The very first day he went to the races, the highbred bay colt won, and brought home $2,600. Before the year was out, he had earned $192,865. As a three-year-old, William Woodward Jr.'s Nashua was an odds-on favorite to win the 1955 Kentucky Derby. But from the first there were horseplayers who refused to recognize the signs of greatness. He's lazy, they said. He's a clown. He'll stop to count the house in the stretch. And when a California upstart named Swaps ran off with the Derby, Nashua's detractors nodded wisely.
But Nashua went right on winning. In August of 1955 he...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
