Charles B. Borel

Who was Charles B. Borel?

Charles B. Borel was an American Thoroughbred horse racing jockey best known for winning the 1917 Kentucky Derby.

Borel rode for prominent stable owners such as Harry Payne Whitney and James Butler. For Whitney he notably won the 1913 Futurity Stakes with Pennant, and for Butler, finished second in the 1915 Kentucky Derby aboard Pebbles. He then won the 1917 Derby with Omar Khayyam, the first foreign-bred horse to win the prestigious race.

By the mid-1930s, a retired Charles Borel made his home in Los Angeles, California where he was an exercise rider at Santa Anita Park. He died at age seventy-six in 1960 in a Los Angeles hospital.