Horse as Symbol.

Easily the most popular spectator sport in the United States during the 1950s was horse racing. Perhaps as a result of attention directed to the war effort, the quality of race horses declined sharply in the 1950s. But then the great horses of the 1940s had set a standard difficult to match. Horses of the 1950s were measured against four Triple Crown winners from the 1940s: Whirlaway (1941), Count Fleet (1943), Assault (1946), and the magnificent Citation (1948), who. in 1951 became the first horse in racing history to earn $1 million.

Near Misses.

The 1950s was a decade of near misses in horse racing. The most famous miss was when Willie Shoemaker misjudged the finish line of the 1957 Kentucky Derby to allow Iron Liege to nose out Gallant Man. The result of Shoemaker's miscalculation is the universal bull's-eye symbol that now marks the finish...