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NAMES
There are names that conjure up equine
greatness: Man 'o War, Citation, Equipoise, Secretariat, Ruffian.
There are names that don't, but they
usually have more interesting origins.
For example:
Seattle Slew, the 1977 Triple Crown winner,
was named because one set of his owners had a logging camp just
outside Seattle, and the other set lived next to a Florida swamp.
Swaps, the 1955 Kentucky Derby winner,
was named because Rex Ellsworth, his breeder, and Mish Tenney,
his trainer, spent all of one night suggesting and rejecting
monickers, and finally got tired of "swapping names."
The great British stallion, Ballydam,
sired a colt who had colic as an infant. Named Bally Ache, he
went on to win the 1961 Preakness.
Alfred Gwynn Vanderbilt was considered
a master at naming his horses. The great Native Dancer, winner
of 21 of his 22 races, was by Polynesian out of Geisha. Find
was sired by Discovery. But it was the Dancer's and Find's stakes-winning
stablemate who gets my vote as the best-named: by Shut Out out
of Pansy, he became Social Outcast.
Alydar, who ran 10 memorable races against
Affirmed, was named for Aly Khan, whom his owner knew as Aly
Darling.
Tom Fool's greatest son was Buckpasser,
but his best-named one was Dunce.
Trainer John Nerud had successful brain
surgery, so he named a horse after the surgeon to thank him.
The horse turned out to be Dr. Fager, the 1968 Horse of the Year.
Ponder, winner of the 1944 Kentucky Derby,
sired Pensive, winner of the 1949 Kentucky Derby.
Sometime the names are so obvious you
would never guess their origin. The winner of 30 stakes races,
Swoon's Son was by The Doge out of (surprise!) Swoon.
THE MOST IMPORTANT RACES
To the man on the street, the most important
race to win is the Kentucky Derby. Sports writers who don't know
which end of the horse has teeth all become experts on the first
Saturday in May, just as they become gymnastics experts every
4th years during the Olympics.
To the racing professional, there are
more important races. One is the Belmont Stakes, because the
12-furlong distance is a quarter-mile longer than the Derby and
requires that much more stamina (which is always a prime selling
point in a stallion). Also, far more Belmont winners than Derby
winners become divisional champions.
Another more important race is the Breeders
Cup Classic, because it brings together the best horses in America,
not just 3- year-olds but older handicap horses as well, at the
Derby distance...and it's a rare 3-year-old than can beat a top-notch
older horse.
In France, the Prix de l'arc de Triomphe,
run at 12 furlongs on the grass about 3 weeks before the Breeders
Cup, is considered by Europeans to be the most important race
in the world.
GREATNESS
The mark of a great horse is to carry
weight over distance. That's been the criterion for as long as
there have been horses and races.
Put in simple terms, a horse cannot be
considered great until he has won -- hopefully repeatedly --
at the classic distance of a mile and a quarter. Or more.
And he cannot be considered great until
he has carried more than scale weight, in practical terms 130
pounds or more, and given away chunks of weight to good competition.
By this criterion, Secretariat was not
a great horse -- or, rather, let us say that he was never given
the opportunity to prove he was a great horse, because he retired
as a 3-year-old, and hence never had to carry enormous weights
and give weight away. Another horse from his crop, 3-time Horse
of the Year, Forego, was demonstrably a great horse, winning
more than a dozen times at 10 furlongs or more, successfully
carrying 137 pounds to victory, and always giving away weight
to his rivals.
Could Forego have beaten Secretariat?
Possibly not. The one time they met was in the Kentucky Derby,
when Forego was still a year away from his best efforts. But
there is no question of Forego's greatness; there will always
be some doubt as to whether Secretariat could have carried, say,
135 pounds, and given 15 and 20 pounds to good horses as Forego
did so many times.
My own criteria would include not only the ability to carry weight
over distance, but also the ability to win a huge percentage
of one's races. Man 'o War won 20 of 21; Native Dancer 21 of
22; Personal Ensign 13 of 13; Seattle Slew 14 of 17; Dr. Fager
19 of 22; Ruffian 10 of 11. Allowances can be made for Kelso
and Forego, because, as geldings, they raced at the mercy of
handicappers for many years, whereas most complete horses give
the handicapper a single year to slow them down and then retire
with the reputations mostly intact. (Which is to say, they retire
at 4, or in some cases, such as Secretariat, at 3; whereas Kelso
was Horse of the Year at 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, and was still running
at 9; Forego was Horse of the Year at 4, 5, and 6, and handicap
champion at 7; and old Find, a stablemate of Native Dancer and
Social Outcast, was still winning stakes at 9 and placing in
them at 11.) Thus, I'm less impressed with Secretariat, who lost
5 times to very ordinary horses in 21 starts, than I am with
Seattle Slew, who lost two photo-finishes to year-end champions,
and lost only one other race when he clearly wasn't fit.
I can also make allowances for injury.
Citation won 32 of his 45 starts, hardly a percentage for one
of the 3 or 4 greatest American race horses -- but he won 27
of his 29 starts at ages 2 and 3, missed his entire 4-year-old
season due to injury, and was hardly the same horse when he came
back at 5 and 6.
RIVALRIES
The Yankees and Dodgers. The Lakers and
Celtics. The Cowboys and Steelers. Great rivalries are essential
to any sport, and horse-racing has had its share of them.
The most famous rivals, of course, were
Affirmed and Alydar. They met 10 times in 15 months. Affirmed
won 7 of them, 5 in photo finishes, and was second 3 times. Alydar
won 3, and was second 6 times. At the end of 10 races and almost
11 miles, they were something less than 2 lengths apart.
But they weren't the only ones.
Back in the late 1950s, there was a trio
of outstanding horses, all of whom had been born in 1954 -- Bold
Ruler, Gallant Man, and Round Table. When the dust had cleared,
Bold Ruler and Gallant Man had met 8 times, splitting 4 apiece.
Bold Ruler and Round Table had met twice, splitting one apiece.
Gallant Man met Round Table three times and won all three.
Probably the two greatest horses to engage
in a top-drawer rivalry in the past half-century were Dr. Fager
and Damascus. They met twice in 1967, each winning once; and
twice in 1968, splitting again. In 1968, neither ever carried
less than 131 pounds.
MONEY
There's a lot of money in racing and
breeding, far more than there used to be. I can remember when
a Hyperion colt named Rise 'n Shine set the all-time yearling
auction record by selling for a then-unheard-of $87,500. These
days yearlings sold at the Keeneland Summer Auction _average_
more than half a million dollars apiece. The record, for a half-brother
to Seattle Slew -- remember, this was a yearling who'd never
even had a saddle put on him -- was for more than $13 million.
And never won a race.
In fact, of the first 100 yearlings to
sell for more than a million dollars, only 4 earned back their
purchase price, and only one -- A. P. Indy, a son of Seattle
Slew -- became a champion.
Stud fees have also skyrocketed. These
days the leading sire in the country is Storm Cat, and a date
with him costs $800,000 -- _if_ you can get to him. He's usually
booked years in advance.
(Cheer up. If he's busy, maybe you can
get a date with Danzig. He's only half a million per service.)
You can also run up a tidy profit if
you pick right. People talk about Seabiscuit and Stymie, former
claiming horses (horses that were for sale for a set price on
the day of the race) who were bought for peanuts and went on
to win hundreds of thousands of dollars. John Henry sold for
$25,000 in 1979 and went on to win more than $6 million.
But for a _real_ success story, look
no further than Seattle Slew. His "call name" around
the barn as a yearling was Baby Huey, because he was so clumsy.
He was rejected for the Keeneland Summer Sales, because neither
his pedigree nor comformation were perfect enough, and the team
of Mickey and Karen Taylor, and Jim and Sally Hill, bought him
for $17,500. What did they get for their investment?
Well, to begin with, they got the only
undefeated Triple Crown winner in history, who went on to win
over a million dollars on the track.
Then they syndicated him for $12 million, keeping 20 shares ($6
million worth) for themselves and selling 20 shares.
By 1986, 8 years after his initial syndication,
he had been so phenomenally successful at stud that a share in
Seattle Slew sold at auction for $4 million, making the horse's
value $160 million -- more than any skyscraper in downtown Cincinnati,
to put it in some perspective.
But that wasn't all. The Taylors and
Hills entered into a foal-sharing arrangement with major breeders
like Claiborne Farm and others of that ilk. It worked like this:
Claiborne, to take a concrete example, got two free seasons to
Seattle Slew. They would flip a coin, and Claiborne got one foal
and the Taylors and Hills got one. In this particular case, Claiborne
got Derby and Belmont winner Swale, who died tragically only
eight days after winning the Belmont; and the Taylors and Hills
got champion Slew o' Gold, who in turn was syndicated for $15
million (and again, they kept half the shares and sold half the
shares.)
Between his owners, and his syndicate
members, and the breeders who sold his yearlings, and the people
who raced his offspring, it's estimated that this one $17,500
yearling created more than 100 millionaires. Hard to do if you're
not franchising MacDonald's.
COLORS
Probably because binoculars are a relatively
recent invention, horse-racing is an incredibly colorful sport.
Not only do the horses come in a number of colors, but every
owner has his own silks, and some of the designs are truly eye-catching
(as they were meant to be, since they originated to help an owner
spot his horse as a cluster of them raced down the backstretch
half a mile away).
The most famous colors?
Probably Calumet's devil's red and blue
-- a red jersey, with two blue bars on each sleeve.
Then there's Claiborne's pure orange,
and Odgen Phipps' pure black.
The Vanderbilt silks are cerise and white
diamonds, with red sleeves. (When I was 10, and already a fanatic,
I wrote a number of owners and stables, asking for their silks.
Only two -- Brookmeade Stable [white with blue cross sashes]
and Vanderbilt -- sent them to me. One of the most mournful days
of my life came two years later when I realized I had outgrown
them forever.
There are currently more than 5,000 colorful
designs registered with the Jockey Club. Makes baseball uniforms
seem even duller than they are.
EQUIPMENT
The most common equipment for a racehorse
is a set of blinkers. It keeps his attention straight ahead,
and stops him from getting distracted by movements in the stands
or the infield.
Then there's the shadow roll, about two inches thick and cylindrical,
which goes over his nose, and prevents him from seeing (and jumping)
shadows.
From time to time you'll see a horse
with a tongue-tie; this stops him from trying to swallow his
tongue in the heat of the race (or not trying and doing it anyway).
Some horses will wear protective bandages
on front or rear legs.
On off tracks, some horses will wear
mud caulks, the equivalent of spiked shoes, which gives them
better purchase.
None of these things should give you
any concern; none imply that a particular horse is at anything
less that his best or fittest.
On the other hand, a bar shoe –
the program book will tell you if he's wearing one – is
a protective device for horses with quarter cracks (cracks on
their hooves). The track vet won't let the horse run if he's
lame, or in any way unfit, but a bar shoe is an indication that
he's had problems in the past and may again.
MEDICATION
Almost every horse runs on Lasix these
days. When a horse makes an extreme effort, he may occasionally
bleed -- which is to say, capillaries burst in his lungs, the
blood comes up through his nostrils, and he can't breathe easily.
Lasix used to be outlawed in New York, but now it's legal everywhere
in the country, and used as a preventative far more than a cure.
(If a horse does bleed, he is forbidden to race again until the
track veterinarian is convinced the problem has been solved.)
Many horses run on Bute – short
for Butazolidin, a brand name for phenylbutazone. (I used it
once myself, when I tore some tendons in my foot and my doctor
prescribed it.) Bute doesn't cure anything, but if a horse is
sore – and sooner or later, most athletes get sore if they
stay in training – the Bute will mask his pain. Again, it
used to be outlawed at about half the tracks – the one disqualification
in the history of the Kentucky Derby came in 1968 when it was
discovered that Dancer's Image had used Bute – but today
it's legal everywhere.
Again, if you find a horse is running
on Bute and/or Lasix, it's absolutely standard. He probably doesn't
even need it, but as long as it doesn't hurt and might help,
trainers will use it.
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