Owned by American businessman Samuel Doyle Riddle and trained by Louis Feustel at Glen Riddle Farm in Berlin, Maryland, Man O’War was retrospectively selected as American champion as a two- and three-year-old by ‘The Blood-Horse’ and is widely considered one of the greatest racehorses of all time. Foaled on March 29, 1917 at Nursery Stud, near Lexington, Kentucky, Man O’War made 21 starts in 1919 and 1920, winning 20 of them and amassing nearly $250,000 in prize money. His sole defeat, by a neck, came at the hands of Upset, who was in receipt of 15lb, in the Sanford Memorial Stakes at Saratoga Race Course on August 13, 1919.
Upset went on to finish second, beaten a head, in the Kentucky Derby on May 8, 1920, but Riddle declined a rematch on that occasion, baulking at the idea of sending a three-year-old hundreds of miles, by train, to race over 10 furlongs in Louisville on the first Saturday in May. Instead, Man O’War made his three-year-old debut in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore two weeks later, where he duly reversed the Saratoga form with Upset to the tune of 1½ lengths.
In the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York he was sent off at 1/20 to beat sole rival Donnaconna and did so by 20 lengths in a time of 2:14.2, thereby taking more than two seconds off the previous world record for a mile and three furlongs, 2:16.4, set by Dean Swift in the Liverpool Cup in 1908. For his final start, Riddle sought a special match race with the four-year-old Sir Barton, the first winner of the American Triple Crown in 1919 – although it wasn’t known by that name until 1930 – for the Kenilworth Park Cup at Kenilworth Park in Windsor, Ontario. The so-called ‘Race of the Age’ failed to materialise, with Man O’War winning the $75,000 purse easily, by seven lengths.