Eddie Price as Roscoe Tarleton Goose Kentucky Derby Winner

Presented by Kentucky Humanities

Eddie Price takes us back in history as he portrays Roscoe Tarleton Goose: Kentucky Derby Winner 1891-1971

Roscoe Tarleton Goose was born on a Jeffersontown, Kentucky farm in 1891. Rufus Ganz, his father and a Civil War veteran, changed the family surname to “Goose;”as Ganz was constantly misspelled “Gans,” the German word for “goose.”
After a particularly hard winter, Rufus decided the family was moving to the big city — Louisville. They moved into a small house in the Butchertown area. The Goose family was poor, and Rufus was going blind due to an injury suffered in the war, making it difficult for him to earn a living. Roscoe went to work at an early age, in an effort to help the family’s finances.
His first job working with horses came when he began driving a horse and wagon delivering goods for a department store — driving to Germantown, Limerick, and Snitzelburg. He loved the horses!
Goose was a natural horseman. He was slight of build and fearless. While exercising horses at Churchill Downs, Goose was approached by trainer John Kuprion to ride as a jockey in the Hardin County Fair in Elizabethtown. He scored a number of second- and third-place finishes, solidifying his standing as a prominent young jockey. Soon after, Goose scored five out of six victories at the Kentucky State Fairgrounds races. Roscoe’s early career was threatened to be cut short by “reformers,” who wanted to ban the sport of horse racing and gambling associated with it. Believing horse racing would no longer take place in Kentucky, Goose moved to California to exercise horses and race as a jockey in Juarez, Mexico.
Goose moved back to Kentucky in 1910, and continued to win races and earn larger fees. By autumn of 1910, Roscoe Tarleton Goose was the leading money winning jockey at Churchill Downs and was one of the top riders in America. By 1913, he had attracted the attention of trainer and farm owner Thomas Patrick Hayes. Hayes had a horse called Donerail and wanted Goose to ride him in the Kentucky Derby. Roscoe agreed to train with Donerail, and rider and horse entered the 1913 Kentucky Derby.
In a stunning victory, Roscoe Tarleton Goose and Donerail won the 1913 Kentucky Derby. The odds were set at 91:1, the longest odds of a Derby winner, a record which still stands. After the Derby win of 1913, Goose continued his stellar racing career until his retirement in 1915.

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