Woody Is Back in the Business of Being Woody

“I got to where I didn’t know if I wanted to go on,” Woody Stephens said.

He was not talking about whether he wanted to go on training horses, which he has been doing for 50 years, or living, which he has been doing for about 76 years.

That’s “about” 76 years because Woodford Cefis Stephens has been known to approximate as well as exaggerate when talking about himself. “For a good many years,” says Keene Daingerfield, the wondrous wise racing judge of Lexington, Ky., “Woody and I were the same age. And now I find he’s two years younger.”

In any case, Woody Stephens is back, and looking younger than he did when he became immortal by saddling his fifth straight Belmont Stakes winner in 1986.

He is back from serious surgery, back to battling with his emphysema, feeling quite mortal. They say that pain has no memory, but Woody’s recollection of the needle in his spine is vivid.

“The doc told me I was tough,” Woody said. “I said, ‘Well, Doc, I been hard-rode and put up wet for a long time.’ ”

Patty Cooksey, leading female jockey of the pre-Julie Krone era, was taking on-the-job training with Chris Lincoln’s ESPN crew, which greeted Stephens at Barn 3 at mid-morning the day of the Belmont Stakes. He had left his Florida hospital four days earlier, after long convalescence.

“I was gonna be out here earlier,” Stephens said, “but I slept in till 8. Them silk pajamas felt awful good.” He was paraphrasing Eddie Arcaro’s dictum: “It’s hard to get up in the morning when you’re wearing silk pajamas.”

That led to one of his it’s-a-small-world stories, the kind Woody likes. “Arcaro won the Ohio Derby for me on Traffic Judge in ‘55,” he said. “Then in ’79 ... “

In ’79 there was Spectacular Bid. Stephens had a colt named Smarten, bred by Jim and Eleanor Ryan in Maryland. Smarten never got close enough to Spectacular Bid to find out what Bid smelled like until October at the Meadowlands when, of course, he finished second to him. By that time, Smarten had won the Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and American derbies and $638,433.

The year before, Stephens had chased after Affirmed and Alydar with Believe It, through the Derby and Preakness, before diverting Believe It to races he might win.

Now the ESPN people were set up in Woody’s clover, near the spot where Swale dropped dead shortly after winning one of those five Belmonts. They were taking pictures of Roi Danzig as buildup for their Ohio Derby show on Saturday.

Roi Danzig will be in that race, after a narrow escape from the Belmont Stakes. In another year Woody would have faint-praised him as “a nice sort of colt,” but this year he was Woody’s remote Belmont hope. Even in the hospital, feeling mortal, Stephens had to think about that.

By last Wednesday Roi Danzig had been in the money five of six times. On May 20, the colt opened up eight lengths in winning a 1 1-16 mile race. Three days before the Belmont he was going the same distance.

“If he’d won by six or eight lengths,” Stephens confessed, “I’da probably entered him in the Belmont.” Roi Danzig won neatly as a 19-10 favorite, but only by 1 1/2 lengths. So, Woody did the smart thing, as he had with Smarten.

“Rwah,” a TV functionary was saying to Chris Lincoln, trying to pronounce Roi Danzig’s first name. “Rwah Danzig. It’s French. Roi means king. Rwah.”

Lincoln didn’t try pronunciation on Stephens. Caveat, who won Woody’s second Belmont after Laffit Pincay had scraped him through on the rail, is still Ca-veet to his trainer. Woody’s pronunciation of his first Belmont winner, Conquistador Cielo, cannot be conveyed in writing.

Woody hasn’t decided which to pronounce Cefis, and that’s his middle name.

But he’s back, and he’s thinking. Woody’s plans for his horses always include their life after racing, in the breeding shed, “where the money is.”

Woody showed the TV crew Jim Ryan’s pretty chestnut filly named Darlin Lindy. He was running her in the Mother Goose on Sunday against Eugene Klein’s monster filly, Open Mind. “I don’t think she can beat that one,” he said, “but she might get a little black type.”

Finishing third would put her name in boldface letters in the sales catalogs and stud books, designating her as “stakes-placed.” Woody did not explain that the accomplishment is easier in a race against a 1-5 shot like Open Mind. In a field of five, three of them have to get a little black type. And, as Casey Stengel might have said, who’d look it up?

Darlin Lindy didn’t. Angel Cordero had to hustle Open Mind to a stakes record to win, and Darlin Lindy wasn’t in the hunt.

But there are other races. Woody found some for her uncle, Smarten.