Gallant Fox Wins the Preakness

I found this fun newsreel on YouTube yesterday and wanted to share it with you! This is about ninety seconds of a newsreel chronicling Gallant Fox’s Preakness from May 1930. Unfortunately, it has no sound, but the images are wondrous nevertheless!

The scene is Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 9, 1930. In the post parade, the Fox and jockey Earl Sande wear saddlecloth #1, the first horse after the outrider that accompanies the field. You can see Sande clad in the white with red polka dots and red cap. See the field loaded into the Bahr gate, which Pimlico used that year, and then notice the horse that starts from the far left, standing outside the starting gate. That was Armageddon, a bad actor who held up the start until J. F. Milton moved him out of the stalls to start from there.

Read more about the 1930 Preakness Stakes and how Gallant Fox brings home the victory at Pimlico in early May, when The Foxes of Belair: Gallant Fox, Omaha, and the Quest for the Triple Crown will be available at your favorite bookseller.