Round Table

Round Table (1954-1987) was an American Thoroughbred racehorse. He is considered the greatest turf horse in American racing history. Trained by Moody Jolley, Round Table's most significant win came in October of 1956, when the he won the Breeders' Futurity Stakes at Keeneland Race Course. On February 9, 1957, Claiborne Farm owner Arthur B. Hancock, Jr. sold Round Table after his second start of the three-year-old season to Oklahoma oilman Travis M. Kerr. The sale agreement included Round Table standing at stud at Claiborne when his racing career was over with Claiborne receiving twenty percent of his breeding income. Racing at age three, with Kerr having hired William Molter as his trainer, Round Table won the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland in track record time. He then finished third to Calumet Farm's Iron Liege in the Kentucky Derby, with the heavily favored Bold Ruler finishing 4th. After the Derby, Round Table was shipped back to race in California, where he scored eleven consecutive wins, several of which would later become Grade I stakes races. He wound up the leading money winner of 1957 and won the first of three straight U.S. Champion Turf Horse titles.

In 1958, Round Table dominated American Thoroughbred racing. He began the year by capturing the races that are now known as the Strub Series at Santa Anita Park, becoming the first horse to win the Malibu Stakes, the San Fernando Stakes and the Santa Anita Maturity, now the Strub Stakes. He ended the racing season as the winner of every racing award available to him including Horse of the Year. Five years old in 1959, he won 9 of his 14 races and his third Champion Turf Horse title. His lifetime earnings were $1,749,869, and he was the third American Thoroughbred to earn more than a million dollars, after Citation and Nashua. Of his 66 starts he won 43, placed in 8 and showed in 5, and set or equaled 14 track records during his career, including one world' record and two U.S. records.

Retired at the end of the 1959 racing season to stand at stud at Claiborne Farm, Round Table was the Leading sire in North America in 1972. He sired 83 stakes winners including Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame inductee He's A Smoothie, Apalachee, Advocator, King's Bishop, and Poker, who was the damsire of two Hall of Fame inductees, Seattle Slew and Silver Charm. Among his descendants are Horse of the Year winners A.P. Indy and Mineshaft. His worldwide reputation both in racing and as a sire was so great that when Queen Elizabeth II visited Kentucky in 1984, she asked to see the 30-year-old horse. Her father, King George VI bred Round Table's dam, Knight's Daughter.

Round Table died at the age of 33 on June 13, 1987. He is buried in the equine cemetery at Claiborne Farm.

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