It started with Whirlaway in 1941. Then Pensive, Citation, and Ponder. Since opening a century ago, Calumet Farm has produced the most Derby-winning horses of any farm in Kentucky or beyond. “If you’re looking at the Derby, quite honestly, Calumet was and still is the standard,” says Chris Goodlett, historian and director of the curatorial team at the Kentucky Derby Museum in Louisville. “Eight winners as an owner and breeder in the heyday of the forties and fifties and two additional ones as a breeder more recently.”
In 1924 the Wright family, owners of Calumet Baking Powder, established a standardbred horse farm on a small spread in Lexington. The operation pivoted to Thoroughbreds in the 1930s, and by 1933 Hadagal had become its first stake winner and Nellie Flag the first horse to wear the red and blue racing silks that would become a fixture in Kentucky. The Wrights honed in on bloodline and purchased a stallion named Bull Lea, who would go on to sire some of the farm’s standout horses.
But it was after Ben Jones signed on as trainer in 1939 that Calumet came into its period of greatest success. Joined by his son Jimmy, he gave the farm its first Derby winner in Whirlaway, who went on to take the Triple Crown, too. Three years later Pensive wore the garland of roses, but Calumet’s most famous horse was still to come.
“When they get past Secretariat and Man o’ War, racing historians then always mention Citation,” Goodlett says. “He was one of the greatest Thoroughbreds of all time.” Not only did Citation win the Derby in 1948, he did so on an epic sixteen-race win streak that included the Triple Crown. Legendary jockey Eddie Arcaro rode him and said he was “so fast he scared me.” (The racing silks Arcaro wore at the 1948 Derby are on display at the museum.) After his retirement, Citation became the first Thoroughbred to achieve millionaire status.
“Calumet established itself as a top producer, and the top trainers and the top jockeys wanted to be part of that, too,” Goodlett says. “And people like the Joneses and Eddie Arcaro became part and parcel to the farm’s success.” Throughout the 1950s Calumet’s upward trajectory continued—Hill Gail, Iron Liege, and Tim Tam all stood in the Derby’s winner’s circle. But in the 1960s the farm entered a rougher patch—Ben Jones passed away, Jimmy Jones retired, and the stallion Bull Lea died as well. Still, Forward Pass took the Derby title in 1968 when Dancer’s Image was disqualified.
It wouldn’t be until 1976 that Calumet would regain some of its glory courtesy of a horse named Alydar, who provided the racing world with one half of its all-time great rivalries. Alydar and Harbor View Farm’s Affirmed thrilled the crowds with neck-and-neck finishes in each race of the Triple Crown—something that had never happened before and hasn’t happened since.
Another Derby winner, Strike the Gold, would follow in 1991, but his name did not reflect the coming circumstances; Calumet went bankrupt the following year and headed to auction, where it fetched a price of $17 million from Henryk de Kwiatkowski, who owned it until his death in 2003. Today Calumet is owned by Brad Kelley, a businessman who hopes to bring the legendary stable back to its former glory—and seems to be on his way. Last year Calumet-bred horses brought in over $13 million in earnings, the most of any breeder in North America besides Godolphin. But the farm’s most memorable modern contender may be the aptly named Rich Strike, who in 2022 defied 80-to-1 odds to take the Derby trophy—the second-biggest upset win in race history.
