Dancer's Image

Dancer's Image (April 10, 1965 – December 26, 1992) was an American Thoroughbred racehorse who is the only winner in the history of the Kentucky Derby to have been disqualified. Owned and bred by businessman Peter Fuller, the son of former Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller, the colt was trained by Lou Cavalaris, Jr. and ridden in the Derby by jockey Bobby Ussery.

Racing history

At age two, Dancer's Image won graded stakes races in Maryland and at Woodbine Racetrack in Ontario, Canada. At age three, in the lead-up to the 1968 U.S. Triple Crown races, he won several more races including the Grade I Wood Memorial Stakes. For the Kentucky Derby, he was a second choice among bettors to Calumet Farm's Florida Derby and Blue Grass Stakes winner Forward Pass. Plagued by sore ankles, on the Sunday prior to the Derby, the handlers of Dancer's Image had a veterinarian give him a tablet of phenylbutazone, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory commonly used to relieve inflammation of the joints which was legal at many race tracks in the United States at the time but not at Churchill Downs. Following dosage, the medication would dissipate from the horse's system during the six days before the Derby. Phenylbutazone in 2010 was one of the most commonly used medications in horse racing. By 1986, phenylbutazone was so commonly used that in the 1986 Kentucky Derby, thirteen of the sixteen horses entered were running on the medication. Forty years after the disqualification, owner Peter Fuller still believes he was a victim of a set-up, due to his being a wealthy civil rights sympathizer from Boston who offended the Kentucky racing aristocracy by donating Dancer's $62,000 prize for a previous victory to Coretta Scott King two days after her husband's murder.