Bittersweet Kiss

Frank Hayes loved horses and his ambition in life had always been to be a jockey. Unfortunately for Frank he grew a bit too much, and at a little over 140 pounds, was just slightly too heavy for the job. Still wanting to work with horses however, he settled for a career as a trainer and stableman instead. An Irish-American, Hayes was born in 1888 and lived in Brooklyn, New York with his mother and sister.

He found employment, initially as a stable hand, with James K.L. Frayling, a horse breeder, who was quick to spot Frank’s potential. Apparently he had a way with horses and seemed to be able to get the best out of them. Frank Hayes soon gained a reputation as an excellent trainer of thoroughbreds.

A first class trainer of horses he might have been, but the passion to be a jockey still burned away inside him. However, owing to his size and weight, any horse he rode would have been at a distinct disadvantage, and so it seemed that his dream of one day becoming a jockey would never be realised. By the time he was 35 years old Frank had all but resigned himself to a life out of the competitive saddle.

All that was to change however, at the beginning of June 1923, when Miss A.M. Frayling, the owner of a horse called Sweet Kiss, that Frank had been training, decided to enter the horse in its first race at a meeting at Belmont Park, New York on June 4th. Owing to the short notice, Miss Frayling was finding it difficult to find a jockey to ride her horse in the race. The fact that Sweet Kiss was a 20/1 outsider, may also have played a part in the apparent jockey shortage. Frank immediately saw his chance and offered to ride Miss Frayling’s horse in the race. She initially refused his offer, thinking him too heavy, but after promising her that he could lose the required weight in time, she reluctantly agreed to let him ride Sweet Kiss.

Opportunity had finally come knocking, and Frank wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Sorry, couldn’t resist! He immediately undertook an intense weight loss programme and through a combination of a near starvation diet and rigorous exercise, succeeded in reducing his weight from 142 pounds to 130 pounds in little more than 48 hours. He was to ride in the second race of the day, a steeplechase. With the clear favourite being a horse called Gimmie, Sweet Kiss was expected to be little more than an also ran.

When race day arrived, Frank was ready to take his big chance. Fellow jockeys would later remark on how excited he seemed, to be finally making his debut as a jockey. Just before the start he reportedly turned to the other riders and said “Today’s a good day to make history“. How prophetic his comment would come to be.

The steeplechase was to be run over 2 miles and included 12 jumps. The favourite, Gimmie, unsurprisingly took an early lead and continued to lead the charge until the final turn when Sweet Kiss, with Frank in the saddle, unexpectedly moved to the front. With Hayes leaning forward, and seemingly whispering in the horse’s ear, they passed the winning post a head in front of Gimmie. Frank had done it. He had won his first race at the age of 35 on a 20/1 outsider.

However, as the horse began to slow to a canter, things didn’t seem quite right. Miss Frayling and race officials were just preparing to congratulate Frank, who was still leaning forward in a bizarre manner, when after about 100 yards, and just as Sweet Kiss was coming to a halt, he fell off. Track physician Dr John Voorhees ran to his aid, but was too late. Frank Hayes was dead!

At some indeterminate point in the race, but thought by witnesses to have been somewhere in the middle, he had suffered a fatal heart attack, believed to have been caused by a combination of his rapid weight loss and the excitement of the occasion. Amazingly, the deceased jockey had somehow remained in the saddle even over a number of fences. Astonishingly, Sweet Kiss had won the race with a dead man slumped on her back.

Out of respect for the dead jockey the race was not contested, post-race formalities were waived, and so Belmont’s jockey club simply declared him the winner without the traditional weighing-in. Frank Hayes thus became the first, and so far only, person to achieve victory in a competitive sporting engagement post-mortem.

Frank was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York in the racing silks he had been wearing on that victorious but fateful day.

Unfortunately for Sweet Kiss and her owner, jockeys are a superstitious lot, and no one was prepared to ride her thereafter. The horse also gained a new name and was thenceforth known as Sweet Kiss of Death. Miss Frayling was eventually forced to retire the mare, despite boasting an impressive 100% record of one race, one win.

Sources:

https://www.headstuff.org/culture/history/1900-present/flogging-dead-jockey-frank-hayes/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Hayes_(jockey)