A Leap Year Look at the Kentucky Derby

Today is Leap Year Day, February 29, 2016. I thought it might be fun to take a look at the Leap Year winners of the Kentucky Derby and to examine the impact of that extra day of development for three-year-olds. JUST KIDDING, about the extra day, but this is a great excuse to take a look back at some past special Derbys that happened in a leap year.

Leap years are defined as years that are divisible by 4 with the exception of the century years, which must be divisible by 400. Leap year happens because a year is actually 365 ¼ days long; that is the amount of time it takes the planet Earth to revolve, or make one full orbit, around the Sun. With the typical year being only 365 days, the extra quarter of a year gets made up every four years, which are the leap years. February 29, Leap Day, is the extra day that is added to the calendar.

I love listening to the old race calls and hearing the names of the horses in the Derby field as the track announcer does the first recap. You hear the names of horses that became great as their careers continued or that became very influential in the breeding shed. I picked a handful of Leap Year Derbys to watch, so enjoy the leap into racing history.

2012 – Names of note were Bodemeister, Hansen, Take Charge Indy, and Union Rags. I’ll Have Another ran down the game Bodemeister at Churchill Downs and then again in the Preakness, and eventually ended up as another Triple Crown disappointment.

2004 – In the field on this leap year were Tapit, Lionheart, Pollard’s Vision, and Birdstone. Smarty Jones, who had caught the fancy of the American public, would stay unbeaten on that sloppy Derby Day. The great sire Tapit, who stands for a $300,000 stud fee in 2016, finished ninth.

1988 – Leap year must be good for the fillies as Winning Colors won wire to wire to become the second filly to win the Derby in the 1980’s. She defeated a distinguished field that included Forty Niner, Seeking the Gold, Private Terms, and Risen Star.

1980 – Rockhill Native, Plugged Nickle, and Jacklin Klugman, who was owned actor and horseplayer Jack Klugman, faced off against Genuine Risk. Genuine Risk was the first filly to run in the Derby in 21 years and she joined Regret as the only other filly at the time to win the Run for the Roses.

1972 – Riva Ridge, the first of consecutive Derby winners for the Meadow Stable, put in a dominant wire-to-wire performance to save the family farm of the soon to be very famous Penny Chenery Tweedy.