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Imp
One of the most popular idols of the Gay Nineties, Imp well fitted her nickname of the “Coal Black Lady,” as she was a leggy black mare with a diamond-shaped white star. She was owned by David R. “Uncle Dan” Harness, who bred the mare at his High Bank Farm near Chillicothe, Ohio. Imp was not a particularly pretty youngster, being a rawboned type, but Harness was fond of her and reportedly named her “Imp” because of the mischievous way in which she frolicked in her pasture. Imp had quality in her background, but it was tainted with questionable soundness. Her sire, *Wagner, won the Wilton Park Stakes in England in his only start. Her dam, Fondling, was a daughter of the 1880 Kentucky Derby winner Fonso but was injured in her only race. Such was the parentage of one of the toughest mares ever to grace American racing. Imp was trained from her initial breaking onwards by C. E. Brossman, who had made a local reputation by training a tough mare named Bessie Bisland to win the Harlem Cup; he later became the editorial writer for the Thoroughbred Record. For training Imp, he had an arrangement with Harness in which Brossman bore the training expenses and split the purse winnings with Harness. Imp raced at ages two and three in Harness’s name along and at ages four through six for the partnership of Harness and Brossman. Imp began her career on May 22, 1896, by winning a half-mile race at the old Oakley course near Cincinnati. Four days later, she ran third four days later in the Sapphire Stakes. She went on to win three of eleven starts with six placings as a two-year-old while racing primarily at Oakley and Latonia; her other two wins were in overnight company. As a juvenile, she could certainly be described as useful, but no one would have picked her out as a future champion at this stage of her career. Imp began raising eyebrows for her durability if not her class as a three-year-old, eventually winning fourteen of 50 races that year and placing in another 33 events. She began her season in April and raced 21 times through June at the Newport and Latonia tracks in Kentucky. She took some time to race herself into winning condition but eventually won four of these races, all $250 overnighters at six and seven furlongs. In July she moved across the river to Oakley, racing five times and scoring once in a mile race. In August she went to Chicago and over the next four months made twenty-four starts at the city’s Harlem and Lakeside tracks. Mostly she ran against $1200 and $1400 platers for $400 purses, but near the end of the season scored a four-length win over colts at seven furlongs and finished the year with a fifteen-length win at a mile in November 15. The general class of her races can be gauged from the fact that from all her efforts, she netted but $4,934 for the season. So far Imp had proven nothing more than a very consistent and durable selling-class sprinter, but her last two wins by wide margins apparently set Brossman to dreaming of bigger things. Improving with maturity, she began winning right away when returned to racing in April of 1898, winning four straight races at Newport at distances ranging from five and one-half furlongs to a mile and fifty yards before being shipped to Chicago. At Lakeside, she added her fifth straight win in a mile race by ten lengths before running second in a five-furlong affair two days later. Brossman gave her eleven days off, and she responded with two six-length wins at one and one-sixteenth miles and one and one-eighth miles. By June 3, Imp was ten-for-eleven and Brossman began dreaming still bigger dreams, shipping her to New York with the Suburban Handicap in mind. Imp easily won her first Eastern start in a nine-furlong overnight affair at Gravesend, but she was still not taken seriously for the Suburban and ran about as well as expected, finishing sixth. After another sixth in an overnight sprint at Gravesend, Brossman took Imp back to Chicago, where she won two overnight races at one and one-sixteenth miles and one and one-eight miles, respectively, before going into a seven-race losing streak. Imp began regaining her best form in September, winning a nine-furlong overnight race to snap her losing skid. In her next race, the nine-furlong Monadock Stakes at Hawthorne, she picked up her first stakes victory; two days later, she added the seven-furlong Austin Selling Stakes to her tally. Before the end of the month, she had scored three more wins including the six-furlong Speed Stakes at Harlem and the seven-furlong Dash Stakes at Hawthorne, and she raced five more times before the end of the season, winning two to bring her four-year-old record to twenty-one wins and nine placings from thirty-five starts. Her seasonal earnings of $12,340 more than tripled her career bankroll to $18,584. Imp won “only” thirteen of thirty-one starts at five but had her best year from a standpoint of both racing quality and financial reward. After warming up with an opening loss and a win in a one and one-sixteenth mile race at Washington Park, Imp headed east again for another try at the New York cracks. Her first race there was in the Metropolitan Handicap, in which she finished fourth. The race was more impressive than it might have seemed at a passing glance, however, for she was conceding weight to both the first and second horses and got pocketed twice during the running according to the chart. But she then lost five consecutive races before winning a nine-furlong overnight handicap at Morris Park, and she followed up with a dismal race in the Brooklyn Handicap before being given a two-week breather. Imp returned with two overnight wins and was then set to her greatest challenge, the Suburban Handicap, for which she was assigned a relatively light 114 pounds. She got a further break during the forty-five minute delay at the start of the race, much of it caused by the unruly favorite, Banastar. In between twelve false starts, Imp’s jockey, Nate Turner, managed to relieve the mare of part of his weight for a while by standing her next to the rail and resting his foot on it. When the starter’s flag went down, Imp settled in behind the early pacemakers and took the lead after six furlongs. The stretch drive was enlivened by the collapse of part of the infield rail under the press of spectators, causing Imp to have to steer away from the mess, but the mare kept to her business and won by two lengths with Bannockburn second. The time of 2:05-4/5 was a stakes record, and Imp thus became the first mare to win the Suburban in its sixteen runnings. Imp suffered four straight defeats before she won again, but once again she pulled out a major effort for a big race. This was the Brighton Handicap, in which she was asked to concede nine pounds actual weight to champion three-year-old colt Ethelbert. Making all the running, Imp won by a length in track record time. She then put together a string of six more stakes victories in the Islip Stakes, Ocean Handicap, Turf Handicap (a grass race, unusual for the day), First Special Stakes, Second Special Stakes, and Oriental Handicap, closing out her season with earnings of $30,735. By many observers, she was rated the best American horse In training that year, regardless of age or sex. By this time, Imp was a tradition in New York, where the popular song “My Coal Black Lady” was played by the racecourse band after each of her victories. She wasn’t doing too badly in her native Ohio, either. On her return home from New York, a flower-wreathed Imp was paraded through the streets of Chillicothe, Ohio to the music of marching bands with her regular jockey, Pete Clay, in the saddle and wearing her racing silks. Her groom, a big African-American named Tom Tandy, was almost as much a celebrity as she; before each of her races, he would plead with all and sundry not to “wake her up,” and when she came home a winner he would howl like a banshee, to the great delight of spectators. (Tandy’s caution against “waking” Imp referred to her very low-headed running style, which caused her to look almost sleepy even while streaking along at top speed.) As a six-year-old, Imp was sent back to New York with a repeat try at the Suburban in mind. She did not accomplish this goal, running fourth, but she did win the Parkway Handicap and Second Special Stakes over the Suburban winner, Kinley Mack, and also won the one and three-quarters mile Advance Stakes by an estimated thirty lengths, setting a new American record of 2:59-1/5 for the distance. The last stakes victory of Imp’s career came on October 25, 1900, when she won the Mahopac Handicap at the inaugural Yonkers meeting under top weight of 126 pounds. She had won but eight of her thirty-one starts at six, but nineteen placings helped boost her seasonal earnings to $18,185. Brossman and Harness went their separate ways at the conclusion of Imp’s six-year-old campaign, and Imp was trained as a seven-year-old by Peter Wimmer. Although she returned to New York and won overnight races at Saratoga and Morris Park, a third in the Saratoga Cup was her best performance in stakes company, and she bowed out of racing with a sixth-place finish in an overnight race at Aqueduct on November 9, 1901. In her long career, Imp had run 171 times for sixty-two wins, thirty-five seconds, and twenty-nine thirds for earnings of slightly more than $70,000 (the exact total varies according to the source consulted). Following the death of Dan Harness in 1902, Imp was sold to Ed A. Tipton for $4,100. He entered her in the 1902 Sheepshead Bay fall sale, where she was purchased by John E. Madden for a reported $6,000. She did not enjoy a long broodmare career, dying in 1909, but did produce five named foals for Madden, among them the stakes-winning colt Faust. It is primarily as a race mare that she is remembered, however, and in 1965 her enduring quality was recognized by admission to the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame. © 2005 by Avalyn Hunter |
