Aristides Wins the Inaugural Kentucky Derby
On this day · 17 May 1875
A small chestnut colt and a 19-year-old jockey turned a single afternoon in Louisville into America's longest-running sporting tradition.
On May 17, 1875, a chestnut colt named Aristides won the first-ever Kentucky Derby at the new Churchill Downs track in Louisville. Before a crowd of roughly 10,000 spectators, he beat 14 rivals in a field of 15, finishing the day’s headline event by two lengths.
The winning ride belonged to Oliver Lewis, a 19-year-old African American jockey, while the colt was conditioned by trainer Ansel Williamson, himself a formerly enslaved horseman. Both men were pioneers in a sport then dominated by Black riders and trainers. Aristides was owned and bred by H. Price McGrath.
Aristides covered the distance in 2:37¾, a record for the era’s mile-and-a-half Derby trip.
The race the colt launched has run every year since, making the Kentucky Derby the longest continuously held major sporting event in the United States. Aristides is now memorialized in bronze at Churchill Downs.
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