Getting Lost in a Legend

The best-selling book about Seabiscuit, the Golden Globe-nominated movie based on the book, and the recently released DVD based on the movie all poignantly document the wonder horse’s rise from ne’er-do-well to champion.

But where’s Kayak II?

Ignored by the writers and filmmakers responsible for the Seabiscuit phenomenon, Kayak II, more than half a century later, remains a source of intrigue and controversy.

He was a stablemate of Seabiscuit, and many think a horse good enough to have won the 1940 Santa Anita Handicap, the race that successfully capped Seabiscuit’s incredible career.

The 1940 Big ‘Cap has long been a flash point among racing buffs and historians. The Kayak II camp has said that its horse might have won if jockey Leon “Buddy” Haas apparently hadn’t been content to finish second. Seabiscuit’s supporters -- and his trainer, the late Tom Smith -- have argued that their horse was clearly the best.

Now relatives of two of the jockeys closely connected to the controversial finish of that race have fueled the theory that Haas, following orders from owner Charles S. Howard, didn’t ride Kayak II vigorously to the wire, guaranteeing that Seabiscuit would win.

Howard owned both horses, and had won the 1939 Big ‘Cap with Kayak II, but Seabiscuit was his favorite, and he desperately wanted the 7-year-old veteran to win the race that had previously eluded him. A victory in a $100,000 race would enhance Seabiscuit’s value as a stallion. In 1940, the horses were coupled in the betting, which meant that bettors backing the Howard entry cashed their tickets regardless of which horse won.

Johnny Bucalo, a nephew of Johnny Adams, the Hall of Fame rider who had ridden Kayak II to victory in the 1939 Santa Anita Handicap, said that his uncle turned down the mount for the 1940 running of the race because he always rode to win and didn’t want to follow Howard’s Seabiscuit-must-win instructions.

Biggie Haas Walker, Buddy Haas’ sister, has said that her brother told her several times that he was under orders from Howard to let Seabiscuit win.

Laura Hillenbrand, who wrote “Seabiscuit: An American Legend,” the book that was developed into the movie, “Seabiscuit,” said she was aware of the post-race gossip, but chose to leave it out.

The recently released Seabiscuit DVD, which includes the movie and a lot of historical background on a second disc, does not mention Kayak II’s role in the 1940 race. The movie doesn’t even acknowledge that Kayak II ran in the race.

In 1940, when $100,000 was a small fortune, Seabiscuit was trying for the third time to win the so-called “hundred-grander.” When Adams, one of the best riders of his era, reportedly refused the mount on Kayak II, he was left without a horse in the race. Seabiscuit, in the last race of his storied career, beat his stablemate by an estimated 1 1/2 lengths.

Adams won 3,270 races. He retired in 1958, was voted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 1965 and died in 1995. Bucalo, a familiar Southern California racetrack figure and the off-track betting manager of the Barona Valley Ranch Resort and Casino near San Diego, recently recalled what his uncle had told him about the 1940 Big ‘Cap.

“John said that he could have ridden Kayak,” Bucalo said. “He was asked to ride the horse. But [Howard] didn’t want Kayak to win if it would prevent Seabiscuit from winning, and my uncle was told that. My uncle told me he couldn’t have ridden Kayak, or any horse, under those conditions. He turned down the mount.”

Bucalo’s story about his uncle seems the strongest indication that Howard wanted Kayak II to win the Santa Anita Handicap only if Seabiscuit couldn’t. All of the principals -- Howard, Haas, Smith and Seabiscuit’s jockey, Red Pollard -- are dead. Smith trained Kayak II as well as Seabiscuit.

At the time, Howard and the others discounted the rumors that Kayak II was restrained from running his best, although Haas, two days after the race, cryptically said, “I had the best horse in the race.”

Was Haas dancing around the fact that Howard, as he had apparently asked of Johnny Adams, had requested that Kayak II not get in Seabiscuit’s way?

Smith tried to cold-water the speculation at the time, saying, “Kayak never saw the day he could beat Seabiscuit when Seabiscuit was at his best.”

Ralph Shaffer, professor emeritus in history at Cal Poly Pomona, has written about the 1940 Santa Anita Handicap. Several months ago, he contacted Haas’ sister and asked her about the race.

“My brother said many times that C.S. Howard had instructed him to let Seabiscuit win,” Biggie Haas Walker, who is in her 80s, told Shaffer. “I’m from the generation that if your boss tells you to throw a letter on the floor, you do it. If Mr. Howard told [Buddy] to do it, he did, and I heard Buddy say more than once that those were his instructions. I still vividly remember the race and how Buddy handled it.”

Walker did not respond to requests from The Times for an interview.

Author Hillenbrand said, “In the four years I spent researching, I came to the conclusion that the idea that Kayak was robbed of the race simply isn’t very plausible. It was rumored that Haas told friends just after the race that he could have won, but I was unable to find any quotes to support the rumor.”

Haas, though, didn’t whip Kayak II through the stretch. The third-place horse, Whichcee, couldn’t hold the lead and finished a length behind Kayak. The Daily Racing Form’s chart footnotes, written shortly after the race was over, said:

“Seabiscuit, close to the pace from the start, was urged forward and out of trouble when it seemed as if he might be in close quarters nearing the first turn, then came on to catch Whichcee entering the final eighth [of a mile] and was going in his best form to the finish. Kayak II, slow to get going, ran a sensational race to make a very strong move in the backstretch and might have been closer to the winner had he been vigorously ridden in the last sixteenth.”

The chart indicates that Seabiscuit won by half a length, but photos of the finish show that the margin was greater. Eventually, in Seabiscuit’s career past-performance lines, the margin was changed to a more realistic 1 1/2 lengths.

What isn’t open to conjecture is that Seabiscuit, carrying 130 pounds to Kayak II’s 129, ran 1 1/4 miles in 2:01 1/5, a Santa Anita record and one of the fastest clockings ever for that distance. Only two horses had run faster at 1 1/4 miles, Whisk Broom II and Sarazen, and Whisk Broom’s time had been questioned because of a possible timer malfunction.

Some veteran horsemen, including the retired trainer, Farrell Jones, say that Kayak II would not have been able to pass Seabiscuit, no matter how much Haas encouraged his horse. But Ernest Gardetto, who was 20 when the race was run, embraces the theory that Kayak II wasn’t given a fair chance.

“I was a devoted racetrack aficionado in 1940,” Gardetto said. “I was standing along the home stretch, within 100 feet of the finish line, with hundreds of other fans.... A feeling of doubt pervaded the area. Kayak’s jockey [Haas] had let up. I am not a Seabiscuit detractor. I loved Seabiscuit. But Kayak was also a hell of a horse.”

The across-the-board payoffs on the Howard-Smith entry were $3.40, $2.80 and $2.60. Under racing rules of the day, an owner could “declare to win” if he ran a multiple entry, and before the race Joe Hernandez, the track announcer at Santa Anita, announced to the crowd of 68,526 that Howard had “declared to win” with Seabiscuit.

Haas was riding Kayak II for the first time, and rode him only once more, in the Argentine-bred’s final race, a second-place finish at Santa Anita in January of 1941.

Seabiscuit earned $86,650 in the 1940 Big ‘Cap and Kayak collected $20,000. By pre-race agreement, their jockeys, Pollard and Haas, split their commissions, which came to about $5,300 apiece.

Adams rode Kayak II twice after the 1940 Santa Anita Handicap, winning the Sunset Handicap with him at 131 pounds at Hollywood Park. Overall, Adams won four times and had one second with Kayak II in seven tries.

Seabiscuit, who was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1958, had been injured and didn’t run when Kayak II won the Santa Anita Handicap, under 110 pounds, in 1939.

Kayak II’s chances of being enshrined in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., are remote. He won 14 of 26 starts, including the Hollywood Gold Cup, the Santa Anita Handicap and five other stakes. But he would have needed a second win in the Big ‘Cap to have a chance with the voters. Whether he was afforded the best opportunity to do that remains an argument for the ages.