The Kentucky Harness Horse by Ken McCarr

Author:Ken McCarr [Ken McCarr]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780813193953
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

BINGEN

GREYHOUND (Sep Palin)

Belwin was the son of McKinney that came from the East. Undefeated as a four-year-old, this horse later stood at Calumet Farm, then a prominent trotting nursery. His greatest son was Bunter, who produced speed for the short time that he was at a top-ranking eastern farm. Like McKinney’s owner, Bunter’s owner wanted his horse at home and he faded into oblivion in Ohio.

It was bad luck that made the McKinney family one of lesser importance today. Probably its greatest claim to fame came from a great-granddaughter of McKinney, Elizabeth, who had a gray colt named Greyhound. Admiration and honors were heaped on Greyhound, whose world trotting record stood from 1938 to 1969. Even the Thoroughbred people honored this trotter one year. His mile in 1:55 1/4 is still the fastest ever trotted over the famous old Lexington trotting track. Probably the naming of Greyhound as “trotter of the century” by the Red Mile and the Hall of Fame of the Trotter came closest to expressing his greatness. Greyhound, who raced for trainer-driver Sep Palin, was a real Kentucky product; he was bred by Henry Knight at Almahurst Farm, near Lexington. The world-famous gelding trotted twenty-five miles in 2:00 or faster and set twenty-five world records. Greyhound’s world trotting mark of 1:55 1/4 had stood for thirty-one years when Nevele Pride (now a Kentucky sire) trotted a mile in 1:54 4/5 at Indianapolis.

It has often been pointed out as one of the oddities of breeding history that of the four sires recognized as the greatest contributors to today’s breed, two (Bingen and Peter the Great) were owned by J. Malcolm Forbes and the other two (McKinney and Axworthy) by William Simpson. Forbes bought both of his as colts, while Simpson sought out McKinney and Axworthy after they were already noted sires.

McKinney’s twenty-five seasons of stud service meant, since he was a popular and fertile sire, that he got a very large number of foals. John Hervey, in The American Trotter, estimates that his sons and daughters may well have numbered over 1,000—surely more than the progeny of any of the other four great sires except Peter the Great.

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