Forego
Born on 30 April 1970, Forego was an incredibly successful thoroughbred racehorse in America. During the course of his career, the bay gelding won the Woodward Stakes four times, the Brooklyn Handicap three times, the Widener Handicap and the Metropolitan Handicap twice in a row and the Jockey Club Gold Cup, the Carter Handicap, the Suburban Handicap and the Marlboro Cup once. He also ran and won a number of other, less prestigious races. He was owned and bred by Mrs. Martha Gerry’s Lazy F Ranch, trained by three different trainers over the years and raced by two main jockeys. Forego was born in the same year as racing great Secretariat, and while Secretariat was a comfortable and fast three-year-old, Forego was still growing into his immense body. This meant that many of his early races were not all that successful. His size and unruly behavior also led to him being gelded so that he could be raced more successfully. Thus, his three-year-old year was dismal but he soon started to shine as a four-year-old.
During his time spent on the racetrack, Forego started 57 times and won 34 races. He also placed in nine races and came in third seven times. By the time his racing career ended he had earned a massive $1,938,957. He was also noted for his versatility, winning anything from 7 furlongs to 2 miles. He was also often weighted with as much as 130 pounds because of his immense size but still he became a champion handicap horse. Some of the racing awards he received are US Champion Sprint Horse (1974), US Champion Older Male (1974–1977) and US Horse of the Year (1974-1976). He was inducted into the US Racing Hall of Fame in 1979 and is ranked as 8th on the list of Top 100 Racehorses of the 20th Century.
At the end of 1978 Forego was retired and taken to the Kentucky Horse Park where he lived out the rest of his life in leisure. In 1997, at 27 years of age, he broke his left hind leg and had to be put down. Forego is still seen by many as one of the greatest racehorses of the 20th Century.
