Best of the Best in Racing : Wild Again’s Justification of His Owners’ $360,000 Gamble in the 1984 Classic Leads This List of Special Moments From Nine Years of the Breeders’ Cup

A survey of turf writers last year indicated that the most memorable Breeders’ Cup race was Personal Ensign’s last-gasp victory over Winning Colors in the mud at Churchill Downs in 1988.

Personal Ensign, an undefeated filly, nosed out that year’s Kentucky Derby winner, Winning Colors, in the Distaff to end her career with 13 victories.

But this vote still goes to the first Breeders’ Cup Classic, at Hollywood Park in 1984, as the race that had everything:

--It was racing’s first $3-million race.

--There were horse-of-the-year implications, with Slew O’ Gold needing a victory to clinch the title.

--Three owners were so confident in their horse that they paid an unheard-of supplementary fee of $360,000 to make Wild Again eligible.

“All that dough to run a 30-1 shot,” one of the owners of Slew O’ Gold, Mickey Taylor, said with admiration before the race. “Now that’s what I call being dead game.”

--There was a furious three-horse finish by Wild Again, Slew O’ Gold and Gate Dancer, with Wild Again winning by a head and Gate Dancer finishing half a length ahead of Slew O’ Gold.

--The stewards--Alfred Shelhamer, Pete Pedersen and Hubert Jones--conducted a lengthy inquiry into whether Wild Again and Gate Dancer might have fouled Slew O’ Gold through the stretch. The stewards ruled that Wild Again had run straight along the rail, but they dropped Gate Dancer, the colt with the purple earmuffs, to third place. He had lugged in, and was leaning on Slew O’ Gold in their drive toward the wire.

First place was worth $1.35 million, which didn’t seem like a very good return, considering the money Wild Again’s ownership had risked.

“Don’t worry about us, pal,” said Ron Volkman, one of the owners. “We more than made up for it at the windows.”

Wild Again paid $64.60 to win, still a record for the Classic.

Pat Day, riding Wild Again--his first of six Breeders’ Cup winners--followed orders from trainer Vincent Timphony, which included not hitting the colt because he might shy from the stick.

Said Day: “As we turned for home, Slew O’ Gold ranged up on the outside of me, and my horse was tiring significantly at that point. I thought that was as far as we were going to go.

“But as Slew came to me, he never got by me. My little horse just refused to give up. He dug down with such a gutsy last quarter of a mile that it gives me goose bumps just to talk about it. I could hear him grunting every jump, just straining. It was almost as though he knew that those people had put up all that money to give him the chance.”

With the 1984 Classic at the top of this list, then, here are the other races in the Breeders’ Cup’s most memorable dozen:

THE LAST JUMP

With a quarter-mile to run, the 1988 Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Churchill Downs looked like a refrain of the Kentucky Derby over the same track six months earlier. Winning Colors had been leading all the way and appeared to have enough left. Personal Ensign, favored at 1-2, was eight lengths behind, in fifth place, as she tried to become the first major horse to finish an unbeaten career since Colin in 1908.

“She wasn’t handling the race track,” said Personal Ensign’s jockey, Randy Romero. “That’s the reason she was so far back. It was slick, and I didn’t want to rush her off her feet, really getting after her, because I knew that wasn’t the right thing to do. So I just kept her together and hoped that she would get untracked.”

At the eighth pole, Winning Colors still led by 1 1/2 lengths over Goodbye Halo, with Personal Ensign four lengths from the lead. As the three fillies neared the wire, it still didn’t seem as though Personal Ensign, on the far outside, would have enough time.

“She switched (lead feet) late, and got the job done,” Romero said. “She win it in the last jump. That’s my most significant racing accomplishment, being associated with that filly. And that Breeders’ Cup race was one in a million.”

GO FOR WAND

Two years later, in 1990, Romero was aboard another heavily favored filly in the Distaff, at Belmont Park. Bayakoa, the Argentine-bred mare who had won the Distaff the previous year, and Romero’s Go For Wand were in an intense stretch duel, only inches apart, when Go For Wand broke down near the sixteenth pole.

The crowd of 51,236 at the track and millions watching television cringed and later wept as Go For Wand, after throwing Romero, got back up and instinctively staggered toward the finish line. She went from the inner rail to the outside fence before collapsing, and minutes later a veterinarian gave the filly a lethal injection. Romero rode another Breeders’ Cup race that day, but an examination later showed that he had suffered eight broken ribs and a broken collarbone.

Ron McAnally, who saddled Bayakoa, was the unhappiest of winners.

“It’s a shame what these horses sometimes have to do just for our enjoyment,” he said.

Another Hall of Fame trainer, Horatio Luro, and Billy Badgett, who trained Go For Wand, were talking the day after the spill.

“You have to have the skin of an elephant to play this game,” Luro said.

PIGGOTT AT 54

The adage that the show must go on applies to racing as well as the circus. About 20 minutes after the Go For Wand tragedy, a 54-year-old jockey entered the paddock at Belmont Park. Lester Piggott is considered a national treasure by English racing fans, although that reputation was tarnished in 1987 when he was convicted of tax evasion.

Piggott served about a year in prison, paid the government more than $5 million to square things and after a brief, unsatisfying training career, resumed riding only weeks before the 1990 Breeders’ Cup.

The winner of more than 5,000 races, including 29 of England’s classic stakes, Piggott added the Breeders’ Cup Mile to his resume with a come-from-behind ride on Royal Academy.

Two years later, Piggott’s luck turned in the Breeders’ Cup as Randy Romero’s had. In the 1992 Sprint at Gulfstream Park, Mr Brooks went down at the top of the stretch. The horse was destroyed and Piggott, five days short of his 57th birthday, was hospitalized with a broken collarbone, two cracked ribs and a partially collapsed lung. But he resumed riding several months after the Gulfstream spill and still is active.

SHOEMAKER AT 56

Piggott’s Breeders’ Cup victory at 54 didn’t break a record. Bill Shoemaker was 56 when he won the Classic with Ferdinand at Hollywood Park in 1987.

The year before, Ferdinand had won the Kentucky Derby as Shoemaker became the oldest jockey ever to win that race.

Ferdinand’s 4-year-old season started poorly, however, as he failed to win six consecutive starts. He ended the streak in the Hollywood Gold Cup in late June, then won at Del Mar months later and prepped for the Breeders’ Cup with a victory at Santa Anita two weeks before the Classic.

Trainer Charlie Whittingham, winless in the Breeders’ Cup, had gone into the 1987 series with eight horses, but after the first six races, the best he had done was Jeanne Jones’ second-place finish in the Juvenile Fillies.

Whittingham was taking three shots in the Classic, and another of his horses, Judge Angelucci, was tenaciously holding the lead at mid-stretch. Shoemaker didn’t want to move too soon with Ferdinand, who had a habit of pulling himself up and waiting for other horses after taking the lead. And Alysheba, who had won the Derby in 1987, was another closer who was moving from back in the pack about the time Shoemaker was drawing a bead on Judge Angelucci.

Inside the sixteenth pole, Ferdinand edged ahead. As he hit the wire, Alysheba, who had made up more than eighth lengths, was right there with him.

As they pulled up their horses, Shoemaker and Chris McCarron, astride Alysheba, both felt that they had lost. They agreed to “save” for $10,000, the winning jockey giving the other rider that much out of his share.

The placing judges studied the photo finish and put up Ferdinand’s number. A couple of months later, Ferdinand was voted horse of the year.

THE $6-MILLION HORSE

In 1988, Ferdinand had been retired to stud and Alysheba was winning races all over the country. The end of the season brought the colt to Churchill Downs as trainer Jack Van Berg tried again for a victory in the Classic. Van Berg had every reason to believe that he was snake-bitten: In 1984, his Gate Dancer had come up empty in the roughly run Classic at Hollywood Park; in 1985, Gate Dancer missed by a head against Proud Truth at Aqueduct; and in 1987 there was Alysheba’s heartbreaker against Ferdinand.

The track was muddy, the weather raw and darkness rushing in when the 1988 Classic was run, but Van Berg was confident. Many believed that Alysheba, a confirmed bleeder, couldn’t win without medication, Lasix, but Van Berg ran him without it, on the track over which they won the Derby.

Two horses--Waquoit and Cutlass Reality--were supplemented into the race, at $360,000 apiece, but McCarron and Alysheba were always in control, in fourth place early, third at the quarter pole and leading with an eighth of a mile left. The chart shows that Alysheba beat Seeking The Gold by only half a length, but actually McCarron had the finish line well measured and won more comfortably than that.

Alysheba, having won seven of nine starts, was voted horse of the year. He was retired after the Classic with $6.6 million in purses, breaking John Henry’s record. In his victory speech at Churchill, owner Clarence Scharbauer couldn’t help saying: “And we did it without Lasix.”

“Jeez, Clarence,” Jack Van Berg said. “Nobody’s brought it up but you.”

ELEGANT ENCORE

Charlie Whittingham’s second taste of victory in the Classic was especially sweet, because when his Sunday Silence beat Easy Goer by a neck at Gulfstream Park in 1989, it was the definitive answer to an intersectional rivalry that had started at that year’s Kentucky Derby, when the California colt defeated the heavy favorite from New York. Sunday Silence also beat Easy Goer in perhaps the best Preakness ever, but in the Belmont Stakes, Easy Goer prevented Whittingham’s horse from sweeping the Triple Crown.

Despite Sunday Silence’s 2-1 edge in the rivalry, Easy Goer went off at 1-2 in the Classic and Whittingham’s horse was 2-1. Pat Valenzuela, Sunday Silence’s regular jockey, was sitting out a 60-day suspension after having tested positive for cocaine, and Whittingham was able to hire McCarron.

Sunday Silence lurked in third place in the early going, with Easy Goer and Pat Day not far behind. At the top of the stretch, Sunday Silence overtook the pace-setter, Blushing John, and then it was up to Easy Goer to catch him.

He was a neck short. Trainer Shug McGaughey had won two races that day, with Dancing Spree in the Sprint and Rhythm in the Juvenile, but the big one got away. Sunday Silence finished ahead of Easy Goer in the horse-of-the-year poll, as he had on the racetrack.

LADY’S DAY

Pat Day has a record of two victories and three seconds in the Classic, and one of those seconds, aboard the late-running Turkoman at Santa Anita in 1986, was a factor in the horse-of-the-year balloting. McCarron couldn’t ride Turkoman because he had suffered a broken leg three weeks before the race.

Skywalker, the winner of the Classic, lacked horse-of-the-year credentials, so Lady’s Secret, with Day aboard, locked up the title with her 2 1/2-length victory in the Distaff. The victory for trainer Wayne Lukas’ 4-year-old capped an outstanding year: 10 victories, three seconds and two thirds in 15 starts. She defeated males in the Whitney at Saratoga.

MANILA’S BIG MOVE

That same year at Santa Anita, the British brought to California perhaps their best horse in a decade, Arc de Triomphe winner Dancing Brave. But they could not bring the mild European weather with him, and by race day, the hot, muggy training conditions in California might have been too much for the 3-year-old colt.

Bet down to 1-2 in the Turf by a crowd of almost 70,000, Dancing Brave never threatened and finished fourth, beaten by almost five lengths.

The winner was Manila, who was almost 9-1 even though he came into the race with five consecutive victories. When jockey Jose Santos couldn’t find room inside the mare Estrapade halfway through the stretch, he switched Manila to the outside and they won by a breathtaking neck over Theatrical, whose jockey, Gary Stevens, dropped his whip with about 40 yards left to run.

FRENCH CONNECTION

The apologies that the British made for Dancing Brave were not needed in 1991, when the French sent a horse to Churchill Downs for the Juvenile.

Arazi, who had never run on dirt, came from far behind on the turn for home, passing America’s best 2-year-olds as though they were standing still. He blew past pace-setting Bertrando on the far turn, galloping home under Pat Valenzuela. His margin, a modest five lengths, could have been doubled or tripled had the rider urged him.

“He was the best racehorse I’ve ever ridden,” Valenzuela said. “At the turn, I couldn’t believe Arazi was accelerating that fast. I thought I was on the next Secretariat.”

Six months later, having undergone surgery on both knees shortly after the Breeders’ Cup, Arazi returned to Churchill Downs, short on seasoning as he tried to win the Kentucky Derby. At the top of the stretch this time, he had nothing left. His eighth-place finish was the start of a slide to oblivion.

He was retired before the year was over, but he still had that remarkable Juvenile performance next to his name. There has never been a more electrifying victory by a Breeders’ Cup horse.

THE MISS IN THE MILE

Horses with two Breeders’ Cup victories are rare. Bayakoa won consecutive Distaff titles in 1989-90, the second victory tainted by the fatal breakdown of Go For Wand.

There are no qualifiers for Miesque’s consecutive victories in the Mile in 1987 and ’88. The French filly raced only twice in the United States, both in the Breeders’ Cup, and demolished the opposition both times. She added to her 3 1/2-length victory at Hollywood Park with a four-length triumph at Churchill Downs. Both victories clinched Eclipse Awards for best turf female.

PEBBLES ON GRASS

Before Miesque, there was Pebbles, an English filly capable of beating males. In 1985, Pebbles came to New York with what appeared to be bad training habits: She drank a pint of Guinness stout daily and had a traveling companion, a 6-year-old gelding who was along mainly for company.

So much for shady living. Pebbles went off as the favorite in the Turf at Aqueduct, was in 13th place after half a mile and then came up between horses and beat Strawberry Road II, the French-owned 6-year-old, by a neck. She won an Eclipse Award and earned $900,000 for her owner, Sheik Mohammed Al Maktoum, who had supplemented her into the field for $240,000.