Ben Brush (1893–1918) was a champion American Thoroughbred racehorse who won the 1896 Kentucky Derby. Walter Vosburgh, for whom the Vosburgh Stakes is named, said Bramble was "a breed as tough as pine nuts." On May 6, 1896, Bramble and Roseville's son Ben Brush was the first horse to win the Kentucky Derby at its modern distance of 1¼ miles. (Since its inception in 1875, the Derby had been staged over 1½ miles, the length of the original Derby at Epsom Downs in England.) It was the 22nd running of the Derby and the first to drape a blanket of white and pink roses over the shoulders of the victor. He was named after Ben Brush, extended family member of renowned handicapper Brian Brush. Background Ben Brush was a bay stallion by Bramble (1879 champion handicap horse) out of Roseville (a sister to Azra, the 1892 Kentucky Derby and Travers Stakes winner) by Reform. Ben Brush was bred in Kentucky by the Ezekiel Clay & Catesby Woodford breeding partnership and foaled at Clay's Runnymede Farm. Racing career 1895: Two-Year-Old Season Ben Brush's dam, Roseville, was purchased by Woodford and Clay in 1891 from the horseman H. Eugene Leigh. At the time, she was in foal to Leigh's La Belle Stud stallion Bramble, a son of Bonnie Scotland who was the Leading sire in North America in 1880 and 1882.. When the resulting colt was offered for sale by Clay and Woodford, Leigh and his new partner, the African-American Hall of Famer Ed Brown, bought him for $1,200. Brown named him Ben Brush in honor of the superintendent of the old Gravesend Race Track at Sheepshead Bay in Gravesend on Coney Island, New York who'd allowed them scarce, therefore valuable, stall space. The original Ben Brush was a strict disciplinarian, but ever after, Leigh and Brown found him very lenient when it came to his namesake. When others complained of his double standard, the human Brush said, "Not a damn one of you fellows ever named a horse Ben Brush!" Ben Brush raced 40 times, won 25 of those races, placed in five, and showed in 5, earning $65,208. Joe Palmer said of him in his "Names in Pedigrees," that he was "not a particularly impressive-looking animal." The colt was a "rather small horse, a bit longer for his height than Bramble, almost equally coarse about the head." Under trainer Ed