In 1969, Longden Had Majestic View

Once asked which part of his racing career he liked the most, riding or training, Johnny Longden said that it wasn’t even close.

“I got a much bigger kick out of riding than training,” he said. “Even when I started training, the best part was still being able to get on the horses in the mornings. Training was a whole lot different than riding. After having Majestic Prince, I was glad I never had the aggravation of training a real good horse again. There was a lot of pressure and a lot of headaches.”

When Longden rode his last race, winning the San Juan Capistrano Handicap with George Royal at Santa Anita in 1966, all he wanted to do was take a long vacation and do some fishing. But Frank McMahon, an oilman in Vancouver, Canada, called him. Two days after the San Juan, Longden flew to Florida, where he signed a deal to train McMahon’s horses in California.

That summer, Longden picked out a yearling filly that Spendthrift Farm had consigned to a Keeneland sale and McMahon bought her for $35,000.

The filly was a winner, and the next year, 1967, McMahon wanted her half-brother, who was also being auctioned. With Longden doing the bidding, McMahon went to $250,000, a record price, to buy the colt. They later named him Majestic Prince.

Longden knew from the start that he might have a special horse on his hands. Majestic Prince grew into a tall, husky colt who weighed a whopping 1,120 pounds and measured a robust 75 inches at the girth. He ran twice as a 2-year-old, winning both times, then, moving into stakes company, won four more times, his eight-length victory in the Santa Anita Derby stamping him as the Kentucky Derby favorite.

The day of the Santa Anita Derby, in the paddock, Majestic Prince got loose from his groom and almost ran off.

“Stop!” Longden yelled. Miraculously, the horse slowed down long enough for the groom to retrieve him.

A week before the Kentucky Derby -- in what was not uncommon then -- Longden ran Majestic Prince at Churchill Downs in the seven-furlong Stepping Stone Purse. He won by six lengths, missing the track record by a fifth of a second.

Only eight horses ran in the 1969 Derby, the smallest field in 21 years, because the 3-year-old crop was loaded. Besides Majestic Prince, out of the East came Arts And Letters, winner of the Blue Grass by 15 lengths; Top Knight, winner of the Flamingo and the Florida Derby, and Dike, the winner of the Wood Memorial.

Bill Shoemaker, edging closer to Longden’s riding record of 6,032 wins, had been riding Arts And Letters, but three days before the Derby, a filly reared in the paddock at Hollywood Park, falling on him and pinning him against a hedge. Shoemaker suffered multiple injuries, including a crushed pelvis and a torn bladder, and Braulio Baeza replaced him aboard Arts And Letters.

Bill Hartack and Majestic Prince did not have a clean trip in the Derby, but they passed Arts And Letters at the head of the stretch, then held off Baeza’s game mount the rest of the way for a neck victory. Dike was a close third.

Majestic Prince was the first undefeated horse to win the Derby since Morvich, the California-bred, 47 years before, so Longden’s colt carried an eight-race streak into the Preakness.

At the start at Pimlico, Majestic Prince bore out and brushed Arts And Letters. Down the stretch the first time, Hartack’s horse lugged out again, forcing Baeza to check with Arts And Letters. At the wire, Majestic Prince was a head better, but Longden and McMahon sweated out 22 minutes before the stewards disallowed a foul claim by Baeza.

Despite the victory, Longden saw all the wrong signs in the Preakness. Although his horse was within one win of the Triple Crown, he thought the Belmont’s mile and a half would be too much for Majestic Prince.

“When he bore out, that was a warning,” Longden said years later. “He had a tendon that was weak, and he was tired. He had lost his color. I didn’t want to run a horse like that in New York.”

There hadn’t been a Triple Crown champion since Citation in 1948, though, and the pressure was intense for Majestic Prince to run in the Belmont. When the Majestic Prince camp wavered a week or so before the race, the New York Post headlined: “Majestic Prince Scared Off by Arts And Letters?”

Longden kept telling McMahon that Majestic Prince was physically drained, but the owner insisted that they run. A record crowd of 67,961 turned out. What they saw was a bizarre race -- the slowest opening six furlongs in Belmont history, and the fastest come-home time for the last half-mile.

The first half-mile -- with Dike on the lead for the first time -- was 51 seconds, and when Longden saw that time on the tote board, he turned to McMahon and said ruefully, “We’re going to be second.”

He was right. Majestic Prince finished second as Arts And Letters won by 5 1/2 lengths. That was Majestic Prince’s first loss and his last race. He was shipped back to California and given the rest of the year off. Early in 1970, a knot formed behind his left knee and he was sent to stud at Spendthrift, where he was syndicated for $1.8 million. Arts And Letters kept on winning, trounced older horses in the fall and was voted horse of the year.

Longden had an oil painting of Majestic Prince hanging on the wall of his home in Banning.

“I was always a believer that you put the horse first, but I was forced to run,” he said of that Belmont. “It wasn’t the mile and a half that stopped my horse, it was that leg of his. He was a very willing horse, a horse you could place anywhere. He didn’t have to be on the lead. He was the best horse I ever trained.”