By: Blood Horse (Tom Hall)

Photo Credit: Blood Horse

https://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/247141/the-tale-of-bull-lea

Look Back: Champion sire won the 1938 Blue Grass Stakes for Calumet Farm.

Spring has officially arrived in the Bluegrass State and ushers in one of those “God’s in His Heaven and all is right with the world” annual rites by welcoming the long-awaited and even longer-anticipated return of Keeneland‘s spring meet.

A centerpiece stakes on the opening weekend card is the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes (G2), Keeneland’s prime stepping-stone for the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1).

The Blue Grass Stakes has been a stopping place for Derby hopefuls since the race’s inception in 1911 at the old Kentucky Association Racetrack. The race’s first winner, Governor Gray, finished second in the Derby, and the 1914 winner, the filly Bronzewing, finished third. E.R. Bradley’s Black Servant, the 1921 Blue Grass winner, was upset by a head at the wire by his stablemate Behave Yourself.

Not until 1926 when Bradley’s Bubbling Over led throughout to win the Kentucky Derby did the Blue Grass earn true Derby-prep status. That was also the last year for the Blue Grass Stakes until Keeneland took the place of the defunct KA track and revived the race in the spring of 1937. That year’s winner, Fencing—faring not so well in Louisville—finished 17th to future Triple Crown winner War Admiral.

While the 1938 Blue Grass victor failed to win the Derby, he, of all other winners of the Blue Grass, might well have had the most influence on the Derby as well as on the sport for a half century: Calumet Farm’s Bull Lea.

While shopping at Saratoga in 1936 for yearlings to stock his newly established Calumet Farm, Chicago businessman Warren Wright (his homebred filly Nellie Flag had finished fourth to Omaha in the 1935 Derby) and trainer Frank Kearns eyed a well-built, powerful son of Bull Dog—Rose Leaves, by Ballot, the property of Coldstream Stud. For $14,000 he became a color-bearer for the devil’s red and blue Calumet colors.

At 2 Bull Lea won a pair of races from his nine starts. However, his second-place finishes in the Hopeful Stakes and, moreover to H.P. Headley’s Menow in the Champagne Stakes at Belmont Park in his last two starts of the year, did more to illustrate his promise than the $7,300 he put in his bank account.

Bull Lea’s first starts at 3 came at Keeneland. He won the 8 1/2-furlong Mereworth Purse easily and wheeled back in the Blue Grass Stakes a week later. Facing his nemesis Menow, Bull Lea, ridden by Irving Anderson, bulldogged Menow throughout most of the nine-furlong trip. With less than a furlong to the finish, the Calumet colt drew aside his rival before drawing away to win by a neck at the wire. Nine days later he was eighth in the Derby; Menow finished fourth.

Bull Lea proved to be a very useful racehorse in the remainder of his career, winning among other stakes the Widener Handicap at Hialeah at 4. He earned $39,575 as a sophomore and added another $47,950 at 4.

Retired to stud, Bull Lea led the nation’s leading sires list five times and the broodmare sires list four times. He sired 52 stakes winners from 345 foals, nine individual champions, and three Kentucky Derby winners—Citation, 1948; Hill Gail, 1952; and Iron Liege, 1957. He is also the maternal grandsire of 1958 Derby winner Tim Tam, whose sire Tom Fool is a son of Bull Lea’s old rival, Menow.

Owner of eight Kentucky Derby winners and breeder of nine, Calumet won five more Blue Grass Stakes. Two of them, Faultless (1947) and Coaltown (1948) were sons of Bull Lea, while Forward Pass (1968) and Alydar (1978) also have Bull Lea in their pedigree.