Tall Tales of the Track: Unexpected Glory

The fair-haired kid from South Dakota had found life in the saddle was his calling. From his humble beginnings at bush tracks to a spin in Man o’ War’s saddle, Earl Sande had made his name riding horses like Sir Barton, Zev, and Grey Lag, a Hall of Fame-level career arrested by a spill at Saratoga in August 1924. His fame was such that the accident made headlines in newspapers around the country. 

Within months, the beloved jockey was back in the saddle, but his comeback was still not complete. Needing a big win to get him back on track, Sande sought a mount for the 1925 Kentucky Derby, but came up empty until he found that Gifford Cochran's Flying Ebony needed a rider. What happened next etched Flying Ebony’s name in the Run for the Roses’ record books. 

A Good Start 

John E. Madden’s Hamburg Place was still turning out champions well into the 1920s. The former boxer turned horseman had bred four winners of the Kentucky Derby by 1922, including Old Rosebud (1914), Sir Barton (1919), Paul Jones (1920), and Zev (1923). Though his training days were behind him, Madden was still a prodigious breeder, owning stallions like The Finn, the 1915 Belmont Stakes winner, and partnering with others in pairing mares like his Princess Mary and then reaping the financial rewards when the resulting foal went through the ring. 

On March 25, 1922, Princess Mary foaled a black colt at Hamburg Place, and then later that year, her colt went to Lucien Moseley’s Riverview Farm, where he prepared the colt for the yearling sale at Saratoga the following summer. There, the colt that would become Flying Ebony hammered down at $21,000 to Gifford A. Cochran, a descendant of Alexander Smith, a carpet-making entrepreneur whose vast fortune helped his grandson pursue a life as a patron of the turf. Cochran dove into the sport in 1913 as racing in New York made its comeback after the Hart-Agnew laws had shut racetracks for nearly two years. At the 1923 Saratoga sale, Cochran bought both Princess Mary’s colt as well as one by Negofol, a French stakes winner, out of the Rock Sand mare Sun Queen, a colt he would name Coventry. 

To start, Flying Ebony was part of Cochran’s string under the care of former jockey turned trainer Cal Shilling, who had won the 1912 Kentucky Derby on Worth. The colt debuted in May 1924, finishing second in the 4 1/2-furlong Wicomico Purse at Pimlico before breaking his maiden on the Kentucky Derby undercard in another 4 1/2-furlong juvenile race. He then reeled off three more wins at Churchill Downs and Latonia before trying stakes company. His best finish was a third in the Saratoga Sales Stakes, his last start of his two-year-old season. 

As 1924 wound down, Cochran was busy making a deal with celebrated American trainer William Duke. He had started training Standardbreds in the late 19th century and then traveled to England, where he found success with both trotters and later flat racers before moving to France. There, he began training for William K. Vanderbilt and then the Aga Khan, winning five Prix du Jockey Club, or the French Derby, in addition to a long list of other French stakes victories. Cochran lured the 68-year-old back to the United States, where together they would have a stellar 1925.

Handy Sande 

Flying Ebony started his three-year-old season with a six-furlong sprint during the United Hunts meet at Belmont Park in late April. Facing a large field of 13 others, he battled Superlette throughout, eking out a win by a neck. Duke then shipped the colt to Churchill Downs for the May 16 Run for the Roses, while stablemate Coventry was sent to Pimlico for the Preakness Stakes. Contested at 1 3/16 miles for the first time, Coventry took over in the stretch to win that race by four lengths. Eight days later, Flying Ebony was set to meet the starter in the Kentucky Derby.

Originally, Clarence Kummer was the jockey tapped to ride Cochran’s colt, but he stayed in New York to ride for Log Cabin Stable, who held Kummer’s contract, leaving Flying Ebony without a jockey. Still making his way back after his serious injury the previous summer, Earl Sande also was without a mount, but he was not looking at the son of The Finn. No, his eye was on the favorite Quatrain, but the Omar Khayyam colt already had a rider, Sande’s friend Bennie Breuning. Sande pleaded with Breuning to let him have the mount, offering to give him $2,000 on top of the jockey’s share of the race’s $50,000 purse, ten percent or $5,000. But Sande had already won the Kentucky Derby with Zev two years earlier, and Breuning knew that this may be his only shot. He refused his friend’s request, which meant that Sande was available for Flying Ebony, whom he had never ridden before. With a Hall of Fame rider like Sande, that did not matter.

The 1925 Derby had a sizable field of 20 horses, so several entries were lumped into the mutuel field. These horses were considered long enough shots that Churchill Downs decided it would be better for bettors if they were all grouped together. That included Flying Ebony, who likely would have had longer odds had he not been part of that group. As they paraded to the starting line, the threatening clouds that had hung over the racetrack throughout the day opened up, dumping a sizeable amount of rain on the field and sending racegoers scrambling. Unfazed by the newly muddied racetrack, Sande sent Flying Ebony to the front from the break and dueled with Captain Hal from the six-furlong mark to the stretch, where Sande’s skills were put on display.

As Captain Hal drifted away from the rail during their stretch drive, Sande did his best to keep Flying Ebony straight, pushing him hard as the wire approached. On the muddy track, the Cochran colt managed to put 1 1/2 lengths between him and Captain Hal, winning the 51st Kentucky Derby and giving Sande his second Derby. Sande would win one more in 1930, riding Gallant Fox to victory under the Twin Spires and in the Triple Crown as well. 

Flying Ebony’s win gave William Duke his second classic win of 1925, the first trainer to do it with two different horses. The colt would start three more times that season, but the Derby would be his final victory. He would retire to stud at the end of the year; Major Thomas McDowell would buy into the Derby winner and stand him at his Buck Pond Farm until Cochran’s death in 1930. Purchased by Maryland breeder Leslie Kieffer, Flying Ebony would stand at Inverness Farm until 1934, when he went west to California to stand at Charles Perkins’ Alisal Ranch. Flying Ebony died in September 1943, when Father Time finally caught up to the Derby winner, the horse Earl Sande settled for and won a Run for the Roses with.