The Can’t-Lose Colt of Breeders’ Cup : Dancing Brave Is 8-1 in Europe but to His Fans Is Unbeatable

Once in a great while there comes along a horse of such superior ability that its defeat becomes more newsworthy than its victories.

Dancing Brave was such a horse--at least until Sheik Khaled Abdullah’s remarkable bay colt managed to turn even its lone defeat into a victory.

Having accomplished that, it matters little in the eyes of those who have seen him run whether Dancing Brave wins Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Turf race at Santa Anita. A loss could be taken with a shrug, and a victory would merely confirm Dancing Brave as the greatest horse of his generation.

To understand the hold Dancing Brave has taken on the public’s imagination, at least in Europe, it is necessary to look first at the one defeat he has suffered in his nine starts.

To do so involves a trip to Epsom Downs, where the Epsom Derby, considered by many to be the world’s greatest horse race, has been run since 1780.

Dancing Brave went to the post last June 4 as the favorite to add his name to the list of legendary Derby winners. Instead, he encountered early problems, problems that later would contribute to jockey Greville Starkey’s losing the horse.

Trailing, Dancing Brave made his move by swinging wide outside as the field rounded famed Tattenham Corner. The colt put in a superb effort down the stretch, his surging run in the final furlong bringing the crowd to its feet. It was to prove too little, too late, however, and Shahrastani, wearing the colors of the ill-fated Shergar and ridden by Walter Swinburn, held on to win by half a length.

This week, standing in the sunshine at Santa Anita and recalling that wintry afternoon in England, Dancing Brave’s trainer, Guy Harwood, relived the moment.

“You have to understand that when he ran in the Derby, it was only the fifth race of his life,” Harwood said. “And at that time, we weren’t sure we would get a mile and a half (out of him) or not. So one had to ride with a certain amount of tenderness to enable the horse to be sure to go the distance.

“And the Derby was a very muddling-run race. They set off at a fast pace for the first two furlongs and unfortunately at that time Bold Arrangement, who was being ridden I think by (Chris) McCarron, came up underneath Dancing Brave’s neck and knocked him right out of his stride.

“The plan was to track (the Aga Khan’s) Shahrastani in the race. But unfortunately when (the bumping incident) happened, Shahrastani got away from us and then they slowed the pace. And from the nine-furlong marker to the seven-furlong marker they went very slowly. I think they ran it in something like 26 or 27 seconds. Obviously, all the horses bunched up.

“So, having been knocked over, we then were not able to take a nice position. We had to sit at the back and suffer. So it meant that by the time we hit the straight we were a long way back.

“And the horse just became unbalanced as he came off the turn into the straight. So, just for a vital second or so, he lost his action and was beaten a fast-finishing half-length.

“But just his performance in getting to where he got in the finish was outstanding. So it was just one of those things that happen in racing.”

Even Harwood’s rival trainers concede that the best horse lost.

Clive Brittain said that Dancing Brave “would have won by three lengths” were it not for the incident involving his own horse, Bold Arrangement, who earlier this year ran second to Ferdinand in the Kentucky Derby and who will run in the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday. Others have expressed a similar belief.

Was losing the Derby Harwood’s biggest disappointment?

“Oh, I never look back,” he said. “I look forward.”

No matter how far forward he looked, even Harwood could not have envisioned the scenes that took place in the next four months.

After his defeat in the Derby, Dancing Brave swept through his next four races with such ease that he convinced everyone that the loss had been a fluke.

--On July 5, under Starkey, he won the Coral Eclipse Stakes at Sandown by four lengths, beating Tryptych, who will be running in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and Teleprompter.

--On July 26 at Ascot, he won the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes by three-quarters of a length, beating Shardari and Tryptych. Epson Derby winner Shahrastani finished a well-beaten fourth, the first defeat of his career.

“(Dancing Brave) must be the best 3 year old in the world,” jockey Pat Eddery, replacing the injured Starkey, said afterward.

--On Sept. 12, with Starkey back aboard, he stunned the crowd at Goodwood with a 10-length stakes victory.

--By October, English fans were ready to believe the horse could do anything, and no fewer than 15,000 of them made the cross-channel trip to cheer Dancing Brave on in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

It was a memorable race. By now, the sheik had signed Eddery, 34, to an exclusive contract, and it was the Irish jockey, the season champion in England, who had the ride at Longchamps.

“I don’t think there’ll ever be a tougher race than the Arc,” Harwood said. “I mean, we had five Group I winners all in a line at the furlong marker. . . . That was a tremendous race.”

Eddery timed his stretch run to perfection, bringing Dancing Brave through the pack and finishing a length and a half in front of French favorite Bering. The luckless Tryptych was again third.

“When I gave my horse a couple of taps, he jumped,” Eddery said. “He flew past, it was really unbelievable. It was only my second ride on him, but today he was electrifying.”

Said Hardwood: “I had never been more confident that a horse would win than today.”

Trainer Ron McAnally, who enjoyed so much success with John Henry, was in Europe at the time and was convinced at first sight that Dancing Brave could not be beaten.

“As soon as I saw him, I knew he’d win,” McAnally said earlier this week.

Dancing Brave covered the 1 1/2 miles in 2:27 7/10, three-tenths of a second better than the Arc record Eddery had set aboard Detroit in 1980.

Making the victory all the sweeter was that rival Shahrastani finished fourth. Shardari was fifth, and Darara, one of Dancing Brave’s opponents Saturday, came home sixth.

Now, all that remains for Dancing Brave is the Breeders’ Cup.

Racing fans on both sides of the Atlantic will have reason to support Dancing Brave Saturday. The colt might have done all its racing in Europe, but it is American-born.

Bred by Glen Oak Farm in Versailles, Ky., Dancing Brave is by Lyphard out of Navajo Princess. He was sold as a yearling at the Fasig-Tipton sales and, in retrospect, was a remarkable bargain at $200,000.

To date, his eight victories and one second-place finish have earned him $1,398,491, and a win in his final race Saturday would add another $900,000 to that total.

Asked whether Dancing Brave had exceeded all expectations, given his comparatively modest purchase price, Harwood bristled somewhat.

“That’s why one buys yearlings,” he said. “One hopes that one’s going to buy something that will be a champion. If one couldn’t buy a champion, then one would never buy a yearling, you’d buy horses in training all the time. You’d go for the animal that you know is good.

“The tremendous attraction to buying yearlings is that one day you might buy a champion.”

Dancing Brave looked like a champion from the start.

“We clearly thought he was a very nice horse,” Harwood said. “When Greville (Starkey) rode him the first time, he got off and said, ‘That will be my Derby ride.’ So the horse obviously gave him a very extra special feeling.

“But we don’t work our 2 year olds at home to find out how good they are, we just work them to learn about racing and (then) let them show us on the track.”

Dancing Brave showed Harwood right away, winning his first race by three lengths at Sandown on Oct. 14, 1985.

But, Harwood said, it was Dancing Brave’s three-length victory in the prestigious Two Thousand Guineas Stakes at Newmarket last May 3 that convinced him the colt was something special.

“They didn’t go a tremendous gallop in the Guineas,” he said. “It was a slow-run race and Green Desert (who will be running in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint) got first run on him, only just marginally.”

Green Desert is a sprinter whereas Dancing Brave is a distance runner, but Dancing Brave ran Green Desert down and defeated him handily.

“There was a six-furlong horse really beaten at his own game by a horse that can go a mile and a half,” Harwood said. “So, obviously, that was a very impressive performance.”

Next came the Derby disappointment, after which the sheik decided to syndicate Dancing Brave and retire him to stud at Dalham Hall near Newmarket at year’s end.

The sheik retained 12 shares in the colt, another 12 went to the Maktoum family, and another 16 were quickly sold at 350,000 pounds (just under $500,000) apiece. That made Dancing Brave worth $20 million even before his most recent triumphs.

“He wasn’t the most expensive horse in the world,” said Martin Pearce of the International Racing Board. “People who bought into him before the King George, who bought shares in his syndication, well, that’s probably the best decision they’ve ever made in their lives. I think they put up 350,000 (pounds) sterling for a share, and that’s now looking tremendous value. He’s probably worth three times or four times that, now. So they’re over the moon and you can’t blame them, can you?”

Harwood was asked this week whether it was not a pity that the horse had been syndicated so soon, that perhaps it might have been better to keep racing him into his 4-year-old year.

“It is a shame,” the trainer replied. “Obviously, I think if the horse wasn’t syndicated we would keep him in training another year. But the fact of the matter is he is syndicated and there’s nothing I can do about that.”

Had he not been syndicated, how much more would Dancing Brave be worth today?

“It’s impossible to say,” Harwood said. “How long is a piece of string? I mean, he’s a very hard horse to value. It’s what people will pay to breed to him that really determines his value, and that we shall find out in the next six months. I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess.”

Harwood, who trains “about 30 or 40” of Sheik Abdullah’s 200-odd thoroughbreds, has gone out of his way to accommodate reporters this week, patiently dealing with the seemingly endless questions that arise after each of Dancing Brave’s late-morning workouts.

A small sampling:

Question: Does Dancing Brave travel well?

Answer: Nothing bothers him. I mean he went to France which, while it isn’t as far, involved just the same sort of traveling. He’s a good traveler.

Q: What about his temperament?

A: Smashing. Really smashing. No problem at all.

Q: He’ll have to handle tighter turns and a faster pace on Saturday. What is your biggest worry?

A: I think my biggest worry is that I produce the horse right on the day. And after that I think he’ll take care of everything else.”

Q: How will he respond to having to make left turns?

A: We’ve been doing plenty of left-handed work with him at home and he goes around really well. I don’t have any concerns about that. We run both ways in England.

Q: Have you had a chance to study the past performances of other horses in the race?

A: No.

Q: Do you know anything about the other horses in the race?

A: No.

Q: Do you care anything about the other horses in the race?

A: Well, obviously I respect the others. I respect the filly (Estrapade) and Manila, and obviously there are other horses in there because they’re very good horses. But really it isn’t going to make any difference to the result how much I study them. My job is to make sure I get my horse there on the day.

Q: What about tactics?

A: I think Mr. Eddery and I will decide on our tactics and keep them to ourselves.

Q: Has Dancing Brave’s success scared other European horses from entering the race?

A: I couldn’t answer that question. I don’t know. It may well be that they aren’t coming here because of it. . . . I think there may be an element of truth in it. There is no doubt that he has become undisputed champion in Europe. But there were plenty of horses in the Arc prepared to take him on.

There will be nine others taking on Dancing Brave on Saturday, but whether they’re prepared is another matter. In post position order they are Theatrical, Manila, Dahar, Wylfa, Pillaster, Estrapade, Darara, Ivor’s Image and Duty Dance.

Dancing Brave has drawn the far outside post, which won’t bother him at all.

If there are factors working against him, they are the heat and smog (although the colt actually seems to enjoy the former), the loose nature of Santa Anita’s turf course (which both Harwood and Brittain have commented on this week), the lingering effects of having traveled 6,000 miles just to get here, and the matter of “running the wrong way,” or counter-clockwise.

Trainer Wayne Lukas, who might be regarded as a neutral observer since he has no horse in the race, believes the combination will be enough to defeat Dancing Brave. Especially with the exceptional chestnut mare, Estrapade, trained by Charlie Whittingham, in the race.

“I think that unless this is just the best horse ever, it’s a big adjustment for him,” Lukas said. “Estrapade’s got an affinity for this course. She loves it, her style suits it. They’re going to find out that that guy over there with no hair (Whittingham) is a little bit tough.”

Harwood is well aware that it’s going to take more than just showing up in the winner’s circle to pick up the trophy.

“I think one would be somewhat conceited if one didn’t think that the local horses don’t have a big advantage, because I think they do have a big advantage,” he said. “They’ve raced on the track and they’re at home.”

But . . .

“I think that despite what happens here, I think if you asked anybody in Europe, they’d probably say Dancing Brave is the best horse in the northern hemisphere this year. I think he’s the best horse we’ve seen in Europe for a decade at least. Since possibly Nijinsky and Mill Reef.

“I think he’s one of the great horses, and I shall be a very lucky man if I ever see another one as good . . . or train another one as good.”

‘I love the game as much as I ever have. But it is sad what has happened. I hate to think what might be left by the time my grandchildren might want to get into the business. I’ve done what I’ve done because I want to see the sport saved before it is too late.’