A Match Race for the Ages

I never saw Man O’War.

But I saw Citation, which was the same thing.

I saw Secretariat.

I thought Citation was better. Heck, I thought Affirmed was too.

It’s a very subjective thing. A lot of my colleagues will disagree with me.

I thought Citation was the best racehorse I ever saw, a not-inconsiderable accolade when you consider my gallery also included Swaps, John Henry, even Native Dancer.

Most railbirds would opt for Secretariat, but I could never get over the fact Secretariat lost the Wood Memorial (he finished third) two weeks before the Kentucky Derby. It is Murray’s Law that good horses win, losing horses excuse. Period.

It’s hard to argue with Secretariat winning the Belmont by--what?--31 lengths? But he lost (to older horses) twice later that year.

There is the additional fact that neither Secretariat nor Man O’War stayed on the track to test handicap horses later in their careers. They quit at 3. Man O’War quit because the racing secretary promised if he stayed on the track that they would load “the heaviest weight ever carried by any horse” on him. Man O’War went to stud. So did Secretariat at age 3.

Citation didn’t. I first ran into Citation in his 5-year-old year. He had to skip his 4-year-old season, injured. He laid out the whole year, but he shipped out to Santa Anita as a 5-year-old. In those days, a railroad spur ran right out to the track and my magazine editor sent me out to cover the arrival and subsequent comeback campaign of the Calumet Big Horse.

I remember I learned a lot about racing from Citation’s Jimmy Jones, one of the famous Jones boys trainers, Papa Ben and son Jimmy.

Jimmy Jones put the horse on the track for the first time in a year in a driving rainstorm. It puzzled me. Thirty miles to the west they had to cancel a golf playoff--Hogan vs. Snead--because of the weather. If golf couldn’t be played, how could a healing horse come back?

Jones snorted. “A sloppy track in driving rain is the same as a fast track,” he summed up. Lesson One.

I remember challenging him on Citation’s credentials. Because he didn’t have the fast times some champions had. He had won his Kentucky Derby in 1948 in 2:05 and 2/5, his Preakness in 2:02 and 2/5, and his Belmont in 2:28 and 1/5. (Secretariat was to win his Belmont, unpressed, in 2:24 flat, his Derby in 1:59 and 2/5 and Preakness in 1:54 and 2/5, for instance).

Jones snorted. “Let me tell you about time,” he instructed me at the time. “We have a horse, Coaltown, who can and has run the three-quarters in 1:07 and change. Citation runs it in 1:10 and change. Yet, when we put them in the same race, Citation wins. In 1:10. Time is incidental. In the Kentucky Derby, Citation beat Coaltown by 3 1/2 lengths. Know what Citation ran the three-quarters in that day? 1:12 and change.”

I got it. I also got a grasp on Citation. His edge was courage and will.

Racehorses are the faintest hearted of God’s creatures, for the most part. Look them in the eye at the quarter-pole and most of them want to call 911. Or their mothers.

But what I remember mostly about that year is, Jones put the brave Citation in an inconsequential six-furlong tightener as his second comeback race. Citation ran his 1:10. He lost it, by a neck, to an inferior sort called Miche, who was getting a 16-pound pull in the weights from Citation.

Now, it seemed to mean little at that time. Just a complicated work for big Cy. But it has acquired meaning since. That race ended a 16-victory win streak for Citation. No one thought it mattered.

It matters now, a generation later. Because no horse has ever hung up a victory skein like that.

Until this year. A horse called Cigar has just tied the great Citation’s record. And, this Saturday at Del Mar, in the Pacific Classic, he has a chance to break it.

Now, in the little world of thoroughbred racing, this record is akin to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. Man O’War won 15 straight, Colin won all 15 races he ran in 1907 but 16 was the standard until Cigar tied it at Arlington last month.

Who is Cigar and why is he doing these terrible things to Citation? Well, Cigar is no one you want to see in your rear-view mirror. If Cigar were human, his nickname might be Rocky. A great part for Stallone and a throwback to Marciano who set pugilism’s win-streak standard of 49 in a row.

Like the Rock, Cigar is not long on style, only results. He’s got the long stride of the great ones, but he’s not the kind of horse you could set a glass of water onto and not have him spill a drop. He’d be a puncher, not a boxer. He’d get off the floor to beat you. His attitude is, your place, my place, whatever. He has won in the burning sands of Arabia, the leafy bowers of upper New York state, the prairie tracks of the Midwest or the sunny slopes of California. He’s not going to beat you by 31 lengths, but he’s going to beat you. He loves a good scrap. The margin is incidental. When the hand is played, he’s showing aces.

He’s a kind of late bloomer--but that’s because they thought he was a grass horse. He hated the stuff. He wanted to eat it, not run on it. He wanted to get down in the dirt where a guy could dig in and not slide all over the place. American racing, not Longchamps or steeplechases.

Like Citation, Cigar is good for racing. It has been a sport plagued by absentee stardom. Horse racing is unique in sport in that, once it establishes a star, he vanishes. Retires to stud.

A Babe Ruth, a Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis or Jack Nicklaus doesn’t make his mark in a World Series, title fight, U.S. Open--and then retire to go raise a family. They stick around and sell tickets. Race horses don’t. A Man O’War, Secretariat, Native Dancer gets his name in lights--only to blink out at once. Native Dancer even made the cover of Time. But when they loaded 137 pounds on him, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt said, “That’s it!” And walked his horse off into the sunset.

But Allen Paulson is keeping Cigar on track. Sports needs stars. I mean, they wear numbers, don’t they?

Cigar vs. Citation is one of the great match races of thoroughbred history. Even though they’re competing over the generations, the rivalry is genuine.

More than the purse will be at stake Saturday. History will be coming down the stretch.