Kentucky Derby 1968: Two Winners, Two Losers

Dancer's Image and Forward Pass broke out of the starting gate for the 1968 Kentucky Derby at 4:40 pm on May 4, 1968, with Forward Pass being declared the winner almost five years later. It was the one and only incidence of the winner of the Derby being disqualified, and the legal ordeal left winner, loser, and fan alike with a bitter memory. The handsome gray Dancer's Image, a son of the legendary Native Dancer whose lone loss came in the 1953 Derby, was first under the wire, with Calumet Farm's Forward Pass a length and a half back in second. Tickets were cashed or torn in half, champagne flowed both to drown sorrows and celebrate victory, headlines were written, and horses taken back to the barn and cooled out. There was no indication that Saturday night of the impending storm cloud.

Peter Fuller, owner of Dancer's Image, son of the former governor of Massachusetts, and a Boston businessman would be travelling back to his hometown on the following Tuesday before he learned that his Derby winner's urinalysis had yielded a positive result for an illegal substance, Phenylbutazone, commonly referred to as "Bute". While it was legal to train on Bute in Kentucky in 1968 (and many states allowed its use on race-day), it was supposed to be out of a horse's system by race time, and for reasons that have never been fathomed, it was not out of Dancer's Image when he won. Phenylbutazone, comparable to aspirin for a human, is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication, which the Kentucky State Racing Commission ultimately legalized in March of 1974.

How it came to be in Dancer's Image system remains a mystery, and is likely to never be known with any degree of certainty. Lucille Parker Wright Markey, widow of Calumet Farm founder Warren Wright and wife of Hollywood producer Admiral Gene Markey, allegedly threatened to never set foot in the Bluegrass State again if the case was not decided in her horse's favor. While that had no bearing on the legal decision, it did show the depth of feelings of all involved. The case dragged the participants and racing fans alike through five years of legal haggling.

Forward Pass would eventually be declared Calumet's eighth Kentucky Derby winner - a record no owner has approached in 139 renewals, but there were no winner's circle photos, no freeze-dried blankets of roses, and no memories of celebrating that crowning achievement for Mrs. Markey, who died in 1982 at age 85. Forward Pass won the Preakness on his own merit, but was second in the Belmont Stakes. Dancer's Image was third in the Preakness, but disqualified to eighth -- this time for his jockey's imprudent riding tactics, and never ran again. Both horses ended up in Japan for stud duty, Forward Pass dying in 1980, and Dancer's Image in 1992.

We don't know what drew photographer Tony Leonard to focus on Dancer's Image the week leading up to that fateful Derby - perhaps it was the colt's dappled gray coat, or the fact that his famous sire had just two years' prior had the Derby winner Kauai King. Whatever the reason, the images, many never before published before, foreshadow the love affair Tony Leonard would have with the spectacle of the Kentucky Derby over the next four decades.