A Tale of Promises Not Kept

The owners of Smarty Jones, Roy and Pat Chapman, didn’t get involved in racing until the 1980s. Too bad they didn’t start a little sooner. They could have profited from something Louis and Patrice Wolfson learned when they raced the incomparable Affirmed just a few years before.

The Chapmans, after indicating during this year’s Triple Crown campaign they would race Smarty Jones another year, lost stature when they recently retired the colt, who will be whisked off to stud duty to accelerate a breeding syndication that starts at $39 million.

It was either just after the Preakness, or shortly before Smarty Jones’ only loss, in the Belmont Stakes, when his trainer, John Servis, answered a question about the horse’s future by saying: “We don’t anticipate too hard of a campaign the rest of the year. These people [the Chapmans] want this horse around as a 4-year-old, and we want to make sure he’s ready to handle that.”

About two months later, those words, and the promises of the Chapmans, had a hollow ring. It’s folly to tell anyone, especially plutocrats such as Smarty Jones’ owners, how to spend their money, but they have dealt the sport a crippling blow. Sending the colt to pasture with minor ankle injuries, the kind most horses overcome, costs racing an irreplaceable star.

In 1979, Louis and Patrice Wolfson also said too much too soon. Affirmed had swept the Triple Crown the year before -- still the last horse to do so -- and after a couple of early blips as a 4-year-old, Laffit Pincay Jr. replaced Steve Cauthen as the jockey. The Wolfsons’ colt never lost another race and won his second horse-of-the-year title. But you can’t please all the people all the time, and as Affirmed’s career wound down, the popular Wolfsons paid the price for overplaying their hand.

While Affirmed was hitting home runs at Santa Anita, and at Hollywood Park winning the Californian under 130 pounds and the Hollywood Gold Cup carrying 132, Spectacular Bid was the next stirring 3-year-old. His winning streak had reached 12 races, including the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, before Ron Franklin’s bush-league ride and a fresh horse, Coastal, led to his defeat in the Belmont.

Fans were either frothing or salivating as they anticipated Affirmed and Spectacular Bid going head to head in the fall at Belmont Park. There was no Breeders’ Cup, so the championship races would be the Marlboro Cup, the Woodward and the Jockey Club Gold Cup.

The Wolfsons announced that they were headed for the Marlboro Cup, and so did Spectacular Bid’s camp. The buildup was tremendous, but then the weights came out. Affirmed was assigned 133 pounds, Spectacular Bid 124. Perhaps Lenny Hale, the Belmont racing secretary, didn’t have much choice. Affirmed had already won with 132 pounds, and Spectacular Bid was a year younger. But Laz Barrera, who trained Affirmed, was incensed by the spread and pulled his horse out of the race. The Wolfsons, backing their trainer, went from the perfect couple to pariahs.

Years later, Patrice Wolfson talked about the grief that decision caused. “The mistake we made was committing to the Marlboro so early,” she said. “We assured everybody that we were going to run. If we had just said we would be looking at those three races, skipping the Marlboro wouldn’t have been that big of a deal.”

Spectacular Bid romped in the Marlboro, then didn’t run as Affirmed, under weight-for-age conditions, carried only 126 pounds and coasted home in the Woodward. Finally, in the 1 1/2 -mile Jockey Club Gold Cup, there was the much-awaited showdown. Only two other horses showed up. Affirmed, with 126 pounds again, beat Spectacular Bid, at 121, by three-quarters of a length.

Patrice Wolfson won the race and learned a lesson. The wrath would have been less if the Chapmans had known now what she knew then.

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Jockey Pat Valenzuela, suspended for the rest of the year by the Del Mar stewards, has had his request for a stay turned down by the seven-member California Horse Racing Board. Neil Papiano, Valenzuela’s attorney, is prepared to take their appeal to court, but he said Thursday that his first step has been to ask for a hearing before the full board.