KINGS OF THE CROWN

By BILL CHRISTINE

May 30, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

LOUISVILLE, Ky. —

In biblical terms, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse represented pestilence, war, famine and death.

Moved by the muse after Notre Dame beat Army in football 75 years ago, sportswriter Grantland Rice mythologized them as Stuhldreher, Layden, Crowley and Miller.

In Triple Crown lore, their names are Longden, Turcotte, Cruguet and Cauthen. These four horsemen won’t ride again, but they have their stories to tell, the legendary accounts of Count Fleet, Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed. They are timely tales now, because jockey Chris Antley would join the exclusive circle if he and Charismatic win the Belmont Stakes in New York on Saturday, thereby dropping off the 12th Triple Crown champion at racing’s front door.

The four horsemen of the Triple Crown--the only jockeys alive who rode horses that swept the difficult series--come fully armed with a point of view. Secretariat wouldn’t have beaten Count Fleet, said Johnny Longden, but then he might be biased. Ron Turcotte said Secretariat was one of a kind. Steve Cauthen, only 18 when he rode Affirmed, said that his three races were incrementally better. And leave it to an embittered Jean Cruguet to crack the mold: Seattle Slew, Cruguet said, wasn’t even the best horse he ever rode; the 1977 Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont don’t head the list of the races Cruguet won.

Longden, 92, is unique in Triple Crown history because he rode Count Fleet to a sweep in 1943, then 26 years later, he almost swept the series as a trainer with Majestic Prince. After Arts And Letters beat Majestic Prince in the 1969 Belmont, that opened the gates for the prolific 1970s, when Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed became Triple Crown champions.

Charismatic will finish up training at Churchill Downs on Tuesday and be flown to New York on Wednesday for his Belmont countdown. “It won’t be just another day at the track,” said Antley, mindful that it has been 21 years since Affirmed kept breaking Alydar’s heart. “When you reach this point in racing, it gets to be a scary thought.”

Scaring Them Away

As a 2-year-old, Count Fleet ran the fastest mile in the history of Belmont Park and won another stake by 30 lengths. Yet John Hertz, the rental-car and Yellow Cab magnate who raced his horses in taxi-like black-and-yellow silks, almost sold the plain-looking colt for $4,500.

“Somebody told me that,” Longden said, “and I got on my bicycle at Belmont Park and raced to the nearest phone. ‘You can’t do it, Mr. Hertz,’ I told him. ‘This horse is too good to sell.’ ”

Count Fleet was the heavy 2-5 favorite in what was called the Streetcar Derby. World War II travel restrictions and a gasoline shortage virtually limited the crowd at Churchill Downs to locals and soldiers from nearby Fort Knox. In a field of 10, Count Fleet won by three lengths.

The Preakness, run a week later, drew only four horses. Count Fleet registered another wire-to-wire victory, this time by eight lengths. A month later came the 1 1/2-mile Belmont, longest race of the series. By now, the colt’s odds had dropped to a nickel on the dollar, the lowest allowed by law. Only two other horses showed up.

“There was no pressure,” Longden said, “because I knew that no horse could beat him.”

Eight lengths ahead after the opening half-mile, Count Fleet won by 25 lengths.

“You were crazy to let him win by that much,” said Eddie Arcaro, who had ridden Whirlaway to the Triple Crown two years before and would ride Citation to another Triple Crown in 1948.

“You’re crazy,” Longden told him, “because you don’t know the horse.”

Longden said that Count Fleet had only one bad habit.

“You couldn’t rate him,” he said. “If you tried to slow him down, he wouldn’t like it and he’d take off for the outside fence.”

Longden retired from the saddle in 1966, having won a then-record 6,032 races, and three years later he was in the middle of another Triple Crown hunt as the trainer of Majestic Prince.

Ridden by Bill Hartack, Majestic Prince nipped Arts And Letters and Braulio Baeza by a neck in the Derby. In the Preakness, Arts And Letters chased Majestic Prince, this time missing by a head.

The first two races had taken their toll on Majestic Prince, but his owner, Frank McMahon, insisted on running in the Belmont.

“He had tendon trouble, and he wasn’t himself,” Longden said. “Besides that, the mile and a half was a little beyond him.”

Arts And Letters took the lead with half a mile left and Majestic Prince finished second, beaten by 5 1/2 lengths. Longden’s horse was then retired with a bowed tendon.

31 Skiddoo

Redeeming himself after losing the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct two weeks before, Secretariat won the 1973 Derby by 2 1/2 lengths over Sham in a record 1 1/4-mile time of 1:59 2/5. Hopes soared that there might be the first Triple Crown champion in 25 years.

“I couldn’t take credit for anything he did,” Turcotte said. “I was just a passenger and he carried me along.”

In the Preakness, Secretariat shocked Turcotte as well as the crowd at Pimlico, moving from fourth to first on the clubhouse turn with a tremendous burst of speed. At the wire, they were again 2 1/2 lengths better than Sham. Pimlico’s time was 1:54 2/5, but the Daily Racing Form, suggesting that the official timer had malfunctioned, continues to list a time of 1:53 2/5, a Preakness record.

“A week after the Preakness, when the horse came back and was doing so great, I knew we’d win the Belmont,” Turcotte said. “I had confidence in him all the way.”

Trainer Lucien Laurin, the pint-sized Canadian, was a worrywart. One night he awoke in a cold sweat, after dreaming that Secretariat stumbled in the Belmont and Turcotte fell off. The day of the race, Turcotte saw jockey Jorge Velasquez’s wife, Marguerita. In her dream, Secretariat won by 15 lengths.

“If that happens, I’ll buy you all dinner,” Turcotte said.

By the time Turcotte hit the paddock before the race, Laurin’s nervousness had rubbed off.

“I thought to myself that a horse could always hit a hole,” Turcotte said in recalling the day.

The only hole was the one Secretariat punched in the wind. In what is arguably the most powerful race ever run, he won by 31 lengths. Down the stretch, Turcotte looked over at the tote board, noted the early fractions and kept riding him to the wire. The time was 2:24, which left Gallant Man’s record of 2:26 3/5, set 16 years before, buried in the dust.

“By the time my rear hit the saddle, I was OK,” Turcotte said. “When we first hit the track, he wasn’t keyed up like he’d been in the other two races. I said to the outrider that he was so relaxed, I hope there’s nothing wrong with him. He was very smart. I think he knew he was going a mile and a half, and wasn’t pushing himself.”

Five years later, less than two weeks before his 37th birthday, Turcotte’s career ended tragically. In a five-horse field, a filly he was riding at Belmont Park clipped the heels of another horse. Turcotte was thrown forward and landed on his head, crushing his spinal cord. He was paralyzed from the waist down.

Bittersweet Days

Five months after Seattle Slew won the Belmont, sweeping the 1977 Triple Crown, his trainer, Billy Turner, was fired. The next year, Cruguet was replaced by Angel Cordero.

Cruguet, 50, still shows the scars from that tumultuous time. Trying to launch a training career in Lexington, Ky., Cruguet was not invited to a 20-year reunion in 1997, even though he was living close to the stud farm where Seattle Slew was standing.

“Those people [Seattle Slew’s owners] have no shame,” Cruguet said.

The best horse Cruguet ever rode? He lists Hoist The Flag, the champion 2-year-old in 1970, who was injured and never ran in the Triple Crown. Cruguet’s favorite race? Not the Derby, the Preakness or the Belmont with Seattle Slew, but the 1978 Washington, D.C., International at Laurel, where he rode Mac Diarmida to victory.

“Seattle Slew was a top mile horse with a lot of speed,” Cruguet said. “That speed carried him farther as the races got longer. I thought he was better as a 4-year-old than he was at 3.”

Seattle Slew didn’t lose until he was shipped to Hollywood Park, after the Belmont Stakes, and lost by 16 lengths to J.O. Tobin in the Swaps Stakes. The Belmont was Seattle Slew’s ninth win in a row.

At the Derby, Seattle Slew came unhinged in the noisy Churchill Downs paddock and broke sideways, leaving himself behind horses for the first time, but he still won by 1 3/4 lengths.

“After that,” Cruguet said, “the Preakness looked like a piece of cake.”

Seattle Slew’s win at Pimlico came by 1 1/2 lengths. He was 1-5 in the Derby and 2-5 in the Preakness.

“I was still worried about the Belmont,” Cruguet said. “I didn’t think he was a mile-and-a-half horse. He really wasn’t.”

Seattle Slew’s winning margin was four lengths. Twenty yards from the finish, Cruguet stood up in the saddle and waved his whip. New Yorkers booed lustily.

“His class and speed carried him,” Cruguet said. “There wasn’t much [opposition] in the race. We just walked through the [opening] three-quarters, and that was stupid, because nobody went to me. When they finally came to me, I just went on.”

The Kid

Steve Cauthen grew up with horses in Kentucky, began riding them professionally when he was 16 and was still fuzzy-cheeked but seasoned by the time Affirmed came into his life. “He might have the body of a teenager,” a trainer said, “but he’s got the mind of somebody who’s 40.”

Cauthen needed the presence of a veteran in 1978, because the Triple Crown races that year were the most hotly contested ever. Alydar, not that far behind Affirmed in ability, kept coming at Affirmed every time they met, but Cauthen and his horse were barely better. The winning margins got shorter by the race--1 1/2 lengths in the Derby, a neck in the Preakness and a head in the Belmont.

The Belmont was one of the most stirring races ever run. With Alydar’s trainer, John Veitch, and jockey Jorge Velasquez realizing that their colt had to be closer to Affirmed to win, the two horses hooked up on the Belmont Park backstretch--with seven furlongs yet to run--and were virtually inseparable the rest of the way.

Cauthen, who breeds horses at his farm in Walton, Ky., and works in the front office at nearby Turfway Park, is still in awe of the Belmont.

“It was a small field [five horses] and there was nowhere to hide that day,” Cauthen said. “Affirmed broke well, like he always did. Alydar started tackling me at the seven-furlong pole, and we ran hooked from there. We were eyeing each other and trying to rate our horses and determine when to really go for everything.

“Alydar started putting pressure on me around the turn, and at the top of the stretch he actually headed me for a second, or at least was even with me. I could tell that Affirmed was starting to tire. I knew at this stage that we were going to have to go for everything.”

With Affirmed on the rail, Alydar was just off his right flank, which meant that Cauthen would have to whip left-handed if he went to his stick. It was not an automatic decision, because in 10 races Cauthen had never hit Affirmed from the left side.

“I knew that this was the time to try,” Cauthen said. “I pulled my whip through, hit him left-handed, and he just surged enough to get his head back in front. Then we held on to the wire. It had to be one of the greatest races of all time.”

****

BELMONT STAKES

WHEN: Saturday

WHERE: Belmont Race Course, Elmont, N.Y.

TV: Channel 7, 1:30 p.m.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Crowning Moments

For a third consecutive year, a Triple Crown is on the line at the Belmont Stakes, which will be run Saturday. Past Triple Crown winners:

YEAR: HORSEJOCKEY

1919: Sir BartonJohn Loftus

1930: Gallant FoxEarl Sande

1935: OmahaWilliam Saunders