Cot Campbell

There wasn’t any sort of multi-generational family love affair with thoroughbred racing that tugged on Cot Campbell’s heart strings and convinced him to enter the sport. As Campbell tells the tale, if he had gone by his father’s experience in the game he never would have gotten involved.

Inducted

2018

Born

Sept. 27, 1927, New Orleans, Louisiana

Died

Oct.27, 2018, Aiken, South Carolina

Biography

There wasn’t any sort of multi-generational family love affair with thoroughbred racing that tugged on Cot Campbell’s heart strings and convinced him to enter the sport. As Campbell tells the tale, if he had gone by his father’s experience in the game he never would have gotten involved.

“My father sold a Coca-Cola bottling franchise in 1940 to go into the racehorse business and within two years he was broke,” Campbell said. “I didn’t inherit any racehorse head start from him. In fact, it was quite the opposite.”

Nonetheless, Campbell became passionate about the sport and wanted in. Born in New Orleans in 1927, Campbell entered racing following a successful career in the advertising business. Looking for a way to minimize the financial risk of purchasing racehorses, Campbell came up with the idea of syndicating partnerships in horses. The idea was to maximize purchasing power, bring new owners into the game, and reduce the monetary gamble involved.

Dogwood Stable was born — and Campbell has never looked back.

“I went into racing because I loved horses,” Campbell said. “At first, it was a way to have some fun, but then it evolved into a way of life and a business. I never started out to cut a wide swath. It just gradually happened.”

Founded in Aiken, South Carolonia, in 1967, Dogwood Stable, had its first stakes winner two years later when Mrs. Cornwallis won the Alcibiades at Keeneland. Dogwood went on to campaign more than 80 stakes winners, including Summer Squall, winner of the 1990 Preakness, and Palace Malice, winner of the Belmont in 2013.

Summer Squall also won the Hopeful, Saratoga Special, and Blue Grass, among others, and sired Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Charismatic and the Dogwood-owned Breeders’ Cup winner Storm Song. Both Storm Song and steeplechase standout Inlander, winner of the prestigious Colonial Cup, were Eclipse Award winners for Dogwood. Palace Malice, meanwhile, won the Metropolitan Handicap, Jim Dandy, and Gulfstream Park Handicap in addition to the Belmont and earned more than $2.6 million.

Overall, Seven Dogwood partnership horses earned $1 million or more. Other standouts for the partnership have included Dominion, Domynsky, Nassipour, Southjet, Wallenda, Trippi, Smok’n Frolic, Limehouse, Cotton Blossom, and Aikenite.

More than 1,200 people participated in Dogwood ownership throughout the years and the partnership paved the way for hundreds of other groups that have followed. Campbell was both modest and proud that Dogwood set the standard.

“Well, if I didn’t do it someone else certainly would have sooner or later,” Campbell said of the partnership concept. “One of the things I’m happiest about is the fact that partnerships have brought people into the sport who would not have been able to do it on their own. It has energized racing and convinced a lot of talented and dedicated people to get into the game.”

A member of The Jockey Club, Campbell also served as a trustee of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. He was the Thoroughbred Club of America’s Honored Guest in 2004 and received the Eclipse Award of Merit in 2012. He also found the time to author three books, “Lightning in a Jar,” “Rascals and Racehorses,” and “Memoirs of a Longshot.”

“I’ve had an absolutely wonderful life. A hell of a lot of it is due to the lady I married (Anne Campbell) and a hell of a lot of it is due to the horses," Campbell said. "My career in racing has taken me to Japan and Dubai and all over Europe. I’ve done business with the Aga Khan and Queen Elizabeth and Sheikh Mohammed. My life has been adventurous, glamorous, exciting and tumultuous … and no one could be more aware of it and more appreciative of it.”

Campbell died in 2018 at the age of 91.