Black Gold, 1924 Kentucky Derby
Black as Coal Colt Wears Red Roses for Al and Rosa Hoots
Jul 22, 2007
The "Star-Spangled Banner" was replaced by "My Old Kentucky Home' for the first time. Starting gates had not yet come into existence. One of the favorites, owned by a full-blooded Osage Indian lady widowed by a determined Irishman with Choctaw blood, was Black Gold. The year was 1924.
Black Gold was registered as a black colt, born from a pairing of Useeit and Black Toney. Useeit was the cattle-raising Irishman's dream, a race horse, an individual he had purchased on first sight in 1909 after a fairgrounds match race, paying for her not with cash, but with eighty acres of grazing land.
She ran as many as 122 races in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas territory, winning 34 times. The Irishman, Alfred Worth Hoots, loved his mare and dreamed further, as only an Irishman can dream, of mating her to Black Toney, one of Kentucky's prized thoroughbred stallions owned prominently by Colonel E.R. Bradley's Idle Hour Stock Farm.
Al Hoots died in 1917, but he left his Irishman's dream in the good hands of his hard working Indian wife, Rosa. He had leased land from the Osage Nation in Oklahoma territory that one day in 1919, two years after his death, produced an oil gusher. With sudden adequate money available, Rosa Hoots arranged to send Useeit to Kentucky's Black Toney, thus fulfilling part of her husband's dream. The dream more than blossomed.
Useeit's black colt was named Black Gold, a favorite Indian name for the black liquid that gushed skyward from the drilled earth. Rosa Hoots carried the Irishman's dream forward. She chose an employee from the Hoots cattle ranch, Hanley Webb, an old-school trainer to handle the colt.
In Black Gold's juvenile season, 1923, he began pulverizing his competition at The Fair Grounds track in New Orleans. Fair Grounds jockey J.D. "Sit Still" Mooney noticed. He determined to win the mount after he watched Black Gold move up in competitive races, then crush a cream of the crop two-year-old field at Churchill Downs on the day Zev won the 1923 Kentucky Derby.
In the second half of Black Gold's juvenile season, Mooney and the colt formed a perfect union that surely produced smiles in the grave of the dream-filled Irishman. The colt won nine races all told, placed five times and showed twice from eighteen starts.
The fiftieth running of the Kentucky Derby, the "Golden Jubilee" in 1924, drew 80,000, a crowd teeming with Black Gold fans, but also strong supporters for the eastern barns of Whitney and Bradley. Bracadale, with Earl Sande up, took the early jump in the field of nineteen.
Pinned in at the rail by four horses, Black Gold was not bothered. When Mooney asked, the black colt barged through. Leaping past Transmute and Chilhowee, the colt caught Wild Aster and set out after Bracadale and Bafflilng in the lead.
Chilhowee came on again, and Black Gold went four wide into the lane. Altawood and Transmute rallied. Beau Butler and Bracadale lost the lead to Chilhowee. It was Black Gold who found the final throttle, leaving Chilhowee a half length back to win in his closest match ever.
The Irishman grinned.
