A lovesick girl and her grandfather groom their filly for the Kentucky Derby.
A horse with great potential is reluctantly sold by the breeder and by chance passes through multiple hands who do not treat him well.
Young lovers Jack and Sally are from families that compete to send horses to the 1938 Kentucky Derby, but during the Civil War, her family sided with the South while his sided with the North--and her Uncle Peter will have nothing to do with Jack's family.
A jockey tries to overcome the reputation of his father, who once threw a race.
A prize-winning stallion breeds off-guard with a mare owned by his rival. The colt is trained to race from birth, eventually running in the Kentucky Derby against another horse owned by its sire.
A profligate, polo-playing playboy (Henry Fonda) is married to a beautiful but superficial heiress (Mary Brian). They divorce, and the wife gets all the money. But the humbled (and impoverished) Fonda finds true love in the arms of Pat Paterson, who cares nothing for material things.
Juanito, a boy from Puerto Rico, finds himself in Kentucky and drawn to a thoroughbred horse. He believes the horse can win the Derby and eventually others around him start to think it's possible.
A London taxicab driver cashes in on a big sweepstakes ticket and becomes the prey of a confidence-gang that sells him a nag of a cavalry horse on the claim that it is a brother to a current Derby winner.
Billy Garrison, a jockey, is framed and suspended for throwing a face. Depressed, he goes to a bar and eventually gets into a fight. He loses his memory, and is taken to the home of pretty young Sue Desha, who gets him a job as a jockey for her father, Col. Desha. Unfortunately, the man who framed Billy, named Crimmins, finds out he's working for the Sue's father and reveals Billy's past to the colonel. Complications ensue.