Discovery (horse)

A bright chestnut horse with a white blaze and white hind feet,[2] Discovery was foaled at Walter J. Salmon's Mereworth Farm in Lexington, Kentucky. He was sired by the Preakness Stakes winner Display, another product of Mereworth. His dam, Ariadne, was a member of Thoroughbred family 23-b, which has produced many notable American racehorses including Zev, Affirmed and Winning Colors.[3]

Discovery was owned by Adolphe Pons of Country Life Farm in Bel Air, Maryland, who raced him at age two with limited success, winning only two of thirteen starts and being beaten in several races by future Hall of Famer Cavalcade. Purchased for $25,000 by Alfred G. Vanderbilt II's Sagamore Farm, Discovery raced one more time in 1933, finishing second.

At age three, Discovery's racing season was marked by his continuing rivalry with Cavalcade. He finished second to Cavalcade in the 1934 Kentucky Derby and third to High Quest and Cavalcade in the Preakness Stakes. Both horses skipped the Belmont Stakes. Discovery went on to win the first of three consecutive Brooklyn and Whitney Handicaps (both under higher and higher weights), and set a world record time for one mile and three-sixteenths in the Rhode Island Handicap at Narragansett Park.[4]

In 1935, Discovery was the dominant horse in the United States, and one of the most notable things about him was his ability to carry great weight. Running under an average of 131 pounds, the four-year-old won eleven of nineteen races and has been retrospectively regarded as the U.S. Champion Handicap horse and Horse of the Year for 1935. Although there was no formal award, Discovery was recognized in contemporary sources as the "top stake horse" of the year.[5] In the Merchants and Citizens Handicap, he carried 139 pounds to victory in August before a crowd of 25,000 including the Governors of New York and Pennsylvania.[6] For these feats, he was called the great weight carrier, or the "Iron Horse." The fact that Discovery was retrospectively named Horse of the Year in 1935 is unusual as Omaha won the Triple Crown in that year. This was the only time that a Triple Crown winner has been failed to be retrospectively recognized as Horse of the Year.

Racing at age 5, Discovery won his third Brooklyn and Whitney Handicaps. His achievements were formally recognized when he was the first horse to be voted U.S. Champion Handicap horse.[7] His win in the Whitney was described by The New York Times as "the most decisive victory to be scored in a big American stake in many years".[8]

He was retired to stud at Vanderbilt's Sagamore Farm in rural Baltimore County, Maryland at the end of the 1936 racing season.

Over the course of a 21-year stallion career, Discovery sired just 25 graded stakes race winners including Loser Weeper. But it was through his daughters that Discovery left his legacy. The most important of those was Miss Disco, dam of Horse of the Year and Hall of Fame inductee Bold Ruler who became the leading sire in North America eight times and sired one of the greatest racehorses of all time, Triple Crown winner Secretariat. Discovery's other daughters produced Hall of Fame champions Native Dancer, Bed o'Roses, multiple stakes winner Intentionally, and Preakness Stakes winner Hasty Road. Native Dancer produced Raise a Native, who sired leading stallion Mr. Prospector, champion Alydar; Sea Bird II's sire Dan Cupid, champion filly Ruffian's sire Shenanigans, and Northern Dancer's dam Natalma.

Discovery was inducted into the U.S. Racing Hall of Fame in 1969.[1]

• Repeat winners of horse races