On This Day...

Feb. 16, 1957, at Hialeah was a special day on the way to the Kentucky Derby. Five of the nine horses in that year's Derby competed on that afternoon's card. Bold Ruler and Iron Liege ran in the Everglades Stakes, and Better Bee, Federal Hill, and Round Table started in an allowance race.

Mrs. Henry Carnegie Phipps' Bold Ruler was heavily favored in the 1 1/8-mile Everglades against the Calumet Farm entry of Iron Liege and Gen. Duke and four others. Bold Ruler, winner of seven of 10 races his 2-year-old season, had beaten Gen. Duke, Federal Hill, Gallant Man, and seven others in the Bahamas Stakes Jan. 30 at Hialeah and signaled his readiness by working a mile in 1:35 for the Everglades. Iron Liege also was coming in full of run by virtue of a track-record effort for 1 1/16 miles at Hialeah.

But instead of those two, it was Gen. Duke scoring by a head over Bold Ruler while in receipt of a dozen pounds from him. Iron Liege ran third. The time, 1:47 2/5, was a fifth of a second off the track record.

Round Table meanwhile made short work of his task by galloping home by six lengths in time two-fifths of a second off the track record.

It wasn't the last time that Bold Ruler and Iron Liege would meet Gen. Duke.