Throughout history, several early favorites have missed out on the Hambletonian. In virtually all cases, though, it’s been a matter of illness or accident. That was not, however, the case with the super-talented Fireglow. Close to 100 years later the circumstances of his death are still shrouded in mystery. The question is, did somebody kill the “the greatest talent ever” just a few weeks prior to the Hambletonian?
As a two-year-old the smallish chestnut son of San Francisco had set a new world record for two year old trotters, which was identical to the time Mr McElwyn had ran in a time trial four years earlier, when winning the Junior Kentucky Futurity for 2-year-olds. Spencer had set a high tempo but faded and toward the end it was a duel between Fireglow and Scotland, the former winning easily by a length in a world record 2:04 (1.17,1) time. Despite the 1925 crop containing top trotters such as Scotland and Spencer, Fireglow had no problems mopping the floor with both of them and the 1928 Hambletonian was a foregone conclusion in everybody’s eyes a few months ahead of the big race. Walter Cox had even proclaimed Fireglow the greatest trotter he had ever trained – and very few disagreed with him.
After a lengthy lay-off, Fireglow made his season debut in the $11,000 Championship Stallion Stake on North Randall on Aug 15, 1928 and the colt immediately made headlines – but unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. With the Hambletonian only two weeks away, he easily won the first heat in 2:04 (1.17,1), with the last quarter in 29 seconds. The second heat, however, saw an incident which James Clark, writing for the Horse Review, claimed “will go down in turf history as being marred by the worst accident that has occurred on any trotting track in many years.” Since Clark’s account is extremely detailed it makes sense to quote most of it in its entirety even though he claimed that if he could “foresee what was to occur during the ‘One Big Day’ we have been looking forward to for many weeks – I am sure that I would, for the first time in my life, have declined to write a report.”. The following lengthy quote is from the August 28, 1928, edition of Horse Review: