Assault in 1946, Triple Crown Winner trained by Max Hirsch

Talk with Columbia oldtimers about horse trainers Max Hirsch and Woody Stephens, and you get the idea the Columbia Fairgrounds Stables could put out winners. Once a home for winners, why not now a home for winners?

Hirsch trained Assault, a Triple Crown winner in 1946. Assault was sired by Hirsch’s 1936 Derby winner, Bold Venture, which also sired his 1950 Derby winner, Middleground. Altogether, Hirsch’s horses made $12.2 million over 1,933 wins.

Stephens won five straight Belmont Stakes. In 1983, he won the Eclipse Award as the nation’s top trainer.

Churchill Downs race track, home of the Kentucky Derby A short visit to the Aiken Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame & Museum reveals stories about these trainers and others in Columbia’s horse– training past. Fixed almost equidistant between horse towns Camden and Aiken, Columbia is still naturally suited and sited for horse training – and horse racing.

Some Columbia people are part of the thoroughbred horse racing industry. Camden’s John Fort, graduate of Dreher maybe 40 years ago, is the owner of Coin Silver, one of this month’s Derby contenders. Another Derby horse two weeks ago was Sort It Out, owned by USC graduate Bob McNair of Houston.

A Columbia architect, J. Lesesne Monteith, was investigating horse racetrack surfaces decades ago. Monteith called the front office at the Saratoga racetrack in upstate New York. He asked about tracks in the US with the fastest times. The Saratoga resource didn’t know Monteith was calling from Columbia, but he did say the fastest times used to come from the track at the Columbia Fairgrounds.

Training horses not only takes high–wage skilled labor, but it pulls in another industry for further development, if the northeastern and California tracks are reliable guides. Racetracks are beginning to include casino gambling in the same compound for the same ticket holders. Pari–mutuel racing is not enough anymore to draw the crowds.

Well, that’s fine with us Columbians, I hope. We can get pari–mutuel horse racing and casino–style gambling, both at the Fairgrounds or nearby. Please don’t say, “Tacky, tacky.” Even Las Vegas is evolving as a family destination.

There are higher margins at the bar and the restaurant and even the boutique than there are in the casino, but it’s the casino that draws for the bar and the rest. And if that doesn’t suit, don’t go. Plenty of other people will.

The sport of kings, horse racing really reaches across socio–economic divides, combining entry– level employment, lifetime professional pursuits, and fun – yeah, lots of it. Columbia and its stable economy can use a different kind of stable economy, a horse stable economy that brings new people and new money and new fun.

Photo Courtesy Louisville Convention and Visitors Center