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When Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt’s Native Dancer absent from his monumental resume: a win in the splashed home nine lengths the best in a seven-fur- Kentucky Derby. A brutally run race that day left the long handicap on a sloppy track at Saratoga in Au- “Gray Ghost of Sagamore” a head short of perfec- gust 1954, capping a career that saw him win 21 tion, and although the Vanderbilt name would leave times from 22 starts, he had long since confirmed an enduring mark on the history of Thoroughbred himself as a legend of the American turf. Just over racing, the legendary owner never had the satisfac- 13 years later, when he was laid to rest alongside tion of bringing a Kentucky Derby trophy to the roll- his damsire Discovery in a serene graveyard under ing hills of Maryland horse country. a grove of trees at his lifelong home at Maryland’s Fast forward some 50 years and the 530-acre Sag- Sagamore Farm, there was but one accomplishment amore Farm, situated just north of Baltimore in the 57