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By Betsy Burke Parker

The road to Sunday’s 44th annual Point-to-Point at Winterthur has been anything but linear, a circuitous, sometimes backtracking route that’s taken the Delaware estate from Lenape hunting grounds to the storied du Pont clan, then into a beloved Brandywine Valley education and preservation foundation that welcomes scholars and visitors to study and view its oddball – and vast – collection of trinkets and antiques big and small that tell the story of American arts.

Along the way, an eclectic bunch of friends and supporters of Winterthur and horse racing took turns breathing life into the event that today is by far the biggest fundraiser for the namesake museum, garden and library.

To understand why the May 8 races are so important to the circuit, the region and the estate itself, meet the ones that made – make – it happen.

In 1978, Winterthur board member Greta “Greets” Layton, started thinking outside the box to make the surrounding Brandywine Valley community more aware of the world-class museum and gardens at the former du Pont estate.

You could say Layton was thinking so far out of the box that it looped back on itself. Her vision eventually became the nation’s only figure-8 racecourse, the region’s biggest sporting event and the Winterthur fundraiser by which all others are measured.

The first races were May 6, 1979, a small, country-fair affair with no cash prizes, only silver trophies. (Photo, left, from the 1979 races courtesy of the Winterthur Museum) But even the trophies were molded in the Winterthur tradition – modeled after early American silver in Henry Francis du Pont’s eclectic collection. Today, what remains called Point-to-Point at Winterthur, even though it’s long run under National Steeplechase Association sanction, is known just as much for railside action as much as racecourse action.

Greta Brown Layton, known to all as Greets, died in 2014 at age 89. She attended St Timothy's School in Maryland, graduating from the Katherine Gibbs School in New York in 1943. She worked for Halloran General Hospital and the American Economics Foundation.

In 1948, she married the late Rodney Layton of Wilmington, moving to Delaware to raise their three children.

Layton volunteered for the Visiting Nurse Association and Junior League. She developed a passion for American decorative arts through her early participation in the Delaware Antique Show and pursued it through her involvement at the Winterthur Museum. She was on the board of directors of Winterthur from 1967-2007.

Her lifelong love of horses and her recognition of the need to introduce the Museum's mission to a broader audience spawned the Point-to-Point at Winterthur. (Jim Graham photo)

Race director at Winterthur since 2001, Jill Abbott, 55, grew up in north New Jersey. She attended the University of Delaware to play division 1 tennis. She earned a masters in public administration from the Fels School of Government at the University of Pennsylvania. She worked for Delaware Governor Michael Castle and U.S. Sen. William Roth, Jr. Prior to joining Winterthur in the late 1990s, Abbott worked for the international public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. (Tod Marks photo)

She took over as Winterthur race director in 2001.

Abbott remembers 2001 - it ended up being quite a tumultuous year.  

“My parents had asked me (earlier that spring) if they should come down to the races, my first time ‘in charge,’ ” Abbott recalls. “I said, ‘no, how ‘bout give me a year to get my bearings and you guys come next year.’

“What they didn’t know was why I said that – I was pregnant with their first grandchild, and I hadn’t told them yet. Of course I was thinking of 2002, when I’d need them to hold the baby for me!

“I told my father I was pregnant on Father’s Day,” a few weeks after running her first Winterthur Point-to-Point, a successful day, she says.  

Her parents did visit Winterthur at the end of summer, for the annual crab festival on Labor Day.

A week later, her father was dead.

Michael “Mickey” Abbott was a Wall Street trader, at work on the 104th floor of World Trade Center 2, the South Tower the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

A few minutes after the North Tower was hit, the South Tower was hit by a commercial jetliner at 9:03 a.m. It was the first to collapse – at 9:59 a.m.

When Abbott’s daughter was born a few months later, the name was obvious – Michele. They call her Mikki in memory of Abbott’s father.

Abbott likens running a hunt meet to running a small business. “That’s what these events are,” she says. “Yes, we’re a non-profit, but I look at it through an investing eye. We have corporate sponsors, tailgate spaces in two infields – north and south,” inside the figure-8 course loops. Half of the 600 tailgate spaces are “owned” with lifetime rights, Abbott says.

“For a one-time fee, you own that space,” she explains, saying since Winterthur is non-profit, it is a tax deduction. “I kid you not, I know some people put their precious tailgate space in their divorce decree. One of my friends got a divorce, and he gets the space every other year, she gets it the other year.

“People take great pride in these spaces.” (Jim Graham photo, left)

When she started on the race committee, Abbott recalls the late Paddy Neilson’s kindness and patience. “I’m not a horse person,” Abbott readily admits. “I’ve never been on a horse, but he was so nice, no question was too silly. I think Paddy embraced that I asked at all. I learned so much from him.” (Tod Marks photo, right, of Paddy Neilson and daughter Sanna at the 2018 Winterthur Point-to-Point)

She’s three years into her four-year term as chairman of the NSA’s race-chair committee, though maintains that “nothing’s been normal about my term. What are the odds I’d get these crazy years.”

In 2019, her own Winterthur meet was canceled nearly at post time for the first on race day. Several course crossings collapsed as paddock time approached, undermined by heavy rains the night before. NSA stewards made the excruciating, unprecedented – but necessary, they said, decision to cancel the card.

The 2019 Point-to-Point, held on Cinco de Mayo. ©Jim Graham

That was Abbott’s opening volley as NSA committee leader.

Her second was just as weird: Winterthur, and most of the circuit, canceled because of Covid.

Last year, Winterthur ran a few weeks late, May 28, with Covid restrictions in place, but, Abbott says, “everybody was so excited to get back to near-normal.

“It’s a labor of love. Race directors are a different breed.

“Pun intended.”

She remembers the exact conversation. Former Winterthur race chair “Josh Taylor asked me to join the race committee three years ago,” recalls race chair Sanna Neilson. It was pre-Covid, but it was the wet spring of 2019. (Jim Graham photo of Sanna Neilson at Winterthur Point-to-Point)

“So the first thing that happened my first year ‘on the job’ is that the stewards canceled the races just before post time.” Neilson acknowledges that deteriorating road crossings and sodden turf warranted the unprecedented move, but it was a big blow.

“So, right after that Josh resigns and says ‘hey, would you take over?’

“I was like ‘okay, I guess so.’ ”

The next year was eerily similar, for different reasons, Neilson recalls: Covid canceled not only the Winterthur races but almost everything else on earth in spring, 2020, so she still didn’t get a chance to flex her race chair muscles.

Last spring – 2021 – was the first time, Neilson says, that Winterthur ran under her supervision, though it was still a little different than their normal “Kentucky Derby Sunday” date.

Neilson hopes this Sunday will be a totally normal day at the races. “I mostly deal with the horse ‘side’ of things,” she explains. “I’ve been over there a bunch this week, setting up beacons, adjusting the course.

“I remember my dad (the late Paddy Neilson) saying when they were laying it out the figure-8 was the only way to make it fit. A course like this serves its purpose – not every horse is (timber phenom and free-galloping) Senior Senator or Vintage Vinnie. You find your niche, and trainers know if this course suits their horses. (Tod Marks photo)

“With timber, in my mind I think if a horse breaks their maiden, there’s not a ton of places to go. So we wrote a non-winners-of-two with a juicy purse, and we got good horses.”

“It was a challenging piece of ground to lay it out on,” recalls Joe Clancy Sr., a lifelong racing horseman who helped Russell Jones, the late Paddy Neilson and the late Donnie Ross design a racecourse at Winterthur in the late 1970s. (Tod Marks photo, left, of Joe Clancy, Sr. at the Radnor Hunt Races)

Clancy trained for Delaware Park executive Ross, and it was he who suggested they bring horses to the old cattle fields at the back of the Winterthur grounds to lay out a track in what was, essentially, two adjacent open pastures mostly divided by a thick woodland.

Leslie Young has a soft spot in her heart for the Winterthur races. When she was a junior, Young (then Leslie Falini) partnered small pony Phantom and large ponies Taboo and Jay to sew up the Delaware Valley race association titles with wins at Winterthur.

She loves coming back as trainer, Young says. “It takes a handy type of horse who turns well, obviously. The fences are very fair, uniform stacked rails, not a huge jump but very fair.”

Sunday, Young will saddle Boutonniere in the allowance and Mercouer in the feature.

(Tod Marks photo of Sanna Neilson presenting Leslie Young the Leading Trainer award at the 2021 Winterthur Point-to-Point)

In addition to action on track, there’s plenty to entertain spectators outside the rail – and inside the many furlongs of inner rail within two figure-8 loops.  

There’s a carriage parade, a tailgate competition (Jim Graham photo, right), “best dressed,” a trivia contest and a betting “contest.” There’s no pari-mutuel at Winterthur, but the “Bet the House” contest lets spectators put $5 down on a horse of their choice – in any race – with a winner selected to collect the cash prize from all correct predictions.

There are stick pony races, real pony races and a Winterthur scavenger hunt. There’s a classic car show, canine fair and Mother’s Day photos.

Huntsman Jimmy Paxson will parade the River Hills foxhounds, and a pipe and drums corps will perform.

A life-size-plus topiary timber horse named Petunia welcomes Winterthur visitors near the facility’s entrance. Petunia is 10-feet tall; her saddle cloth – no. 8 – reflects the May 8, 2022 race date.

🏇 The Alison Hershbell memorial pony races are run in memory of Alison Hershbell, a popular jockey based at Delaware Park who died in 2007. Hershbell won more than 300 races on the flat; she started her career at hunt meet and point-to-point pony races.

🏇 The Isabella du Pont Sharp Memorial maiden timber is named in honor of Isabella Sharp in memory for her work work to preserve and conserve open space. The Sharps owned land a few miles south of Winterthur – Gibraltar. The property, like Winterthur, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The noted gardens at both Winterthur and Gibraltar were designed by Marian Coffin.

🏇 The Winterthur Bowl is the event’s signature race: the winning rider is awarded the Henry Francis du Pont challenge trophy named in honor of the most recent private owner of the historic estate.

🏇 The Vicmead Plate commemorates the founding of Delaware's Vicmead Hunt Club in May 1920 and is run in memory of its four founding members: Mrs. Victor du Pont, Mrs. Hollyday Meeds, Mrs. A. Felix du Pont and Mrs. H. Rodney Sharp.

The hunt club stopped mounted hunting more than 50 years ago, but the Vicmead Hunt Club lives on as a golf, tennis, swimming, dining and special event club.

🏇 The Greta Brown Layton trophy is presented to the trainer who earns the most points at the meet.

🏇 The Frolic Weymouth carriage parade is a big part of race day. George Alexis “Frolic” Weymouth, was an artist, preservationist, four-in-hand driver, art collector and more. He founded the Brandywine Conservancy, a land-preservation effort that has contributed to the permanent preservation of 62,000 acres of farmland, forests, water resources, historic sites and scenic vistas in the area.

Weymouth died in 2016.

Winterthur is located in northwestern Delaware a few miles north of the Delaware River, a few miles south of the Pennsylvania border.

Prior to European contact, the Lenape tribe inhabited the area along the Delaware River and the Brandywine.

H.F. inherited Winterthur when his father died in 1927. At the time, the estate consisted of 90 buildings and over 2,600 acres. H.F. renovated the main house, tripling its size and outfitting it with architectural elements salvaged from 17th, 18th and 19th century American homes. Rooms in the home were themed by time-period.

H.F. contracted landscape architect, Marian Cruger Coffin, to assist with the design of 70 acres of the estate's gardens.

H.F. arranged in “period” rooms, a museum display technique which he regarded as a natural mode of home decoration. He slept in a Queen Anne bedroom, breakfasted in a Newport Chippendale morning room, played bridge in a “Chinese” Chippendale parlor (pictured) and dined in a Federal dining room.

Known as reclusive and shy, H.F. nonetheless opened Winterthur for the public to view in 1951; he moved into a smaller house on the estate grounds and made the mansion into a museum.

By 1959, the museum had been enlarged to accommodate a library, lecture halls and additional period rooms. The museum today comprises nearly 200 rooms holding H.F.'s collection, conservation laboratories and administrative offices.

In 1961, at the invitation of Jacqueline Kennedy, H.F. chaired the First Lady’s Fine Arts Committee, which oversaw restoration of the White House. Fully recognizing the significance of the stories of art, craft, design and history that his own collection could tell, he also established graduate programs for the study of material culture and art conservation.

By the time of his death in 1969, H.F. had amassed a collection of more than 50,000 objects.

Jim Graham photo from Winterthur Point-to-Point 2016