Victory Gift, September 4, 1948
By Bob Gates
Victory Gift: Three Generations of Success
Over the years Assiniboia Downs has been blessed with some of the finest fillies and mares in horseracing.
We thought we had seen the best of the best with likes of: Miss Missile (career earnings – $442,028), Golden Stripe (Mb – $287,717), Body Works (Mb – $252,755), Coral Prospect (Mb – $183,151), Preservata ($136,263), One More Lady ($130,756), Electric Fever (Mb – $127,834) and Liz’s Pride (Mb – $86,740) with honourable mentions going to One and Only (Mb – $91,706), Northern Diamond (Mb – $89,068), Picatune (Mb – $64,341), Astral Moon ($62,251) and Taboga ($45,501).
Then in 2017 along came Escape Clause (Mb – $866,100) who rewrote the record books. However, long before Escape Clause and Assiniboia Downs, a young A. G. “Scotty” Kennedy was coaxed into the sport by racing icon Robert James Speers. While our story is about Scotty’s bay mare, Victory Gift, it was her mom that paved the way for a storybook career.
You’ve read about her on these pages a few years back. We’re talking about Omar’s Gift, the horse that set Scotty back a grand total of 37 cents. What a bargain!
As it turns out Omar’s Gift knew something about running. A few weeks after her “37-cent purchase” the bay won the winner’s share of the purse for the 13th running of the Winnipeg Futurity in 1942. The win was worth $2,160 for Scotty, a pretty decent return for his investment.
Omar’s Gift, Winnipeg Futurity Winner, July 3, 1942, Polo Park
Omar’s Gift won a few races, but her major contribution came as a broodmare. Her first and by far most successful foal was the bay filly, Victory Gift who was born on VE Day, May 8, 1945.
Victory Gift was destined to have a bright future on the racetrack. In 1947 she compiled a record of one win, three seconds and a third in eight starts. A modest beginning, but she showed promise. Her initial campaign included a second-place finish in the Winnipeg Futurity, the race her mom won in 1942.
Her 3-year-old season was her breakout year, which saw her win seven and place second three times in 11 starts. Victory Gift was known locally as the storybook horse, all because of her 37-cent mom. Multiple stakes-winning Victory Gift won the Canadian Derby and Longacres Derby in 1948, and the 1949 Canadian Invitational Championship.
Her 1948 earnings totaled $21,970 which was second best in the nation and a nice tidy sum at the time. She finished $700 behind King’s Plate winner Last Mark. By the way, did we mention that she routinely raced against the boys and more often than not spanked the colts and geldings with ease. Victory Gift was widely hailed as one of the finest fillies in the “Dominion.” She was a docile, well-mannered filly who could run.
In preparing this story, I had the pleasure of listening to a copy of the radio broadcast of the 1948 Canadian Derby. How cool is that?
The date: September 4, 1948. The time: a glorious sunny Saturday afternoon. The place: Polo Park racetrack. The broadcast featured Tom Benson, Lou Davies and “Cactus” Jack Wells himself. Lou Davies started the call of the race with the then usual “and there they go!” and not the “they’re off” that we’ve become accustomed to.
The 19th running of the 1948 Canadian Derby turned into a match race between Scotty Kennedy’s Victory Gift and R. J. Speers’ Lord Fairmond. Victory Gift’s win in the 1¼-mile Derby was her crowning achievement, which saw her wire the field in a time that was only 4/5 of a second off the track record. Her nearest rival was Lord Fairmond who had finished second in the King’s Plate earlier in the year, with the balance of the field far back battling it out for third place.
1948 Canadian Derby Blanket, Track Historian Bob Gates and Assiniboia Downs CEO Darren Dunn
Victory Gift’s career was cut short as a result of a serious on-track accident at Toronto’s Thorncliffe racetrack in the spring of 1949. She was retired to the Speers farm in Carberry, Manitoba where she joined her mom Omar’s Gift as a broodmare.
To bring our three generations story full circle, Victory Gift foaled a son in 1957. The bay colt would come to be purchased a few weeks before the 1960 Manitoba Derby by Downs owner, Jack Hardy. The colt’s name? Bocage! And if his name sounds familiar – it should.
The 1960 Derby was the first renewal of the race since 1940. Bocage, grandson of Omar’s Gift, and son of Victory Gift was the winner of the 12th running of Manitoba’s Derby and the first ever run at Assiniboia Downs.
Bocage (Guy Contrada up), 1960, Winner of the 1st Derby run at Assiniboia Downs
The saddest part of preparing our history pieces is that almost all of the horses have long since passed and all too often we never find out what happened to our four-legged friends. In this case, with thanks to Ellman Guttormson and Harold Loster who were afforded plenty of space and resources in their respective newspapers, we know what became of our three generations of runners.
Victory Gift passed in August 1963 at the age of 18, Bocage, the youngest, died a few months later, he was only six years old. Omar’s Gift who lived out her retirement at the Speers farm in Carberry, outlived her daughter and grandson. She was in her late twenties when she joined Victory Gift and Bocage in that big pasture in the hereafter.
And there you have our three generations of success…
The 37-cent grandmom, the storybook mom, and her bouncing baby boy!
Historian Note: Equibase and the Thoroughbred Horse Pedigree both show Omar’s Gift and Victory Gift as USA breds. Well this has to be wrong. Both horses ran in the Canadian Derby, Omar in 1943 and Victory in 1948 and to be eligible they had to be foaled in Canada. I strongly suspect they were both Manitoba-breds. Speers bred Omar and Scotty bred Victory, and Scotty owned both, so at the very least, they were proudly raised in Manitoba.