Top 3-Year-Old Fillies of the East and West Meet Today at Saratoga

At the end of the movie, “The Sting,” Paul Newman turned to Robert Redford for a brief exchange that summarized the entire plot. Newman and Redford were roustabouts who devised an ingenious scam to get revenge for the murder of Redford’s friend.

“It’s not enough, is it, kid?” Newman said, after the bad guys had been hustled.

“No, it’s not,” Redford said, smiling. “But it’s awful close.”

Peter Fuller has that same, partly vindicated feeling. Fuller, the Boston automobile dealer, won the Kentucky Derby with Dancer’s Image in 1968, then had the win and the purse money taken away from him by chemists and judges in a court fight that lasted for five years. Now, Fuller has another talented 3-year-old, only this time it’s a filly. Mom’s Command is her name, and while she hasn’t given Fuller a Derby win that would stand up, she has put the 62-year-old owner in the winner’s circle after several major stakes in New York, where Fuller believes the Establishment still hasn’t completely forgiven him for his headline-grabbing persistence in the Dancer’s Image furor.

Fuller could add to his succor today. In a year bereft of charismatic thoroughbreds--John Henry, couldn’t you have hung around for just one more season?--Mom’s Command and Fran’s Valentine represent the best of the East and West in the 3-year-old filly division. Today’s showdown will be run at historic Saratoga, where three others will join the pair in the 105th edition of the Alabama Stakes.

A crowd of more than 40,000 fans will risk a few bob in the Alabama. Who they’ll favor is open to question. Fran’s Valentine comes into the race off solid wins in the Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs and the Hollywood Oaks at Hollywood Park. Mom’s Command became only the sixth horse to sweep Belmont’s three races for 3-year-old fillies, but in her last start, at Saratoga on Aug. 1, a five-race winning streak ended when she finished second on an off track to Lady’s Secret in the Test Stakes.

“We ran Mom in the Test to get her ready for the Alabama, and we figured she got a lot out of the race,” Fuller said. “She had the No. 2 post in a large (10-horse) field and didn’t like it down on the inside. When Abby swung her to the outside, she closed some ground and was strong at the end.”

Abby is Abby Fuller, one of the owner’s seven daughters and a 26-year-old jockey who has ridden Mom’s Command in all but 2 of her 15 lifetime starts. The first exception came last year when Fuller was sitting out a stewards’ suspension; the other time, she was, in so many words, sacked by her father for the Selima Stakes at Laurel in November.

Abby Fuller says she “was not happy” when she missed the Selima, a race Mom’s Command won by 2 lengths under Gregg McCarron.

Her father read the reaction as being stronger than that. “It made her very, very angry,” Peter Fuller said. “But two races before, in the Astarita at Belmont Park, she had gotten caught in a blind switch and had to take up. The filly made a tremendous move and still won.

“We thought Abby had learned her lesson. But in the next race, the Frizette at Belmont, she again got off badly and finished third. I wanted to make my point by sitting her out in the Selima. I figured it would make more of an impression than any fatherly talk I could give her.

“I told Abby that I still loved her, but racing is a business and I’m the person who’s hiring you and paying you 10% of the purse if you win. I also told her that in exchange for that, she’s expected to do what I tell her, and in the Frizette, she didn’t do it.”

In 1968, Abby Fuller, a 9-year-old who had never been to a race track, posed in the Churchill Downs winner’s circle with her father, her mother Joan and other family members following Dancer’s Image’s apparent win in the Derby. But a post-race urinalysis showed that the colt’s system contained phenylbutazone, a pain-killer legal in Kentucky and many other states now, but not permitted in Kentucky at the time.

There followed 4,022 pages of testimony that finally ended in the Kentucky Supreme Court, which in 1973 upheld the stewards’ disqualification and awarded the win to Forward Pass, the horse that ran second.

“A circuit court had ruled for us, then the state court overturned that decision,” Peter Fuller said. “A lot of political pressure came to bear through it all. In the end, I was a victim of circumstances that were beyond my control.”

The late Eddie Neloy, who trained Buckpasser and other top horses for Ogden Phipps, a kingpin among New York’s racing aristocracy, went to Fuller and asked him, on behalf of “a lot of racing people,” to drop his appeal. But an adamant Fuller saw it through to the end. The year after the final decision, the ban on phenylbutazone was dropped in Kentucky.

Abby Fuller, whose intentions to become a jockey didn’t surface until 11 years later, was oblivious to the bitter Derby aftermath. “I really didn’t understand what was going on,” she said the other day from Suffolk Downs, the Boston track where she is fourth in the rider standings. “All I knew was the thrill of seeing our horse finish first. It was a big thrill, seeing him come from last and get through a hole that wasn’t there.”

A sore-legged horse, Dancer’s Image ran only one more race, finishing third in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico two weeks after the Derby and being disqualified again, this time to eighth place for bumping another horse.

Peter Fuller no longer has a financial interest in Dancer’s Image, who stands at stud in Japan. “He’s snow white, just like his old man (Native Dancer),” Fuller said. “It’s a sore spot with me that breeding records in the United States don’t even mention the Derby. It’s like we never took the horse to Kentucky. In Europe, at least they give him credit for running first and then being disqualified.”

Horse Racing Notes Owner Dennis Diaz has confirmed that Kentucky Derby winner Spend a Buck won’t run in the Travers Stakes at Saratoga next Saturday. Instead Spend a Buck will run in the Monmouth Handicap the same day at Monmouth Park, where he finished second to Skip Trial in the Haskell Invitational in his last start. Laffit Pincay will ride Spend a Buck next Saturday, leaving the Travers mount on Stephan’s Odyssey for Pat Day. Day, leading race-winning rider in the country the last three years, went 32 mounts at Saratoga before he won his first race of the meeting this week. . . . Besides Mom’s Command and Fran’s Valentine, other starters in the Alabama are Foxy Deen, Raise a Q and Golden Horde. . . . A full brother (same sire and dam) to Mom’s Command sold for $650,000 at a yearling auction at Saratoga this week. Peter Fuller, who consigned the colt, thought he might go for more. . . . In Friday’s Ballerina at Saratoga, Lady’s Secret won her second stake of the meeting for owner Gene Klein.