Algernon Daingerfield of The Jockey Club in New York City asking for his influence to persuade Regret's owner to include his horses in the Kentucky Derby "as the names of Regret and such horses would do us a lot of good in an advertising way." By the conclusion of the 1916 Spring Meet public opinion on the Kentucky Derby and horse racing had done an about face, due in large part to the 20% increase in business from the previous year. The day-after-Derby editorial in Louisville's Courier-Journal summed up the new wave of feelings: "Such a day's sport as that of yesterday for those who went to see the Derby and such a day's business for the turf, cannot be looked upon by reasonable persons as a blot upon the escutcheon of the city or the state. It cannot cause regret that Kentucky was not swept by the anti-racing wave, partly made up of righteous puritanism, but partly of narrow and ignorant fanaticism, which destroyed the turf in a number of states less interested in breeding." As revenue-producing pari-mutuel wagering supplanted unlicensed bookmaking, the wrath of reformers abated. By the late teens, American tracks were paying state taxes, Federal taxes and excess profits taxes. By 1918, The Courier-Journal's owner, Robert Worth Bingham, who had led the reform movement to curb vice and close the track in 1905, was serving on the Downs' board. Winn's public relations mastery continued. When America went to war in 1917 he pledged 10% of all money the track handled to the Red Cross; employees gave 10% of their salaries, the track, 10% of its "take," and the horsemen 10% of their earnings. Then, during a national potato shortage in 1918 Winn turned the Downs infield into a huge potato patch. When the crop was sold all the profits went to the Red Cross. It was money sorely needed as soldiers returning from Europe brought with them a lethal influenza, the like of which America had never experienced before. After the war and after the influenza epidemic dissipated, things truly took a turn up for the Derby and its mystique. Late in 1918 Downs management formed itself into the Kentucky Jockey Club, Incorporated, a holding company for Churchill, Latonia, Douglas Park and Lexington. Johnson Camden, an influential Woodford County horse breeder, State Senator and former member of the Kentucky State Racing Commission, served as president. The next year a cold named Sir Barton swept three spring races, the Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont. Sportswriter Charles Hatton dubbed the feat the Triple Crown, a name lifted from a series of stakes races Johnson Camden had proposed for Lexington, Louisville and Latonia in 1912. Working hand in hand with reporters, local investors and the L&N Railroad, Matt Winn worked to make the Downs a mecca for celebrities and racing fans. When the 50th Derby rolled around in 1924, Winn asked Lemon & Son jewelers to create special trophies for the Derby, the Oaks and the Grainger Memorial Stakes. (Grainger had died five weeks before the 1923 Derby.) Winn presented the first 14k gold Derby trophy to a Rosa Hoots, owner of Derby champ Black Gold. Due to her distant kinship ties to Oklahoma's Native American tribes, Winn referred to Ms. Hoots, a widowed heir to an oil fortune, as a "simple aboriginal woman"--pure hype that added to the growing list of Derby legends. Matt Winn's key to success was publicity, getting the right people to the track and showcasing them. He courted the press that Lutie Clark had antagonized. "Give me the five best writers in New York on my side, and you can have the rest," he said. For the 51st Derby Winn went all out. The first radio network play-by-play of a Derby was almost broadcast from one of the spires on May 16, 1925. Louisville radio station WHAS employees lugged equipment up five flights of stairs, but within an hour of the race the weather turned bad, with winds stirring up track dust, then hail and a torrential downpour flooding the track. The radio announcer, Credo Harris, had to hold on for life as the storm threatened the entire spire not to mention the broadcast. From that point on broadcasting took place closer to the ground. (Still, toupees, hats and umbrellas on today's TV broadcasts can still be victims on nasty-weather Derby days!) The following year, realizing people were more reliable than the weather, Winn invited New York City mayor Jimmy Walker to present the 1927 Derby trophy. Early in 1928, the Kentucky Jockey Club dissolved, then reformed itself with the same Board of Directors as the American Turf Association. Things were progressing at a steady rate both for the Derby and for the country, until it all came to a "crashing" halt in October of 1929. Cocktails with the Sport of Kings | The Arrival of Thoroughbreds | Into the Colonies and America Foundations: Bluegrass and Lexington | The Move to Louisville Churchill's Colonel | Derby Growing Pains | The Legacy of Matt Winn | The Home Stretch: Into Modern Times