Good Morning POU!
We continue our series on the pillars of thoroughbred racing in the United States as we near the 140th Kentucky Derby race.
Ansel Williamson was an African American thoroughbred horse racing trainer. He was born a slave in Virginia sometime around the middle part of the 19th century. In 1864 he was purchased by Robert A. Alexander, owner of the famous Woodburn Stud near Midway, Kentucky. Out of this humble beginning came a trainer whose superb horsemanship was known throughout the South. Taught the breeding and training of horses, after he was freed Williamson remained in Alexander’s employ. He conditioned a number of successful horses including the undefeated U.S. champion three-year-old male, Norfolk and the undefeated Asteroid.
Ansel was the trainer for Merrill, ridden by Abe Hawkins when he won the third Travers Stakes in 1866.
Following Robert Alexander’s death in 1867, Williamsom went on to train many great horses including Tom Bowling, who won 14 of his 17 races, and Virgil who was the sire of the great Hindoo. However, he is best remembered for having trained Aristides, the winner of the inaugural Kentucky Derby in 1875. That same year, his horse Calvin won the Belmont Stakes. In addition, Williamson trained horses who won other major races such as the Travers Stakes, the Jerome Handicap, and the Withers Stakes.
Following its formation in 1998, Ansel Williamson was inducted posthumously into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.
The jockey that rode Aristides to the inaugural Kentucky Derby crown was Oliver Lewis.
Oliver Lewis (1856–1924) was an African-American jockey that rode into history with the winning horse Aristides in the very first Kentucky Derby.
Very little is known about Lewis’s life, but according to the Black Athlete Web site he was “A family man, a husband and father of six children.” Lewis was 19 years old in 1875 when he entered the inaugural Kentucky Derby riding Aristide, a colt owned by H. Price McGrath and trained by Ansel Williamson, who was also black.
Lewis’s achievement in the opening year of what has become America’s longest-running sporting event went almost unrecognized for over a century. He rode Aristides to second place in the Belmont Stakes, which later became one of the “Triple Crown” races, and won a total of three races at the Louisville Jockey Club that season. He never rode another Kentucky Derby, but it is known that he attended the 33rd race, in 1907. Lewis’s career as a jockey did not last long. After a spell working as a day laborer Lewis began providing notes on racing form to bookmakers and later became a bookmaker himself, a profession that was then legal in the United States. Lewis’s methods of collecting data and compiling detailed handicapping charts was the template for the systems used currently by the Daily Racing Form. In fact, the form Lewis created is still used today, with only minor modification. Lewis passed on his bookmaking skills and business to his son James.
Despite his role in the history of one of America’s most famous sporting events, Lewis has been neglected by sportswriters for well over a century and his life beyond the famous race is practically undocumented. Lewis died in 1924 in Lexington, Kentucky, and is buried in the Lexington No. 2 Cemetery along with several other black jockeys of the period, including Isaac Murphy, who won the Derby three times.
On September 8, 2010 the Newtown Pike Extension in Lexington, Kentucky was named the Oliver Lewis Way in honor of Oliver Lewis.