Did You Know...

Tweet This month's edition was very interesting to me as a relatively new fan to the sport. I learned quite a bit about some history, in particular a certain horse named Zippy Chippy.....so here goes...

Did you know:

- That record breaking trainer Dale Baird won his first race 49 years ago today at Ellis Park with a horse named New York? Baird won 9,445 races in his career. His life was taken from him in December 2007 in an auto accident at age 72.

- That 86 years ago today that the Jockey Club announced a match race between the Epsom Derby and Kentucky Derby winners to be run in October 1923. The match race between Zev, the '23 Kentucky Derby winner, and Papyrus earned spot #81 in the book, "Horse Racing's 100 Greatest Moments." Zev won the race for America by five lengths at Belmont Park.

- That 7 years ago today, Sunday Silence suffered a fatal heart attack in Japan. He was the horse of the year in 1989.

- And last, but not least, that Zippy Chippy, loser of all 86 of his lifetime races at the time, was defeated by minor-league baseball player Jose Herrera in a 40-yard dash. The race, called the "2000 Red Wings Derby," was held prior to a home game of the International League's Rochester AAA ball club at Frontier Field. Zippy would go on to lose 100 races and was banned from racing everywhere but Massachusetts. He even raced against a pacer in March 2001 at Freehold Raceway in New Jersey, spotting him 20 lengths and still lost.

Here's the video of the race if you haven't seen it: