North Hampton NH Archives - New England Historical Society

The New Hampshire thoroughbred Dancer’s Image won, then lost, the Kentucky Derby in 1968 because his owner made a kind gesture to the widow of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Peter Fuller, the horse’s owner, believed that to the day he died. He was convinced resentful white southerners stripped him of his prize because he was a New Englander who supported the civil rights movement.

The 1973 Kentucky Derby

Bigger, Tougher, Stronger

Peter Fuller was the son of car dealer and former Massachusetts governor Alvan Fuller and Viola Davenport Fuller. He was born on March 22, 1923 in Boston with an intestinal disease that stunted his growth and kept him out of school until he was 10.

Fuller spent the next 15 years compensating. He told the New York Times he spent every waking hour making himself bigger, tougher and stronger.

Fuller graduated from Harvard, where he wrestled and boxed, and served in the Marines during World War II. He managed the boxing career of Tom McNeeley and turned down an offer to manage Rocky Marciano. His father’s car business made him rich, and he bought his first thoroughbred in 1951. He kept his horses at Runnymede Farm in North Hampton, N.H., where he lived.

Fuller bought Noor’s Image in 1958 and bred her to Native Dancer, a celebrated stallion. He named the horse after his father but then changed his name to Dancer’s Image when he decided to sell him. His wife Joan begged him to keep the beautiful horse and he bought him back at auction.

Dancer’s Image

Native Dancer

The Kentucky Derby, the most exciting two minutes in sports, has a fast pace set by more than a dozen unpredictable three-year-old colts.

The day before the 1968 Kentucky Derby, Peter Fuller had such confidence in Dancer’s Image that he practiced the walk from his box to the winner’s circle at Churchill Downs in Louisville. He even composed an acceptance speech. He demanded 50 tickets rather than the usual four allotted to owners.

Dancer’s Image wove through 13 rivals from last place to win the Kentucky Derby by a length and a half. Three days later, Churchill Downs ruled Fuller had to return the $122,600 winner’s purse. Track officials discovered the painkiller phenylbutazone, also known as bute, in the horse’s system.

Dancer’s Image had sore ankles and a veterinarian had given him the drug, commonly used to relieve inflammation of the joints. It was legal at many U.S. racetracks, but not at Churchill Downs. Why the drug appeared on Dancer’s Image’s test results remains a mystery.

Bute

Bute disappears from a horse’s system six days after it’s administered. It had been given to Dancer’s Image more than six days before the Kentucky Derby. After the race, Churchill Downs followed its usual practice of testing the winner and one horse chosen at random. That’s when the test results showed bute in Dancer’s Image’s system. The second place finisher, Forward Pass, was declared the winner, though he was not tested.

Peter Fuller believed he was set up. Either someone sneaked into the stall and gave Dancer’s Image the drug or someone altered the test results.

Fuller thought he was targeted because of his support for Martin Luther King, Jr. Two days after the civil rights leader’s assassination in Memphis that year, Fuller gave a purse of $62,000 won by Dancer’s Image to King’s widow, Coretta Scott King.

Churchill Downs had special reason for animus toward King and his supporters.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The year before, civil rights protesters held a sit-in on the stretch run in the middle of a race at the racetrack. They had protested for months, demanding an end to housing discrimination. Tensions grew as the 1967 Kentucky Derby approached, and the protesters’ leader, A.D. King, asked his brother Martin for help. Martin Luther King, Jr., came to Louisville and led a downtown rally in downtown on the day of the Derby. He feared a demonstration at the racetrack would lead to bloodshed.

King was murdered on April 4, 1968. Fuller didn’t announce his gift to Coretta Scott King, but it made the news in Louisville in the run-up to the Derby. Fuller feared reprisal. He received death threats, one of his stables was set on fire and Dancer’s Image was given a racial slur as a nickname. Fuller asked Churchill Downs for extra security. He didn’t get it.

He described the guard at his barn as “an old fella sitting in a chair and asleep.”

Sports Story of the Year

The controversy filled the news. Sports Illustrated called it the sports story of the year.

Peter Fuller fought for years to have Dancer’s Image declared the rightful winner of the Kentucky Derby. He appealed the racetrack’s ruling to the Kentucky State Racing Commission, which sided with Churchill Downs. He took his case to court and, in 1970, won. But then he lost on appeal.

Runnymede Farm, Dancer’s Image home

He later said he didn’t regret the publicity about the gift. In 1998 he told the Boston Herald, “It was just my way of saying, ‘Hell, this was a hell of a guy,’ and I’d say that to any redneck in the world.”

Dancer’s Image came in third behind Forward Pass in the Preakness Stakes, the second leg of the Triple Crown. He was disqualified again for bumping another horse. Fuller decided to retire him after that race because of his sore ankles. He was sent to stud and died in Japan at age 27 on December 26, 1992.

Kentucky lifted its ban on bute in 1974. It was so commonly used that by 1986 13 of the 16 horses entered in the Kentucky Derby were running on it.

Peter Fuller said he wouldn’t take another horse to the Kentucky Derby unless he thought it could win. He never found that horse, but if he had he had a name for it: ‘Dancer’s Revenge.’

He died at age 89 on May 14, 2012 in Portsmouth, N.H. To this day, a weathered billboard at Runnymede Farm proclaims Dancer’s Image the winner of the 1968 Kentucky Derby.

This story was updated in 2022.

Champlain in New Hampshire

According to the memoir written by the Rev. Edmund F. Slafter, on July 15, 1605, Champlain and De Monts sailed from Cape Porpoise, Maine, past Rye, N.H., and anchored off Little Boar’s Head in North Hampton, N.H.

On the 15th of July, De Monts and his party left Cape Porpoise, keeping in and following closely the sinuosities of the shore. They saw no savages during the day, not any evidences of any, except a rising smoke, which they approached, but found to be a lone beacon, without any surroundings of human life. Those who had kindled the fire had doubtless concealed themselves, or had fled in dismay. Possibly they had never seen a ship under sail.

A Gliding Monster

Slafter knew that European fishermen preceded Champlain. Year after year they came to the Atlantic coast of North America during the summer for the abundant cod.

The fishermen who frequented our northern coast rarely came into these waters, and the little craft of our voyagers, moving without oars or any apparent human aid, seemed doubtless to them a monster gliding upon the wings of the wind. At the setting of the sun, they were near the flat and sandy coast, now known as Wallace’s Sands. They found in vain for a roadstead where they might anchor safely for the night. When they were opposite to Little Boar’s Head, with the Isles of Shoals directly east of them, and the reflected rays of the sun were still throwing their light upon the waters, they saw in the distance the dim outline of Cape Anne, whither thy directed their course, and, before morning, came to anchor near its eastern extremity, in sixteen fathoms of water. Near them were the three well-known islands at the apex of the cape, covered with forest-trees, and the woodless cluster of rocks, now called the Savages, a little further from the shore.

The Merrimack in Pembroke, N.H.

Crayon and Drawing Paper

The next morning five or six Indians timidly approached them in a canoe, and then retired and set up a dance on the shore, as a token of friendly greeting. Armed with crayon and drawing-paper, Champlain was despatched to seek from the natives some important geographical information. Dispensing knives and biscuit as a friendly invitation, the savages gathered about him, assured by their gifts, when he proceeded to impart to them their first lesson in topographical drawing. He pictured to them the bay on the north side of Cape Anne, which he had just traversed, and signifying to them that he desired to know the course of the shore on the south, they immediately gave him an example of their apt scholarship by drawing with the same crayon an accurate outline of Massachusetts Bay, and finished up Champlain’s own sketch by introducing the Merrimac River, which, not having been seen, owing to the presence of Plum Island, which stretches like a curtain before its mouth, he had omitted to portray.

Bonus Information

The intelligent natives volunteered a bit of history. By placing six pebbles at equal distances, they intimated that Massachusetts Bay was occupied by six tribes, and governed by as many chiefs. He learned from them, likewise, that the inhabitants of this region subsisted by agriculture, as did those at the mouth of the Saco, and that they were very numerous.

The photo, “Samuel de Champlain by Ronjat,” is by Book author: François Pierre Guillaume Guizot. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. This story updated in 2022.

North Hampton NH

Dancer’s Image, the NH Horse that Won and Lost the Kentucky Derby