Real Delight

Real Delight (1949–1969), was an American Thoroughbred race horse bred by the famous Calumet Farm of Lexington, Kentucky.

Her sire was one of America’s foundation stallions, the influential Bull Lea (sire of seven Hall of Famers, including his other great daughters: Two Lea, Bewitch, and Twilight Tear). Her dam was the stakes-winning Blue Delight (10 wins out of 24 starts) out of Blue Larkspur, a racehorse Blood-Horse magazine considered number 100 in its list of the Twentieth Century’s greatest racehorses.

Real Delight was a huge, rangy filly, standing 17 hands. Throughout her second year, she was bothered by a bad knee and did not race as a two-year-old. A Calumet horse, she was trained by Hall of Famer Horace A. Jones. Horace had become the head trainer by the birth of Real Delight while his father, Ben A. Jones, became Calumet's general manager.

At three, Real Delight won eleven of twelve starts. She began in combination races, meaning mixed fields of claimers and allowance runners, but quickly stepped up in class after two easy wins. Her first stakes victory came in the Ashland Stakes, followed by her only loss at three, and the only time she competed against males. Even so, at a sprint distance of six and one half furlongs not suited to her long legs, she closed fast, losing by only a head. Often ridden by the Hall of Fame jockey Eddie Arcaro, she then took eight stakes in a row, including the Kentucky Oaks, Coaching Club American Oaks, Black-Eyed Susan Stakes (once known as the Pimlico Oaks), Ashland Stakes, Modesty Handicap, and Beldame Stakes.