Real Delight

Thoroughbred racehorse infobox
horsename = Real Delight


caption =
sire = Bull Lea
grandsire = Bull Dog
dam = Blue Delight
damsire = Blue Larkspur
sex = Filly
foaled = 1949
country = USA (Kentucky) flagicon|USA
colour = Bay
breeder = Calumet Farm
owner = Calumet Farm
trainer = Horace A. Jones
record = 15 Starts: 12 – 1 - 0
earnings= $261,822
race = Kentucky Oaks (1952)
Beldame Stakes (1952)
Coaching Club American Oaks (1952)
Modesty Handicap (1952)
Beverly Handicap (1952)
Black-Eyed Susan Stakes (1952)
Cleopatra Stakes (1952)
Ashland Stakes (1952)
Arlington Matron Handicap (1953)
awards= American Champion Three-Year-Old Filly (1952)
American Champion Older Female Horse (1952)
honours = U.S. Racing Hall of Fame (1987)
updated= February 11, 2008

Real Delight (1949-1969), was an American Thoroughbred race horse bred by the famous Calumet Farm of Lexington, Kentucky.

A filly sired by one of America’s foundation stallions, the influential Bull Lea (sire of seven Hall of Famers, including his other great daughters: Two Lea, Bewitch, and Twilight Tear), Real Delight’s dam was the stakes winning Blue Delight (10 wins out of 24 starts) out of Blue Larkspur, a racehorse Blood-Horse magazine considered number 100 in its list of the Twentieth Century’s greatest racehorses. Real Delight was a huge rangy filly, standing 17 hands. Throughout her second year she was bothered by a bad knee and so went unraced as a two-year-old. A Calumet horse, she was trained by the Hall of Famer, Horace A. Jones. Horace had become the head trainer by the birth of Real Delight while his father, Ben A. Jones, became Calumet's general manager.

At three, Real Delight was a spectacular competitor. In her twelve starts that year, she lost only once. She began in combination races, meaning mixed fields of claimers and allowance runners, but quickly stepped up in class by her two easy wins. Her first stakes victory came in the Ashland Stakes followed by her only loss at three, and the only time she competed against males. Even so, at a sprint distance of six and one half furlongs not suited to her long legs, she closed fast, losing by only a head. Often ridden by the Hall of Fame jockey, Eddie Arcaro, she then took eight stakes in a row, including the Grade I Kentucky Oaks, the Grade I Coaching Club American Oaks, the Grade II Black-Eyed Susan Stakes (once known as the Pimlico Oaks), the Grade I Ashland Stakes, the Modesty Handicap, and the Grade I Beldame Stakes.

By winning the Kentucky Oaks, the Black-Eyed Susan, and CCA Oaks, she was the second filly to win this early version of the Triple Crown for fillies. The only filly before her was Wistful. (Today's Triple Tiara of Thoroughbred Racing consists of the Acorn Stakes, the Mother Goose Stakes, and the CCA Oaks.)

In 1952, she was voted not only the United States Champion Three-Year-Old Filly, but the United States Champion Older Female Horse. At four she won the Arlington Matron Handicap carrying top weight, just as she did in all her four year old races.

She retired that year, going back to Calumet where she foaled three stakes winners, eventually becoming the third dam of Alydar.Real Delight was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1987.

References

* [http://www.pedigreequery.com/real+delight Real Delight’s pedigree, stats, and photo]
* [http://www.racingmuseum.org/hall/horse.asp?ID=121 Real Delight in the Hall of Fame]