Woody Stephens Gets a Quintuple Crown : Danzig Connection Wins Belmont--Trainer’s 5th, McCarron’s 1st

As Chris McCarron was walking through the mud that was Belmont Park late Saturday afternoon, somebody in the crowd of 43,137 yelled to him: “Hey, Chris, you just gave Woody Stephens his fifth Belmont winner.”

“No,” McCarron yelled back. “Woody just gave me my first Belmont winner!”

Both the fan and the jockey were correct. But while even before Saturday the Belmont Stakes had become an embarrassment of riches for Stephens, the 72-year-old trainer, the race was part of the Triple Crown bugaboo for McCarron.

Scratch one bugaboo. After six unsuccessful rides in the Kentucky Derby, four in the Preakness and one in the Belmont, McCarron hit the winner’s circle in the Triple Crown Saturday. Doing precisely what Stephens told him, the 31-year-old rider rode Danzig Connection to a 1-length win over Johns Treasure in the $564,640 Belmont, giving the craggy-faced trainer his fifth straight Belmont as he broke his own record.

So add Danzig Connection’s name to the roll call of Stephens’ winners in the Belmont, starting with Conquistador Cielo in 1982 and followed by Caveat, Swale and Creme Fraiche. Stephens didn’t think that Danzig Connection, a colt with a surgical knee, was as good as the first four, but he allowed that maybe the competition wasn’t that good this year, either. So, in his typical fashion, the trainer brought the son of Danzig and Gdynia up to the race perfectly, having honed the bay colt with a sharp win in the Peter Pan Stakes over the same Belmont track just 13 days earlier.

McCarron, having found a Triple Crown race so hard to win after 10 years of trying, reflected on Saturday’s Belmont and marveled at how easily this one had come.

“I’ve never been in a race this big where it was so easy and I could just sit on a horse as long as I did this one today,” he said. “I was just a passenger today.”

Johns Treasure, a horse that Stephens feared even though Johns Treasure had run only four times in his life, rallied on the outside in the sloppy going to finish second by a neck over Ferdinand, the Kentucky Derby winner and second-place finisher in the Preakness.

Ferdinand finished 2 3/4 lengths ahead of Personal Flag, and the rest of the order in the 10-horse field was Fobby Forbes, Mogambo, Rampage, Bordeaux Bob, Parade Marshal and Imperious Spirit. Rampage, who went off a surprising 5-2 favorite, even though he hadn’t run since his fourth-place finish in the Derby five weeks ago, was a big disappointment, never being in the hunt and apparently not comfortable with the goo he had to run in.

Danzig Connection, earning $338,640 for his owner and breeder, Henryk de Kwiatkowski, who also owned Conquistador Cielo, paid $18, $8.20 and $5.40. Johns Treasure returned $6.40 and $4.60, and Ferdinand, who at 7-2 was the second betting choice, paid $3.80. A $2 exacta on Danzig Connection and Johns Treasure was worth $126.40, and a triple wager on the first three finishers returned $498.

After the race, Stephens was drinking his usual Scotch, passing up the champagne that automatically goes to the winner of a big stake. “That champagne,” Stephens said, “that stuff will rust your pipes.”

McCarron had tried to get the mount on Johns Treasure, then wound up with Danzig Connection because neither Pat Day nor Laffit Pincay was available. Day, who rode Danzig Connection to his win in the Peter Pan, was committed to Rampage; Pincay, who won Stephens’ previous Belmonts except the one with Creme Fraiche, preferred Johns Treasure.

Never having ridden Danzig Connection before, McCarron watched videotapes of the colt’s win in the Peter Pan, and Stephens visited him in the jockeys’ room early Saturday.

“Let the colt break, and you’ll be 1-2-3 early,” the trainer told the jockey. “I’m not sure he’s a mile-and-a-half horse, but I’m pretty sure he is.”

In a race with little early speed, it was Mogambo who broke on top, with Danzig Connection just behind him and Ferdinand, a little closer than usual, settling into third place under Bill Shoemaker.

The order remained that way down the backstretch, but Danzig Connection overtook Mogambo at the start of the final sweeping turn. Shoemaker, close to the rail, where the running was harder, brought Ferdinand outside of Danzig Connection just before the winner made the lead.

On the turn for home, Ferdinand got within about half a length of Danzig Connection, with Johns Treasure continuing to advance outside both of those horses.

At that point, Shoemaker, a five-time Belmont winner, thought he had an outside chance to win, but he was also aware that McCarron had a cocked pistol under him.

“I wasn’t sure what horse it was,” McCarron said, referring to Ferdinand, “but I wasn’t concerned, because I knew I had a lot of horse left. Any time I needed acceleration, I felt it would be there. I chirped to the horse at the eighth pole, and he moved. Then I moved my hands (changing his grip on the reins) on him at the sixteenth pole, and there was an immediate response.”

McCarron, who was second in this year’s Derby with Bold Arrangement, could have left his whip back in California. He waved the stick at Danzig Connection a couple of times but never hit the colt with it.

Danzig Connection, timed in 2:29 4/5, which was the slowest of Stephens’ five Belmont winners, couldn’t win a stake as a 2-year-old, finishing second twice. He ran 12th, beating only one horse, in the $1-million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Aqueduct last November, when the knee was probably bothering him. Arthroscopic surgery removed a chip, and Danzig Connection was out of action for two months before Stephens brought him back to training at Hialeah in late January.

“I told Henryk back then that if I could get three races in this horse, he’d be ready to run in the Belmont,” Stephens said. After a third and a second in the first two starts as a 3-year-old, Danzig Connection got his third race in the Peter Pan.

Before the Peter Pan, however, Stephens was saying around the time of the Kentucky Derby that he really didn’t have a Belmont horse this year. Nobody really believed him, though; it was like Lucifer saying that he had run out of hot pokers.

All last week, in visiting with Stephens, newsmen were sensing that the horseman was getting more confident by the day. When the forecast called for rain over the weekend, Stephens even practically dismissed Ferdinand, not considered much of a mudder.

As for Danzig Connection handling the slop, Stephens wasn’t absolutely sure.

“I’ve always had the feeling,” the trainer said between sips of Scotch late Saturday, “that good horses can run good anywhere you put them. As long as I was in the race, I thought I had a chance. I felt good when McCarron went after Mogambo the right way. I still felt good at the top of the stretch, even though we were almost abreast of the other two horses (Ferdinand and Johns Treasure).”

Asked about the five straight Belmonts, Stephens said: “I don’t know exactly how I feel. But it’s (the record) something that will last a while.”

Unless Stephens himself comes along to re-break it. “It’s got to rank as one of the greatest feats in all of sports,” McCarron said.

On the way to a television stand immediately after the race, McCarron, near tears, shook Stephens’ hand and said: “You are unbelievable. Just unbelievable.”

He sure is.

Horse Racing Notes Although it appeared that Bill Shoemaker had to take up with Ferdinand nearing the end of the run down the backstretch, the jockey said otherwise. “I didn’t really take up, I just eased up to move him to the outside,” Shoemaker said. “I wanted to get to the outside, because running on the rail was no place to be. It had no bearing on the outcome of the race. My horse didn’t handle the mud too bad, but he was laboring at the end.” . . . Rampage had won the Arkansas Derby on a sloppy track, but he didn’t handle Belmont’s soup nearly as well Saturday. “The slop here was different than it was at the other place,” jockey Pat Day said. “Maybe the horse wasn’t as prepared for this race as I thought. But I don’t have any bad thoughts about staying with him and taking off the winner. Those things happen, and unless today is the last day that I’ll ever ride, I’m sure they will happen again. Woody (Stephens) has a record that will last forever. I said to him in the morning that if I didn’t win the race, I hoped he would.”

Laffit Pincay, talking about Johns Treasure: “He really didn’t want any part of the mud. It was hitting him in the face and he didn’t care for it. But then he dug in and tried. I was waiting for Danzig Connection to come back to us, but he never did.” . . . Danzig Connection has five wins, four seconds and two thirds in 12 starts, and Saturday, he earned almost $100,000 more than he made in his first 11 races. He didn’t run in either the Kentucky Derby or the Preakness. . . . Ogygian, one of last year’s top 2-year-olds who missed the Triple Crown series this year because of an injury, won the race before the Belmont, the $75,000 Riva Ridge Stakes, by 3 1/2 lengths. A bet of $100,000 to show was made on Ogygian just after the windows opened. The 2-5 favorite paid $2.80, $2.40 and $2.10. . . . An ambitious program of seven companion stakes races to the Belmont was hampered by daylong rain, which resulted in most of the races being taken off the grass. That led to numerous scratches. In fact, out of 96 horses entered in the nine races, only 55 ran. . . . The other stakes winners Saturday were I Am the Game, Red Wing Dream, Clocks Secret, Basket Weave, Lieutenant’s Lark and Bharal. . . . Creme Fraiche, winner of last year’s Belmont, ran second to Red Wing Dream. . . . Clocks Secret was ridden by Shoemaker for his second stakes win of the weekend at Belmont. . . . Only two horses--Danzig Connection and Fobby Forbes--ran in the Belmont with mud caulks, special shoes that are sometimes worn by horses on off tracks. Temperence Hill, a 53-1 shot, won the 1980 Belmont with caulks, as the only horse in the field to wear them. It was Woody Stephens who made the suggestion about the shoes to Joe Cantey, Temperence Hill’s trainer. Maybe that makes Saturday’s Belmont the sixth win for Stephens.