Upset?

You tell me: fact or fiction.I heard on the radio the following factoid about the origin of the phrase sports upset:

It seems the concept dates back to the one horse race that Man O' War lost against, a horse named, you guessed it, Upset. Hence the concept of the underdog winning against the favorite has since then been called an upset.

The race, by the way, was the Sanford Memorial Stakes, run August 13, 1919 at Saratoga Race Course. There were seven horses in the race and the favorites were Man O' War and Golden Broom , who each carried 130 lbs. Upset, owned by Harry Payne Whitney, carried 115.

In those days, race fixing was a common practice and Upset, whose odds consistently hovered at 10-1, went off 8-1. He was the only starter whose odds dropped considerably the closer it got to post time. As Dorothy Ours writes in Man O' War, "More than one somebody--or one big-betting somebody--liked him."

In addition to the clue dropped by the big bettor, the jockeys aboard Golden Broom and Upset conspired to box Man O' War in during the race, and many say, the starter-- (in those days, horses lined up across the track and started when the starter decided they were ready to go) sent them off when Man O' War was actually facing in the opposite direction.

Regardless of conspiracy theories, Upset won the race and set a new track record in the process, beating the old one by eleven lengths at 1:11 1/5. However, Man O'War, in nearly catching Upset, "must have run his six furlongs, despite carrying 130 lbs. and being delayed in traffic, well under 1:11," according to Ours. Indeed as she reports, Man O' War's trainer's stopwatch, which "he clicked as he started and finished, said 1:10 and one."

So who was upset?