Damon Runyon
Lancaster New Era/December 23, 1936
MIAMI, Fla., Dec. 23—We ran into “Hummin’ Bob” Smith, the great old time trainer, the other day, and heard news of Cavalcade, one of our favorite race horses.
Cavalcade has been retired to the stud. He will have his headquarters in Virginia, and “Hummin’ Bob” says that 27 mares will be bred to him his first season, some of them belonging to Cavalcade’s owner, Mrs. Isabelle Dodge Sloane, and some of them the property of other turf folks.
“Hummin’ Bob” worked hard for a couple of years trying to get the once mighty Cavalcade back to the races, but finally had to give it up. A race in New England behind horses that couldn’t have kept within rifle shot of Cavalcade when he was at his best was the convincer.
So, rising seven years of age, one of the greatest race horses of the past decade passes from the active stage. Cavalcade ought to be a good sire. He is bred in the deep purple and there seems to be no reason why he shouldn’t transmit his speed, his heart and his staying qualities to another equine generation.
But that’s a gamble like everything else connected with horse racing. Sometimes, very great race horses fail to produce their own like.
Cavalcade is by an English horse named Lancegay, out of a mare called Hastily, also English. The mare was imported to this country in foal, and Cavalcade was the result. Hastily was by Hurry On, a good English horse.
The name Cavalcade struck the popular fancy at once. Mrs. Sloane took it from Noel Coward’s famous play. Cavalcade was her favorite from the time he was foaled, and he grew up to head the coterie of horses that made her “Queen of the Turf” for a couple of years.
Cavalcade was no great shakes as a two-year-old, winning one race in seven starts, but that race happened to be the Hyde Park Stakes at Arlington, worth $11,180, and thereafter Cavalcade began displaying distinct promise. He ran third in the Saratoga Sales, and second in the Sanford, at Saratoga, in August.
In the fall, he ran second in the Eastern Shore in Maryland, fourth in the Richard Johnson Stakes, second in the Spalding Lowe and third in the Walden, and went into winter quarters with $15,000 to his credit and the reputation of being the big Kentucky Derby threat for 1934. “Hummin’ Bob” Smith had signed up the veteran Mack Garner, who died recently, as his leading rider at a time when nearly everybody was saying Mack was all through.
It was old Mack who drove Cavalcade to victory in the Derby in ’34, beating Discovery and Agrarian. Discovery was later to become accustomed to chasing the blue and white colors of Mrs. Sloane.
“Hummin’ Bob” had another three-year-old in the Sloane barn contemporaneous with Cavalcade, and the name of this horse was High Quest, a pretty good runner on his own account. The trainer sent Cavalcade and High Quest after the Preakness in Maryland, following the Derby, and probably preferred winning with Cavalcade.
But the drive through the stretch found High Quest on top, and his rider, R. Jones, couldn’t see Cavalcade anywhere around. So Jones went on about his business and won the race, later discovering that Cavalcade, with Mack Garner up, was second, a whisker away. Discovery was third.
Then “Hummin’ Bob” descended on Chicago, with the English flyer, and won the American Derby and the Arlington Classic. Discovery was second, and Singing Wood third in the Derby. Discovery was second again, and Hadagal was third, in the Classic. You can see what a time Discovery was having with Cavalcade in their three-year-old years.
It looked as if Cavalcade had all the other big three-year-old stakes of the season of ’34 at his mercy, but he sustained a cracked hoof and had to be thrown out of training.
He made two starts as a four-year-old in 1935, when Discovery was beginning to roll up his great record as a handicap horse. Once Cavalcade was second, and once be ran unplaced. And his total winnings amounted to $200 that year.
He never became right again, though “Hummin’ Bob” took him with high hope to California to run in the Santa Anita Handicap. Cavalcade didn’t start. At times thereafter he gave the trainer some encouragement, but never again did the great horse recover his old form, which Is a pity, because Cavalcade was a tremendous attraction for racing.
He won about $150,000 and there again he was a tough luck horse, because the racing game hadn’t yet come out of the depression in Cavalcade’s time, and the purses were at the depression low. The Derby, which had been, and is again, a $50,000 stake, was worth less than $20,000 to Cavalcade.
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