Kent Hollingsworth - The Kentucky Thoroughbred

The

Kentucky

Thoroughbred

The

Kentucky

Thoroughbred

KENT HOLLINGSWORTH

Foreword by Edward L. Bowen

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

The Kentucky Thoroughbred was originally published as part of the Kentucky Bicentennial Bookshelf.

Copyright 2009 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,

serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of

Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society,

Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State

University, Morehead State University, Murray State University,

Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of

Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

All rights reserved.

Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky

663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008

www.kentuckypress.com

13 12 11 10 09 5 4 3 2 1

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Hollingsworth, Kent.

The Kentucky thoroughbred.

Includes index.

1. Thoroughbred horseHistory. 2. Race horses

KentuckyBiography. 3. HorsesKentuckyBreeding

History. 4. HorsesKentuckyBiography. I. Title.

SF293.T5H58 1985 636.1'32'09769 85-3149

ISBN-10: 0-8131-1547-7 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-9189-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)

This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting

the requirements of the American National Standard

for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Member of the Association of
American University Presses

Foreword

T he Kentucky Thoroughbred was originally published in 1976 as part of what was aptly called the Kentucky Bicentennial Bookshelf. The series was prompted, of course, by the nationwide observation that two hundred years had passed since a group of determined traitors to one government got serious about creating a wondrous new one and thus began a transformation of their identity from rebels to patriots.

The importance of the Thoroughbred horse in Kentuckys economy, culture, and soul had abided through more than half of those twenty decades, and thus it was a proper subject for the University Press of Kentucky to include on its bookshelf. Selection of the author was a masterstroke, albeit one that predestined considerable hair pulling by the publisher as the deadline for completion approached, passed, was refigured, and approached again.

Kent Hollingsworth was many things, and one of them was a perfectionist. This is contradictory in a sense because he was also a pragmatist and thus understood that perfection is a goal that invariably slips over the horizon untouched. From no one did he demand more effort in that chase than from himself.

As editor and then publisher of the Thoroughbred trade magazine the Blood-Horse, Hollingsworth assigned himself the weekly task of commenting on the sport and industry in a one-page column, Whats Going On Here. For more than two decades, Kent strove to make his column a gem of logic, importance, relevance, and style. He crusaded for what he believed was best for the sport and against any and all challenges to its integrity, tradition, prosperity, and charm.

As his managing editor, I had the task of making sure the other editorial matter of the magazine was in order, and the bosss page was generally the last to reach my desk. In the final days before weekly publication, a succession of sheets of paper were ripped from Kents typewriter and reduced to wads in and around his wastebasket. Each version was good but, he felt, could somehow be made betterperhaps perfect. Time lingered heavily on the hands of the editorial staff awaiting the moment when Kent would pad, in his socks, from his office to ours, completed opus in hand. I was the first to read his columns and the first to marvel again and again at how high the bar was set, and remained.

Kents compulsion for excellence went beyond his professional strivings. I once dropped by his office to see how the column was coming and was several sentences in to what was under the typewriter bar before I realized I was intruding on a personal matter. It seems one of his beloved daughters had developed, or was considering developing, some sort of connection with a fellow who by trade was a carpenter. Kent counseled that one could not generalize too readily about carpenters. One, he pointed out, had made a mistake more than a century before that meant that this very daughters bedroom window still leaked, whereas another carpenter, he reminded her, had changed the history of humanity some two thousand years before. All around were the telltale signs of Kents effortthe wadded and discarded versions. Even in a matter addressed to only one person, he kept at it until it was the best he could make it be.

Although such character comes from within, Kents background provided numerous stepping-stones to his lasting success and importance as a journalist, historian, and teacher.

He was born on August 21,1929, in St. Louis, and he treasured his baseball cap from the old St. Louis Browns. He described his father as a civil engineer, oil producer, and Thoroughbred breeder, his mother as a poet, playwright, and horseplayer. Raising a few horses was a sideline to Denzil Hollingsworth, whose sense of adventure was satisfied more by gambling on drilling sites. Nevertheless, Kents father did provide the opportunity to write years later of a forlorn last-place finish in the 1946 Kentucky Derby, gamely summarized as Well, son, weve had a Derby horse.

The Hollingsworths moved to Scott County, Kentucky, when Kent was about ten years old. Living on a farm provided him with experience in performing all manner of chores with barnyard animals. Nor was his experience with horses confined to Thoroughbreds. He proudly recalled harnessing draft horses on his tiptoes, as well as mowing fields, mucking stalls, and, later, exercising racehorses at home and working at various racetracks.

Kent graduated from old University High School, beloved as U High by those who remember it. He was a team manager for Adolph Rupp s high-flying University of Kentucky Wildcats basketball team, and he graduated from the university in 1950 with a degree in journalism. Kent enlisted in the army in 1952. He was of a bent that the challenges, both physical and mental, of Officer Candidate School appealed to him, and after graduation he was a tank gunnery instructor at Fort Knox. Following his release from active duty in 1954, he worked at various jobs in both advertising and reporting for the Lexington Leader, the Blood-Horse, and Sports Illustrated. He also attended the University of Kentucky College of Law, graduating in 1959, and for a time thereafter added legal matters related to the horse industry to his varied workload.

Along the way, Kent developed a great knowledge and appreciation of the Thoroughbred sport and business. This included a devotion to the sporting principles, without which the game would not have interested him, and a fascination for the wide range of personalities involved, who have little in common save a connection to the horse. Covering these dramatis personae put him in contact with captains of industry, hardworking horsemen, aristocrats, and others who fell into the category of characters. Each type held some fascination for him, but he tended to let individuals earn respect rather than be granted it.