HORSE RACING WOOD MEMORIAL : For Once, Jerkens Has Giant

The groom called trainer Allen Jerkens to the horse’s stall.

“It was a bow (a career-threatening tendon injury),” Jerkens said. “I wanted to turn my head away and not even look at it. It was tough to take.”

This was in 1974, at Belmont Park. The horse was Onion, a 5-year-old gelding and one of Jerkens’ favorites. In 1972, Onion had beaten Canonero II, the winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness the year before. In 1973, two months after Secretariat had swept the Triple Crown, Onion beat him in the Whitney at Saratoga, one of the biggest upsets in racing history.

Secretariat might have been ill at Saratoga, and he hit his head on the gate at the start. But that doesn’t detract from Onion’s victory. Secretariat lost only four other times during a 21-race career.

Because it has been written so often that Secretariat was beaten by a claiming horse in the Whitney, fact has been obscured by fabrication. At the time of the Whitney, Onion had never run in a claiming race, although Jerkens had come close to entering him in one.

“Early in his 3-year-old year, I entered him in a race for $35,000 claimers,” Jerkens said. “I was afraid somebody might take him, so I scratched.”

Allen Jerkens was voted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 1975 when he was 45, making him the youngest trainer at the time of enshrinement. Around New York tracks, he is known as “the giant-killer” for an ability to prepare horses that topple some of the legends of the game.

At Aqueduct today, Jerkens will be in a different position, trying to win the $500,000 Wood Memorial with Devil His Due, a 3-year-old colt who is one of the favorites. Although Jerkens has won many of New York’s biggest races, he has hardly touched the Wood, unsuccessfully running horses twice in the Kentucky Derby prep and not having been represented since Step Nicely finished fourth in 1973.

Secretariat, at 3-10 odds, didn’t win the Wood that year, either, running third behind his stablemate, Angle Light, and Sham. Jerkens kept bombarding Secretariat with horses that year until he wound up beating him twice--with Onion in the Whitney and with Prove Out in the Woodward at Belmont in the fall.

Beau Purple was another of Jerkens’ underrated horses. In 1962 and ‘63, during Kelso’s five-year run as horse of the year, Beau Purple beat the big gelding three times. Jerkens also upset Buckpasser, the 1966 horse of the year, with Handsome Boy in the 1967 Brooklyn Handicap.

Onion tested Jerkens’ mettle as much as any horse. The veteran gelding never won another important race after the Whitney. The tendon injury kept Onion away from the races for all of 1974. The next year, as a 6-year-old, he ran 12 times, won three and was second and third four times. Then he had another bowed tendon in 1976. Onion made yet another comeback in 1977, winning two races.

Jerkens has never apologized for Onion, never felt that his victories over Secretariat and Canonero II were flukes.

“As a 4-year-old, somebody in California, I forget who, was going to buy him for $100,000,” Jerkens said. “But the X-rays came back bad and the deal was canceled. I could never keep him sound, and I really wanted to, because I wanted to show everybody that this was a really good horse. And he was a good horse. Besides the Whitney, he ran a good fourth in the Marlboro Cup one year.”

Jerkens has been to the Kentucky Derby twice, finishing 11th with a longshot, Round Stake, in 1975, and running sixth with Sensitive Prince in 1978.

Devil His Due, a son of Devil’s Bag, the champion 2-year-old colt in 1983, has run five times, with three firsts and a second. The farthest he has run is a mile in the Gotham here on April 4; the Wood is 1 1/8 miles.

Close to the pace in the Gotham, Devil His Due and Lure, the 3-5 favorite, finished in a dead heat, with Devil His Due surviving a stewards’ inquiry before the result was allowed to stand. After watching the head-on view of the race, Jerkens concluded that his horse had brushed with Lure at the top of the stretch, and that Lure had come in and brushed Devil His Due as they neared the wire.

Mike Smith, who rode Lure, will ride Devil His Due today, with Herb McCauley switching to Thunder Rumble, the 7-2 favorite in the 13-horse field.

“I don’t know why McCauley got off my horse,” Jerkens said. “But I wound up with the leading rider around here, so how can I complain?”

Devil His Due will carry 126 pounds in the Wood, an increase of 12 from the Gotham.

Horse Racing Notes

Here is the Wood field, in post-position order: Thunder Rumble, West by West, Snappy Landing, Pie In Your Eye, Devil His Due, Careful Gesture, Rokeby, Chief Speaker, Surely Six, Jacksonport, Best Decorated, Goldwater and the filly Queen Of Triumph. . . . Aqueduct is a 1 1/8-mile oval, so with a short run to the first turn, it will be difficult for horses breaking from the outside to gain good positions. . . . Continued rain, which is in the forecast, might produce an off track.