When Mesh Tenney Swaps a Tale or Two, It’s Like Olden Times

Rex Ellsworth was born on Nov. 15, 1907. Mesh Tenney was born the next day. In the 78 years since then, these two hardboots have remained just that close.

They met when they were 8 years old, in grammar school in Arizona. They shared winner’s circles and headlines when Swaps won the Kentucky Derby in 1955 and was named Horse of the Year in 1956.

Ellsworth was Swaps’ breeder and owner and Tenney was his trainer. Together, Ellsworth and Tenney also campaigned Candy Spots, Prove It, Terrang and Olden Times, who was always Tenney’s personal favorite.

Twelve years ago, the Ellsworth-Tenney partnership ended. Tenney, because of a need to straighten out a family matter he’d rather not discuss, quit training and went back to his cow ranch, 42 sections of acreage in Safford, Ariz., 165 miles east of Phoenix.

Ellsworth’s place was across the road, but the two men, probably about a $20 cab ride apart, wound up talking on the telephone more than they saw each other.

Several months ago, they were talking on the phone again, Ellsworth having made the call. He had this gang of 2-year-olds, sons and daughters of Olden Times, and wanted to know if Tenney would be interested in training them.

So, to the surprise of almost everybody, Tenney appeared at Santa Anita a couple of months ago with three horses. Nobody from the state asked him to take a trainer’s test in order to be re-licensed.

“I was surprised I came back, too,” Tenney said the other day at the barn.

“It took me a few days to get my affairs in order and then I came on over.”

Tenney now has 10 Ellsworth horses in his barn, all but two of them offspring of Olden Times. Ellsworth had played his trump card there, knowing how much his old sidekick cared for that horse, who, at age 27, died in his sleep last Aug. 14.

As Tenney recently talked at the barn, a 2-year-old son of Olden Times was cooling out following a workout.

“See,” Tenney said, “they all bear his stamp. A long body, good looking and strong. He was a dandy, a lot of fun. He was smart and I loved his disposition. Wherever he went, he felt he was the biggest horse there.”

One of Tenney’s helpers approached, asking about equipment that should be put on a horse.

“Who is he?” Tenney snapped. Told the name, Tenney said with an icy patience, “What did I say might help?”

Meshach Adams Tenney may have been out of the game 12 years, but his approach hasn’t changed. Bob Hebert of The Times, who covered Ellsworth and Tenney at their apogee, called Tenney a “stern taskmaster.”

Put another way, people and horses knew he was around. Tenney treated Swaps the same as any other horse in the barn, which shocked some people. “Our horses are content, because they know exactly what we want them to do,” Tenney once said. “We don’t spoil ‘em, and we don’t confuse ‘em.”

Tenney was asked if he’s come back to a game that wasn’t there in 1973, the year he left.

“It’s more hurried now, but otherwise I don’t see much difference,” he said. “There are more women working at the track now. That’s no put-down; they’re about like the men--some are tops, some others could use more experience.”

One of the fringe benefits of Tenney’s return is his recollecting those many stories about Swaps, who beat favored Nashua in 1955 to become the first California-bred Kentucky Derby winner in 33 years. Time has embroidered the Swaps lore, and Tenney tries to strip the tales of their extravagance, but even then they are the things dream horses are made of.

Tenney sleeping in Swaps’ stall at Churchill Downs the week of the Kentucky Derby is as good a place to start as any. There’s no question it happened; Cowboy Sleeps With Derby Horse, read a headline in one New York newspaper. But Tenney can’t recall the part about his starting out to sleep in a nearby car, then moving into the stall when he discovered a track guard had fallen asleep.

“We just wanted to be totally careful about the horse’s safety,” Tenney said. “I moved in four or five days before the Derby. Nothing bothered that horse. I never did it before, and I never did it again afterwards.”

Nashua and Swaps were both undefeated as 3-year-olds going into the Derby. The Daily Racing Form’s chart of the race indicates that Swaps took an early lead and, unheaded, reached the wire 1 1/2 lengths to the good, but Tenney remembers that the win wasn’t as easy as that.

“Nashua had the advantage all the way in that race, because we set the pace,” Tenney said. “At the top of the stretch, Nashua got his head in front. But (Bill) Shoemaker slapped Swaps and he drew off all to himself.”

The racing world thirsted for a rematch in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico three weeks later, but Swaps hadn’t been nominated and Ellsworth didn’t want to pay the supplementary fee of $7,500. According to Tenney, trainer Ben Jones of Calumet Farm, a friend who badly wanted to see another Swaps-Nashua race, offered to pay Ellsworth’s way into the Preakness.

“We had too much of a stable to worry about back in California,” Tenney said, explaining why Swaps returned home. Swaps won three more races by almost 20 lengths at Hollywood Park--he went off at 1-20 odds in the Westerner Stakes--while Nashua captured both the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.

Ben Lindheimer, the owner of Washington Park near Chicago, brought Swaps and Nashua together again--for the last time--in a $100,000, winner-take-all match race 30 years ago last Aug. 31. On a Wednesday afternoon, 35,000 people came to the track, including Gov. Earl Long of Louisiana and Sugar Ray Robinson, and the national television audience was estimated to be 50 million.

This time Swaps was favored, but Eddie Arcaro unexpectedly broke Nashua on top, they held off three charges by the California horse and at the end of 1 miles Nashua had won by 6 1/2 lengths.

Swaps swerved at the start and drifted to the rail through the stretch, which caused racing historian Joe Estes to write: “Nashua with four good feet was much better than Swaps with three.”

Evan Shipman, a columnist for The Morning Telegraph, was skeptical of Swaps’ excuse. “(Neither) . . . Ellsworth nor Tenney nor little Willie Shoemaker (said) anything about lameness or a bad foot when they were questioned exhaustively immediately following the running,” Shipman wrote. “All that came later . . . The colt showed no signs of lameness (the morning after the race).”

That Swaps went 5 1/2 months without another race would seem to be proof enough of a problem. “He had what might best be described as athlete’s foot in the right front,” Tenney says now. “The tender area was about the size of a dime and it bothered him about four or five times in his career. It was touchy, there was no way he should have run when it bothered him.”

So why did he and Ellsworth go ahead with the Nashua match race?

“We were committed,” Tenney said. “The whole world was going to see those horses run. The foot didn’t flare up until the day before the race, but we decided to run, anyway, because it didn’t really hurt him. Arcaro got off to that bronco pace and every time our horse got up to Nashua with his bad foot, he couldn’t pass him. But our horse had the foot, all right. Ben and (his son) Jimmy Jones looked at him after the race and they saw what it was.”

Since Swaps and Nashua finished their rivalry at a win apiece, many a small hour has been wasted arguing about who was the better horse. A reasonable conclusion might be that they would have traded beating each other had there been more races.

A reasonable conclusion, that is, if your name is not Mesh Tenney. His eyes turned to laser beams when such a possibility was mentioned.

“The Derby was the true race,” Tenney said. “Nashua would never have beaten our horse.”

That’s the way Mesh Tenney’s two children, his nine grandchildren and his two great-grandchildren will hear the story. It’s from the closest source this side of the horse’s mouth.