What happened to Upset? The horse that beat Man O' War

[Merlinsky]

I read that the starter was a replacement for the normal one who was sick, and that this guy once kept a field of horses for an hour before the race went off. They were just behind the barrier constantly messing up the line, I guess.

I have someone I'll ask about some of the things like the start and Upset to find out what's apocryphal. I don't know about the 20 lengths, but supposedly they knew MOW could wind himself up if they banged into him so they tried to burn his energy at the beginning. His neighbors at the barrier were misbehaving on purpose.

[Dunbar]

As a kid I remember thinking what a terrific coincidence it was that the only horse to beat Man O' War was named Upset. Then I heard that the word "upset" didn't have that particular meaning until AFTER Man O' War's defeat at the hands of Upset. (which was perhaps a Beamonesque effort on the part of Upset).

I wasn't particularly upset about having my "coincidence" ruined. It also seemed pretty cool that horseracing had changed the English language. Then I read that it WAS a coincidence after all. "upset" was already used before the 1919 race to mean a surprise victory by an underdog.

I just tried to verify this in my 1971 OED, but I couldn't find that definition even listed, which is odd in itself. But I did find a couple of online references to a word researcher named George Thompson who in 2002 found some newspaper uses of upset (as in surprise victory) dating back to the late 19th C.

http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=2435
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upset

So now I'm back to thinking it was an amazing coincidence.


--Dunbar