Second Thought

Eric Guerin, the Hall of Fame jockey, was 69 when he died in 1993. His ashes were spread near the finish line at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Fla., not far from where he lived, and at a memorial service that day his son referred to the 1953 Kentucky Derby.

“I would like to think that, somewhere, my father is riding Native Dancer right now,” Ronnie Guerin said. “And, Dark Star, you don’t have a chance this time.”

Fifty years ago, Eric Guerin was on the wrong side of one of the biggest upsets in Derby history, a narrow loss to Dark Star, a 24-1 longshot, that eventually prevented Native Dancer from probable canonization as the greatest horse ever.

“The Gray Ghost,” as Native Dancer came to be known, didn’t lose a race before his stumble at Churchill Downs, and never lost one afterward. A Derby victory, which would have been his 12th win in succession, could have elevated him above Man o’ War, Secretariat and Citation, horses that usually outdistance him in the occasional polls.

“If he had won the Derby,” his owner and breeder, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt Jr., once said, “Native Dancer’s record would be the record by which all horses are judged.”

Running 22 races from 1952 through ‘54, Native Dancer won 21 times. As a 2-year-old, he shared horse-of-the-year honors with One Count, a 3-year-old who carried the vote in a separate poll. In 1953, Native Dancer came back to win the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes after the Derby shocker. In 1954, Native Dancer was voted horse of the year in both year-end polls.

Twice, at the end of his career, Native Dancer carried 130 pounds or more and won. In his last race, he carried 137 pounds and won by nine lengths at Saratoga. Secretariat never carried more than 126 pounds, and never ran as a 4-year-old. But he swept the Triple Crown, and Native Dancer never got the Derby win that he did.

“Without his defeat in the Derby, Native Dancer may have gone into the record book as the ‘horse of the ages,’ ” Mike Mercer wrote in 1988.

Native Dancer’s Derby defeat, by a desperate head after an uncharacteristically erratic ride from the veteran Guerin, haunted the jockey to his grave. Guerin won 2,712 races, among them the 1947 Derby with Jet Pilot, and was voted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 1972, but his retirement years were spent facing an unending inquisition about the Derby he hadn’t won.

Guerin managed to handle it with equanimity.

“Funny how people never forget a mistake,” he once said, years after the Native Dancer defeat. “Horse players still like to discuss that Derby, even though it was run so long ago.”

Guerin made some tactical errors in judgment after he and Native Dancer had been solidly bumped by Money Broker, a 45-1 longshot, as the field of 11 was negotiating the first turn. Native Dancer, coupled with another Vanderbilt horse, Social Outcast, was a 7-10 favorite, and Guerin always felt that Al Popara, the rider of Money Broker, and other jockeys in the race were gunning for his big colt.

“I looked over at [Popara] going to the first turn,” Guerin said a couple of days after the race, “and I knew what he was going to do before he did it.”

Popara, a former Golden Gloves boxing champion from Hayward, Calif., was 24, five years younger than Guerin, and riding in his first Derby. Popara, whose instructions were to take back with Money Broker, was surprised that Native Dancer, who usually raced close to the pace, was far back with his horse as they ran down the stretch for the first time.

On the clubhouse turn, Guerin yelled, “Hey!” He had to steady Native Dancer to avoid clipping heels of horses in front of him.

“My horse changed strides and dropped in when we were not quite clear,” Popara said. “When [Guerin] checked his horse, he didn’t drop back like some horses do when they’re bothered. It seemed like he was inside of me one second and on the outside of me the next.”

The crowding left Native Dancer in eighth place after half a mile, 10 lengths behind Dark Star, who’d trailed only briefly at the start. Guerin hustled his mount down the backstretch, staying wide of the horses they were trying to pass. Looping the field might have been the best way to finish, but instead Guerin moved Native Dancer over to the rail on the final turn.

“Eric took Native Dancer everywhere at Churchill but the ladies’ room,” one of Guerin’s critics said after the race.

At the quarter pole, Native Dancer was fourth, but Correspondent, ridden by Eddie Arcaro, and Straight Face, with Ted Atkinson, were already spent horses. Dark Star, with Henry Moreno aboard, was the only horse Native Dancer needed to catch.

Back in the pack, done for the day, were Money Broker and Al Popara. Much later, Popara recalled, “Because of what happened on the first turn, I sure hoped Native Dancer would win. Because if he got beat, something unseemly was going to hit the fan. He didn’t and it did.”

At the eighth pole, Moreno had Dark Star 15 feet off the fence, with 1 1/2 lengths between them and Native Dancer. But when Guerin started to charge on the inside, Moreno moved Dark Star toward the rail, tightening the path.

In the box seats with Vanderbilt, Bill Winfrey, a future Hall of Fame trainer, grimaced.

“As Dark Star came over to the rail, Eric pulled Native Dancer out and had to start his run all over again,” Winfrey said.

Charles Hatton, the Daily Racing Form pundit, said he had never seen a horse run faster than Native Dancer in the last sixteenth of a mile, but he was still a jump or two short at the wire. Dark Star’s 1 1/4-mile time of 2:02 was the fifth fastest for a Derby, and only three-fifths of a second slower than the record set by Whirlaway in 1941.

In John Eisenberg’s recently published book about Native Dancer, he recalled how Vanderbilt had come down to the track to ask Guerin what happened. On the way, Vanderbilt saw his good friend, Harry Guggenheim, who owned Dark Star.

“Harry, if it was anybody, I’m glad it was you,” Vanderbilt said.

Vanderbilt then glared at Popara, who had just dismounted from Money Broker.

“Popara said his horse was lugging in and he couldn’t hold him,” Guerin said the day after the race. “But I think he was lying. I don’t think it was an accident.”

When Guerin was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 1992, the year before he died, Popara introduced him. Time had erased the bitterness of almost 40 years before.

There were three weeks between the Derby and the Preakness then, and Native Dancer won the Withers before he beat Jamie K. by a neck in the Preakness. Dark Star came out of the Preakness lame, and never raced again. Jamie K. gave Native Dancer another good battle in the Belmont, losing by a neck.

Nearly blind, Vanderbilt was 87 when he died in 1999. In a lifetime of breeding horses, he had no Derby starters after Native Dancer and Social Outcast.

Native Dancer, 17, was still at stud when he died of colic in 1967. He sired Kauai King, the 1966 Derby winner, and Dancer’s Image, who finished first in 1968 before being disqualified.