Horse Racing Sports Oddities and Trivia

Some random facts and trivia about the sport horse racing.

A MINI-ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SPORTS ODDITIES

HORSE RACING

Twenty-four-year-old jockey Johnny Heckman had an incredible day at Hawthorne Race Track in Chicago on Oct. 1, 1956; he brought home winners in the first, second, fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth races. As if that weren't enough, Heckman won two of the three races he rode on the following day.

In the summer of 1873, two horses, Bing Aman and Mart Jordan, finished in a dead heat at Gravesend Race Track in New York. Despite the sizzling temperature, the horses were sent around the 1 3/4-mi. track again to determine a winner. Again they ran a dead heat. It happened again on the third running, and the fourth as well (or so it appeared). But the judges ruled Bing Aman the winner by a nose. The crowd didn't see it that way and protested the judgment with a riot that destroyed much of the track.