Meet longtime race chair Dwight Hall
Innovation nation Nashville’s Iroquois is on the vanguard of American steeplechasing: Innovation nation Nashville’s Iroquois is on the vanguard of American steeplechasing: Meet longtime race chair Dwight Hall
The wheel may be the greatest innovation in history. But its invention more than 3,000 years ago would have died on the vine were it not for a second innovation: the axle.
Building the wheel was the easy part. The transformative effect on society required more than a single idea to take root. This cluster of value effect reaches into the steeplechase world, says Iroquois Steeplechase’s Dwight Hall. He’s long used a bundle of interconnected systems to innovate the spring’s richest meet, and one of the circuit’s best courses, and move it into a new era. More simply: He brings lots of stuff together to make it work, and it works really well. Find out how he does it.
By Betsy Burke Parker
The National Steeplechase Association’s richest spring meet, the Iroquois Steeplechase south of Nashville, Tennessee, runs tomorrow, May 11.
The races first ran in 1941. Some 800 miles away and two years later, Dwight Hall was born in Marshallton, Pennsylvania, the northern edge of Chester County’s horse country, so starting a collision course with one of the south’s biggest sporting events.
Hall says it almost didn’t happen: His parents had no horse connection, though his father was friends with one of the region’s soon-to-be legends, Jigs Baldwin, who lived nearby.
“I was fascinated with horses” as a young boy, Hall traces his steps from sleepy Marshallton to Music City. “Dad connected me with Jigs. I’d clean stalls and he’d let me ride. His sister Betty won all the big races that were open to women at the time. She was a helluva rider, and they were big-time.”
It was a varied horse education, Hall says – hunting, showing, racing, and he came up through the ranks, showing ponies, getting catch rides. He rode a few point-to-points, and soon as he turned 16, Hall started taking sanctioned rides. One of his main show horses got to the grand prix level his senior year of high school.
It was a gap year before college that started the slow steer south towards Nashville, albeit in a roundabout way. He took horses to Southern Pines for Baldwin, following the southern ’chase circuit that spring and ending up in Nashville for the Iroquois. He and the horses bunked at Margaret Henley’s Green Pastures in Brentwood, a few miles from the Iroquois course. There were no races after the Iroquois for the horses in his care, and he stayed on at Green Pastures for a while afterwards, becoming quite good friends with the family and discovering that the Tennessee horse scene was surprisingly active.
Thusly, it was to Nashville, not Pennsylvania, he returned to after earning his degree in business administration from the University of Mississippi. Hall worked first as a commercial banker then on computer mainframes, all the while running the horse operation at Green Pastures. The horses went to Jonathan Sheppard or Paul Fout when they were ready to run, but the amateur circuit was huge back then, Hall says – especially on the old Midwest Hunt Race Association schedule, and he kept many of the mounts. He won all the big races at the old Hardscuffle and Atlanta meets, his top victory coming with Easy Henley’s Alvaro II, winner of the 1977 Iroquois.
Dwight Hall and Alvaro II heading to the winner's circle of the 1977 Iroquois Steeplechase. Photo courtesy of Dwight Hall.
Hall retired exactly 10 years later, immediately after finishing four lengths behind champion Flatterer with Melinda Bass’s High Echelon in the 1987 Iroquois.
“I was lucky,” Hall says. “Never had a real bad injury, though I did spend a week in the hospital at Far Hills,” after falling with Traveling Son in the 1978 New Jersey Hunt Cup, crushing his chest. “Plus I’m not the smallest person in the world, and fighting your weight grinds on you. It was great while I did it, but I never looked back.”
Ever Wondered? Who was Iroquois?
The Iroquois Steeplechase was named for Pierre Lorillard’s Iroquois, foaled in Pennsylvania in 1878. The dark bay colt raced in England, the first American-bred to win the Epsom Derby, in 1881. He went on to win the St. Leger and the Prince of Wales Stakes.
Upon his retirement, Iroquois returned to Lorillard's Rancocas Stud in New Jersey, but in 1886, he was purchased by William Hicks Jackson to stand at Belle Meade Stud not far from the Iroquois racecourse south of Nashville.
Jackson inherited the 5,300-acre estate from his father-in-law, and he continued William Giles Harding's practice of holding annual yearling sales at Belle Meade. In 1892, Jackson elected to send his young stock to New York: 53 Belle Meade homebreds sold for a princely $110,050, and Iroquois was leading sire in the U.S. that same year.
The financial panic of 1893 and ensuing economic depression adversely affected breeding operations, which, coupled with reform efforts by an evangelical movement in Tennessee, resulted in shuttering area racetracks and the beginning of the end of gambling in the state.
Iroquois died at the farm in 1899 and was buried at Belle Meade, now a tony, south Nashville country club.
Iroquois founder Mason Houghland's great-grandson Mason Lampton is keeping the steeplechase dynasty going.
First in the first
The winner of the first Iroquois, run in May, 1941, was Rockmayne, ridden by Dinwiddie Lampton.
Dinwiddie Lampton married Iroquois founder Mason Houghland's daughter Nancy. Their son Mason Lampton created the Races at Callaway Gardens. His son, also Mason, is currently active on the circuit, most recently winning the Foxfield Spring feature with Maccabee.
The first Iroquois card featured featured a wildly varied undercard with pony races, a grooms’ race on mules, the Marcellus Frost Hunter Race and the Truxton Purse, named for one of Andrew Jackson’s favorite horses.
Iroquois has run every year since – except in 1945 during World War II. The May 11, 2019 event is the 78th anniversary.
Hall remains involved, directly, with horses these days through Winner’s Circle, a show, hunt and racing barn he operates with daughter Holly near Franklin.
The year before he retired from race riding, in 1986, he’d started helping run the Iroquois at the committee level, eventually rising to race chair in 2008.
Iroquois offers a unique model on the circuit, purses funded solely by box seat sales. Founder Calvin Houghland “never wanted to be dependent on the economy,” Hall explains. “He knew race sponsorships would dip and dive if the economy took a hit.”
To bring Iroquois to the elite level – to get and keep the attention of U.S. trainers as well as reach overseas, and to continue to attract spectators, Hall recognized the need to innovate; they regularly attract English and Irish starters.
When he took over from Henry Hooker, one of Hall’s first programs was to highlight a return-on-investment campaign to lure sponsors. “We build a custom package for sponsors,” he says. “We run their commercials on the Jumbotrons, they’re in the program, in our race promotions.”
It’s a powerful business tool, and local companies eat it up. The race program is fat with ads, and the meet’s flashy website plump with interactive live links leading to dozens of sponsors.
All of them want to be part of the region’s biggest spring sports event, Hall says, and they all crave association to Iroquois’ charity: since 1981, the races have donated more than $10 million to Nashville’s Children’s Hospital.
“We have the same challenges as all the other race meets,” he adds. “We get 25,000 people every year – that’s capacity at this course. You have to provide the spectator, like the sponsor, value for their money.”
“Steeplechasing exists in the U.S. today largely because of people like Dwight Hall, who volunteer their time and labor to run ... meets and provide leadership in countless ways,” says Robert Bonnie, chair of the NSA futures committee. His late father, Ned, was longtime steeplechase horseman and attorney that helped craft the Interstate Horse Racing Act; wife Julie Gomena is an active trainer. “Dwight oversees one of the best race meets in the country. All of us who care about this game owe him a debt of gratitude.”
Innovation: Irrigation
The Percy Warner Park course is fully irrigated, one of the nation’s first, and still one of the nation’s only fully-irrigated tracks. The system is state-of-the-art, Hall says, with pop-up heads that lie flush to the ground watering individual sections of the track through electronic metering sensors. “We’re not just dumping water,” he says. The sophisticated golf course technology uses 100 different readings for moisture and compaction.
Innovation: Amateur to professional
The first Iroquois Steeplechase ran in 1941. Until the early 1990s, the meet was limited to amateur riders “acceptable to the committee.”
“That was a long time ago,” says Hall. “There were a lot more amateurs than there are today, and the Midwest (Hunt Race Association) circuit was active. We had a large number of races, and more meets, and plenty of them could afford to card amateur races.
“As we got more and more sponsors, and more and more money, it started to get more and more difficult to find owners willing to risk putting up an amateur on their horses for these bigger races,” Hall says. “It’s a great tradition – like the Olympics, but the meet couldn’t sustain on amateurs alone as the sport started to change.”
With price tags of $100,000 – and up – for top horses today, owners just aren’t willing to risk a part-time amateur jockey on their horses, Hall says. “We kept one amateur race for a while, but we couldn’t even fill it.”
Ever Wondered? Nashville’s state-of-the-art racecourse
The origins of the Iroquois Steeplechase date back to the 1930s when local sportsmen Marcellus “Pops” Frost, Mason Houghland, John Sloan and others were lamenting the recent closure of Grassland Downs.
According to Walter Durham’s “Grasslands,” the course in Gallatin, northeast of Nashville, hosted the first international steeplechase meets, in 1930 and ‘31. The feature race awarded the solid gold King of Spain cup, designed by King Alfonso XIII. The trophy is still in circulation today, given as the International Gold Cup at Great Meadow.
The Tennessee horsemen contracted Fair Hill racecourse designer William duPont to re-purpose a meadow in the then-remote Percy Warner Park south of Nashville. Labor was provided through the Works Progress Administration.
The course turned out to be an engineering marvel.
The low ends of the three, nested courses are built up nearly 15 feet above grade, culverts draining the water that sluices off homestretch hill. The original natural brush hedges and living wings were identical to Fair Hill’s.
Today, Iroquois runs over National fences, but many remember the living hedges as eminently jumpable, at their best an imposing, yet fair, test of a ‘chaser’s boldness.
A throwback to the meet’s roots still in play are two huge cast-iron bells, one located in the permanent stable courtyard, one in the steward’s tower.
“Obviously, these were (used) before telecommunications,” explains former clerk of the course and chairman of entries Charlie Burke. “The story goes they’d ring the bell in the tower when they were ready for the horses to come up, and they’d ring them back down in the barn to say they’re on their way.”
Each spring, both bells are freshly-painted in the colors of the prior year’s winner. “Who knows how many coats of paint are on them,” Burke adds.
Innovation: Natural hedges to National fences
“Those came out under Henry Hooker’s (chairmanship, in the early 1990s),” Hall says. “They were beautiful, but they were uneven, and a nightmare to maintain.“One year, we had such a drought, the bushes were really thin so we filled them out with clipped brush. I remember I fell (on Charlie Burke’s Jaughs in the 1985 Iroquois) when the poor horse’s legs got all tangled up in the loose brush. There’s a pretty dramatic photo of the horse a stride after landing, his back legs full of brush.”
Innovation: Fan-fare
“We take the standpoint that we’ve got to innovate to keep our crowd engaged,” Hall says. “The hillside boxes are our premium areas. Those are sold out with a waiting list. They’re like football boxes, passed down through generations.”
In three major hospitality areas, Hall says they offer canopied music, food and seating: boxes on homestretch hill and two on the infield. One infield party tent is aimed at the college-age crowd, millennials and Gen Z, with headline music acts and alcohol – with a proof-of-ID wristband, of course. The other party tent is aimed at families with a DJ and kids’ games.
They truck in a video-game arcade, and there’s bungee jumping. “That’s a hot thing,” Hall adds. Food trucks line the rail.
Ever wondered? From Houghland to Houghland to Hooker to Hall
Passing the torch at Iroquois
Iroquois Steeplechase creator Mason Houghland settled in Brentwood, Tennessee south of Nashville where he was an avid sportsman and foxhunter. He called himself a "wildcatter," starting Spur Oil as a single gas station that mushroomed into hundreds around the gasoline-hungry 1930's U.S.
Houghland helped found the Hillsboro Hounds in 1932, serving as the club’s first master and huntsman. He helped start the Iroquois in 1941. His sporting memoir, “Gone Away,” was published in 1949.
He died in 1959, passing the torch to son Calvin.
Calvin Houghland founded and operated Direct Oil and Fleet Transport. He was a director of Gasoline Marketers of America, American Petroleum Institute and the Tennessee Oil Men's Association. An avid sportsman, fisherman, world traveler and philanthropist, Houghland helped form the Volunteer State Horsemen's Foundation, governing body of the Iroquois. Houghland won the Iroquois as a rider in 1943 – on Frederick II, and won it five times as an owner, including with Pierrot Lunaire in 2009, the year of his death.
Calvin Houghland was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 2001, given NSA’s Chairman's Award in 2005 and put in the Iroquois Steeplechase Hall of Fame in 2008.
Henry Hooker served as Iroquois race chair 1991 to 2008. An enthusiastic and gifted sportsman, Hooker joined Hillsboro Hounds in 1963, and was the pack’s long-serving joint-master. His sporting memoir, “Fox, Fin, & Feather,” was published in 2002. He served as NSA board chair through 2006.
“Henry (was) visionary of the Iroquois Steeplechase for years, helping us take our event and transform it into something spectacular," current Iroquois chair Dwight Hall told the Tennesssean after Hooker’s death in 2017, “He’s truly one of the giants upon whose shoulders the Iroquois has been built."
Dwight Hall has helped run the Iroquois since 1986, starting at the committee level and rising to race chair in 2008.
He’s served on the NSA board of directors, as treasurer and chair of the stewards’ advisory committee. He currently chairs the safety committee.
Ever wondered? Who was Percy Warner?
There’s a feel-good, all-American success story behind the development of Percy Warner Park, home to NSA’s premier spring meet, the Iroquois Steeplechase.
Percy Warner Park and adjacent Edwin Warner Park comprise 3,000 acres nine miles southwest of downtown Nashville. “Percy Warner” goes down as the Equibase course designation in the charts.
The parks opened in 1927 on land donated by the family of Percy Warner, a member of Nashville’s Board of Park Commissioners and former head of the city’s streetcar lines and electric utility. A grand sandstone entrance and native limestone rock walls were constructed by the Works Progress Administration during FDR’s New Deal era in the 1930s. It was a way to get America back to work after years of depression.
The parks were named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, the recently-added H.G. Hill parcel home to what’s recognized as the largest old-growth virgin forest in an urban area east of the Mississippi.
In addition to the 1 ½-mile hurdle course, 1 ½-mile timber course and 1 mile turf course, the park has a historic stable block, rings and courses for low to upper level eventing, show rings, miles of trails for riding, hiking and biking, athletic fields, the Warner Park Nature Center and two golf courses.
Percy Warner hosted the 1955 Pan Am Games selection trials.
Ever wondered? WWDD? (What Would Dwight Do – if he was Steeplechase Czar?)
“Because I’m involved in a lot of things, it’s pretty transparent to me. I see a lot of good going on that people don’t realize,” says Hall. “We’ve got a lot of new (owners and trainers) involved, and the growth and promotions committee has done a helluva good job getting the live streaming. It’ll be a viable product (soon.) I’ve gotten where I enjoy spending Saturday afternoon watching the show if I’m not at the races.
“I think the key is more opportunity, more races. Trainers aren’t saying they want richer races they’re saying they want more races. For example, maidens. Colonial Downs will be huge this summer. That’s another five weeks to get horses out of the maidens and into ratings and allowance divisions.”
It’s a trickle-up effect Hall says, something that may not sound sexy, but it affects the bottom line.
“It’s the heart and guts of NSA,” he says. “Find a way to fund purses. What if we took ownership of a facility that’s funding purses out of (for instance) instant racing? There’s your way to fund more races, especially at these smaller meets that are at risk of shutting down because it’s so hard to get sponsors.
"That’s the core of the sport.”
