Purchase (horse)

Purchase
Sire	Ormondale
Grandsire	Ormonde
Dam	Cherryola
Damsire	Tanzmeister
Sex	Stallion
Foaled	1916
Country	USA
Colour	Chestnut
Breeder	W.B. Miller
Owner	Sam Hildreth
Trainer	Sam Hildreth
Record	23 Starts: 14 wins
Earnings	$39,706
Major wins
Jockey Club Gold Cup (1919) Southampton Handicap (1919) Stuyvesant Handicap (1919) Dwyer Stakes (1919) Empire City Derby (1919) Huron Handicap (1919) Saratoga Handicap (1919) Saranac Handicap (1919)
Last updated on September 14, 2008

Purchase (foaled in 1916, died 1936), an American Thoroughbred racehorse, was called "The Adonis of the Turf." Walter Vosburgh, the official handicapper for The Jockey Club as well as a turf historian for many years (and for whom the Vosburgh Stakes were named), wrote: "…one of the most exquisitely beautiful of racehorses…to describe Purchase would be to exhaust the superlative."

Purchase was the best son of Ormandale, the only foal in the 1903 crop of Ormonde. Racing, Ormonde went undefeated, an English Triple Crown winner, but as an imported sire he was almost infertile. As for his son, Ormandale (born in Menlo Park, California), he was not the runner his father was, but as a sire, he was much the better horse. Sent to Kentucky in 1912 at the death of his California breeder, he entered the second half of his stud career as an immediate success. The dam of Purchase was Cherryola whose racing career was more than respectable, winning 26 races between the years 1909 to 1913. (On April 15, 1923, along with forty other horses, she died in a barn fire at Harry F. Sinclair's Rancocas Stable, New Jersey.)

Eventually standing 16 hands 1 inch, Purchase was a long-legged golden chestnut, sold as a yearling to the Brighton Stable which was shortly thereafter dispersed. The trainer Sam Hildreth bought Purchase for $12,500. By the end of his racing career, Hildreth said that Purchase was one of the greatest racehorses he ever trained…"and I say that without any strings to it."

Racing at two, he went winless in at least seven races, including the Futurity Stakes (coming in third) basically due to what Hildreth described as a "bad break." But Sam Hildreth thought all that would change with maturity, especially as the colt had injured his leg just before another two-year-old race. And Hildreth was right. Racing at the age of three, Purchase was barely beaten out of winning the three-year-old colt division by Sir Barton even though Purchase had won nine races of 11 that year, including the inaugural running of the Jockey Club Gold Cup. Hildreth would have entered Purchase in the 1919 Kentucky Derby as well as the Preakness Stakes, but just before the Derby, Purchase reared up in his stall and caught a front hoof in a hay rack. This delayed his third year campaign until he beat the first Triple Crown winner Sir Barton by three lengths in the Dwyer Stakes on July 10, 1919.

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