Hangin' With Haskin : santa anita derby

Sham Rocks

Blood-Horse Staff — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:53:00 GMT

Lucien Laurin, wearing a bright burgundy sport jacket, bent down to tighten the girth on Secretariat, and then placed the colt’s familiar blue and white checked blinkers on his head. Big Red stood motionless on the Pimlico grass course saddling area staring straight ahead, his muscle lines rippling and his golden chestnut coat as radiant as ever.

Standing only a foot away, I knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunity, so I reached for my camera and quickly got the shot before the horse moved. Just as I clicked the shutter, Big Red, hearing the sound that had become so familiar to him, turned his head and looked at me, as if to say, “Here’s a better shot.” I clicked again, and as it turned out, he was right. My second photo of Secretariat staring right at me through his blinkers remains one of the most special shots I’ve ever taken.

To be that close to Secretariat and see him in all his splendor was as good as it gets. I then turned around to check out the other horses being saddled, and there before me was a vision as breathtaking as Secretariat.

This horse, however, was dark seal brown in color, with a coat that glistened like burnished copper. Like Big Red, he was big and powerful with an air of nobility about him. But he was more refined, like a chiseled sculpture. The horse was Sham, and having only seen him in the flesh from the grandstand in the Wood Memorial, I had no idea what a magnificent creature he was. He was an athlete in the purest sense. That image of Sham in the Pimlico saddling area remains as indelible today as it did 36 years ago. I still have to wonder if two more spectacular-looking colts ever stood on the same track together.

Last year, I paid tribute to Secretariat on this blog on his 35th anniversary. Now it is Sham’s turn.

It is said that a warrior’s greatness is measured by the courage of his opponents. The same applies to athletes. Beyond all of Secretariat’s record times and winning margins lies the horse who pushed him to three track records and helped secure his place in history. Sham will forever live in the shadows of Big Red, but once every few years he deserves to be thrust into the spotlight he was denied more than three decades ago.

When an athlete pushes another to perform great feats, and still stands apart from the others, it suggests a fine line between himself and the history books. Going strictly by the numbers, take Secretariat away and Sham wins the Kentucky Derby and Preakness by eight lengths, both in blazing-fast times. It has become a cliché to say “in any other year…” But there is no denying that Sham, like Alydar, was born in the wrong year.

Let’s not forget that there is much more to Sham’s resume than finishing second to Secretariat in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. Before he came face to face with his nemesis, Sham won the Santa Anita Derby in a stakes record-equaling 1:47 flat and captured the Santa Catalina Stakes over a deep, muddy track. Prior to those races he won a pair of 1 1/16-mile allowance races by six and 15 lengths. In his six-length score, his time of 1:41 2/5 was only a second off the track record. In his final start at 2, he broke his maiden at Aqueduct by six lengths, also in the mud, in hand the length of the stretch.

Some were down on him for getting beat a head in the Wood Memorial to Secretariat’s stablemate Angle Light, even though he finished four lengths ahead of Big Red. But the track had been playing dead all week, and Sham had worked four days before the race, blazing five furlongs in :58 flat. By comparison, Secretariat worked a mile the same day in 1:42 2/5, with Angle Light also working a mile in 1:42.

In the Wood, Angle Light controlled the pace with slow fractions of :24 3/5, :48 1/5 and 1:12 1/5, with Sham sitting 1 1/2 lengths back the whole way. Secretariat, as was learned later, had an abscess in his mouth and was in great discomfort from the bit. Jorge Velasquez could have taken on Angle Light whenever he pleased, but he felt he needed to save as much horse as possible to brace for the oncoming assault of Secretariat, which never came. By the time he realized it was just him and Angle Light, they were inside the eighth pole and by then it was too late. And let’s not forget that Angle Light was coming off a good third, beaten only a length, in the Louisiana Derby, and before that romped by 10 lengths in a one-mile allowance race at Aqueduct, run in a swift 1:35 3/5. In his previous start, he was beaten two heads in the Flamingo Stakes, by Our Native and My Gallant, after going head and head the entire race. So, this was no easy opponent by any means, especially when loose on an easy lead.

Sham was owned and bred by Claiborne Farm and trained by Woody Stephens as a 2-year-old. When Claiborne owner A.B. “Bull” Hancock died in late 1972, the racing stock was put up for auction. Among the 2-year-olds on the block was Sham, a son of Pretense, out of the Princequillo mare Sequoia, who was purchased by Sigmund Sommer for $200,000.

Sommer, a New York businessman, was looking to expand his breeding operation and saw Sham as a potential major stallion prospect. Stephens told him he was very talented horse, but he didn’t fully blossom until he was three. Sommer turned Sham over to his regular trainer Frank “Pancho” Martin, who brought him to California for the winter.

Sommer’s wife, Viola, recalled several years later, “The Santa Anita Derby was really a high point. I remember, he was so relaxed while he was being saddled I turned to my husband and said, ‘Doesn’t he know he’s about to run in a very important race?’

“But that’s the way he was. After he ate up every afternoon, he’d lie down in his stall and take a little siesta. He was a lovely, beautiful animal and we enjoyed him so much. He was so well-behaved, you had to love him.”

In the Kentucky Derby, his regular rider Laffit Pincay was back on him, and this time they weren’t about to have a repeat of the Wood. This time there would be no waiting; Pincay would get the jump on Secretariat and make him try to catch him. Pincay moved Sham up from fifth to second behind the fast sprinter Shecky Greene. Around the far turn, Pincay felt it was time to try to bust the race wide open and asked Sham for his move, feeling he could blow right on by Shecky Greene, who was coming off a five-length, wire-to-wire victory in the seven-furlong Stepping Stone Purse a week earlier. But although Shecky Greene was a fast sprinter, having won the seven-furlong Hutcheson Stakes in 1:20 4/5, he did follow that up with a victory in the 1 1/16-mile Fountain of Youth Stakes over a “slow” track.

So, when Sham moved up to challenge for the lead, he found a stubborn Shecky Greene, who wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel. He pushed Sham through a fourth quarter in :24 2/5, softening him up for Secretariat’s big closing kick. Big Red came charging up on the far outside nearing the quarter pole and looked as if he were going to draw off, but Sham still had plenty left. He ran with Secretariat until inside the eighth pole, but he couldn’t keep pace with Big Red’s spectacular record final quarter in :23 1/5, which resulted in a track-record final time of 1:59 2/5. Not only had Secretariat smashed Northern Dancer’s track record of 2:00, Sham also bettered the record, going in 1:59 4/5. It would take 28 years for a horse to equal his time. Sham was beaten 2 1/2 lengths, but was eight lengths ahead of third-place finisher Our Native.

What made Sham’s performance all the more impressive was the fact that he had hit his head on the side of the starting gate at the break with such force he knocked out two of his teeth and returned bleeding heavily from his mouth. When he returned to be unsaddled, his two teeth were dangling, held together by only a thin strip of his gum. Back at the barn, it took three-quarters of an hour to stop the bleeding and cauterize the wound.

The Preakness was pretty much the same story, as Secretariat again beat Sham by 2 1/2 lengths, with a gap of eight lengths back to Our Native in third. This time, Sham’s misfortune came when he banged into the rail going into the clubhouse turn, just as Big Red was beginning a spectacular last-to-first move on the first turn that caught everyone by surprise. He opened a clear lead on Sham down the backstretch and maintained it to the wire.

By the time Belmont day rolled around, it became apparent that Sham was not the same horse. He became uncharacteristically nervous before the race and was wringing wet by the time he got to the gate. He outran Secretariat early, as planned, but had little challenge for Big Red when he moved alongside down the backstretch, especially with the blazing fractions they were running. After three-quarters in an unheard of 1:09 4/5, Sham faded into the footnotes of history, while Secretariat kept pouring it on, shattering the record books and establishing his place in the pantheon of the immortals.

Several weeks after the Belmont, the unfortunate Sham suffered a fractured cannon bone. Following a two-hour operation, in which three screws were inserted in his leg, the prognosis looked good for a complete recovery. But later in the year, it was decided it would be in the colt’s best interest to retire him.

“We all cried because he was such a brave horse and had his career end so early,” Viola Sommer said. “All I kept thinking was ‘What if?’”

Although Sham came along in the wrong year, as everyone agrees, Sommer still has fond memories of his battles with Secretariat. “The rivalry was so good for the sport,” she said. “It gave racing a real revival. Penny Tweedy was a great ambassador, and everyone got caught up in it.”

Sham was retired to Spendthrift Farm, and then later moved to Walmac. In the early morning hours of April 3, 1993, the nightwatchman checked in on Sham and found the 23-year-old stallion dead in his stall, the victim of an apparent heart attack.

“I was really saddened, but I felt good that he had a very peaceful, happy life and didn’t endure any pains or illnesses,” Sommer said. “He wound up being an excellent broodmare sire, and all things considered, I feel warm about his place in history.”

After his death, an autopsy revealed that Sham’s heart weighed an incredible 18 pounds, more than double the normal Thoroughbred heart, which is 8.5 pounds. By comparison, the great Eclipse’s heart weighed 14 pounds, which was unheard of. It was so large, a London surgeon decided to weigh it following the horse’s death in 1789. The only heart believed to have weighed more than Sham’s was, you guessed it, Secretariat, whose heart was estimated at 22 pounds by Dr. Thomas Swerczek, head pathologist at the University of Kentucky.

Even in death, Sham broke all records, only to finish second to Secretariat.

Ky. Derby Trail: The Key Word is Prep

Blood-Horse Staff — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:49:00 GMT

Saturday's big three Kentucky Derby preps should be pretty formful, with one or two standouts in each race. But, there's a lot more to these races than who is going to win. While they are all prestigious events, let's not forget the fact that they are indeed preps.

Read full column here.

The Unbreakable, Indestructible Jim French

Blood-Horse Staff — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:26:00 GMT

You may have noticed the two brief mentions of Jim French in the last blog in regard to His Majesty’s exploits early in his 3-year-old campaign. Remaining on the subject of Graustark, it is only appropriate to give his son equal billing. I can’t think of any horse who deserves to have his accomplishments chronicled and hammered into our psyche more than Jim French, especially in this era of pampered horses.

Jim French’s story has long faded into history, taking with it the colt’s remarkable feats of durability on the racetrack and the notorious final chapter of his career, in which he was actually impounded by the Saratoga County sheriff's office and not permitted to run in the Travers Stakes. But more on that later.

What you are about to read is not meant as praise or indictment of Jim French’s trainer John Campo, who admitted years later he “hadn’t been training very long and didn’t know any better.”

Jim French was a plucky little brown colt, as average-looking and unassuming as any horse you’ll ever see. It is mind-boggling still to think that he was a son of Graustark, a grand-looking dark liver chestnut who was as spectacular a horse as you’ll ever see. Campo’s handling of Jim French would have brought about an outpouring of criticism and indignation from today's Internet-driven racing fans. But the colt not only stood up to Campo’s unprecedented racing regimen, he actually seemed to thrive on it.

As excessive as his methods were, Campo's ability to keep Jim French in top form for so long actually was a remarkable achievement, and he at least deserves for that. But then again, maybe it had nothing to do with Campo’s training. Maybe it was strictly the horse, who never once backed down to his trainer’s demands.

By the time Jim French arrived in Florida in December 1970 to begin preparing for the Triple Crown races, he had already crammed 11 races into a four-month period, racing four times in November alone, including a victory in the Remsen Stakes. With so much racing behind him, and no time off, here is what he went on to accomplish:

-- On Dec. 26, he engaged in a thrilling stretch duel with Sir Dagonet to win the 1 1/16-mile Miami Beach Handicap at Tropical Park.

-- Two weeks later, he just got up to win the 1 1/16-mile Dade Metropolitan Handicap at Tropical by a nose, carrying top weight of 125 pounds and conceding 10 pounds to the runner-up.

-- Eleven days later, now at Hialeah, he dropped back to six furlongs and finished a fast-closing fourth in the Hibiscus Stakes, beaten only 1 1/4 lengths by the brilliant Executioner.

-- He was back two weeks later, coming from 10th at the top of the stretch to win the seven-furlong Bahamas Stakes by a head, with His Majesty third.

-- Two weeks later, he was beaten a head by His Majesty in the 1 1/8-mile Everglades Stakes, but was disqualified to fifth for bearing in down the stretch.

-- Like clockwork, he was back in the gate two weeks later, coming from 19 lengths back to finish third behind Executioner in the 1 1/8-mile Flamingo Stakes.

-- Instead of waiting for the Florida Derby, Jim French not only ran 17 days later, he shipped up to New York, where he finished third to the early Kentucky Derby favorite Hoist the Flag in the seven-furlong Bay Shore Stakes, run in a scorching 1:21.

-- Just one week later (that’s right, one week), he was back in Florida, where he closed fast to finish third to Calumet Farm’s Eastern Fleet in the Florida Derby, run in 1:47 2/5, just a fifth off the stakes record.

-- Not content to wait for one final Derby prep, Campo put Jim French on a plane to California and ran him one week later (yes, one week) in the Santa Anita Derby, which he won by 1 3/4 lengths in 1:48 1/5.

-- Two weeks later, he was back in New York, where he finished a solid fourth to stablemate Good Behaving in the Wood Memorial.

So, Jim French entered the grueling Triple Crown series having competed in 10 stakes in a little over four months, traveling from New York to Florida to New York to Florida to California, back to New York, and finally to Kentucky. That’s 9,000 miles of traveling leading up to the Kentucky Derby. Although most horses would have been totally wiped out by now, Jim French went on to finish a fast-closing second to Canonero II in the Kentucky Derby, third in Canonero's track record-breaking Preakness, and a fast-closing second in the Belmont Stakes, in which he made up more than five lengths in the final furlong to be beaten three-quarters of a length.

Instead of being given a well-earned vacation following without a doubt the most ambitious and exhausting Triple Crown campaign ever, Jim French amazingly was back in the starting gate two weeks after the Belmont, finishing a fast-closing fourth in the one-mile Arlington Classic (run as the Pontiac Grand Prix that year). Following his first three-week "vacation" since the previous November, he shipped back to California, where he finished second in the 1 1/4-mile Hollywood Derby, giving the winner, Bold Reason, 13 pounds. One week later, he was back in New York, winning the 1 1/4-mile Dwyer Handicap, conceding 12-15 pounds to the rest of the field.

In less than seven months, Jim French had run in 16 stakes from six furlongs to 1 1/2 miles, never finishing worse than fourth (except for his disqualification). During that time he competed at 10 different racetracks in six different states, made two round trip cross-country flights at a time when Eastern horses rarely flew to California for one race, and logged around 18,000 miles of traveling.

Jim French resurfaced four weeks after the Dwyer and ran an uncharacteristic ninth as the 2-1 favorite in the Monmouth Invitational Handicap. It was discovered after the race that the colt had a spur in his right knee that had broken off. Several people around the horse, however, were convinced that he had been ‘gotten to.’ His owner, whom we’ll get to shortly, actually put a full-page ad in a racing trade journal claiming it was a nefarious act that got the horse beat.

Campo then sent Jim French to Saratoga for the Travers, and that's when all hell broke loose. Prior to the Travers, it was announced that the colt had been impounded by the Saratoga County sheriff's office. His entry for the Travers was refused by the stewards. State steward Francis P. Dunne called it “the most complex racing situation I've ever encountered.”

That brings up to Part Two of the Jim French story. It had been discovered through a loan made by Jim French’s co-owner Frank Caldwell, who had purchased the colt from the colt’s breeder Ralph Wilson during his 2-year-old campaign, that there was a hidden ownership issue surrounding the horse.

Caldwell, a Long Island furniture executive, had sold 70% of Jim French to Etta Sarant, and then taken out a loan from the Citizens National Bank and Trust Co. of Lexington, Ky., receiving a $130,000 advance after stating on his affidavit that he was the sole owner of Jim French. Leslie Combs II, a director of the bank, also assured that Jim French would stand at his Spendthrift Farm in Lexington.

It was discovered, however, that Mrs. Sarant, in whose name Jim French raced in the Monmouth Invitational, had no owner’s license in New York, and had no interest in applying for one. After the Monmouth Invitational, Jim French was resold to construction executive Fred Cole, but he had been suspended by the New York Racing Commission for failure to appear to give testimony in the hidden ownership case. That left Jim French without an owner.

Dunne said at the time, “We have a real can of worms on our hands, and it’s beginning to appear that not all of the worms have been pulled out of the can.”

He was right. Officers of the Saratoga Country sheriff's office then filed a writ of attachment on behalf of the Citizens Bank. The New York Racing Commission, sensing a possible cover-up, began an investigation into the ownership of Jim French and several other horses owned by Caldwell.

According to the commission’s findings, the true owner or part-owner of Jim French and the other horses was R. Robert LiButti, doing business as Robert Presti. The commission also concluded that the horse's ownership had been concealed from racing authorities, and stated that LiButti/Presti had been barred from racing in 1968. He maintained it was only a misunderstanding and that he had been exonerated of any wrongdoing.

LiButti said that undisclosed ownership was a common occurrence in racing, and his ownership of Jim French was not done to defraud the public, claiming that no crime had been committed.

On Oct. 13, 1971, the New York Racing Commission suspended Campo and Jim French’s breeder and original owner Ralph Wilson for 30 days for their role in the concealed ownership. Caldwell was ordered to appear before the commission to "show cause why his license should not be revoked."

As for Jim French, he was not allowed to run in the Travers. Because of the complexity of the case, and the danger of his knee eventually splitting due to the spur that had broken off, he was retired and sold (it was never officially reported by whom) to art dealer Daniel Wildenstein for $1 million and retired to Haras de la Verrerie in France, where he proved unsuccessful, siring only five stakes winners. He was then sent to Japan in 1977. His name did show up in America as the broodmare sire of Breeders' Cup Mile winner and grass champion Steinlen.

The name of Jim French has long since disappeared. The vast majority of today’s racing fans have never even heard of him, which is a shame.

This was a true Thoroughbred in every sense of the word – a road warrior if ever there was one who gave 100% every time he ran, despite being subjected to one of the most grueling racing schedules of any horse in the history of the sport.

There are no shrines or memorials to this gallant horse, who deserved to go out fighting and be remembered for his amazing toughness and durability rather than the ignominious series of events that befell him.

More than three decades have passed, and now, at a time when it is so difficult to keep horses sound, and when many champions race only four or five times a year, it is important that we remember a horse like Jim French to remind us just how resilient Thoroughbreds can be, or at least used to be.