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BeatTheChalk
04-30-2008, 11:31 PM
Derby almost was losing bet 100 years ago
April 30, 2008

In fact, during this week in 1908, Louisville police were threatening to arrest anyone who placed a bet at Churchill Downs, and only a court injunction stopped them.

Anti-gambling sentiment was sweeping the country. Unregulated racing at Churchill Downs and other U.S. tracks had allowed them to virtually fall under control of bookmakers.

Louisville had passed an ordinance barring bookmakers from working in the city. Churches in Louisville were leading a crusade that seemed likely to close Churchill Downs.

"The churches' opposition to gambling … was based on the fact that the more money that goes out of a community because of gambling, the heavier the burden was on the churches for maintenance of these families and children of gambling parents once they lost whatever assets they had," said writer/historian Lynn Renau, a former curator of the Kentucky Derby Museum.

Renau's Presbyterian and Lutheran ancestors -- including her great-uncle, Sheriff Charles L. Scholl -- were among those who would have closed the track.

Her father, William Scholl, a Louisville & Nashville Railroad official, always firmly rejected invitations to Churchill Downs and the Derby.

And because of her family's staunch objections to the track, Renau had never been to Churchill Downs before she was hired as curator in 1988.

"I told them I had never set foot on Churchill Downs," Renau said. "Silly me, I turned down an invitation to be at the Derby the first year -- when Winning Colors won. I'll never forgive myself for that, but I attended every Derby thereafter as long as I was on staff."

This week, it was Renau who reminded us that the 100th anniversary of the effort to close Churchill Downs should not pass without noting the last-minute, "brilliant" legal maneuver by Col. Matt Winn that quite possibly saved Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby.

Winn, the track's general manager, remembered that his predecessor, Col. Meriwether Lewis Clark, had imported French pari-mutuel machines for the first Derby in 1875, but had not used them again until 1878, then abandoned them. Why?

The machines had been complicated and labor-intensive, Renau said, and perhaps the politics of gambling had played a role in their early retirement in favor of bookmakers.

But while searching the old state law governing machine wagering, Winn found one line in an 1878 amendment that saved the Derby that year:

"This act may not apply to persons who may sell combination, or French pools, on any regular race track during the races thereon."

By Derby Day, Winn had rounded up 11 pari-mutuel machines that had been unused for years and had put accountants to work figuring the formulas for payoffs. He ran ads in local papers explaining pari-mutuel wagering, or "wagering among ourselves."

Stone Street won the Derby, paying $123.00 for $5.00
And last year - Street Sense won the Derby. In the sire
line that included Stone Street.

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