WIN AT THE RACES WITH MMT!
Morgan Men & Tada Horseracing Handicapping Podcast
Scroll down to see the latest MMT Top Picks
SANTA ANITA CLASSIC MEET 2024
Best Picks of the Day
April 27, 2024
6th Race ON THE GRILL D Picks #5 Top Gun Tommy - WINNER!
9th Race MAGIC CHEF Z Picks #8 Stay and Scam - Third
10th Race TADA Picks #4 Faustin - Third
11th Race HOT PLATE G Picks #2 Kelly's Out - Off the Board
COOKEM UP!!!
THREE BROTHERS AND A SISTER
(Clockwise) TADA, Magic Chef Z , Hotplate G, and On the Grill D, cook up winners every Saturday morning. MMT are the only African American handicappers analyzing the past performances of thoroughbred horses running at Santa Anita, Del Mar, the Triple Crown and Breeders Cup.
Join them as they give their selections for the Pick Six and Top Pick of the day. Answer the horseracing quiz, enjoy the family banter, be in on some of the inside jokes, and COOKEMUP!!!!!!
American Horse Racing History
All too often American History has excluded individuals who have made significant contributions. MMT is here to change that. We are here not only to entertain but also to educate.
SHE WENT WEST AND WON
Eliza Carpenter
Eliza Carpenter (1851 – December 16, 1924) was a racehorse owner and jockey who was born an enslaved person and achieved success as the only African American racer in early Oklahoma.
For more than thirty years she owned and raced a number of thoroughbred horses in country circuits, winning many races and considerable money.
Eliza was born in Virginia some 10 years prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War. At 6 years of age Carpenter was sold to a slave owner in Madison County, Kentucky. Two years later, at age 8, she was sold to another slave owner in Missouri.
Gaining her freedom at the end of the Civil War, she returned to Madisonville, Kentucky, where she learned the business of buying, training, and riding racehorses. She then moved to Kansas where she purchased several horses.
She trained Thoroughbreds, quarter horses, and other horses for racing, becoming one of the few African American stable owners in the West. When dissatisfied with the way a race was going, she sometimes would ride her own horses as a jockey, winning some races.
Recorded names of her horses include "Irish Maid", "Blue Bird", "Jimmy Rain", "Sam Carpenter", and "Little Brown Jug", the last of which she reportedly raced at Tijuana, Baja California.
FIRST JOCKEY TO WIN THE KENTUCKY DERBY
Oliver Lewis
American jockey Oliver Lewis was born in Fayette County, Kentucky in 1856, he was seven years when Emancipation came. Twelve years later On May 17, 1875, at age 19, Lewis won the very first Kentucky Derby aboard Aristides. The pair won by a reported two lengths, setting a new American record time for a mile-and-a-half race. Lewis and Aristides took second place in the Belmont Stakes, which is now the third race of the U.S. Triple Crown series.
He later became a bookmaker (a legal venture at the time) and wrote detailed handicapping charts that served as precursors to those found today in publications such as the Daily Racing Form (DRF).
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 have been likened to the systems used by the Daily Racing Form. Lewis passed on his bookmaking skills and business to his son James.
After his death in 1924 he was buried in Benevolent Society No. 2 Cemetery, which is now known as African Cemetery No. 2. On September 8, 2010, the Newtown Pike Extension in Lexington, Kentucky was named Oliver Lewis Way in honor of Lewis’s historic accomplishments.
The Daily Racing Form began publishing as a 4-page newspaper in 1894 in Chicago. Founded by Frank Brunell. Originally, the Form reported the results or "form charts" of horse racing at major tracks in the United States, Cuba, and Mexico. Today, the DRF publishes over 2,000 pages of editorial and statistical content 364 days a year.
CONSIDERED TO BE THE G.O.A.T.
Issac Burns Murphy
Issac Burns Murphy was an American Hall of Fame Jockey, who is considered to be one of the greatest riders in American Thoroughbred horse racing. Murphy won three runnings of the Kentucky Derby and was the first jockey to be inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame at its creation in 1955.
Isaac Burns Murphy was born into slavery on January 6, 1861 in Clark County, Kentucky. His mother America Murphy worked as a house slave on the Pleasant Green farm owned by David Tanner until the fall of 1864 when records indicate that she became a refugee at the Union Army depot at Camp Nelson. Isaac's father Jerry had escaped from bondage and enlisted in the 114th US Colored Troops at Camp Nelson in the summer of 1864 and would fight in some of the most decisive battles of 1865. Jerry died at Camp Nelson upon his return from war, likely of tuberculosis.
In 1867, America and Isaac moved in with family friend Eli Jordan, a man who would become one of the most important figures in Isaac's life. Eli was a prominent horse trainer who worked for the Williams and Owings stables.
Murphy began his racing career riding for Williams and Owings stables in 1875 at the age of fourteen. What followed was one of the most illustrious careers in the history of the sport, during which Murphy became one of the highest paid athletes and among the most famous Black men in America. Murphy rode in eleven Kentucky Derbies, winning three times: on Buchanan in 1884, Riley in 1890, and Kingman 1891. Kingman was owned by Jacobin Stables (co-owners, Preston Kinzea Stone and Dudley Allen) and trained by Dudley Allen, and was the first horse co-owned by an African-American to win the Derby.
Murphy is the only jockey to have won the Kentucky Derby, the Kentucky Oaks and the Clark Handicap in the same year (1884).
WON ALL THREE RACES OF THE TRIPLE CROWN
Willie Simms
Willie Simms was born January 16, 1870, near Augusta, Georgia. He liked the colorful brightly colored silks that whipped around racecourses. He began racing at the age of 17. By 21 he burst on to the national racing scene becoming the 5th leading jockey in the nation.
Simms won the Derby in 1896 and 1898, the Belmont Stakes in 1893 and 1894. When won the Preakness Stakes in 1898, he became the only African American to win all the Triple Crown classics. He was invited to ride in England.
Simms became the most-successful rider to adopt the short stirrup since the antebellum slave and rider Abe Hawkins. The short stirrup, which is now ubiquitous, lifts the rider over the horse’s withers (the ridge between the horse’s shoulder bones) and thereby allows the animal better balance. In 1895 Simms became the first American jockey to win in England. The short stirrup, however, earned more esteem after the white American jockey Tod Sloan used it to win English races in 1897, and it soon came to be known as the “American seat.”
Because of racism he couldn’t get mounts so he came back to America. Simms' victories on the track paid him well – by one estimate, he's thought to have raked in $20,000 a year at the height of his career (over $600,000 in today's money). He invested his winnings well, buying real estate wherever he could. He purchased an estate in his hometown of Augusta with a gymnasium, riding stable, and a six-horse carriage.
He wasn't alone in his arrival to wealth thanks to riding races – his generation of riders in particular, who had been born after the end of slavery and able to keep their own winnings from the beginning, inspired not just adoration from fans of the turf but upward mobility. Not everyone liked that.
Jim Crow, jealousy of Black wealth and the shift of power balance caused Black jockeys to be targeted by white jockeys , white fans and white sportswriters. White riders began targeting Black jockeys in races with dangerous crowding, boxing in, and other tactics they hoped would make their rivals give up, pull up, or be injured or killed. (To say nothing of the risk to their horses.) They began warning owners not to hire Black riders – a combination, perhaps, of racism and a desire to eliminate fearsome competitors. Gradually, commissions stopped granting licenses to Black jockeys until they slowly disappeared from the starting gate.
Simms retired in 1901. He passed February 26, 1927, Asbury, New Jersey, Simms was inducted into the hall of fame at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 1977.
LEFT JIM CROW AMERICA TO RIDE OVERSEAS
Jimmy Winkfield
Jimmy Winkfield was born in Chilesburg, Kentucky April 12, 1880. In 1901 and 1902 he won the Kentucky Derby back to back. He won the Clark Handicap at Church hill downs in (1901), the Tennessee Derby (1901), and the Latonia Derby (1901), a race that use to run and featured Kentucky Derby horses.
At age 24 with a promising career, he left the United States for Russia in 1904 where he had even greater success. We know why he left. America’s lost was Russia’s gain. Winkfield won the Moscow Derby twice, the Russian Derby 3 times, the Russian Oaks five times, the Warsaw Derby two times and he was the Russian Champion Jockey, 3 times.
After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, led to the formation of the Soviet Union, Winkfield went to France where he won the Grosser Preis von Baden (1909), and several other Grand Prixs, from 1922-1927. He was 47 years old. He lived in France until the time of his death in 1974, he was 94 years old. In 2004 he was finally inducted into the National Museum of Racing’s Hall of Fame.
In Aqueduct there is a Jimmy Winkfield Stakes for 3 year olds. US Congressional Resolution 231 honors the life of Jockey Jimmy Winkfield.