Billy Reed: Famous racing colors not the only change for venerable but troubled Calumet Farm

One of the biggest disappointments in my sports writing career is that Calumet Farm never made a comeback.

The winner of seven Kentucky Derbies from 1941 through 1958, the farm outside Lexington seemed home to a dynasty that would last forever. It was thoroughbred racing’s version of the New York Yankees or U.S. Steel or General Motors.

But since 1958, when Tim Tam won the roses, Calumet’s only Derby victory was one tainted by scandal. In 1968, Calumet’s Forward Pass was moved from second to first when a then-illegal medication was found in the post-race urinalysis of the victorious Dancer’s Image.

When Oxbow won the Preakness in 2013, it was Calumet’s first win in a Triple Crown race since Forward Pass won the 1968 Preakness. But it hardly evoked much nostalgia became current Calumet owner Brad M. Kelley had changed Calumet’s famed devil’s red and blue silks to his personal black-and-gold colors.

To me, Kelley’s decision was blasphemous. No horse should ever run in the name of Calumet Farm unless his jockey is wearing the same colors that Eddie Arcaro won when he won the 1941 Triple Crown with Whirlaway and repeated with Citation in 1948.

The racing silks notwithstanding, Calumet still looks the same as it did in its glory days. The barns still have red roofs, and white fencing still encloses the farm and separates its 762 acres into various paddocks. Way in the back, there’s an equine cemetery where the farm’s greatest sires, broodmares, and champions are buried.

This year, again, Calumet will have nothing in the Kentucky Derby. Apparently Kelley, who leases the farm from the Calumet Investment Group, wants to orchestrate a comeback. It’s just that so far, he hasn’t been able to breed or buy colts that have the stamp of greatness on them.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

The names of Calumet’s Derby winners roll smoothly off the tongue: Whirlaway, Pensive, Citation, Ponder, Hill Gail, Iron Liege and Tim Tam. They belong to a bygone era when horse racing, boxing, and college football were America’s three favorite sports.

The farm was started in 1924 by William Monroe Wright, founding owner of the Calumet Baking Powder Company. He owned and bred standardbreds – trotters and pacers – which were just as popular as the thoroughbreds in the first third of the 20th century. In 1930, the year before Wright Sr. died, Calumet won the prestigious Hambletonian with the trotter Calumet Butler.

Upon Wright’s death, Calumet fell into the hands of his son, Warren Sr., who converted Calumet into a thoroughbred operation. (Nobody knows why he wasn’t a junior instead of a senior, considering he was his dad’s namesake.) He began building the broodmare band. and breeding his mares to such important stallions as Blenheim II, imported from England, and Bull Lea.

But perhaps Wright’s most prescient decision was hiring Ben A. Jones of Parnell, Mo., to train the Calumet horses. Known as “Plain Ben,” Jones won the 1938 Derby with Lawrin. Wright was so impressed with his horsemanship and demeanor that he hired him to train exclusively for Calumet. All he did was win the Derby six times and the Triple Crown twice, a record unmatched to this day.

After Warren Wright Sr. died in 1950, the farm was inherited by his widow, Lucille, who eventually remarried Gene Markey, a Hollywood screenwriter and bon vivant who once was married to actresses Joan Bennett, Hedy Lamarr and Myrna Loy. He liked to be called “Admiral Markey,” although he never served a day in the Navy.

In 1952, Mrs. Markey and Ben Jones reached an agreement by which he would give up he training and become Calumet’s general manager. It was further agreed that Ben’s son, Horace “Jimmy” Jones, would replaced him. It wasn’t nepotism. A good horseman in his own right, Jimmy won the 1957 Derby with Iron Liege and repeated in 1958 with Tim Tam.

The last Calumet horse the Markeys saw run in person was Alydar. That was at the 1978 Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, where the track sent a station wagon to pick them up and take them to the track. Mrs. Markey wore white gloves, as ladies always did in those days when they went to the races.

On that day, Alydar was a vision of power and promise, rolling to almost a 10-length victory. The Markeys had every right to expect a victory in the Kentucky Derby only nine days later, but it wasn’t to be. Yet by finishing second to Affirmed in all three Triple Crown races, Alydar won a lot of fans and assured himself a unique spot in racing history.

Upon Mrs. Markey’s death, the farm was taken over by her daughter by Warren Wright Sr., Lucille “Cindy” Wright. She in turn allowed her husband, J.T. Lundy to run the farm. It took him less than 10 years to turn the farm from solvency to bankruptcy. Eventually, Lundy was sent to prison after being convicted of fraud and bribery.

The star-crossed Alydar came close to restoring the farm’s preeminence. He became one of the world’s most successful sires, but the farm grossly overbooked him because it needed cash. His 1990 death led proud Calumet to file for bankruptcy protection in 1991.

In order to pay its debts, the farm was put up for auction in 1992, a sad day for everyone who remembered its glory days. Blessedly, it was bought by Henryk de Kwiatkowski, a Polish-born Canadian who had won the 1982 Belmont Stakes with Conquistador Cielo. In addition to saving the farm from liquidation, de Kwiatkowski gussied the place up. Peeling white fences were painted, barns repaired, and paddocks refurbished.

In 2012, the Calumet Investment Group bought the farm from the de Kwiatkowski Trust for $36 million. This is when Kelley entered the picture with his black-and-gold silks.

I’d love to see Calumet make a comeback, but only if Kelley finds a way to revert to the trademark silks, which apparently were bought by a Brazilian investment group. If Kelley wanted to get the colors restored, I’m sure the Jockey Club and other racing organizations would work with him to get it done.

Sadly, nobody talks about Calumet much anymore. The farm is very much old news. That’s unfortunate, because the Derby is entwined with Calumet more than any other farm or owner. The two fed off each other for 17 of the most glorious years in horse racing’s history.

I drove past Calumet last week, and wondered if the passengers in the cars whizzing by on U.S. 60 had any idea that they were passing one of Kentucky’s hallowed places, one that has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1991. Names like Arcaro and Jones and Citation flitted through my imagination.

You can think of wherever you want when “My Old Kentucky Home” is played before the Derby. Personally, I always think of Calumet, the postcard of a farm that made devil’s red and blue the most famous – and feared — colors in the racing world.

Billy Reed is a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame and the Transylvania University Hall of Fame. He has been named Kentucky Sports Writer of the Year eight times and has won the Eclipse Award twice. Reed has written about a multitude of sports events for over four decades, but he is perhaps one of media’s most knowledgeable writers on the Kentucky Derby