Curious Fellow: : A New World Is Awaiting Precisionist

Curiousity may have killed the cat but it kept at least one horse occupied and out of trouble.

Precisionist, Fred W. Hooper’s Eclipse Award-winning sprinter, spent the last four years earning more than $3 million in purses. In his spare time, he studied the world around him.

And that, according to his trainer, Ross Fenstermaker, was what set him apart from other horses.

“He loved to watch people and things,” Fenstermaker said the other morning, speaking in the past tense even though the 6-year-old chestnut stallion was standing in a stall not 10 feet away.

“He’d watch anything. You’d take him to the race track, he’d be looking at the crowd, looking at the other horses. He was a very curious horse. Planes would come over, he’d watch the planes.

“We’d be here at the barn some days and he’d watch the flags on top of the grandstand. He’d notice them flying, whereas other horses wouldn’t even know they were there. He was just very observant.”

And still is.

In a few weeks, Precisionist will be taking up a new--and presumably more pleasurable--career. Having been injured Jan. 9 during a workout at Santa Anita and subsequently having successful surgery two days later, he is being retired to stud.

That means he will be leaving California, the scene of most of his racing triumphs, and will probably stand at stud in Kentucky.

Fenstermaker and jockey Chris McCarron, who rode Precisionist in all but seven of the horse’s 36 starts, will be sorry to see him go.

“We’re going to really miss him,” the 47-year-old Fenstermaker said. “He’s the big horse in the barn. You always miss that one. He’s the money maker. So you’re gonna miss that.”

But it goes much deeper than that.

Fenstermaker, who left his home in Idaho at 14 to gallop horses for Hooper in Alabama, has a special feeling for the animals in his charge. To him, they mean more than a paycheck, and in Precisionist’s case that is especially true.

“When you’re with a horse for three or four years, they’re part of you,” the trainer said. “It’s like your family.”

That’s what makes it difficult for him to accept that Precisionist has run his last race and will soon be leaving.

None of this was supposed to happen, of course. Hooper had decided after the Breeders’ Cup last Nov. 1 that he would keep the horse in training for another year.

Winning the Santa Anita Handicap March 8 was to be 1987’s first major quest, one that did not seem impossible now that Precisionist’s two long-time nemeses, Greinton and Herat, had been retired.

“I raise horses to win races,” Hooper had said in announcing that Precisionist would return to the track for his 6-year-old season. “I like to win races, and this horse is the kind who does that. The horse is in good shape, and there’s no reason not to continue running him.”

Then the injury occurred. Fenstermaker explained what happened.

“I took him out and worked him five-eighths of a mile and on the way back he got sore,” he said. “By the time we got back (to the barn) he was lame.”

What Precisionist had done was fracture the cannon bone, the equine equivalent of the shinbone, in his left foreleg. It was not a bad break, just a crack, really, but it was enough to end his racing career.

Precisionist had never scaled the heights that the truly great horses do--he never ran in any of the Triple Crown races, for example, because Hooper believed the distances were too much for him. All the same, he did achieve a measure of fame, especially in Southern California, where his eight duels with rival Greinton in 1985 and 1986 earned both a kind of notoriety.

He won his Eclipse Award as the nation’s top sprinter after winning the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Aqueduct in November, 1985. Last November, he finished third in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita in what proved to be his final race.

In all, Precisionist went to the post 36 times, winning 17 races, finishing second in 8 and third in 3. He earned a total of $3,073,710, or an average of $85,380 every time he sprang from the starting gate.

A curious horse with a curious success story.

Every year for the last 42 years, Fred Hooper, 89, has hoped against hope for another Hoop Jr., the colt he bought for $10,200 in 1943 and who, in 1945, became Hooper’s first and only Kentucky Derby winner.

In 1983, Hooper’s hopes centered on a strapping chestnut colt by Crozier out of Excellently. Even as a 2-year-old, Precisionist had the look of a champion.

He was, as McCarron recalled, a “rank” youngster, full of fight, but he loved to run. And the faster he ran, the happier he was.

McCarron was not aboard Precisionist on the afternoon of July 13, 1983. Instead, it was Terry Lipham who guided the colt to his first victory, in a six-furlong event for maiden 2-year-olds at Hollywood Park.

Not long thereafter, McCarron became Precisionist’s regular rider.

Ironically, having missed Precisionist’s first win, McCarron later would be prevented by injury from being a part of his last. It was Gary Stevens who rode Precisionist to his 17th and final victory, a 4 1/2-length triumph last Oct. 13 in the Yankee Valor Handicap at Santa Anita.

But in between those races, McCarron rode the chestnut 29 times, bringing him into the winner’s circle on no fewer than 15 occasions. Like Fenstermaker, he also regards the horse as something special.

“He was such a great pleasure to ride,” McCarron said while watching the early morning workouts at Santa Anita. “He was extremely fast and finally showed a lot of versatility by being able to go a mile and a quarter.

“I don’t know how fast he would have been if we ever came out of the gate and just sent him hard for half a mile. I don’t know how quick he could have gone. He went 44 (seconds) and change sometimes with as much hold (restraint) as I could have on him. He was just an ultra-fast horse.”

McCarron said he was not surprised by Hooper’s decision to race Precisionist another year.

“I kind of expected that because Mr. Hooper is a real sportsman,” he said. “He loves this game, he loves to see his horses run. He breeds them to run them, he doesn’t breed them to breed them. He has got a great breeding program and everything, but he enjoys raising these horses to see them race.”

McCarron and Fenstermaker differ on how well Precisionist might have done this year had he remained sound.

“I honestly don’t know how he would have been as a 6-year-old,” McCarron said. “I think it just would have been difficult to top what he had accomplished prior to that.”

Fenstermaker thinks otherwise.

“I really thought it was going to be the best year of his life,” the trainer said. “I thought we were going to have a real big year.”

The cracked cannon bone put an end to that, but Dr. G. Lynn Richardson of the Southern California Equine Hospital, one of Precisionist’s veterinarians, said the injury is not uncommon.

On Monday, Dr. Greg Ferraro put a pin in the bone to help it knit, and Richardson said the procedure went without a hitch.

When Precisionist’s name is mentioned, Greinton’s invariably follows.

Between January, 1985, and April, 1986, the two met eight times. Each won four times. They ran one-two in seven of the eight races, the only exception being when the upstart Herat threw a curve into the pattern.

Precisionist’s four wins were, in order, by 4 lengths, a nose, 4 lengths and a neck. Greinton, trained by Charlie Whittingham, in turn beat Precisionist by a neck, 2 3/4 lengths, 1 3/4 lengths and 3 lengths.

Add the eight races together and the difference separating the horses over the total of 9 1/8 miles was--astonishingly--less than a quarter of a length, in Precisionist’s favor. They might not have been Affirmed and Alydar, but their rivalry made for some exciting racing.

It began with the San Fernando Handicap at Santa Anita Jan. 19, 1985. Precisionist, having won 3 of 5 races in his 2-year-old season and 5 of 12 as a 3-year-old, came into the San Fernando fresh from a convincing win in the Malibu Stakes, the first leg of the three-race Strub Series.

This, in capsule form, was how his duel with Greinton developed:

No. 1--Jan. 19, 1985

SAN FERNANDO STAKES

Santa Anita

Precisionist beats Greinton by four lengths to take the second leg of the Strub Series. Greinton has a six-pound weight advantage.

No. 2--Feb. 3, 1985

CHARLES H. STRUB STAKES

Santa Anita

Precisionist wins by a nose in a photo finish to become only the fifth horse to sweep the Strub Series. Putting the feat in perspective is the fact that the others were Round Table in 1958, Hillsdale in 1959, Ancient Title in 1974 and Spectacular Bid in 1980. Greinton has an eight-pound weight advantage.

No. 3--April 13, 1985

SAN BERNARDINO HANDICAP

Santa Anita

Greinton wins by a neck, making the most of a seven-pound weight advantage.

No. 4--May 19, 1985

MERVYN LEROY HANDICAP

Hollywood Park

Precisionist wins by four lengths, prompting Whittingham to say, “At a mile, this (Precisionist) is one tough s.o.b.” Greinton has a five-pound weight advantage.

“This colt is kind of a freak,” Fenstermaker says after Precisionist comes within three-fifths of a second of breaking the world record. “He’s capable of anything. He really is awesome in the mornings, too. In workouts, he’ll breeze to track records. He amazes you.”

No. 5--June 9, 1985

CALIFORNIAN

Hollywood Park

Greinton, with a seven-pound weight advantage, wins by 2 3/4 lengths.

No. 6--June 23, 1985

HOLLYWOOD GOLD CUP

Hollywood Park

Greinton, with a five-pound weight advantage, wins by 1 3/4 lengths.

“When a horse breaks the track record by four seconds, he’s no slouch,” Fenstermaker says of Greinton. “We just got out-run and I can’t use the weights as a big excuse. Maybe the next time they’ll give us weight.”

No. 7--March 2, 1986

SANTA ANITA HANDICAP

Santa Anita

Greinton, with a four-pound weight advantage, wins, finishing 3 lengths ahead of Precisionist, who is sixth. Precisionist burns himself out chasing the front-running Herat, a 157-to-1 shot who winds up second.

The race is a prelude of things to come. Eight months later in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, Herat will again take off with Precisionist in pursuit, his “rabbit” tactics contributing to Precisionist’s third-place finish.

No. 8--April 13, 1986

SAN BERNARDINO HANDICAP

Santa Anita

Precisionist and Greinton finally are given equal weights and Precisionist wins by a neck in what turns out to be their final duel. An injury later in the year forces Greinton into retirement.

So which was the better horse? McCarron and Fenstermaker have no doubts.

“I think (Precisionist) was a better horse than Greinton because when Greinton was beating him in several of those races he was giving Greinton five, six, eight pounds,” McCarron said.

“Whenever they would get up close together in the weights, Precisionist would beat him, with the exception of the Santa Anita Handicap last year. But there were circumstances leading up to that race that prevented Precisionist from running his best race. The main thing was the (fast) workout I gave him. . . . That cooked him. So he wasn’t able to do his best that afternoon.

“But I don’t think there’s any doubt in my mind that he was a better horse than Greinton.”

Added Fenstermaker: “They were an awful close pair. We had to give him (Greinton) so dang much weight all the time. That’s what made me mad. We were always giving him weight and he was so close to us.

“The last time we ran it was at equal weights and there was only a neck difference between the two of them. Neither horse had an excuse that day. They were both good, they were both at their best. They hooked up at the head of the stretch and it was a battle all the way to the wire and we just out-finished him.”

And so the two great rivals finished their series tied, each having beaten the other four times and each then being forced into retirement by injury.

A curious end.