{"id":3502,"date":"2014-11-05T17:39:13","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T22:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrambler.com\/blog\/?p=3502"},"modified":"2014-11-05T17:39:13","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T22:39:13","slug":"a-neat-bit-o-weird-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mrambler.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/05\/a-neat-bit-o-weird-history\/","title":{"rendered":"A neat bit o’ weird history…"},"content":{"rendered":"

You can beat a dead horse, but you can’t always beat a dead rider. Ever hear of Frank Hayes? No? Here’s the skinny:<\/p>\n

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On June 4, 1923, jockey Frank Hayes took off through the gates at Belmont Park on Long Island. He and his horse, Sweet Kiss (a 20-1 shot owned by Miss A.M. Frayling), made it to the finish line first. But when the horse crossed the\u00c2\u00a0finish line<\/span> Frank Hayes was more than just \u00e2\u20ac\u0153relaxed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d – he was dead as a doornail. Hayes’ death was not discovered until Miss Frayling and race officials came to congratulate him shortly after the race and his lifeless body slid out of the saddle.<\/p>\n

It was later determined that Hayes had died of heart failure shortly after Sweet Kiss took the lead, and the\u00c2\u00a0New York Times<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0speculated that the jockey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heart had given out as a result of severe training in order to make weight (he quickly went from 142lbs to 130lbs), coupled with the excitement of winning his first\u00c2\u00a0race.\u00c2\u00a0 Hayes, dressed in his colorful\u00c2\u00a0racing<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0silks, was buried three days later.\u00c2\u00a0 In light of the incident, Belmont\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Jockey Club waived all of the rules and thus made Hayes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 win\u00c2\u00a0official<\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0 This ruling makes Frank Hayes the only jockey to win a\u00c2\u00a0race\u00c2\u00a0while deceased.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0In fact, it is the only time in sports history when a competition was won by a dead man (unless you count a few stupid boxers that crossed the Mob and didn’t throw a fight when they were supposed to.).<\/p>\n

This *might* be the origin of the phrase “I’ll win if it kills me!”, but I gotta do some more checking on that….<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can beat a dead horse, but you can’t always beat a dead rider. Ever hear of Frank Hayes? No? Here’s the skinny: On June 4, 1923, jockey Frank Hayes took off through the gates at Belmont Park on Long Island. He and his horse, Sweet Kiss (a 20-1 shot owned by Miss A.M. Frayling), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,36,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mrambler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3502"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mrambler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mrambler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mrambler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mrambler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.mrambler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3504,"href":"http:\/\/www.mrambler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3502\/revisions\/3504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mrambler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mrambler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mrambler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}