Sport: The Champ Retires

The very first day he went to the races, the highbred bay colt won, and brought home $2,600. Before the year was out, he had earned $192,865. As a three-year-old, William Woodward Jr.'s Nashua was an odds-on favorite to win the 1955 Kentucky Derby. But from the first there were horseplayers who refused to recognize the signs of greatness. He's lazy, they said. He's a clown. He'll stop to count the house in the stretch. And when a California upstart named Swaps ran off with the Derby, Nashua's detractors nodded wisely.

But Nashua went right on winning. In August of 1955 he went out to Chicago for a match race with Swaps and put the Derby winner in his place by 6^ lengths.

After Bill Woodward was accidentally shot and killed by his wife (TIME, Nov. 7, 1955), Nashua went on the block along with his stablemates of the Belair Stud.

If there were any doubts left about the big bay's standing, they were banished when Nashua was knocked down to Leslie Combs II for $1,251,200. No other thoroughbred has ever brought as much.

Last week Nashua went to the post in the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park. It was his 30th start, and it was to be his last. Whatever happened, Combs had decided, it was time to retire the horse to stud. Nashua made a lordly farewell. He galloped the two-mile Gold Cup distance in 3.20! for a new American record and won going away. With the Gold Cup's $36,600 purse tucked away, Nashua retired with earnings of $1,288,565—the richest horse that ever lived.