Searching (horse)
Searching was a racehorse. Searching was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1978, five years after her death.
The filly was born in 1952 at Claiborne Farm near Paris, Kentucky where the Wheatley Stable (founded in 1926 by Gladys Mills Phipps and her brother, Ogden L. Mills) bred and raised its horses. After the Second World War, Gladys's son Ogden Phipps purchased a number of horses from the estate of Colonel Edward R. Bradley and his Idle Hour Stock Farm. Among them was the good racing mare Big Hurry.
Phipps bred Big Hurry (the racing daughter of Bradley’s favorite stallion, Black Toney, out of Bradley’s legendary broodmare La Troienne), to the fourth winner of the U.S. Triple Crown Champion, War Admiral. From this match came a bay filly he named Searching. But after she raced poorly in her first 20 starts under Hall of Fame trainer Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, Phipps sold her to Ethel Jacobs, the wife of another Hall of Fame trainer, Hirsch Jacobs. Under Hirsch, Searching improved immensely. In her next 69 starts, many of them important stakes, she was in the money most of the time.
