“He jumped out and I damn near fell off,” is how my Great Great Uncle Roscoe “Golden Goose” Goose so eloquently described the colt Donerail’s unexpected move that resulted in the greatest longshot win in Kentucky Derby history on May 3rd, 1913.
Two weeks earlier Carl Ganz won the Kentucky Oaks jockeying the filly, Cream. Now there’s not anything terribly unusual about that race except for that the Oaks and Derby were run two weeks apart, and that Carl Ganz was Roscoe Goose’s younger brother. Roscoe was already established as a jockey, so when Carl began his own jockeying career he chose to ride under the name of Ganz, the German version of Goose, to avoid confusion with his brother.