Ferdinand Is Ideal Winner for Gold Cup

Next to the Santa Anita Handicap, the Hollywood Gold Cup is California’s most prestigious horse race. Owners, trainers and syndicationists would rather win it than almost any other.

Some great horses have won it. The mighty Seabiscuit won the first. Round Table took it home. Gallant Man. The great Noor. Kayak II. Challedon.

Some great horses couldn’t win it. Honeymoon. Hill Prince. Avatar. Porterhouse. Determine. Even John Henry tapped out.

But, in the first 47 years of its existence, only three Kentucky Derby winners managed to make it to the wire first. This is depressing--like giving a party and the most social person there is your mailman.

The point is, the Excellers, Ancient Titles, Kennedy Roads, Rejecteds and Greintons don’t quite make it. Native Diver won it three years in a row. And the rest of the country yawned.

You see, a Kentucky Derby victor in the winners’ circle validates your race. Kentucky Derby winners habitually go to Saratoga, Chicago, New Jersey. They corroborate the already massive inferiority complex western racing carries around in its saddle bags. When a Kentucky Derby winner such as Determine finishes down the track (third) to something called Rejected, all West Coast racing feels rejected.

Citation, Swaps and Affirmed were the only Kentucky Derby winners to come west and win the Hollywood Gold Cup. A more normal pattern for a Derby winner is to win something like the Suburban Handicap, the Jockey Club Gold Cup, the Carter, Woodward or Marlboro or something at Arlington Park. Something well east of the Tehachapis.

So, it was with a measure of gratification that the historians of the press box watched Ferdinand win the 48th running of the Hollywood Gold Cup Sunday at Hollywood Park.

In the normal course of things, the way racing is going, Ferdinand would, by now, have been either at 1) stud; or 2) Belmont Park. Instead, he was winning his fifth horse race in convincing style before an audience that chunked in almost a million and a half dollars on the race, most of it on him.

Ferdinand is not exactly your basic nose-to-the-grindstone, go-all-out athlete. If he were a ballplayer, Ferdinand might not exactly crash into the fence after line drives. Ferdinand does not bet all his chips on every card. He might not play both ends of the court in basketball.

You find him a hole on the rail and he’ll win the Kentucky Derby for you. You get him a fast pace and he’ll win from behind for you. But, among other things, you dassn’t let him get ahead early in a race. Ferdinand gets bored when he has nothing to catch. And, sometimes when he does.

He’s a challenge not only to a trainer but a jockey.

But, Bill Shoemaker has made the Hall of Fame cajoling wins out of brutes like these. It’s possible Bill Shoemaker never won a Kentucky Derby (he’s won four) on the best horse in the race. Swaps may have been. On the other hand, Nashua may have been that day. Tomy Lee was not. Shoemaker stole that race from jockey Bill Boland. Lucky Debonair never put anybody in mind of Secretariat. It’s doubtful if any rider ever got so much out of so little. The one time Shoe was on the best horse (Gallant Man in 1957) he may have got him beat.

But, Shoemaker had Ferdinand’s number Sunday. He knows him for the high-class loafer that he is. He rode him Sunday for 8 furlongs like the Wilshire bus. He stalked that field of clumpers like a guy with a warrant and all day to serve it. Shoe knew that if Ferdinand ever got in front he’d want to sit down and rest his feet, enjoy the scenery.

They used to call riders “ice men” for rides like Shoemaker put in Sunday. To sit there with a handful of horse and $500,000 on the line ($275,000 to the winner) calls for a guy who bleeds ice cubes. Shoemaker never hurried, never worried. For once, he had the best horse in the race. Shoemaker knows what to do with that, all right.

So, an historic race got an historic winner, for a change. We were spared the anti-history of a horse named Judge Angelucci (ugh!) or Slyly Gifted (y-e-eech!) or, God help us, Fobby Forbes winning it.

Having your race won by a horse who also won the Kentucky Derby is like having your golf tournament won by Jack Nicklaus, your auto race won by an Unser. It adds another dimension. It moves on the A wire.

It keeps a good story current. If the story of Ferdinand proves nothing else, it proves that Bill Shoemaker is as good a horseman as he ever was. He still makes a good horse two lengths better.

And trainer Charlie Whittingham might have trained 30,000 horses. Eight of them have won the Hollywood Gold Cup. But only one of them won the Kentucky Derby.

You get a free box of cigars if you can name any or all of the other seven. Is Ferdinand special to Whittingham? Is a pie round? Only four trainers in history have won a Kentucky Derby and a Gold Cup. And it took 50 years.

“I’m a public trainer of a public stable and I can’t afford to have favorites,” Charlie protests.

Oh, sure, Charlie. And when one of them wins you the Kentucky Derby-- and a Gold Cup--come around and we’ll talk.