Race of the Year

by Tecla Markosky

For one day in late March, amidst the din of the cicadas and the velvety blooms of the azaleas, the population of the idyllic town of Camden, S.C., multiplies by ten. This year will mark the 75th anniversary of the Carolina Cup, one of the most popular cultural events in South Carolina.

“It’s up there with the Carolina-Clemson football game,” says Wendy Kingsley, assistant director of the Carolina Cup Racing Association. “More people come to the race than live in the county during those few days.”

For nearly 75 straight years, the city of Camden has hosted what is largely considered one of the most important steeplechase races in the country – and with it comes the attention of horse aficionados from around the world.

“We get probably fifteen thousand people from out of state, up and down the eastern seaboard,” says Pam Mosier, media coordinator for the Carolina Cup Racing Association. “People come from all over.”

Kingsley says the Carolina Cup Racing Association, a not-for-profit group, works closely with local organizations and civic groups in planning the annual event and then donates the profits to the Kershaw County Medical Center. “We work very closely with the Chamber of Commerce, the Fine Arts Center in Camden, the Historic Society, the Camden Jaycees and the Camden Junior Welfare League,” she says.

Now, with its 75th anniversary just around the corner, Kingsley and Mosier are more excited than ever. “We will have a whole week of events prior to the race. We want to have a festival to celebrate the 75th,” Kingsley says. “It’s a milestone and there will be a celebration.”

Kingsley, whose own passion for riding fuels her love of the Cup, married a jockey and is now raising her family in the spirit of racing. Beaming with delight, she tells the mythical origins of steeplechase racing. Even the name ‘steeplechase,’ Kingsley says, is steeped in legend. “It started in the 1700s. There were two gentlemen who were riding home from church and could see another church and they jumped everything in their path. This happened in Ireland,” she says. “Steeple chasing is horseracing over fences. It’s just like any other horse race except the surface is grass and not dirt,” she continues. “It’s more challenging because it’s on grass and the distance is longer. Modern steeplechase racing is a circuit,” she says. “The circuit starts in Florida in March and ends here in November.”

If you know small Southern towns, white picket fences, sprawling oak trees and locals with long memories and warm smiles, then you can imagine Camden, South Carolina. Camden is the state’s oldest inland city and is famous for its Civil War history – and its horses. The town has nicknamed itself the “the Steeplechasing Capital of the World.”

“It was the warm climate and sandy turf of this area that started it all. It’s a desirable training area,” Mosier says. “It’s what brought people here in the first place.”

“They’d come down from the North,” Kingsley adds. “It was a one day trip on the train. People would come and spend the winters.”
“The Springdale Race course was created in the 1920s by two gentlemen that came to Camden to pursue equine and canine sporting,” she says.

The facilities have been used ever since for racing and training of thoroughbreds. In 1930 the first Carolina Cup took place and every year, consecutively, with the exception of three years during World War II, the Carolina Cup has been held.
Today, the Springdale Race course is quiet and expansive, carved out of the woods, just a few turns away from the highway, and splintered with white fencing. It is the essence of small-town Southern elegance—and the quiet mastery of equine racing.
It’s the course, Mosier and Kingsley agree, that adds the magic ingredient to create the most remarkable racing events in the Southeast every year.

“For one thing, it was the first full length steeplechase track in the country where all the jumps are visible from the viewing area,” Mosier explains.

“The Carolina Cup race has such a force – it’s one fabulous lawn party. It’s a wonderful tailgating atmosphere. People come dressed to the nines,” Kingsley says.

“The garments the ladies wear are picked out months in advance and called their ‘cup outfits.’ It’s a very big deal,” Mosier says. “We love it. It’s a wonderful tradition.”

“The parking spots are coveted,” she continues. “They get passed down in generations, fought over in divorces.”
The cup, more than anything, says Mosier, drips with tradition. “My daughter was raised around the cup,” she says. “She remembers going, being carried on her daddy’s shoulders. She went to college and watched the race from the college area. Now she’s grown and has a parking spot of her own.”

Each year the race grows in attendance. “The first race in 1930 had 3,000 spectators,” Kingsley says. “Seventy-five years later almost 75,000 people come,” she says. “We also receive over 100 busses from universities from South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia,” she says.

This year will be Hope Cooper’s fifty-first consecutive Carolina Cup. In the half century she has attended the race, Hope says not much has changed. “The basic feeling is the same for a person attending today as a person attending in 1930. In 1930, it was primarily a family gathering, where you got in an old wooden-sided station wagon and packed a picnic and enjoyed the racing,” she says. “The only changes are the amount of people and the way they attend. Fabulous cars, fashion and corporate sponsorships are all new.”

Today, Cooper manages the National Steeplechase Museum, which stands in midst of the training site. Immediately outside her office window, a trainer leads a horse quietly out to the open green.

“We are constantly reminded of our heritage,” Hope says, looking out to the pair.

Cooper has no doubt the power and significance of the race will continue to grow.
“The adoption of the race by college fans has grown so large we built an area for them,” she says. “The legacy lives on, especially with the young people, and that’s what’s so amazing, the continued growth.”