With a century and a half under its belt, the Kentucky Derby (G1) has earned its status as the most important race on the American Thoroughbred calendar. With the thrill of victory comes prestige, fame, and fortune.
That fortune doesn't just spawn from the $5 million purse the 1 1/4-mile race offers—$3.1 million of which is awarded to the winner—but also from the increase in value the winner receives as a stallion prospect.
Nineteen 3-year-olds are set to chase that guarantee when the Churchill Downs starting gate opens May 3, but it's a future that is impossible for the 20th: the gelding Burnham Square.
So why geld a horse on the path to the Kentucky Derby if the race would increase his value?
"To have a stallion opportunity, you have to have a racehorse first," said Clay Whitham, who co-manages Whitham Thoroughbreds with his mother, Janis. "Unless he can go to the races and be successful, he was never going to have a stallion career in the first place."
Had Burnham Square never been gelded, it's highly likely the son of Liam's Map would have never became a grade 1 winner in the Blue Grass Stakes (G1) or topped the Kentucky Derby leaderboard with 130 qualifying points.
"He wouldn't be where he is today if he was a colt," his trainer Ian Wilkes said.
Sent to Florida along with all the Whitham Thoroughbred yearlings, Burnham Square showed a lack of focus in the early breaking process.
"The assessment was he was a little hard to handle," Whitham said. "He wouldn't pay attention and learn his lessons to try and get him into the routine of dealing with people and going to the track."
"It's all on the individual. You geld the horse for a reason," Wilkes said. "Maybe they develop and get too heavy, you need to line them up a fraction. Or maybe they're not developing, or maybe it's the attitude—unruly. You don't want to see anyone get hurt and some of these colts can be tough to handle and do need to be gelded."
Some of that early unruliness perhaps came from the dam, Linda. A homebred for the Whithams just like Burnham Square, Linda showed her talent with a victory in the 2016 Mrs. Revere Stakes (G2T) and four graded placings. However, she could be tough on the riders, Wilkes recalling her running off with jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. during training one morning into an area where they collect the horses' waste on the Churchill Downs backstretch.
"Some would say she had a crabby disposition," Whitham said.
Linda had been an alright producer, with daughters English Charm and Lindsey and son Hatch all being five-time winners. However, none of the three had ever come close to stakes success—another reason why Burnham Square's viability in the breeding shed looked slim when he was an unruly youngster.
"You look at his pedigree and you look at him, he's not a stud horse," Wilkes said. "Even if this horse won the Derby, I don't think he'd be a stallion."
That decision was the right call. A few weeks after his gelding, Burnham Square showed improvement in his behavior.
"He was a better pupil and he started learning his lessons and started moving along. We haven't had a problem with him since," Whitham said.
Even as a gelding, Burnham Square still exhibits signs of his strong personality. However, he has matured with age and his equipment change, being more responsive to his riders.
"He gets aggressive, he needs to train," said the gelding's exercise rider, Mark Cutler. "If he gets a day off, he starts kicking the stall and makes my job difficult. He wants to train too hard. As long as we keep him going, he's happy."
Now, Burnham Square is knocking on the door of history. The connections show no signs of regret.
"That's what's great about the (Whitham) family, they don't second-guess about anything," Wilkes said. "They love racing."
Geldings in the Derby
Understandably, the Kentucky Derby has been dominated by colts in its 151 years. However, it's not uncommon to see geldings in the race, most of whom probably were only able to qualify thanks to the gelding process like Burnham Square.
"With our horse, the way he acted and his pedigree, he didn't need to be a colt," Wilkes said. "All these others, they have to give them a shot to be a stallion because you can make a lot of money. Most of them that run in the Derby as colts, their pedigree is there."
Burnham Square will be the 136th gelding to participate in the Derby, marking two Derbies in a row with a gelding after Society Man ran 16th in 2024. Should he win, he'd become the 10th to do so and the first since Mine That Bird in 2009.
Success for geldings date back to the very first gelding to run in the Derby, Vagrant, who took home the $2,950 prize in the second running of the race in 1876. By 1888, geldings had gone 3-for-10 after victories by Apollo (1882) and Macbeth II (1888). A gelding would not win the Derby again until the 1910s when future Hall of Famers Old Rosebud (1914) and Exterminator (1918) wore the roses. Paul Jones would follow in 1920.
Clyde Van Dusen's victory in 1929 began a long 74-year drought for geldings until the "gutsy gelding" Funny Cide finally broke through in 2003.
Funny Cide's career spanned into his 7-year-old season, capping his career with a victory in Finger Lakes' 2007 Wadsworth Memorial Handicap and a career record of 11-6-8 from 38 starts for $3,529,412 in earnings.
Hopes for A Long Career
That's the benefit of having a gelding at the top level this early: the potential of a long and successful racing career in an era that sees its stars quickly retire after a few top-level wins. That pressure is not there for Burnham Square.
"We're all hopeful that he'll be able to have a long racing career," Whitham said. "We look out there and think if he can keep doing what he's doing and show the talent that he has, we'd love to see him go on and run at 4 and 5."
When Funny Cide retired, he had a massive fan base and took up residence at the Kentucky Horse Park near Lexington so they could visit him. Should Burnham Square continue on his current path, he could see a similar postracing lifestyle at a place like Old Friends Farm near Georgetown, Ky., home of the Whitham's first Derby starter, McCraken.
"He's already a grade 1 winner, he's accomplished a lot," Whitham said. "For a horse like that that has a following and would be recognized, some place like Old Friends would be fantastic."
