Improbable Run to Glory

When the young horse was sent from Texas to Max Hirsch in New York, the famous trainer looked at the colt’s right front foot and shook his head. “I didn’t think he’d train at all,” Hirsch said.

The colt was the son of a Kentucky Derby winner, but his sire had been a dud at stud and his dam, who was lucky herself to be alive, never ran a race.

“When he trotted or walked, you would have thought he was going to fall down,” Hirsch said.

He was talking about Assault, the overachiever who won the Kentucky Derby and went on to sweep the Triple Crown 50 years ago. Only 11 horses have swept the Triple Crown, none since Affirmed in 1978.

It took those 1946 victories in the Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes to make believers out of the many horseplayers who persisted in betting against Assault.

Even now, historians look at Assault’s slow times in the three races and theorize that he was the best of an ordinary crop. In the 1994 edition of its American Racing Manual, the Daily Racing Form listed 22 thoroughbreds as the “Great Horses of the 20th Century,” and Assault was not among them. In a 1988 turf writers’ poll that ranked the 100 greatest horses of this century, Assault ranked 49th.

But two measures of a horse’s greatness--money earned and the ability to carry weight while beating older horses--show that Assault was no cheese champion. That he did what he did with only three good hooves only swells his reputation.

Eddie Arcaro, hired by Hirsch to ride Assault after his Triple Crown jockey, Warren Mehrtens, had been sacked, won several stakes with the long, lean chestnut and ranks him as one of the best horses he ever rode.

“Until I got on him, I had underestimated him,” the 80-year-old Arcaro said. “But I’d have to say that he’s No. 3 of the ones I rode, right after Citation and Kelso.”

The first time that Arcaro rode him, in November 1946, Assault was in Baltimore, the scene of his Preakness victory, and won the Pimlico Special, beating Stymie and Bridal Flower, who was the best 3-year-old filly in the country that year.

The following year with Arcaro, Assault won three times carrying 130 pounds or more, and they won the Butler Handicap at the old Empire City track in New York under an impost of 135 pounds. In the Butler, Assault spotted Stymie nine pounds and beat him by a head, after Arcaro had squeezed his mount through a needle’s eye in the stretch. The shoehorn job was so tight that Assault was accidentally struck across the face by another jockey’s whip.

“That was a race that left the attendance gasping for breath,” wrote Joe Palmer, the legendary turf writer. “A horse that can hold off Stymie’s rush and run down Lucky Draw has to be a little more than good.”

Racing from 1945 until he was a 7-year-old in 1950, Assault won 18 of 40 starts and was second or third 14 times. He earned $674,720, most of it in 1946-47, and at one time held the record for purse money. Allowing for inflation, his earnings would now be the equivalent of more than $4 million.

“Money remains the generally used ranking, probably because it is not subject to dispute,” Palmer wrote in 1946. “Dollars can be counted while people disagree about class.”

Assault was foaled on March 26, 1943, at the King Ranch in Kingsville, Texas. King Ranch, almost a million acres southeast of Corpus Christi, not far from the Gulf of Mexico, was owned by Robert J. Kleberg Jr. and his family, who also were deep in cattle and had significant oil holdings. Gen. Robert E. Lee had told Kleberg’s grandfather to “buy land, and never sell,” and not only had the advice been handed down, it had been acted on, time and again.

A mating of Bold Venture and Igual produced Assault.

Bold Venture, trained by Hirsch and owned by Morton L. Schwartz, had won the 1936 Derby and Preakness, but had been so disappointing as a stallion that he was sold privately to Kleberg and moved from Kentucky to Texas.

Igual, a daughter of Equipoise, the horse of the year in 1932-33, was a sickly foal who almost died. She produced two foals before Assault and 10 after him, and the dismal dozen won only 36 races and earned less than $170,000.

It has never been documented exactly when and how Assault hurt his foot. The best guess is that he stepped on a surveyor’s stake, but the injury could also have been caused by a nail or even a sharp stick. The object punctured the frog, a spongy, V-shaped support area near the hoof wall.

“There was a great risk of infection, because horses have so little circulation in their feet,” said Helen Alexander, Kleberg’s granddaughter and general manager of the 700-acre King Ranch in Lexington, Ky. “I hadn’t even been born then, but the stories through the years were that it was fairly touch and go whether the horse could be saved.”

Rather cruelly, Assault was called “the Clubfoot Comet” during his career, but to say that he was clubfooted would be incorrect. The foot was misshapen, but when he was in a standing position, there was no discernible defect.

“He never showed any signs that it was hurting him,” said Hirsch, who was 88 and still training when he died in 1969. “I think that when the foot still hurt him, he got in the habit of protecting it with an awkward gait, and then he kept it up. But he galloped true. There wasn’t a thing wrong with his action when he went fast.”

The frog reminded Joe Palmer of a “piece of very old dry wood that keeps its shape but has no solidity.” Farriers needed to be careful and persistent in shoeing Assault. It was tricky hammering in the nail that kept that side of the racing plate intact. The shoe on the bad foot was conventional, but the blacksmith would turn it up slightly in front, which helped keep it in place. When Assault was re-shod, it sometimes took a day or two before the plate would stay in place.

As a 2-year-old, with Mehrtens riding him in all but one of his races, Assault was nothing special. He won two of nine starts, and wasn’t favored in any of them. In the Experimental Handicap, a theoretical ranking of 2-year-olds, Assault was rated 18th at 116 pounds.

He didn’t make his debut as a 3-year-old until April 9, 1946.

“I think Max was pampering him,” said Mehrtens, now 75, by phone from Sarasota, Fla. “He was a very gentle horse. He’d forget about his foot and stumble sometimes. He was not big--I guess he stood about 15 hands [60 inches] and weighed close to 1,000 pounds--but he was all heart.”

In that first race, at the old Jamaica Race Track in New York, Assault won by 4 1/2 lengths at three-quarters of a mile. On April 20, in the 1 1/16-mile Wood Memorial, New York’s traditional prep for the Kentucky Derby, Assault won by 2 1/4 lengths at 8-1. Hampden, the favorite, finished second under Arcaro.

Nine days later, Hirsch ran Assault at Churchill Downs in the Derby Trial, which was only four days before the Derby. The track came up muddy and he finished fourth, beaten by 4 1/2 lengths.

This was the first Derby after World War II, and Matt Winn, the president of Churchill Downs, wanted to make it something special. The purse was $100,000 for the first time and Winn forecast--correctly--that 100,000 would attend, breaking the attendance record.

It continued raining in Louisville, and the track condition was listed as slow. For the Brooklyn-born Mehrtens, who was 25, this would be his first--and, it turned out, his last--Derby. Mehrtens already had ulcers; the stomach condition affected his appetite as a teenager, and when he started riding, eight years before, he weighed only 79 pounds.

Mehrtens didn’t have any other mounts on Derby day.

“I was scared to death,” he said. “I was up and down all day. I went to the bathroom a lot.”

The three-horse entry owned by Elizabeth Arden Graham’s Maine Chance Farm was the 11-10 favorite. Lord Boswell, who would be ridden by Arcaro, had won the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, and Knockdown was the Santa Anita Derby winner. The third Maine Chance horse, Perfect Bahram, wasn’t even given much of a chance by his jockey, Ted Atkinson.

“I rode because I didn’t have anything in Chicago that day,” Atkinson said. “And besides, I was being paid a $2,500 retainer by ‘Lady Mud Pack.’ ”

Mehrtens thought that the 8-1 odds for Assault were about right.

“I didn’t think we could win, but Max did,” Mehrtens said. “After he lost the Trial, I was saying, ‘How can I win the big race if I didn’t win this one?’ ”

Spy Song, with Johnny Longden aboard, was first out of the gate, with Knockdown just behind him. Assault was fifth down the backstretch, and although he improved his position to third on the turn, it was because a couple of the tiring horses ahead of him were backing up. Mehrtens hadn’t asked his mount to run yet.

At the top of the stretch, Assault was able to get through inside.

“Longden drifted out with Spy Song, otherwise it might have been different,” Mehrtens said. “And Spy Song carried Knockdown out into the center of the track.”

Don Ameche, George Jessel, Gene Tunney, Hedda Hopper and Margaret Truman were in the stands as Assault won by eight lengths, tying the Derby record for winning margin. But his time for 1 1/4 miles was 2:06 3/5, the slowest in 13 years.

Still, the Texans could crow. Assault was the first Texas-bred to win the Derby, and even sweeter, he was the son of an outcast stallion from Kentucky.

The Preakness was on May 11, a week after the Derby. On May 6, Assault was vanned to Pimlico. On May 8, he had a three-furlong workout. On May 9, five days after running 1 1/4 miles, Hirsch worked him 1 1/8 miles.

“Max wanted to make sure he was fit,” Mehrtens said, not a hint of irony in his voice.

For the first time in 13 races, Assault was favored. He went off at 7-5, with the Lord Boswell-Knockdown entry 2-1 and Hampden 3-1.

At the break, Natchez, who broke from the ninth stall in a 10-horse field, cut over sharply and bothered Assault, who was in sixth place after half a mile. Mehrtens moved sooner than usual, and they went to the front with about three-eighths of a mile left. Assault had a four-length lead at the eighth pole, and Mehrtens, sensing that he was tiring, hit him in the head with his whip.

“He ducked in from that, and then I didn’t hit him anymore,” Mehrtens said. “I just hand-rode him the rest of the way.”

Lord Boswell, ninth after half a mile, made a determined run but lost by a neck. The time for 1 3/16 miles was 2:01 2/5. That was five seconds slower than the track record, and the slowest fast-track Preakness in 17 years.

There were three weeks before the 1 1/2-mile Belmont Stakes. Racing had already had two Triple Crown sweeps in the 1940s--Whirlaway and Count Fleet--but the connections for Lord Boswell, Hampden, who had run third in the Preakness, and four others wanted a shot at Assault, and some thought the added distance might be their trump cards.

Someone gave Max Hirsch a stopwatch with a rabbit’s foot attached, and the trainer used it to clock eight more workouts, the last at 1 1/2 miles three days before the race.

Mehrtens still couldn’t believe that he was on history’s doorstep, and when the gate opened, the Triple Crown bid was almost snuffed out posthaste. Assault went to his knees, coming as close as a horse can to going down.

“I think we would have if I hadn’t been riding long [with his stirrups],” Mehrtens said. “Max always made me ride longer than I wanted to.”

The second choice to Lord Boswell, Assault was allowed to settle into fourth place. Hampden, who was trying to win on the front end, faltered at the top of the stretch as Natchez took the lead, but Assault and Mehrtens were on the move.

In the stands, Bob Kleberg, Assault’s owner, squeezed the rail in front of him with both hands and shouted, “Come on with him!”

Assault brushed Hampden as he went by. He beat Natchez by three lengths, in a time of 2:30 4/5.

Noreen Mehrtens was there, cheering her husband on. They have been married 53 years, and with their five children will attend a celebration on Derby day next Saturday at the Henrietta Memorial Center in Kingsville, Texas.

“Winning the Belmont was something I’ll never forget,” Mehrtens said. “I did it in my hometown, and I was proud that I made it from the bottom to the top, just like Assault.”

Mehrtens’ critical mistake, the one that sent Hirsch to Arcaro, was getting beat by Stymie in the Gallant Fox Handicap at Jamaica in October 1946. Kleberg and Hirsch, who had bred Stymie and then lost him on a $1,500 claim to Hirsch Jacobs, didn’t suffer defeats by their former horse gracefully.

Mehrtens quit riding six years after he won the Triple Crown.

“I was starting to ride scared, and that’s no way to ride,” he said. “I owned two cars, a house and it looked like I was going to be able to work as a racing official.”

Mehrtens retired as a steward at Finger Lakes, in upstate New York, in 1982. Bob Kleberg was 77 when he died in 1974. He and Max Hirsch combined to win another Derby, with Middleground in 1950. Middleground, also a son of Bold Venture, was the second and most recent Texas-bred to have won the Derby.

Assault, apparently a shy breeder, never sired a thoroughbred foal, although a few of his breedings to quarter horse mares resulted in pregnancies. He broke a bone in his left foreleg and was destroyed, at 28, on Sept. 1, 1971.

He and Middleground are buried next to each other at the King Ranch in Texas. Nothing fancy, just a couple of headstones with their names and their dates. In Assault’s case, a plain marker for a plain horse who made it from the bottom to the top.

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Triple Crown Winners

Career records of the 11 Triple Crown winners:

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Year Horse Sts 1st 2nd 3rd Earnings 1919 Sir Barton 31 13 6 5 $116,857 1930 Gallant Fox 17 11 3 2 $328,165 1935 Omaha 22 9 7 2 $154,755 1937 War Admiral 26 21 3 1 $273,240 1941 Whirlaway 60 32 15 9 $561,161 1943 Count Fleet 21 16 4 1 $250,300 1946 Assault 40 18 6 8 $674,720 1948 Citation 45 32 10 2 $1,085,760 1973 Secretariat 21 16 3 1 $1,316,808 1977 Seattle Slew 17 14 2 0 $1,208,726 1978 Affirmed 29 22 5 1 $2,393,818

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