It Turned Out to Be a Rough Ride

They’re giving J.B. Faulconer an appropriate send-off at a memorial service in Lexington, Ky., today. The Dec. 5 death of Faulconer, who was 81, was a reminder of how leaderless horse racing is. The industry somehow came together to create the Breeders’ Cup in 1984, but before that you probably have to retreat to 1971--the start of the Eclipse Awards--for the last consensus.

Faulconer was working at Keeneland then, in public relations, and it bugged him no end that in 1970, racing had two horse-of-the-year winners, the Daily Racing Form having anointed the grass-loving Fort Marcy and the racing secretaries at the Thoroughbred Racing Assns.’ tracks having voted for Personality, the Preakness and Woodward winner.

There had been multiple champions before--as recently as 1965 when Roman Brother and the 2-year-old filly Moccasin divided the vote--and Faulconer was up to his big, bushy eyebrows with indignation.

Racing’s polarization was exacerbated in the years when the National Turf Writers Assn., conducting its own poll, would name yet a third horse-of-the-year winner.

Each of the three organizations smugly thought that its poll was the most credible, but after much arm-twisting the likable Faulconer coaxed them into the spirit of one poll, one champion. Faulconer was even at the ready with the perfect name for the whole awards program, suggesting they name it after the inimitable Eclipse, foaled in England during an eclipse of the sun, undefeated on the track in the late 1700s and the outstanding sire of his time.

Faulconer’s reward, five years later, was being brought to New York to head the Thoroughbred Racing Assns., a trade organization that had been around for more than 30 years. It was in that post that Faulconer, who deserved better, learned in spades what a badly splintered industry is all about.

First off, he was given a staff of 4 1/2, and a skimpy budget to match. In his retirement years, still an astute observer of the horse milieu, Faulconer would smile wistfully when the fledgling National Thoroughbred Racing Assn., the game’s embattled marketing arm, added a new, handsomely paid vice president every other week.

One of Faulconer’s first TRA assignments was to go to Washington and testify, on some racing matter, before a U.S. Congress that barely knew the front of a horse from the back.

Perceptive to the core, Faulconer knew he was stepping into quicksand.

“They’re going to ask me who I represent and I’m going to tell them 50 racetracks,” he said. “Then they’re going to ask how many tracks there are, and I’m going to say about 100. Then they’re going to say, ‘Well, what are you doing here, speaking for only half the industry?’ ”

They did and he did and they did.

Getting tracks to join, and stay joined, seemed to be half the job. Laurel Race Course in Maryland resigned from the TRA when its president, John Shapiro, was unsure what his money was buying. The same year, the Eclipse Award of Merit committee, in a burst of brilliance, gave the coveted prize to John Shapiro.

The awards dinner was to be at the Century Plaza Hotel, and Lynn Stone, then running Churchill Downs and the nominal president of the TRA, arrived in Los Angeles to be told that he’d be presenting the Award of Merit.

“Now wait a minute,” a beet-faced Stone said to Faulconer. “You mean that John Shapiro’s dropped out, and now I’m going to have to go up on that stage and hand him a trophy?”

“Nobody ever said this was an easy game,” Faulconer said.

A consummate Army man, Faulconer was well versed in the politics people are sometimes required to play. He earned multiple decorations, among them the Bronze Star. During World War II, he was a lieutenant colonel at 26, and later, with the Army Reserve, he reached major general. When personalities clashed among the 4 1/2 who worked in Lake Success, Faulconer would say, “I was in charge of 12,000 when they called me up for the Berlin crisis. No problems. But here I can’t even get a handful to get along.”

Then he ordered his third martini.

For a time, he wore a couple of civilian hats, as executive vice president of the TRA and chairman of the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau, the TRA subsidiary that was racing’s most important security arm. The powerful New York Racing Assn.--Belmont Park, Saratoga and Aqueduct--unhappy with its security support, asked for the head of Cliff Wickman, a former FBI agent, Faulconer’s good friend and leader of the TRPB. “All they do is chase guys that are stealing the hubcaps in the parking lot,” somebody from NYRA said.

Wickman sat nervously outside the meeting room in a Miami Beach hotel while Faulconer, delivering what he promised, salvaged Wickman’s job. Faulconer’s good-old-boy Kentucky charm, combined with a homespun homily or two, had saved the day. NYRA tracks continued to pay dues too.

Away from the infighting, Faulconer would sweep through the New York Times crossword puzzle--using a pen--and regale you with a stockpile of anecdotes that carried back to his pre-racing days, when he broadcast the basketball and football games of his alma mater, the University of Kentucky. Faulconer did basketball there during the point-shaving scandals of the 1950s. Remember?

Kentucky Coach Adolph Rupp snorted, “They can’t touch my boys with a 10-foot pole.” Some of the gamblers showed up with 11-foot poles. “Looking back,” Faulconer once said, “I must have done a game that was fixed three ways. Kentucky was dumping, the other team was dumping and the referees had an agenda of their own. And to think I wondered why good players were flying all over the place that night.”

Two years ago, completing a project that the late Jim Bolus started, Faulconer published “The Names They Give Them,” a documented rundown of how many of the most famous horses were named. He dedicated the book to his daughter Alison and to Charles Cella, who gave him his last racing job. Faulconer might have been assistant to the president at Oaklawn Park, but on Sundays there was nobody else, and on that day, alone, he supervised the big horses that pulled the track’s starting gates.

As a very young girl, Alison Faulconer was being interviewed for admission to a Montessori school.

“Where does your father work?” she was asked.

“Well, on Sundays he feeds the Clydesdales,” she said.

Notes

Two Item Limit, who had shipped in Wednesday from Florida to run in Sunday’s Starlet Stakes at Hollywood Park, will miss the race because of a 103-degree fever. . . . Six horses are entered, among them Cindy’s Hero, fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, and Jetin Excess, undefeated in four starts. The other starters will be Haitian Vacation, I Believe In You, Whoopddoo and Avalon Bay. . . . Laffit Pincay’s three winners Friday increased his career total to 9,034.