Kentucky Derby at 150: American sports tradition predates the automobile and the airplane, radio and television

By PAT FORDE | Sports Illustrated

The dominant news of the day in Kentucky on May 17, 1875, was the death of John C. Breckinridge, a U.S. Congressman turned Confederate Civil War general. Breckinridge died at the age of 54 at his home in Lexington, Ky., a divisive historical figure. His obituary filled several columns in the next day’s The Courier-Journal  newspaper.

On page 4 of that Courier-Journal, a relatively modest headline read, “Derby Day.” The accompanying story chronicled the Kentucky Derby victory by the colt Aristides, in what the paper termed “a brilliant inauguration of the Louisville Jockey Club Association.” The founder of the association was Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., grandson of William Clark, one of the principals in the Lewis and Clark Expedition. 

The originator of the Derby traces his sire line to the early days of the United States, when President Thomas Jefferson commissioned two explorers in 1804 to traverse the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. That’s how deeply intertwined the Kentucky Derby is with American history.

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