The race took exactly 2 min., 5 sec. Omaha, the winner, bred for distance but usually a slow starter, broke faster than usual, took the lead on the far turn, stood off the challenge of Roman Soldier in the stretch, finished a length and a half in front. Roman Soldier closed strongly, four lengths ahead of Whiskolo who ran second to him in the Texas Derby. Nellie Flag, favorite when an intermittent drizzle started to put a skim of mud on the track, ran fourth. Other favored horses—Today, who bruised a heel day before the race; Boxthorn, who had a sentimental following; Plat Eye, who tired after a mile—were far back in the field of 18.
In the clubhouse were John D. Hertz, Jack Dempsey, Postmaster General Farley, Mrs. Isabel Dodge Sloane and J. H. Louchheim of Philadelphia, who bet $1,000 on his Morpluck and then contrived to lose his pari-mutuel tickets to a pickpocket who got no good out of them. A squad of National Guardsmen used clubs to keep the spectators in the infield under control. The spectators threw chairs at the guardsmen.
These last week were incidents of the most famed horse race in the U. S., the Kentucky Derby, run for the Gist year, watched by a crowd of 60,000, some standing on peach baskets and some in $50 seats, over a mile-and-a-quarter track at Churchill Downs, Louisville, Ky.
After the race Omaha's jockey, Willie (''Smoky'') Saunders. who chose his mount's name, beginning with ''O." in honor of its famed progenitor Ormond. said: "Omaha is the greatest horse I ever rode." Said Kentucky's Governor Ruby Laffoon. presenting the gold cup which, in addition to a horseshoe of roses and $39,525. was first prize: "The best horse won.'' Omaha's owner is William Woodward, honorary board chairman of Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., chairman of The Jockey Club and probably the most influential owner currently active on the U. S. turf. His Gallant Fox won the Kentucky Derby in 1930. went on to become for a time the greatest U. S. money horse ($328,165) and, by siring Omaha, the third derby winner to beget another derby winner. Tall, quiet, courteous, Mr. Woodward grew so excited during Gallant Fox's three-year-old campaign that he lost co Ib. He plans to start Omaha on a similar campaign with the Preakness this week at Pimlico, near the Belair stud where Woodward horses are raised along Mr. Woodward's own studiously reasoned lines of breeding. So horse-minded is he that when his wife (one of Baltimore's famed Cryder triplets) bore him a son after four daughters, he jubilantly telegraphed his friends (after many of whom he has named horses): "Fine colt born this morning."
After last week's race he jubilated: "It was a damned good race won by a damned good horse."