50 Lengths? Mountaineer Marathon Turns Into Historic Rout

Monday night’s third race at Mountaineer Park will almost certainly go down in West Virginia racing lore, as will Peter Berry’s call of the event.
The starter allowance with a purse of $27,000 featured a field of five going - wait for it - 18 furlongs (2 1/4 miles). That’s three passes in front of the grandstand.
The field stayed fairly compact for the first oh, 8 to 10 furlongs, but on the backstretch during the last lap, eventual winner Feodor, a 5-year-old trained by Pavel Vashchenko, began to widen from the pack. By the time he rounded the far turn (Berry: “Whatever turn this is, I can’t count that high”), Feodor was 20 lengths in front. At the wire the margin was, by Berry’s wild guess, 50.
He was dead on, according to the Equibase chart, which put it at 49 3/4. The 2nd-place finisher, Keniko, was 33 lengths clear of third place.
Berry said it was probably the largest margin of victory in Mountaineer history, at least.
“This is the biggest win I’ve seen at Mountaineer. It might be the biggest win I’ve seen anywhere. It might be the biggest win anybody’s ever seen anywhere!”
The winning rider was Charle Oliveros, and the final time was 3:58, or about half the length of the song, Stairway to Heaven. Despite the Secretariat-in-the-Belmont type margin, It was only the fourth win from 26 starts for Feodor, a son of Mineshaft out of the Trempolino mare, Nogalus.