Isaac Murphy #1465
$ 8.00
Caption from poster__
Isaac Murphy
The first three-time winner
of the Kentucky Derby
Isaac Burns Murphy was one of the first jockeys to pace his
mount for a charge down the homestretch, a technique soon
described as the "grandstand finish."" He was the first three-
time winner of the Kentucky Derby (1884, 1890, and 1891), and
his career winning percentage of 34.5 has never been equalled.
At his peak in the late 1880s, he became the highest-paid athlete
in America, earning close to $20,000 a year. He was the first
jockey elected to the National Museum of Racing's Hall of Fame
and one of only two African Americans inducted.
Isaac Burns Murphy (April 16, 1861 - February 12, 1896) was an African-American Hall of Fame jockey. The official Kentucky Derby website and the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame say that "Isaac Murphy is considered one of the greatest race riders in American history." Isaac Burns was born in Frankfort, Franklin County, Kentucky. His father served in the Union army in the Civil War, until his death at Camp Nelson as a prisoner of war. After Burns' father's death, his family moved to Lexington, where they lived with Burns' grandfather, Green Murphy. When he became a jockey at age 14, he changed his last name to Murphy to honor his grandfather. Between 1877 and 1893, Isaac Murphy competed in eleven Kentucky Derbys, becoming the first jockey to win three Derbys: "Buchanan" in 1884, "Riley" in 1890, and "Kingman" in 1891. "Kingman" was owned and trained by Dudley Allen and is the only horse owned by an African-American to win the Derby. As well, he is the only jockey to have won the Kentucky Derby, the Kentucky Oaks, and the Clark Handicap all in the same year (1884). Considered one of the great jockeys in American history, Murphy was dubbed the "Colored Archer," a reference to Fred Archer, a prominent English jockey at the time. Murphy won 628 of his 1,412 starts, a 44% victory rate that has never been equalled and a record about which Hall of Fame jockey Eddie Arcaro said: "There is no chance that his record of winning will ever be surpassed. On its creation, Isaac Burns Murphy was the fhe first jockey to be inducted in the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. Isaac Murphy died of pneumonia in 1896 in Lexington, Kentucky and over time his unmarked grave was forgotten until Frank B. Borries, Jr., a University of Kentucky press specialist, spent three years searching for the grave site. In 1967, Murphy was reinterred at the old Man O' War burial site but with the building of the Kentucky Horse Park, his remains were moved again to be buried next to Man O'War at the Kentucky Horse Park's entrance. Since 1995 the National Turf Writers Association has given the Isaac Murphy Award to the jockey with the highest winning percentage for a given year in North American racing, from a minimum of 500 mounts.
