PHILADELPHIA — Roy Chapman may be best remembered for scaring a national television audience watching the 2004 Kentucky Derby. Viewers saw this man in a wheelchair, tethered to a steady oxygen supply, grab at his heart and gasp for breath right after Smarty Jones won the race.
Even at that point, Chapman's breathing capacity, affected by asthma and chronic bursitis as well as emphysema, was below 20 percent, family members had said. More recently, he had to cancel a planned visit to see Smarty Jones in Kentucky in September.
"He had told me for a couple of months that he was getting very tired and he didn't want to fight anymore," his wife, Pat, said Friday.
Chapman, 79, who owned a group of Philadelphia car dealerships as well as a national inspiration of a horse named Smarty Jones, died Friday at his home in Doylestown, Pa., of complications from emphysema.
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Chapman, who grew up in Germantown and lived much of his life in Ambler, wanted to be in Philadelphia at the end. He had been at his family's winter home in Florida but, cantankerous to the end, insisted on coming north earlier in the week, his wife said. They hired a private plane to make the trip.
"In only 'Chappy' fashion, he did it his way," Pat Chapman said. "We told him, 'You're too tired and debilitated to make the trip.' He said, 'On my hands and knees, I'm going home.' "
The tale of his horse spilled into the popular culture in the spring of 2004. Chapman was getting out of the horse business after his former trainer, Robert Camac, was shot to death by a stepson. Among Chapman's last couple of horses was one born at his Someday Farm in Chester County, Pa., and named for Pat Chapman's mother.
They hired a Philadelphia Park trainer, John Servis, and the horse won eight straight races, right through the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, before finishing second by a length in the Belmont Stakes, just missing the first Triple Crown since 1978. In the midst of the run, Smarty Jones won his owners a $5 million bonus for sweeping the Rebel Stakes, Arkansas Derby and Kentucky Derby.
Asked Friday about how it must have felt to have gotten Chapman to the Derby, Servis said: "He got me there, too. We were a good team. It was a great swan song. … He hired me expecting me to be successful, but he never interfered in any way. When I took Smarty to Arkansas" — then considered an unconventional road to the Derby — "he never questioned me."
In addition to his wife, Chapman is survived by three children, two stepchildren and a sister.
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