Stagehand (horse)
American Thoroughbred racehorse
Stagehand (foaled 1935 in Kentucky) was an American Thoroughbred racehorse who is the only horse to ever win the Santa Anita Handicap as a three-year-old.
Background
Bred by the prominent horseman Joseph E. Widener, Stagehand was sired by Sickle, who was a son of the influential English sire Phalaris. His dam was Stagecraft, a daughter of U.S. Racing Hall of Fame inductee and Leading broodmare sire in North America, Fair Play.
Maxwell Howard of Ohio, purchased Sceneshifter, Stagehand's full older brother. Impressed by Sceneshifter, Howard took advantage of Widener weeding out his stable. He purchased Stagehand for $8000 at the recommendation of Earl Sande, his trainer. Entered in a Maiden Special Weight at Aqueduct, Stagehand was scratched for unknown reasons and instead shipped up to Empire City Racetrack with the rest of Howard's small stable which included Brooklyn Handicap winner The Chief.
1937: two-year-old season
On July 6, 1937, Stagehand was entered in a 5-furlong event for maidens. He broke last and never made up any ground, as victor Flying Ariel beat him handily. Shipped to Saratoga, Stagehand ran on July 28 in a 5+1⁄2-furlong allowance.
“Stagehand (horse)” enters the record as american Thoroughbred racehorse. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Stagehand, horse and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 15, 2022. The linked authority identifier is Q7596899. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935 and 1937.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stagehand (horse)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.