Revisiting Jim French...Again

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

Old Timer — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 01:41:43 GMT

Even though I have read this column before, I totally enjoyed it the second time around as well. I saw and attended his Derby as well as the Dwyer in New York. I know that it is cliche, but "they don't make them like that any more."

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

Cynthia Holt — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 16:37:30 GMT

In lieu of the shrines and memorials which will never be, your words will stand as an ongoing tribute to the indefatigable Jim French. I never tire of reading his story, and will look forward to re-visiting it in 2017. It is especially gratifying to note that the great Tom Fool, about whom I wish more were written, is his maternal grandsire.

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

Arch the phoneman — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 00:07:28 GMT

What a great story Steve. I've never heard it before. Thank you for rerunning it.

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

txhorsefan — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 14:52:59 GMT

Thanks for revisiting this amazing horse. His story is so interesting not only for his heroic racing campaigns but the allegations and intriguing ownership issues as well. Can you just imagine all the internet hooha going around if a horse was trained and raced like that today?! Your blogs are always the best, Steve - thank you!

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

Love 'em all — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 14:25:41 GMT

I'd like to think 'the Jim French racehorse' was named for the Jim French cowboy, who ran around with Billy the Kid.

And like the horse, the cowboy's fate is also a mystery.

en.wikipedia.org/.../Jim_French_(cowboy)

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

JayJay — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 06:15:09 GMT

Not sure when this was published but this is the first time I've read it and I'm like "What??" Now I have to research and see his full past performances. Amazing how he was able to run that many races back to back to back to back and not only he was very competitive but never got injured. I'm curious how he got his name...

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

Daniel Jividen — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 23:12:54 GMT

Modern trainers lack the boldness of the old time trainers. They seem to never learn that horses are as strong as horses. Horses will stand a lot of training if they are properly started, legged up, and fed - and if the vets (with their overly extensive pharmacopeias) are kept away from them. Campo was a quintessential New York guy - brash, bold, 100% extroverted. He couldn't have coped in the new New York where the new mayor wants to protect horses from pulling carriages in Central Park.

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

Windolin — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 16:49:46 GMT

This is a great story! Thank you for posting it. Please forgive me Steve for not reading your post on SNA. I read all of your postings, but just cannot bring myself to read the one about SNA. It was a heartbreaking loss. There were so many losses in 2013, not only in the Thoroughbred industry, but personally by friends and myself and 2014 really had not started off very well either for some.

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

Pedigree Ann — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 14:52:35 GMT

'Little Jim' was my first 'Derby horse.' I picked him out in the fall of 1970 after he won the Remsen. It was my first year at university in SoCal and the first time I was able to buy the DRF regularly. And the big weekend races locally were on television! The campus library also had copies of the big east coast papers in the reading room, so I could follow 'Jimbo's' exploits out there. I wore his racing colors (yellow and green) on days when he raced and commandeered the lounge TV to watch him when the big Derby preps were on. I was so sick when he couldn't run in the Travers - I was sure he would win, since he wouldn't have to concede weight to anybody; didn't know about the knee.

And to send him to France, of all places for stud! Jim was a throwback, a genuine, hard-knocking dirt horse of the old style, totally unsuited to France's racing surface, i.e. soft turf. Total waste of his stud potential. Japan's turf courses tended to be firmer, but still, turf racing was not his metier.

A few other notes - His Majesty, Jim's contemporary, was his uncle, a full brother to his sire Graustark. It said so in Sports Illustrated. (Yes, SI covered horse-racing extensively at the time.)

Notice the 10f races 3yos got to run in after the Triple Crown? The Hollywood Derby was extended to 12f turf in the summer of 1974 and the Swaps S at 10f was instituted to keep the tradition going. The Dwyer H. at 10f was at Aquedect, whose configuration made it easy to run; when Belmont was given Aqu's summer meeting in 1975, they shortened it because "people want to see the starts of races and the 10f chute starts behind some trees way over on the far side of the training track." Honestly, that is what they said. So now they start 10f races in that awkward way on the turn.

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

Old Bald Peg — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 04:55:14 GMT

Haskin,

They don't make them like that anymore.

We're dinosaurs to remember when racehorses RAN.

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

Lexington Bloodstock — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 03:19:40 GMT

Remarkable. While we are inclined to call horses that race that frequently "iron horses," and Jim French WAS indeed just that, it is also frustrating to compare the career race records of horses from the past one hundred years, and note that today's thoroughbred is now deemed "too fragile" to race more than one a month, if that.

The only people who benefit in this misguided newfangled methodology of training horses are the trainers and veterinarians who's exorbitant fees and commissions are sucking the life's blood out of a once great sport.

If they would only choose to train fewer horses and do it like Nature (and very successful old school trainers did for generations) owners might be more inclined to try their hand.

Having said that -- I remember Jim French well, and the excitement he brought to racing that year -- and have often compared him, in my mind, to horses racing today and have to laugh at the newer "generation" of both horses and trainers.

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

rowdee — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 01:39:41 GMT

Now THERE was a thoroughbred! Thank you, Steve, for this 'new to me' story.

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

livewire — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 23:31:47 GMT

Truly incredible story. The only major Derby preps he missed was the Blue Grass and Arkansas Derby. As a horse racing fan from an era when Derby hopefuls ran in not just one but two nine furlong races this was an enjoyable read. A little crazy perhaps as well.

How ironic that we now read quotes from trainers on their derby horses like "It's hard to run every four weeks and run your best".

Now a racehorse can't run once a month? Longing for the days when the best in training actually ran a race when campaigns began every two to three weeks instead of spacing like this.

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

threedog — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 21:11:42 GMT

Another great story! Thanks Steve. It is still common at smaller seasonal tracks to run your horse in a race every two weeks from the begining of the meet to the end of the meet, but then most of the horses would get plenty of time off.

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

phdiers — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 20:15:05 GMT

What a wonderful story, seems strange to hear of a horse running that many times- now they run 4 times and are off to stud duty.

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

steve from st louis — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 19:24:26 GMT

Jim French remains a great story; he probably could have won Shaikh Mohammad's recent point-to-point endurance races. The real story here somewhat swept under the rug was the life and times of John Campo. Talk about a character of the American turf! I'm sure you could add Joe Hirsch's notes to your own and come up with a one-of-a-kind column. He trained both juvenile Eclipse award winners in 1973 along with Derby and Preakness winner Pleasant Colony. I always found him extremely quotable until he lost his stable to a barn fire in the mid 1980's, from which he never recovered. Don't know if his son still works for the NYRA but Campo was a Damon Runyanesque figure of the first degree.

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

derbylin — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 18:06:44 GMT

Love your "reruns" Steve. What a tough horse he was.

re: Revisiting Jim French...Again

mz — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 17:22:12 GMT

I remember Jim French (in the days that I thought ALL racehorses were raced, how was he unusual?) and I specifically remember reading that he was sent to France to stand at stud. I guess they thought he would breed back to his grandsire, Ribot.

Even though he "didn't leave a mark" in France, isn't it funny that his female family did? His half sister, Native Partner is the great grand-dam of Arazi, who lit some fireworks of his own on his first start in NAm from France.