Whipping Him Hurts More Than It Helps

The trouble with Bruho, the horse, is he can’t seem to make up his mind whether he wants to win the Kentucky Derby or the National Finals Rodeo, whether he wants to race or buck.

He has a pretty good race record. He has won six of 16 races, he has been second six times and third once.

It would be better--except he has had no score in two stakes. He offloaded the pilot in the stretch.

Now, in the rodeo, he’d be a household word. His name would be Midnight or Tornado or Dynamite or Outlaw or Satan.

It’s one thing to throw some green kid who has just hit town with a rope and a new hat. But it’s another to throw the racetrack equivalent of Buffalo Bill, Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok and the Sundance Kid, guys who were all but born on horseback. That’s what Bruho has been doing.

Laffit Pincay has been on about 40,000 horses in his lifetime, he has won on more than 7,000. When he gets on a horse, he expects to stay there. Bruho had other ideas.

When they came down the stretch together in the On Trust Handicap at Hollywood Park the other week, well in the lead and coasting, Bruho suddenly turned into a bucking horse-- and Pincay turned into a pedestrian.

Gary Stevens has won a Kentucky Derby and 2,000 other races and has been the leading rider at every track he has ridden. He expects to arrive at the finish line with the horse, too.

Bruho had other ideas. He came down the stretch in the Balboa at Del Mar with the lead at the 3/16ths pole when he suddenly decided to chuck it all. Including his rider, Stevens.

Race horses aren’t supposed to do that. They’re supposed to be Good Soldier Schweiks. Follow orders. Anyway, they know the best way to get rid of that pest on their backs is to get to that finish pole as fast as possible. Then he will jump off.

Bruho gets bored with this from time to time.

Now, tossing Laffit Pincay and Gary Stevens out of the saddle with stakes money on the line is not to be confused with throwing a greenhorn at a riding academy.

Bruho is an animal that rodeo stock producers dream about. Pincay and Stevens do not leave a horse’s back gladly.

Bruho can run some if he gets along with the guy on his back. He just missed the Del Mar track record when he scorched a mile and a sixteenth in 1:40 in the El Cajon Stakes in September. He has won $242,475 on the track.

Bruho’s trainer does not care for the notion he is conditioning a rogue. Trainers as a class take the position they could take King Kong and reduce him to fetching the paper or they could put a polar bear on roller skates, and the suggestion any race horse is beyond their disciplinary range brings out their resentment.

“It’s the whip,” insists Julio Canani. “He doesn’t like the whip. Would you?”

Canani, who learned his earliest secrets to bringing along a horse in the Peruvian Andes, thinks a whip is like a fire extinguisher--to be used only in the direst emergency. “To me, a rider carries a whip not to whip the horse but to guide him,” he says. “Most riders carry a whip to correct the horse.”

Correct , of course, carries a whole catalogue of interpretations.

“Nobody likes to get whipped,” Canani insists. “And to me, when a horse is five lengths in front, you don’t start getting after him. You know, in Europe, the whip is never used.

“There’s nothing crazy about this horse. He just shies from the whip.”

It is the conviction of most trainers that to be great, a horse must first be docile. They say that Mish Tenney used to ride Swaps to go down to get the mail. Man o’ War probably could have been used on a merry-go-round.

But as a general rule, virtuosity rarely comes coupled with humility. They are not 1 and 1A. Champions are rarely recessive. Good horses have been known to sulk when things don’t go their way.

Bruho doesn’t sulk. He takes action. He gets rid of what’s bothering him, i.e. the rider. Deposits him in the middle of the lane or the middle of the rhododendrons, whichever is closer. He goes on to win the race without him. It’s not his fault the rules of racing do not permit payoffs on riderless winners.

Bruho has a chance to be a good horse. Not a great horse. They loaded him in the gate in the Super Derby at Louisiana Downs, and Sunday Silence showed him how a great horse does it.

“We went wide the whole race,” Canani explains. “You can’t compare him to Sunday Silence. Sunday Silence is a champion. You can’t compare Bruho to them. But he can beat the rest of what’s around. He could have finished second in the Super Derby with a better trip.”

Bruho, who goes in the seven-furlong $100,000 Malibu Stakes on opening day at Santa Anita next Tuesday, could be a surprise of the meeting. He spun out a blistering 57-and-change work at the track Monday. Even better news was the rider, Corey Black, stayed aboard the whole way. “He can run,” Canani said. He can also buck. He gets his name (which means, “male witch” or “sorcerer,” in Spanish) from the fact his sire, Naevus, had a strange marking that looked in outline like a witch on a broomstick. Bruho missed the marking but not the spell, apparently.

In a rodeo, you get points if you stay on a bucking horse for eight seconds. Stevens made about 50 before he got thrown. Pincay’s race was a little longer. He lasted a minute. It’d get him the silver buckle in the rodeo, but it cost him 10% of a $65,000 purse in the On Trust Handicap.

It calls to mind the old New England horse, Kievex, who was his own racing secretary, which is to say, he carried up to 115 pounds placidly but bucked and fumed at anything higher.

He unaccountably won three races, and the secretary levied 130 pounds on him. Outraged friends sought out the trainer, indignant because the track had loaded all that poundage, which was sure to break the horse down. “Don’t worry,” soothed the trainer. “It ain’t gonna be on him long.”