A Rhode Island connection to a famous horse racing thoroughbred and jockey | Opinion

Patrick T. Conley is historian laureate of Rhode Island and a former supervisor of drug testing at Narragansett Race Track.

As the 150th running of the Kentucky Derby begins the 2024 quest for horse racing’s Triple Crown, the attention of many Americans turns toward the so-called Sport of Kings. However, as a historian my attention also reverts to horse racing history, especially when there is a Rhode Island connection.

In the year of my birth, 1938, Seabiscuit, an undersized and overlooked thoroughbred whose giant-killing successes made him a popular star in America during the Great Depression, won the match race of the century at Pimlico, beating 1937 Triple Crown winner War Admiral by four lengths with an estimated 40 million people listening to the contest by radio.

This wonder horse had a jockey named John “Red” Pollard, a Canadian blinded in his right eye by injury. Another of his many injuries kept Pollard from riding Seabiscuit in the great match race, although he coached his Canadian friend George Woolf on how to handle that valiant horse.

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Pollard was born on Oct. 27, 1909, in Edmonton, Canada, the grandson of Irish immigrants. He was the second of seven children. As a youngster, he was athletic and especially loved boxing. However, his main passion was directed to his horse, Forest Dawn. He trained that horse to pull his toboggan, which came in handy when he delivered groceries in snowbound Edmonton.

Though considered too tall at a towering 5 feet, 6 inches, Pollard left his home in Canada to pursue his dream of becoming a jockey. Unfortunately, he soon became nearly destitute while competing at racetracks in rural America. Pollard also traveled the West Coast, pursuing his racing career in an environment that provided scant opportunity. However, he developed a reputation for successfully handling troubled horses using gentle methods.

In 1936, Pollard met Tom Smith, the trainer of a temperamental and unsuccessful racehorse named Seabiscuit.  Smith watched in amazement as Pollard immediately calmed the unruly horse with a sugar cube and then hired the young jockey. From 1937 through 1939, Pollard rode Seabiscuit to a dazzling series of premier victories until Red suffered another severe injury. At the time, he and Seabiscuit were the best racing team in America.

Pollard rode Seabiscuit 30 times with 18 wins, all of them in stakes or handicaps. In 1940, Red closed out the career of the 7-year-old Seabiscuit with a decisive victory in California’s famed Santa Anita Handicap. Unknown to most, Seabiscuit’s first win, five years earlier, had come at Rhode Island’s Narragansett Race Track in a claiming race after losing his first 17 starts. He could have been claimed at that time for $2,500, but he had no takers. When Seabiscuit retired in 1940, he was the highest-earning racehorse in U.S. history having amassed $437,730.

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Although the late-blooming Seabiscuit retired as a hero, Pollard continued to ride, mainly in New England. In 1943 he bought a house on Vine Street in Pawtucket, near Narragansett Park, and used it as his base of operations, first as a jockey until 1955 and then as a jockey’s adviser. His other claim to fame is as a founding member of the Jockeys’ Guild in 1940. During my brief tenure at Narragansett Race Track, I met Red and talked with him briefly.

Pollard died on March 7, 1981, at the age of 71 and is buried at Notre Dame Cemetery, a mile north of Narragansett Park, with his wife Agnes Conlon, his former nurse, a native of Massachusetts. She died of cancer two weeks after Red passed. The two had met in 1939 as Red was recuperating in a California hospital from one of his many racing mishaps. The couple had two children, Norah and John.

A year after his death, Pollard was elected into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame. In 2013 he became a member of the City of Pawtucket Hall of Fame followed by his induction into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2015.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: A Rhode Island connection to a famous horse racing thoroughbred and jockey | Opinion