Tall Tales of the Track: George Smith Finds His Fortune

“Horses are the same as human beings where condition is the test of superiority,” wrote George E. Smith, the legendary gambler better known as the Gilded Age’s ‘Pittsburg Phil.’ This staking savant parlayed his studious nature into a fortune that allowed him to escape the factory and build a life at the betting window. His equine namesake, George Smith, echoed that excellence and made history under the Twin Spires, keeping the memory of this legendary punter alive in the sport that supplied his wealth. 

Meet George Smith, Punter

“A man who plays the races successfully must have opinions of his own and the strength to stick to them no matter what he hears.” George E. Smith, aka Pittsburgh Phil

George Elsworth Smith was not going to settle for life in a cork factory near Pittsburgh. The son of immigrants, a 12-year-old Smith had to trade his schoolbooks for a cork cutting knife when his father, Christian, died and his mother needed help supporting his two sisters and younger brother. He set aside a small chunk of each paycheck to purchase and then train gamecocks for fighting. He hid those from his devoutly Catholic mother but managed to make enough money from that, plus bets on baseball games, to supplement his factory wages. He also learned about betting on horse racing.

At the pool halls he frequented, he also heard the results of racing around the country and started keeping track of statistics, even creating his own form chart long before the Daily Racing Form existed. He was able to make enough money from wagering on horse racing that he quit his factory job and focused on gambling as his job; by age 23, he had made upwards of $100,000 and had to relocate since his famed skills prevented him from getting the advantageous odds he needed to make money. 

Moving to Chicago and then New York, Smith eventually got the nickname “Pittsburgh Phil” from a pool room owner to help differentiate the young gambler from the other Smiths on the premises. He even owned several racehorses and made a substantial amount of money with an English filly he purchased, Consuelo II. He was able to keep her form under wraps long enough to get good odds on her for her debut. When she won, Smith reportedly made upwards of $50,000 from betting on her. 

Though Smith died of tuberculosis in 1902 at age 42, his legend lived on in his missives about gambling and life in the 1908 book Racing Maxims and Methods of Pittsburgh Phil, compiled by turf writer Edward Cole. The famed handicapper got a second life in 1913, when Consuelo II, the filly that Smith had once owned and won with, foaled a colt by the English stallion Out of Reach, and owner Ed McBride decided to honor the memory of the famed punter by naming her foal George Smith. 

Meet George Smith, Thoroughbred

His pedigree was deep in English classic winners: his grandsire, Persimmon, won the Derby and the St. Leger, and names like St. Simon and Isonomy, both Ascot Gold Cup winners, featured prominently as well. The equine George Smith started life at Fred Forsythe’s and Jack Chinn’s Fountainblue Farm in Mercer County, Ky. The black colt went through the sales ring in late October 1914 and was sold to Edward McBride for $1,600 and then sent to trainer Tom Shannon. 

At two, he raced twelve times, winning nine, including the Victoria S. at old Woodbine and the Annapolis S. at Laurel. In October 1915, George Smith caught the eye of Preston Burch, stable manager for John Sanford, the carpet magnate who owned Hurricana Stock Farm in New York. Burch remarked to his boss that the black colt would be 1916’s top three-year-old, and the businessman took him up on that proposition, asking Burch to find out if McBride would sell the colt. He did let him go to Sanford for $22,500, and Hurricana had its Derby hopeful for the 42nd edition. 

In the spirit of the human George Smith, McBride managed to turn his $1,600 into $22,500, fourteen times what he paid for the colt as a yearling. 

They went to the Kentucky Association racetrack in Lexington for an allowance race to start George Smith’s sophomore season. Trained by the 26-year-old Hollie Hughes for Sanford, the Consuelo II colt finished second in the 1 1/16-mile test. His rider was a young Johnny Loftus, a Chicago native who was rising through the ranks. His turn on George Smith in Louisville would be his third try at the Kentucky Derby and the pair faced stiff competition from 1915’s best two-year-old Dominant and Thunderer, both owned by Harry Payne Whitney, whose Regret had become the first filly to win the Derby the year before; and Star Hawk, a British bred colt by Derby and Two Thousand Guineas winner Sunstar. 

Breaking from post 8 in the nine-horse field, Loftus had the black colt in third by the first quarter, sitting five lengths behind a front-running Dominant. At the six-furlong mark, he gave George Smith a cue, and the Out of Reach colt moved to the front. They entered the stretch two lengths in front, with Star Hawk making his move in the final furlong. The pair were able to hold off Star Hawk’s charge to win by a neck, giving Johnny Loftus his first Kentucky Derby and both Hughes and Sanford their only victory in the country’s signature race. 

George Smith would go on to a solid career, winning at four and five, including the 1918 Bowie Handicap, where he defeated fellow Derby winners Omar Khayyam and Exterminator. He started his stud career at Hurricana Stud but was not a success, and Sanford donated him to the Jockey Club’s Breeding Bureau in 1926. From there, he became a part of the Army’s Remount Service, much like Sir Barton would in 1932, and would go on to sire horses for the military’s mounted cavalry until his death in 1933.