Overcoming obstacles:
It’s what steeplechasing does best
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You don’t expect a daily newspaper to be in charge of a jump meet, but that’s the report from Sunday’s
Steeplechase of Charleston.
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Hear how they’re meshing news reporting with the National Steeplechase Association’s final 2020 event. |
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When the first Charleston Cup steeplechase ran in 1986, it was heralded as a new day for the sport in South Carolina’s coastal lowcountry.
As it turns out, it was actually the much-anticipated return of a centuries-old tradition.
Horse racing was first recorded in Charleston in 1734, and the Washington Race Course, near the Stono Ferry course, held race meets every February 1792-1882.
So when real estate developer Joseph Parks and horseman Karl McMillan created the Charleston Cup in 1986, it was exciting news.
When the meet abruptly halted in 2003, it was sad news.
And when the oldest daily newspaper in the South, the Post and Courier, purchased the Charleston Cup in 2019 on the recommendation of board chair and lifelong horseman Pierre Manigault, renaming it the Steeplechase of Charleston and pointing it down a path of expansion and growth, it was the best news of all. |
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“Our aim is to make this a must-do event every year, and one that becomes the signature way to experience Charleston in the fall,” publisher P.J. Browning said at a news conference. ( Post and Courier photo)
After all, horse racing and the coastal south are a natural pairing. Late 18th and 19th-century Charleston was one of the most significant horse racing venues in the world, home to 10 racecourses and to the young nation’s first jockey club.
Fourth-generation owner of the Post and Courier, and chairman of the controlling Evening Post Industries, Pierre Manigault was the driving force behind the paper’s 2019 purchase of the jump meet. Manigault felt like it was an easy sell – He’d grown up showing ponies and junior hunters around Charleston, hunting with the nearby Middleton Place Hounds established by his father, Peter. Manigault understood the easy link between sport and entertainment that racing provided.
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He worked in Washington, D.C. 1989-1994, at National Geographic and the Washington Post. Manigault lived in The Plains, hunted with Piedmont and rode with trainer Bruce Rosenbaum out of historic Blue Ridge Farm and Hickory Tree Farm. (Photo courtesy of The Post and Courier)
He got a taste of steeplechase, first-hand.
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“It was a blast, a lot of fun.” He rode a handful of owner-rider timber races, and owned several winning hurdlers. One of his best, Little Hurt, was a multiple stakes winner his novice season. (Tod Marks photo from Little Everglades in 2005)
Manigault left the active competition side of the sport when he moved home to Charleston, taking over as Evening Post Industries board chair upon the 2004 death of his father, Peter. But there was a lingering affinity to steeplechasing.
It teed up the next phase of his involvement.
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The Charleston Courier, founded in 1803, and Charleston Daily News, founded in 1865, merged to form the News and Courier in 1873. |
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The Evening Post was founded in 1894, in 1896 purchased by rice plantation owner Arthur Manigault. |
In 1926, Manigault's son, Robert, bought the News and Courier. |
In 1991, the News and Courier and Evening Post merged into a single morning newspaper, the Post and Courier. |
Today, Evening Post Industries owns a wide range of newspaper, television, interactive, real estate and forestry investments. Their flagship operation is Charleston’s Post and Courier, considered the oldest daily newspaper published in the south. |
During the 1960s and ’70s, heir Peter Manigault had diversified to balance the economic cycles of the newspaper business. In 1974, EPI began to acquire TV assets. |
Peter’s son, Pierre Manigault, is now EPI chairman, and it was under Pierre Manigault’s recommendation last year that the Post and Courier added what’s easily its most diverse holding of all – the Steeplechase at Charleston. |
EPI also publishes the Aiken Standard, a dozen community weeklies and have recently expanded into Greenville, Columbia and Myrtle Beach, treating the Post and Courier as “a South Carolina paper, not just a Charleston paper,” says chief marketing officer Chris Zoeller. |
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“A few years ago, I was talking to (former champion jockey and now active trainer in Camden, South Carolina) Arch Kingsley,” Manigault says. He’d known Kingsley in Virginia – Kingsley’s wife Wendy galloped for Bruce Rosenbaum at Hickory Tree when Manigault was riding out for him. “We’d stayed friends – my daughter shows with Jack Towell in Camden, so we see each other all the time.”
Kingsley encouraged Manigault to consider helping the flailing Charleston Cup meet, planting a seed that ended up with the Post and Courier purchasing the event.
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Hurricana’s best – George Smith, Sergeant Murphy |
Kentucky Derby winner in 1916, George Smith had pedigree to spare: the black colt was sired by the imported British stallion Out of Reach and out of the imported British mare Consuelo II. His grandsire, Persimmon, was a son of the great English runner and prolific sire St. Simon.
George Smith was named after noted turfman George E. Smith, also known as "Pittsburg Phill", who once owned Consuelo. George Smith was bred by Fred Forsythe and Jack Chinn, born at their Fountain Bleu Farm in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
George Smith was purchased as a yearling for $1,600 by Ed Mcbride, who trained him as a yearling and raced him as a 2-year-old.
George Smith was a promising juvenile, winning multiple races including the Victoria Stakes at the old Woodbine in Toronto.
He was purchased by New York’s John Sanford for $22,500 late in his 2-year-old year.
In the 1916 Derby, later Hall of Fame jockey Johnny Loftus urged George Smith to outfinish Star Hawk by a neck.
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In 1918, George Smith won Pimlico’s Bowie Handicap, beating 1917 Derby winner Omar Khayyam and 1918 Derby winner Exterminator.
George Smith retired after the 1918 season, standing at Sanford's Hurricana Stud farm west of Saratoga. He was a disappointing race sire, so in 1926, Sanford donated George Smith and another stallion, Nassovian, to the U.S. Army Remount Service. From then on, they sired military horses at the Lookover Stallion Station in Avon, New York.
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John Sanford’s son, Stephen “Laddie” Sanford, was the first American owner of a winner of England’s Grand National. His Sergeant Murphy won in 1923 while Sanford was studying at Cambridge. (Watch a video clip HERE)
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Laddie Sanford played at New York’s Meadowbrook Polo Club. His Hurricanes team competed in the 1925 U.S. Open Polo Championship, Sanford riding with Pat Roark, John Wodehouse, and Maj. Louis Beard, the 3rd Earl of Kimberley. They lost to Meadowbrook – Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, Thomas Hitchcock, Elmer Boeseke and Devereux Milburn.
The Hurricanes won in 1926 – with additional firepower provided by Robert E. Strawbridge, Jr., and again in 1929, 1930, 1948 and 1949.
Sanford was posthumously inducted into the Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame in 2015.
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Manigault has four horses in training with Kingsley; they run under the name Hurricana Farm, the original name of the Sanford Stud Farm in Amsterdam, New York from his mother’s side of the family. Manigault even inherited the original Hurricana silks.
“I love staying involved in racing,” he says. “But there’s the additional aspect to continue this family legacy that’s meant a lot to me.
“It’s pretty hard to match what they did.”
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Hurricana Farm's Five Carat Cat (far right) fittingly won the Maiden Claiming hurdle at Charleston in 2019, with Archie Macauley up. Hurricana has one entry (Sherkali) on Sunday, in Race 3, the Maiden hurdle. Archie Macauley again has the ride for trainer Arch Kingsley.
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Since jumping in with the Steeplechase of Charleston, Manigault admits it’s been “a steep learning curve. But I know we can only improve.
“We’re extremely pleased to be able to have some spectators, under the governor’s COVID regulations,” Manigault says about Sunday’s meet. “I was worried about it, obviously, since most of the meets (run this year) have had no spectators at all.
“It’s been a little bit nerve-wracking” trying to plan this year, he adds, with so many unknown variables."
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Photo courtesy of Steeplechase of Charleston |
Chris Zoeller has worked for Evening Post Industries for 15 years. The EPI marketing officer calls the Steeplechase of Charleston and the media company a magical partnership.
“Steeplechase racing is the perfect outdoor, family and friend-centered event for this era,” Zoeller says. Zoeller says though Hurricane Eta is currently threatening the coast, she believes the course is in excellent shape, able to handle any extra precipitation they get late race week.
“Honestly, this year is slightly to our advantage (in that) we took it back to the roots of steeplechasing,” she adds. “It’s primarily a tailgate event, private parties. Just like the old days of sports.
“This year’s races are unique enough – in being offered at all – that we have a lot of people wanting to attend. Sure, we were able to sell only a fraction of our tailgate spaces on the infield, but we’re … delighted to keep the tradition alive.”
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Photo courtesy of Steeplechase of Charleston |
SoC isn’t the first sporting event the Post and Courier has hosted in 2020 – they held a hugely successful bicycle tour last month, with lots of participants and, happily, Zoeller reports, no COVID reports due to diligent safety protocol like they have in place this weekend.
“There’s nothing that’s more natural than to partner horse racing and fashion and tailgating with friends and family, and – of course – food,” Zoeller says. “Our goal is to turn this event into a crown jewel of the fall social calendar. I think we’re well on our way.”
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Photo courtesy of Steeplechase of Charleston |
Manigault says the course at Stono Ferry, while flat and pretty, has been a constant headache for spectators – and organizers, and horsemen – due to a single access point down miles of two-lane roads. “We’re looking for property to build a new course,” he says. Manigault looked at a promising parcel adjacent to the Intercoastal Waterway last week. It has ocean views, he says, on high ground by a golf course with stands of mature pines and a handsome grove of live oaks. |
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“It’s very preliminary, but this could be a really nice site,” he says. He’s consulting Steeplechase of Charleston race director Toby Edwards and Queens Cup founder Bill Price. Key selling points are excellent ingress-egress off a four-lane road, good soil for building viewing berms and plenty of room to add facilities for other horse events – cutting and reining horses are popular in the area. He envisions two meets in the future – spring and fall, much like the Carolina and Colonial Cup propped up both ends of the National Steeplechase Association circuit in years past.
“With the Colonial Cup sadly gone, Charleston inherited the position as the final NSA event of the season,” he stresses. “We’ve got to raise it to the championship level, become a place horsemen want to bring their good horses for a year-end meet.
“We’d definitely be looking at carding a grade 1 race. Now we need a grade 1 racecourse. That’s our goal.”
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Signature event –
the Alston Cup
When Pierre Manigault took the reins from the former organizers, he knew he needed a signature event for his Steeplechase of Charleston.
He found a unique prize in his own trophy case.
His paternal great, great grandfather, William Alston was huge into horse racing in colonial era Charleston. Alston had helped establish the Washington Race Course, a one-mile loop around what today is Hampton Park near downtown Charleston. Races ran there 1792-1882.
Alston himself had won a big race at Washington in the 1920s, but there was no grand trophy given to the winner.
Alston bought his own, inscribing it with his name and the race name. Pierre Manigault donated the handsome, two-handled silver cup for their 3-year-old hurdle feature. (Read more HERE)
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South Carolina racing timeline
South Carolina horse racing pre-dates the United States.
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1734
Southern planters establish the South Carolina Jockey Club, based on the English Jockey Club of their native homeland. This created a demand for Thoroughbreds in the area and ultimately helped connect Charleston to breeders in England, one of the earliest globalization projects the horse racing industry.
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1734
The first recorded horse race held in Charleston was reported by the Charleston Gazette.
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1754
New Market Course established.
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1792
Washington Race Course established.
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1861-1865
The Civil War effectively put an end to horse racing, though illicit racing continued at all corners of the south.
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Late 1800s
Thomas Hitchcock constructed a steeplechase training facility on his 3000-acre property in Aiken, a couple hours west of Charleston.
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1899
The South Carolina Jockey Club disbanded. Its assets were given to the Charleston Library Society.
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1903
Four stone pillars from the original Washington Race Course were installed as the entrance gate at New York’s Belmont Park.
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Four piers stand beside Long Island’s Hempstead Turnpike, flanking the clubhouse entrance to Belmont Park.
©Adam Coglianese
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1986
Stono Ferry Plantation in Hollywood – just west of the city, hosts the first Charleston Cup Steeplechase.
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2019
Race meet purchased by the Post and Courier newspaper, renamed Steeplechase of Charleston.
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Racecourse?
Or POW camp?
Both.
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During the Civil War, the Washington Race Course served as a camp for Union prisoners of war.
Not surprisingly, the death rate in the open field was high – at least 257 men died and were buried in unmarked graves.
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1865 view of the Union soldiers graves at Washington Racecourse
©Prints and Photographs Collection, Library of Congress
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After Union forces occupied Charleston in 1865, the dead were exhumed and reburied under respectful markers. Many consider a solemn procession to the cemetery late that spring to be the first Memorial Day celebration.
The course was last used for racing in 1882. In 1899, the South Carolina Jockey Club disbanded. The club's remaining assets – the track and an adjoining farm – were deeded to the Charleston Library Society. In 1900, the society rented the grounds to the South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition.
After the exposition ended, the City of Charleston paid the Charleston Library Society $32,500 for the land, 70 acres of high ground and 20 acres of marsh.
The racecourse entry posts became surplus property when the parcel was redesigned as Hampton Park, a public park near The Citadel between the Ashley River and the Cooper River.
In 1903, August Belmont Jr., a New York racehorse owner and part-time South Carolina resident, asked to buy the four piers. The city, instead, offered them as a gift. The brick posts were boxed and shipped to New York City, reinstalled at the then-new Belmont Park on Long Island.
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Trace Pierre Manigault’s connection to Charleston and colonial horse racing through his father’s side of the family, but his maternal bloodlines provide plenty of horse racing involvement in New York and beyond. |
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Stephen Sanford was born in 1826. He built Hurricana Farm west of Saratoga in 1880. Saratoga’s Sanford Stakes – the only race Man O’War lost, in 1919 – is named for Sanford.
Stephen’s son John Sanford II (1851-1939) inherited Hurricana, changing the name to Sanford Stud Farm. (photo, left, c. 1940 of the Hurricana Stud Farm courtesy of the National Park Service)
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John’s daughter Gertrude Sanford Legendre (1902-2000) was a colorful figure. A socialite and big game hunter, she conducted exploratory missions for the American Museum of Natural History.
During World War II she worked for the Office of Strategic Services and became the first woman captured by the Germans. She was held POW for six months before escaping to Switzerland.
Gertrude was the inspiration for the play, “Holiday,” later made into a movie starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.
Gertrude Sanford and Sidney Legendre had two daughters, Bokara and Landine. Landine Legendre married Peter Manigault (1927-2004) of Charleston.
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Landine and Peter Manigault had one son, Pierre, now Evening Post Industries chair, owner of Garden and Gun and chair of the Steeplechase of Charleston. |
On the tail-male side of his pedigree, Peter Manigault (above, 1731–1773) was a son of French Huguenots that immigrated to the area in the late 1600s. He was a Charleston attorney and colonial legislator, the wealthiest man in the British North American colonies at the time of his death.
Manigault served in the South Carolina House of Commons in 1755, and 1766-1773, 1765-1772 serving as Speaker of the House. He actively opposed the British Stamp Act of 1765, and was identified with what became known as the Patriot cause that precipitated the Revolution.
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Peter Manigault’s great great grandson, also Peter, was a veteran of World War II and the Korean War. He attended the Naval Intelligence School at Anacostia Naval Station. He earned the Legion of Merit with a Combat V and the Order of Military Merit for Korea.
In 1959, he followed in his father’s footsteps and became president and publisher of the Evening Post Publishing Co. his family had purchased in 1895. He became chairman of the board in 1984.
Son Pierre Manigault currently is EPI board chair, taking over upon his father’s 2004 death.
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Non-sequitur? Garden and Gun are actually a
natural match
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Garden and Gun is a national magazine focusing on the American South. It was named for a disco in downtown Charleston.
Published in Charleston, the magazine reports on culture, food, music, art, literature and the southern population. It was created in 2007 by the Evening Post Publishing Company. Since 2008, it has been owned by Pierre Manigault’s Allée Group LLC.
The magazine reports an audience of 1.6 million.
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The company also produces a podcast, the Whole Hog, has a book publishing arm, operates the Fieldshop retail store, has a Garden and Gun Club restaurant and hosts events.
It won three ADDY Awards and eight Magazine Association of the Southeast GAMMA awards in its first year, since then winning National Magazine Awards in 2011, 2014 and 2015, and the Society of Publication Designers Brand of the Year award in 2018.
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Chairman of the Evening Post Industries, fourth-generation newspaperman and horseman Pierre Manigault also co-founded and is an owner of Garden and Gun magazine, which launched in 2007.
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(photo courtesy of The Post and Courier)
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He started his journalism career in 1987 as a photographer and editor of television news at the NBC affiliate in Colorado Springs. In 1989, he moved to Washington, D.C. and joined the National Geographic Society as a film editor in the television division. He spent three years there and then went to work for the Washington Post. He worked on the business desk before transferring to the editorial department and working as a copy editor. During his time in Washington, Manigault hunted with Piedmont Foxhounds and rode some point-to-points.
In 1994, he returned home to Charleston to work in the family business at Evening Post Publishing. He spent four years as an editorial writer for the Post and Courier, focusing primarily on land and resource conservation and historic preservation. He oversaw operations of the company’s 12 subsidiary newspapers, and in 2004 was named chairman of the board.
Last year, he helped the Post and Courier purchase the former Charleston Cup steeplechase, now the Steeplechase of Charleston.
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Pierre Manigault and Evening Post Industries Board member Rebecca Gilbreth Herres with the Alston Cup, preparing to make the presentation for the Alston Cup Three-Year-Old hurdle at the 2019 Steeplechase of Charleston. The race was won by Irv Naylor's Must See the Doc.
Photo courtesy of The Steeplechase of Charleston
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