Native Kentuckian Ledford Loved The Derby Most Of All
April 17, 2002
By, William F. Reed

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (April 17, 2002) - Last year, Cawood Ledford saw his final Kentucky Derby, his favorite sporting event. He and his wife, Frances, watched it on TV in his room at Lexington's Good Samaritan Hospital, where he was battling the cancer that finally took his life four months later. Ledford covered the Derby for 42 years, and swore he liked it better than any other sporting event, including college basketball's Final Four.

So it was fitting that last year's race was won by Monarchos, whose trainer, John T. Ward, Jr. is a third-generation Kentucky horseman. Ledford, who began his climb to several Halls-of-Fame at WHLN in Harlan in 1951, always pulled for Kentuckians.

Although he was known far and wide as the voice of the University of Kentucky Wildcats, Ledford, who called the Cats' games from 1953 through 1992, had a lifelong love affair with horses that he inherited from his mother, Sudie.

"She listened to all the sports events," Ledford said in his autobiography, "but I think the one she loved the most was the Kentucky Derby. She just loved horses. Much later in her life, I'd bring her to Keeneland, where she and Frances would split $2 bets."

Of course, there was no TV when Cawood was growing up in Cawood, Ky., a little town just outside Harlan in the Eastern Kentucky mountains. So Cawood and his mom would sit by the family radio and listen to Bryan Field or Clem McCarthy call the Derby for a national audience. Then, as now, radio challenges our imaginations in ways that TV doesn't.

Ledford saw his first Derby in 1948, when the wondrous Citation won the Triple Crown for the hallowed Calumet Farm, and began calling the Keeneland races for Lexington station WLEX in 1954. When he moved to 50,000-watt WHAS in Louisville, Ledford worked as a backstretch reporter from 1957-'60.

The first Derby he called for WHAS was Carry Back's victory in 1961. He did such a good job that the CBS radio network picked up his call for a few years in the late 1970s and early '80s. He finally quit calling races in the late '80s because his declining eyesight no longer enabled him to live up to his own high standards.

Going back to the days of Field and McCarthy, race callers have been colorful characters who often stamp their work with a signature phrase for dramatic effect. With ESPN's Dave Johnson, for example, it's "Down the stretch they come!" With Cawood, it was this as the field turned for home: "And now they come to me!" As is the case with many journalists, Cawood's favorite part of Derby week was hanging around the barn area to pick up stories from friends, new and old. He usually was the best-dressed reporter on the backside, a peacock topped by one of those jaunty caps that many trainers wear, and he ALWAYS seemed to have a cup of coffee and a cigarette in hand.

"I love a cup of coffee anytime," Cawood said, "but it always tastes better on a crisp morning the week before the Derby."

Many horsemen also are huge basketball fans, so they loved to question Cawood about college hoops as much as he loved to question them about their Derby horses. He had a good relationship with mega-trainer D. Wayne Lukas, a former basketball coach, and with other hoops-savvy horsemen such as Shug McGaughey, Nick Zito, Seth Hancock, Elliott Walden, and William T. Young.

When Hancock's Claiborne Farm won its first Derby with Swale in 1984, Ledford was ecstatic for his friend. He and Hancock were so close that Hancock was a pallbearer in Ledford's funeral. Hancock also got him involved in a few modest Thoroughbred ownerships, but Ledford enjoyed his greatest success in the equine world with his stable of miniature show horses.

Cawood knew former Louisville coach Denny Crum more through horse racing - Crum has owned a few nice horses - than basketball, and he was delighted when his friend Rick Pitino fell so in love with the racing game that he bought a couple of horses, Halory Hunter and A P Valentine, who were good enough to run in the Derby.

Ledford always said the best Derby he ever covered was the 1964 running, when little Northern Dancer won a torrid stretch duel with the larger Hill Rise. But the greatest Derby performance he ever covered was Secretariat's masterpiece in the 1973 event. In going from last-to-first, the big chestnut colt covered the mile and a quarter in 1:59 2/5, a Derby record that still stands.

Sometime after Secretariat went to stud at Claiborne, Hancock presented Ledford with a Plexiglas case containing two of the Triple Crown winner's shoes and a piece of his mane. To say Ledford was delighted would be an understatement. He valued Hancock's gift as much as the Eclipse Awards he won for excellence in Thoroughbred coverage or the blue ribbons won by his miniature horses.

His last basketball call was the marvelous UK-Duke game in the finals of the 1992 NCAA East Regional tournament. Afterward, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, whose emotions had to be running wild, was still composed enough to come to Cawood's microphone, thank him for setting the tone for college basketball announcers everywhere, and wish him well in retirement.

Although Cawood called a bunch of Final Fours for the NCAA radio network, he always said the Derby was No. 1 in his heart. It wasn't surprising, then, that for three years after his retirement, he continued spending Derby week in Louisville, doing special reports for WHAS radio and TV.

After Thunder Gulch's win in the 1995 Derby, Ledford decided to cut back his Derby week schedule to only one day. He'd do three or four features for WHAS, which then carried the Derby because ABC owned the rights, and the station would use them during its day-long Derby marathon broadcast.

But after Charismatic won the 1999 Derby, Ledford stopped his Derby coverage completely, content to stay home in Cawood and watch the telecast of the event that he cherished, and enriched, for 42 years.

In an almost eerie twist of fate, the likely favorite in the first Derby since Cawood's death is a colt named Harlan's Holiday. The name comes from his breeding. His sire is Harlan, his dam Christmas in Aiken. The colt moved into the favorite's role after demolishing his competition in the Florida Derby and the Blue Grass Stakes.

"I think a couple of people from Harlan owned part of this colt's sire," said Frances Ledford, "so I think he'd be for him. The Hancocks and his other friends don't seem to have anything in it. So it seems logical that Cawood would be for Harlan's Holiday. By this time, he would have read everything about every horse so he would be prepared to talk to the horsemen."

Ledford was born near Harlan, grew up there, began his radio career there, and was buried near there. The city doesn't have a special holiday, but, if it did, it would be April 24, Cawood Ledford's birthday.

Native Kentuckian William F. "Billy" Reed has been a sports writer in various capacities for 42 years and has missed covering the Kentucky Derby a mere two times since 1966. He has been a high-profile sports writer in Kentucky for the Commonwealth's two largest daily newspapers, the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader and was a national columnist for Sports Illustrated, covering among other sports, Thoroughbred horse racing and college basketball. Reed currently pens a column for the Louisville Sports Report, contrbiutes features to the Keeneland program and will be, among varied other assignments, filing Kentucky Derby installments on www.kentuckyderby.com.

« Back to Billy Reed Archive

« Back To Derby News