The first Saturday in May is different this year.
The world won’t stop what it’s doing and focus its attention on a 1-mile dirt track in Louisville. The mint juleps won’t flow, fancy ladies’ hats won’t be on parade, and lumps won’t form in countless throats because “My Old Kentucky Home” won’t be wafting across Churchill Downs.
Like so much else in our lives these days, the annual spring ritual known as the Kentucky Derby is being postponed because of you-know-what. It’s now scheduled for Sept. 5.
The big race has been annually run without interruption since 1875. Not many traditions can rival that boast. Only once before was it held in a month other than May. In fact, it came within a whisker of not being run at all.
This is the story of the year there almost wasn’t a Kentucky Derby.
As January 1945 began, American troops in Europe were recovering from World War II’s bloody Battle of the Bulge. In the Pacific, the Navy and Marine Corps were making final preparations for the upcoming (and equally bloody) Battle of Iwo Jima. In Washington, Jimmy Byrnes had a sticky problem on his hands.
The former South Carolina congressman, senator, and Supreme Court justice was serving as director of the Office of War Mobilization. It coordinated all government agencies’ involvement in the war effort. Byrnes’s power was so immense he was nicknamed the “assistant president.” If Brynes decreed it, it happened.
While the war was going in the Allies’ favor, its outcome wasn’t a certainty. Byrnes’s job was to keep the military machine fully equipped and to remove anything hindering it — which is where horse racing enters the picture.
Believe it or not, the “sport of kings” was hampering the war effort. Moving all those thoroughbreds from one racetrack to another burned desperately needed gasoline and tire rubber. Millions of dollars wagered on races was money that could be spent buying war bonds. All those able-bodied workers who kept tracks open and horse farms operating could be serving in uniform, too.
But banning horse racing wasn’t easy. First, it was far more popular back then than it is today. Fans would be furious. Track attendance jumped during the conflict by 2 million, and betting nearly doubled from 1943 to 1944 alone, with $1.2 billion wagered. No other sport was canceled because of the war, why should horse racing be the only one to suffer? And the Senate’s powerful majority leader happened to be Kentuckian Alben Barkley, who had a vested interest in making sure the ponies kept running.
Byrnes had come close to banning horse racing once before, in early 1943. Racing interests prevailed that time. But their luck finally ran out. Byrnes announced a total ban on all horse racing on Jan. 3, 1945.
That meant no Kentucky Derby for the first time ever. Horse racing fans in general, and Kentuckians in particular, were crushed.
But fate intervened.
Nazi Germany surrendered on May 8, ending the war in Europe. Byrnes quickly lifted the ban on America’s beloved sport. Organizers had to scramble to put it together, but there would be a 1945 Kentucky Derby after all!
Sixty-five thousand fans filled Churchill Downs on a rainy Saturday, June 9, for the 71st edition of the Run for the Roses. They watched legendary jockey Eddie Arcaro lead Hoop, Jr. down a sloppy track to victory by six lengths. His winning time of 2:07 was solid, if not impressive. There was no Triple Crown winner in 1945, though Assault would become the seventh horse to claim the prestigious honor the following year.
It was also the only time the Kentucky Derby was ever run outside of May (until September, God willing).
I’ll be watching on Sept. 5 when “the most exciting two minutes in sports” is finally held. Still, it just won’t be the same seeing the thoroughbreds stampede around Churchill Downs’s track in Labor Day weekend’s oppressive heat.
But we horse racing fans are a sentimental lot. All that really matters is the tradition stretching all the way back to when Ulysses S. Grant lived in the White House will remain unbroken. And in these uncertain times, that’s pretty doggone important.
J. Mark Powell (@JMarkPowell) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He’s VP of communications at Ivory Tusk Consulting, a South Carolina-based agency. A former broadcast journalist and government communicator, his “Holy Cow! History” column is available at jmarkpowell.com.
