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  The night before—Saturday evening—the only two men in the world who had truly believed in Count Turf had got aboard the train, got settled in a bedroom, and then removed the cup from its case and its swaddling of tissue and soft flannel. They had pulled a folding chair into the middle of the room and set the cup on its green marble base, both steadying it with anxious hands. Then they sat back and gazed with pious eyes.

  A long while later they put the cup away, got out a deck of cards, and started to play gin rummy.

  “What do you want to play for?” McCreary asked. “Tenth of a cent? Penny a point? Dollar?”

  “Anything,” Amiel said, “I’ll play for anything.”

  Rakish mischief crept into the jockey’s grin. “Let’s play for the Gold Cup,” he said softly.

  His employer howled as though hit with a battery.

  Whenever visitors came into the room, the cup was taken out again, set up, admired, and tenderly returned to its case. Once, gazing at it, McCreary said a curious thing.

  “It seems to me,” the little harp said, hesitantly as though the idea embarrassed him slightly, “that the Derby has come to be a kind of religious thing. Like for people that don’t have any Confession.”

  There’ll never be another night like that for Jack Amiel, the Broad-way restaurateur—not if he wins a dozen Derbies. For this was his first. It was McCreary’s second—he won on Pensive in 1944 and was eighth, fifth, third, and fifth in four others—but none was like this for him, either. This one was his answer to the guys who had said he was washed up, and to Amiel, who had vowed he wasn’t.

  “How did you happen to buy the horse?” Amiel was asked.

  “I was crazy about Count Fleet,” he said. “I used to see him race and I thought he was great. Well, I always buy a few yearlings at Saratoga, and when I saw this one in the ring, the muscling of his chest and shoulders impressed me. I thought he looked just like his sire, and later John Hertz, who owns Count Fleet, told me this was the first Count Fleet he ever saw that looked like the sire. I figured the yearling would bring $14,000 to $16,000 and he’d be worth it. But I got him for $4,500. Anyhow,” he said, “his breeder, Dr. Porter Miller, called me before the race to wish us luck. I thought it was the nicest thing. I told him: ‘You let this horse go so cheap, I hope you get the $2,500 award for breeding the winner.’”

  McCreary told how he had sat in the jockeys’ room plotting silently while other riders talked. “I know my orders will be to lay back and wait,” one kid said, and then another and another said the same thing and Conn thought: well, if all but three or four would be waiting with their horses, he’d be better off close behind the leaders, ahead of the heavy traffic.

  So as soon as he could, he tucked in behind the three pacemakers, “letting them run interference.” When a horse started to move outside of him, he moved to avoid being shut off, passing everything but Repertoire.

  “Repertoire bumped me,” he said, “and I yelled: ‘Hey, none of that!’ and bumped him back. Then I was in front. I knew I had it.”

  The chart had Count Turf eighteenth at the start, eleventh at the half-mile, sixth at three-quarters, and fourth at the mile. “Actually,” Conn said, “Count Turf got his nose in front at the three-eighths pole. That’s seven-eights of a mile from the start. I could have gone to the front any time after a half.”

  Another visitor had arrived and the cup came out again. McCreary eyed it. “I wish they’d give a little one for the jockey,” he said. “I’d rather have it than the money.”

  He meant it. His 10 percent of the purse is $9,800 and, as a gift from the owner, there’ll be a $1,000 bond for each of McCreary’s four kids. But Conn meant what he said. When he said it, anyway.

  HOIST THE FLAG

  1971

  “I guess he just put his foot down wrong,” said Sidney Watters, Jr., and in those nine words there was more heartburn than some men suffer in a lifetime.

  Watters was talking about Hoist the Flag, the even-money favorite for the Kentucky Derby, who broke a leg in a workout Wednesday. Sidney Watters had saddled the colt for six races and seen him finish first six times without ever being extended, and not even the trainer knew how great the horse might be. Now nobody will ever know.

  Hoist the Flag ran four times within a month last fall, and his two races this year were eight days apart. Thus he had less than six weeks in competition, yet already he was becoming a legend. Then in a fraction of a second it was all over.

  Every safety precaution that could be taken had been taken. The colt worked on a track that had been narrowed to perfection, without a soft spot or a pebble on it. He was handled by Jean Cruguet, a thoroughly competent jockey who had ridden him in all his races and knew him well. The workout was perfect, and then—

  “Hoist the Flag,” said Dr. Michael Gerard, “has suffered a comminuted fracture of the first phalanx of the right hind leg and he also has a fracture of the cannon bone in the same area. The prognosis is very guarded and at this point it is impossible to be optimistic.”

  The phalanx is the great pastern bone and “comminuted” means pulverized. Serious though the injury is, an operation was performed intended to save the colt for breeding.

  “I can’t believe it really happened,” Sidney Watters said. “I deliberately waited until the harrows came on the training track (at Belmont). We broke him off at the mile pole where there was virtually no traffic, and worked him around the three-eighths pole. He did just what we wanted him to do—five-eighths of a mile in 1:02.

  “He had done his work and was pulling up at the quarter pole when I saw Jean trying to pull him up. I sensed that something was wrong because we had intended to gallop him out to the finish line.

  “It was a perfect strip. A horse hadn’t been on it (since the harrows). I guess he just put his foot down wrong.”

  A son of Tom Rolfe and the War Admiral mare, Wavy Navy, Hoist the Flag was bred in Kentucky by John M. Schiff, who sent him to the 1969 yearling sales at Saratoga because that was a “tax year” when Schiff had to show a cash return from his breeding operations. Sonny Whitney authorized George Poole, who trains some of his horses, to bid up to $35,000. George went $1,000 higher on his own authority, then backed off, and Mrs. Stephen C. Clark, Jr., got the colt for $37,000.

  Months before they got to the races, Sidney Watters recognized signs of exceptional quality in the colt. Now in his early thirties, Watters is so tall you’d never pick him out as a former rider, but he’s a reformed steeplechase jock out of Monkton, Maryland, who has never lived away from horses except for four years in the Pacific Theater. During World War II when he somehow folded his lanky silhouette into the tail-gun turret of a B-24, where Eddie Arcaro couldn’t have breathed.

  Hoist the Flag had usual ailments of the young, including tender shins that kept him away from the races until last September 11. That day he won a six-furlong maiden race at Belmont by two and a half lengths. Twelve days later he went six and a half furlongs and won by five lengths. On October 1 he beat Executioner, Limit to Reason and other top two-year-olds in the Cowdin Stakes at seven furlongs.

  Possibly his shins hurt in the Cowdin, for he bore in on Executioner, but the claim of foul was not allowed. Nine days later he finished the one-mile Champagne Stakes three lengths ahead of his field but was disqualified for crowding early in the race. The ruling cost his owner $145,025.

  After a stop at Middleburg, Virginia, where his shins were treated, the colt wintered in Camden, South Carolina. In one month he had so impressed Tommy Trotter that the New York racing secretary ranked him best of the two-year-olds, giving him top weight of 126 pounds in his experimental handicap. But if he was as impressive in the fall, he was an absolute smasher when he came back to the races three weeks ago.

  He had grown into a strikingly handsome bay more than sixteen hands tall, fairly crackling with power. Going six furlongs at Bowie, he won by fifteen lengths in the excellent time of 1:10 3/5. Eight days later he won the Bay Shore Ha
ndicap at Aqueduct by seven lengths. Cruguet flicked him once with the whip and he flashed home in 1:21, the fastest seven furlongs ever run by a three-year-old in New York.

  Even without the loot from the Champagne Stakes, he had won $78,145, more than double his purchase price. Watters planned to send him a mile in Saturday’s Gotham Stakes and a mile and an eighth in the Wood Memorial two weeks hence, then head for Kentucky and the Triple Crown races.

  With all his future ahead of him, there was no telling how many millions he might have accumulated on the track and as a syndicated stallion. That’s only money. More important to some, everything about him spelled class. Now it’s all gone. The harrowing uncertainty of the turf.

  JOHN NERUD DAY AT BELMONT

  1979

  First they ran a flag up the staff at Belmont Park. Red letters on a green background, representing the racing colors of Tartan Farm, read: “John Nerud Day.” Then a chestnut colt named Sofiysk, a son of Dr. Fager bred by John Nerud for Tartan Farm and trained by John’s son Jan, won the second race and paid $11.80 for $2. It was a $15,000 purse, with $9,000 for the winner.

  “Can you imagine getting $9,000 for a horse to break his maiden?” John asked Ted Atkinson, who used to ride for him. “But then, back in 1938 did you imagine you and I would be here today?”

  They were at lunch in the directors’ room—John and Charlotte Nerud, Ted and Martha Atkinson who had come in from their home in Virginia, Everett and Petey Clay who were up from Miami, Pat and Jeannie O’Brien, and other friends. John Nerud, who made the Racing Hall of Fame as a trainer, retired from that dodge this year and now, as general manager of Tartan Farm, supervises the breeding and racing operations of that establishment in Florida, Kentucky, New York and California. In his youth, John left his native Nebraska with a horse and a little money.

  “When the sharpies got through with me,” he has said, “I had neither. So I took a job as groom and then as a jockey’s agent.” One of the jockeys whose “book” he handled was Ted Atkinson.

  “I made enough money with Ted to buy a few horses,” he said at lunch. “Ted won a race for me in New England with a horse named Bit o’ Green and that night I told Charlotte, ‘We’re going to get rich. When they start giving $800 purses, there’s no way we can miss getting rich.’ After that I went into the Navy and Ted went to New York.”

  “The winter you left me in Havana,” Atkinson said, “I rode races for $5 and $15—$5 to ride and $15 for a winner.”

  “When I started racing in the bushes,” John said, “we ran for $60 purses and had to work to get them.”

  John Nerud trained winners of nine different national championships. Dr. Fager was sprint champion of 1967, he was the champion sprinter, champion handicapper, champion grass horse and the horse of the year in 1968. Ta Wee was sprint champion in 1969 and 1970. Dr. Patches was sprint champion last year. Dr. Fager still holds the world record of 1:32 1/5 for a mile, which he set carrying 134 pounds at Arlington Park eleven years ago.

  “Records are set to be broken,” John said. “Horses are getting bigger and faster all the time. I believe, though, that Dr. Fager’s time is going to be hard to beat until a faster artificial track is developed.” John was responsible for developing the Tartan all-weather surface in use at Calder Park in Miami.

  “There never was a horse as strong as Dr. Fager,” he said, “or one that could do what he could do. Man o’ War was the best of maybe 5,000 foals of 1917. Dr. Fager was the best of 25,000 in 1964.”

  John recognized a man across the room. “Cyrus Austin,” he said. “I trained for him twenty-five years ago.” He walked over to shake hands. While he was gone, Everett Clay quoted some Nerudisms.

  About judging a horse’s ability: “Don’t tell me who a horse is by. Tell me who he can run by. Unless a foal is born with two heads or three legs, there’s no way of knowing that he’s no-account when the farm turns him over to the trainer.”

  About Gallant Man before John saddled him to win the 1957 Belmont Stakes: “The one that beats him ain’t gonna enjoy his supper none.”

  About the price of yearlings the year a son of Secretariat brought $1.5 million: “A horse is worth $50 and what the traffic will bear.”

  How to win races: “The time to run a horse is when he is ready. The secret of success in racing is to make the right mistakes.”

  About his seventeen years with the late William L. McKnight, one of the world’s richest men, who founded Tartan Farm: “The reason I stayed with him as long as I did, he was the only man who could afford me.”

  About a man he didn’t admire: “He’ll have to grow a hell of a lot to get as big as his mouth.”

  About a duck he had as stable pet: “He don’t even know he’s a duck. When it rains, he takes off for the nearest shed. And he sleeps with the dogs and cats.”

  About a horseman who wound up a meeting with nothing but a couple of slow horses and a stack of feed bills: “I know that feeling. You sleep all day to keep from thinking of eating and walk all night to keep from thinking of sleeping.”

  There are more, not all suitable for a family newspaper.

  THIS FILLY RAN ALL THE WAY

  LOUISVILLE, 1980

  In the year of Rosie Ruiz, a lovely filly named Genuine Risk struck a blow for the distaff side today. Running every step of the mile and a quarter—and there are films to prove it—she beat ten colts and two geldings in the 106th Kentucky Derby, a race that no member of her sex had been able to win in sixty-five years.

  As sometimes happens with fillies in the spring, Genuine Risk had been “horsing” in the last few days, but if she had her mind on love yesterday, she put frivolous matters aside when the field began the first run down the Churchill Downs homestretch.

  Jacinto Vasquez, the little guy from Panama who won the 1975 Derby for Genuine Risk’s trainer, LeRoy Jolley, had the filly comfortably placed behind the leaders around the clubhouse turn, saving ground on the rail thereafter until they approached the far turn. There he eased her back and took her outside moving up swiftly as the two favorites, Rockhill Native and Plugged Nickle, raced each other into defeat.

  With three-sixteenths to go she was in front, and now Vasquez went to work in earnest. He whipped her once with the stick in his right hand, switched to his left and fetched her six more whacks as she drew out.

  The California colt Rumbo, closing fastest of all, still had a length to make up when he reached the wire in second place. Behind him came two others from the West Coast, Jaklin Klugman, who was bred out there, and Super Moment, a Kentuckian who had run all but one of his races in California.

  It has been suspected all along that the current crop of three-year-olds had somewhat less quality than others of the recent past, but Genuine Risk ran a fine and honest race under a splendid rider. Her time of 2:02 was altogether respectable—faster than Spectacular Bid’s clocking last year, faster than Seattle Slew’s in 1977 and just the same as the time Foolish Pleasure made for Vasquez and Jolley five years ago.

  There was class in her performance and poetic justice in the fact that she produced it so soon after the flap about Rosie Ruiz’s finish in the Boston Marathon. Rosie got a laurel wreath for leading all other women home in Boston, but she was suspected of joining those runners late in the race and she was disqualified.

  There is nothing suspect about the filly’s credentials. Until she ran third to Plugged Nickle in the Wood Memorial, she was undefeated, with six races and six victories. In those events, however, she had been opposed only by members of her own sex, and going a mile and a quarter against colts this early in life is considered a daunting task for a filly.

  Over 105 years, only thirty had even started in the Derby. Only one—Harry Payne Whitney’s Regret in 1915—had won the race and none had tried since Whitney’s son, C. V. Whitney, got fifth with Silver Spoon in 1959.

  Genuine Risk’s defeat in the Wood convinced her trainer that she would be wise to rejoin the ladies. “I found out what I wanted to lear
n yesterday,” Jolley said the next day. “There’s no sense shipping her a thousand miles to find it out again.”

  After that, however, there were discussions with Bertram and Diana Firestone, the filly’s owners. Except for some bad luck in the Wood, she might have finished second. Vasquez thought she could have got back no more than a half-length behind Plugged Nickle. As it was, she was beaten only a length and a half. So plans were changed. Jolley abandoned his notion of pointing her for the filly Triple Crown—the Acorn, the Mother Goose and the Coaching Club American Oaks. She was given her shot at making history.

  Now the question is whether she will be asked to try for the unisex Triple Crown by going in the Preakness two weeks from now and the Belmont Stakes three weeks after that. It is a difficult chore for a robust colt. Before the Derby, Jolley and the Firestones had seemed to indicate that they would pass up the Preakness, though she has been nominated for that stakes and the Belmont. Asked about the Preakness after today’s score, Mrs. Firestone hesitated.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Vasquez had fewer doubts. Asked whether he thought Genuine Risk could go the Belmont distance of a mile and a half, he said: “With this competition, she can go two miles.”

  As a matter of fact, the jockey’s faith in the filly was no sometime thing. He rode her last year in her first three starts, and when she won at a mile in her third outing, he told Jolley, “Boss, I think you have a chance to win the Derby.”

  Jolley took Vasquez off Genuine Risk for her fourth race—” There was something between us,” the jockey said—and rode Lafitt Pincay. She won that one by a nose over Smart Angle, who wound up the year with the Eclipse Award as the nation’s top two-year-old filly.

  Since then, Jacinto has had the mount, and things have gone swimmingly.

  A DAY AT ASCOT

  ASCOT, ENGLAND, 1960

  Inside the brick wall surrounding Ascot Heath stands a sentry box with a sign promising that a ring official will visit this point after each race to assist with regard to any dispute which may arise between bookmakers and backers. The first race was just over but there was no official on the spot, nor any bookmakers, backers, or signs of dispute. Half the Royal Family was on the premises, and horse players were being so polite their teeth hurt.