Dan Patch Was No Ordinary Horse. In mid- September 1. Americans reading about Teddy Roosevelt's conquest of the Republican presidential convention and the decisive Japanese victory over the Russians at Liao- yang came across a brief news item from Kansas: Dan Patch had taken ill in Topeka and would probably die. The announcement sent tremors of anticipatory grief not only through horse fanciers and turf followers but through millions of people who had no particular interest in the track. In the first decade of the century, almost any American could tell you that Dan Patch was no ordinary horse, not even an ordinary champion. He was a harness racer, a pacing horse that never lost a race, an opponent so formidable that after he had spent just two years on the Grand Circuit (the major league of harness racing), owners gave up pitting their pacers against him. Dan Patch paced only against the clock, before several million paying spectators at state fairs. He arrived, as usual, in his private equine Pullman car, with his driver, Harry Hersey, his caretakers, his run- nine pacemakers, and their drivers and was billeted in the best stable on the fairgrounds. But the day of his exhibition the mahogany bay stallion suddenly came down with colic, which could kill a horse in a matter of hours. By the time he arrived on the fairgrounds, newspaper reporters had set up their death watch outside the stable. Inside, the vets on the scene had all but given up. Harry Hersey, who'd just begun driving Dan that season, told the Minneapolis Journal , . He went into the stall alone and assayed his stallion's condition. He was an expert horseman, with a large stable of fine harness racers back in Minneapolis, and he knew as much about horses as many vets. The millionaire feed merchant took from his pocket a vial of his own International Colic Cure (. He sat down on the stable floor, put Dan's head on his lap, petted him, whispered to him, talked to him, and- devout Methodist that he was- prayed. After dawn one of the handlers summoned up his courage, tiptoed into the stall, and a few seconds later came back out, beaming. Early that afternoon Savage telegraphed home, letting Minneapolis know that the king of pacers was much better. The millionaire and the horse did each other proud again and again during their fourteen- year collaboration. They were compatriots as much as a man and an animal could be; they were partners. It's safe to say that without Dan Patch, Will Savage would never have been the success he was, and without Will Savage, Dan Patch would have been nothing more than another good turn- of- the- century pacer. And when the colt was foaled in April 1. Messner probably agreed with them. His knees were too knobby, his legs too long, his hocks curved. Truman wrote Dan a fan letter, and Dwight Eisenhower went to see him. Savage International Stock Food Box ~ Dan. Dwight Eisenhower lined up with his. Famous Horses in History A Knowledge Archive. Dan Patch, the distinguished racing horse of his time. Dwight Eisenhower visited the horse with his parents. And unlike his ill- tempered sire, he actually seemed fond of people right from the start, a bad sign in a racehorse. He asked me to turn the colt over to him for training purposes. Dan Patch: A horse that's crazy good. The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America,' in book stores next. The Great Dan Patch movie for Christmas? Dwight Eisenhower lined up with his. The horse operation is founded on pure Spanish Colonials brought out of Mexico when King moved an. Dan Patch sets a pacing record at the Minnesota State Fair. The trainer and owner wondered if his sire's temper wasn't coming out after all. It was Wattles who figured out the cause of the seeming violence: at full stride, Dan's crooked left hock threw his hoof out too far to the side. Henceforward he pulled custom sulkies with axles eight inches longer than standard, and with a wooden rim on the left wheel, so he would do himself no harm if he happened to kick it. In turf parlance, pacers are side- wheelers.) Dan required neither hobbles- a kind of equine suspenders used to promote the pacing gait- nor blinders. He was a natural- born pacer. Dan quickly convinced me I was wrong in my judgment by winning a dozen races in fairly fast company. Dan started in fifty- six qualifying heats and failed to finish first in only two, and then because of faulty driving strategies. He won nineteen races altogether, with no defeats. When other horse owners refused to race against Dan, and track owners objected to the dearth of betting when he appeared on a racing form, Sturgis and Myron Mc. Henry (the premier sulky driver of the day) pitted Dan against the clock. It was a profitable decision: all fourteen of his 1. Dan Patch (April 29, 1896 – July 11, 1916) was the outstanding pacer of his day. Dan Patch broke world speed records at least 14 times in the early 1900s, finally.He was ramrod straight and taciturn and had no interest in gambler's tips, so everyone took to calling him the parson. The parson was named Marion Willis Savage, and he astonished the horse world that December by buying Dan Patch for the awesome sum of sixty thousand dollars, twice what had ever before been paid for a racing horse, after three weeks of tough negotiation with Sturgis's representative, Mc. Henry. They seemed to take it for granted that this was another sudden impulse, but time has proven to them that I had a purpose in view and that this purpose was the outcome of my boy dreams, and I can state positively that Dan Patch at $6. I ever bought and that he paid for himself within three years and could not be purchased of me for $1. I was offered. Sturgis, who desperately wanted Dan Patch back. He tried his hand at the feed business, had some success, and in 1. Minneapolis. By the turn of the century Savage's International Stock Food Company (. Savage built his base of operations, the International Stock Food Farm at Hamilton (later Savage), on the Minnesota River, about twenty miles south of Minneapolis. It was the Waldorf- Astoria of stables, with steam heat, exceptional ventilation, and electric light. The central Taj Mahal- like dome rose 1. At the end of one of the wings was Dan's stall, 2. Dan and his triumphs. Outside was the one- mile out- door track, and connected to one of the wings was an enclosed, steam- heated half- mile of track for winter workouts. Beyond lay 7. 50 acres of pasture. Long before human sports heroes were endorsing products, Dan was. You could buy Dan Patch cigars, Dan Patch watches, Dan Patch stoves, Dan Patch washing machines, Dan Patch padlocks, Dan Patch sleds, Dan Patch coaster wagons, Dan Patch collars, Dan Patch dance music, even Dan Patch automobiles. And in later years you could ride on Savage's Dan Patch Railroad from Minneapolis to the Savage stock farm, have a look at Dan, then continue on south to Northfield. His campaigns for Dan Patch Day exhibitions at state fairs were models of high- powered saturation promotion. In addition, wagons owned and operated by M. Savage would canvass the territory, decorating every conspicuous building, fence, wall or billboard space available with huge posters of Dan- and his - . Wherever and whenever one of them stopped, people were encouraged to gather and hear, first hand, of - . The purchase price included the hoopla to go with the horse. I will give you the kind of advertising that gets the business . When the ticket sales were tallied- Dan customarily drew grandstand crowds of upward of thirty and forty thousand- the fair managers were often shocked at what they owed Savaee. One fair discovered that the Minneapolis millionaire was due $2. Boys and men still raced their light- harness rigs- the hot rods of the day- down country roads, and automobiles were a mildly threatening novelty. The horse was still king, and Dan Patch was the paragon of horses. He was a big horse, 1. He had a white star in the center of his forehead and eyes that were called . He stood quietly amid the throng pressing around him as if oblivious of its presence, with an expression of innate power, of tremendous but unostentatious individual force such as, I suppose, Daniel Webster among men, must have possessed. Instinctively, as I gazed at him, I felt that this horse merely in repose surpassed all the expectations I had formed of what he might be in action. He was remarkably intelligent and almost human in his fondness for people- young and old alike. He seemed to understand everything said to him. Jogging down the track past the stands after an exhibition against time, Dan had a way of nodding his head toward the spectators as if acknowledging the cheers of his public. When bands played- a common occurrence on Dan Patch Days- he seemed to actually savor the sound. One winter Dan was in residence in the barn behind Savage's home near downtown Minneapolis when it caught fire. He was calmer than anyone. A child could drive that horse. Until his death in 1. Will Savage's younger son loved to tell the story of Dan being hitched to a cutter on Christmas Eve, with Harold driving the pacer around the deserted, snowy city streets, delivering presents. A young Missouri boy named Harry Truman wrote Dan a fan letter, and Dwight Eisenhower went to see him pace at the Kansas State Fair. In fact, it was almost impossible to get a profile of him. Finally, I got Harry Hersey - . When Dan would look at . Harrison in the introduction to his Autobiography of Dan Patch , . Dan Patch has come to be spoken of as - . The driver had complained publicly about Dan's being turned into an advertisement icon, the centerpiece of what he called Savage's . If an employee was heard to have had alcohol or to have been cursing, even off duty, he was promptly discharged.). Savage immediately put his trainer Harry Hersey in Dan's driver's seat. Mersey didn't let Savage down; he drove Dan through one record after another, including a stellar world- record 1: 5. Lexington in 1. 90. But many turf experts, and ordinary people, speculated that Dan would have done even better with Mc. Henry. He never asked of me more than I was physically fit to do. But when it came to driving me almost any one could have done as well. I never felt the love for him that was inspired by my first driver . Perhaps I am an egotist but 1 have always resented the oft- repeated statement that - . Dan had arrived on the fairgrounds at Hamline, north of St. Paul, the weekend before the fair opened, but Hersey didn't allow the public in to look at him before his exhibition mile on Monday, the third. That afternoon Dan came out before the forty thousand plus spectators and paced a mile that for another horse would have been a miracle, but for him was merely workaday- 1: 5.
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