Ruffian: Lady of the Track
Born April 17, 1972, near Paris, Kentucky, Ruffian was a big, dark bay. She won her first race by 15 lengths and set a track record. In 1974, she won the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Two-Year-Old Filly and earned the nickname “Queen of the Fillies.” The only ominous note was a hair-line fracture that ended her undefeated season that year.
But Ruffian returned to racing in 1975 and picked up her winning streak right where she’d left off. She won the three races that made up the Filly Triple Crown: the Acorn, Mother Goose, and Coaching Club American Oaks. One Ruffian admirer told the press that “she may even be better than Secretariat.” (Since the admirer was Secretariat’s trainer, Lucien Laurin, the quote made headlines.)
Ruffian had beaten the best female horses of her generation, so a clamor went up for a match race with a champion colt. In July 1975 at Belmont Park, Ruffian took on Foolish Pleasure, the undefeated colt who’d won the Kentucky Derby. Billed as a “battle of the sexes,” the race attracted millions of television viewers. Ruffian led for a quarter mile, but then tragedy struck. Her right foreleg broke, and it took her jockey 50 yards to finally stop her from running—she was that determined to stay in the lead.
A team of top veterinarians was unable to save Ruffian, and after three hours of surgery, she was euthanized. Millions of stunned fans mourned her death, and no match races have been held at Belmont since. The public outcry over her death also was the catalyst for several innovations in the treatment of injured horses. These included better medications and the “recovery pool”—a vat of warm water in which horses can recover from anesthesia after surgery without re-injuring themselves.
In spite of the tragedy, Ruffian remains the “Queen of the Fillies.” And Sports Illustrated has ranked her as one of the greatest female athletes, human or nonhuman, of the 20th century.
To read about the Godolphin Arabian and Eclipse, turn to page 58. For Man o’ War and Secretariat, turn to page 39.
Funnyman
Comedian Chevy Chase’s grandfather, Edward L. Chase, was a renowned equestrian artist whose studio included an entire horse skeleton. So you might say that Chevy grew up around horses. (Edward also wrote and illustrated an equine guide called The Big Book of Horses.) Today, Chevy’s whole family rides, and they own a pair of Icelandic horses with unpronounceable names, so the family simply calls them “Bob and Candy.”
The Wildest Show Behind Bars
At one time, Huntsville’s Texas Prison Rodeo was the place to be for the state’s wildest rodeo action.
In 1894, Marshall Lee Simmons was about to graduate from the University of Texas and start work at his brother’s law firm when he was arrested for shooting a man who had bad-mouthed one of his relatives. The shooting was ruled self-defense, and Simmons went on to become a businessman, banker, sheriff, and eventually general manager of the state prison system.
It was in this capacity that he came up with the idea of having a rodeo for prisoners in Huntsville. He billed it as “the fastest and wildest rodeo,” and even though Marshall Lee Simmons retired in 1936, his rodeo—which earned the nickname “the Wildest Show Behind Bars”—rode on for another 50 years.
Jailhouse Rodeo
Simmons’s Texas Prison Rodeo started out as a way for the inmates and staff to have a little fun. The Depression was in full swing, and the people of Huntsville needed some entertainment. Plus, the prisoners were often clamoring for something to do. Bullriding, calfroping, wild horse racing, and bronco busting seemed like the perfect solution.
The prison usually held the rodeo on Sunday afternoons—occasional weekday shows were added—in a baseball field near the Walls Unit (Huntsville’s death row). Inmates from all of the area prisons were welcome as long as they had a record of good behavior. In fact, any inmate who kept his nose clean for a year was eligible.
Hustle and Bustle
By 1933, the audience was 15,000 strong, and it continued to grow, sometimes doubling from year to year. Soon the prison needed to build wooden benches to hold all the spectators. The rodeo also brought lots of business to Huntsville: even retail shops and restaurants stayed open at a time when most places closed on Sundays.
The guards were paid for overtime, and the prisoners got to see the fruits of their labor—not just all that rodeo practice, but the planning and preparation work as well. The wild cattle the farm prisoners rounded up for the event were finally put to work, the uniforms sewn by women prisoners stretched across the backs of the bull riders, and a midway full of prison-made arts and crafts found a market.
Big Time in the Big House
As word caught on about the rodeo—so much so that people had to be turned away at the gate—the wooden bleachers were replaced by a concrete megastructure. Over the years, the rodeo had invented its own unusual tongue-in-cheek events, like “Hard Money,” where convicts in red shirts tried to remove a sack of cash from between a bull’s horns, or the greased pig contest in which female prisoners tried to put greased pigs in a sack. By the mid-1980s, the event was grossing almost half a million dollars, all of which was used to help run the prison.
The lineup also included exhibitions by the top rodeo stars from around the country and entertainment courtesy of the likes of Willie Nelson and Loretta Lynn. By then, the rodeo was attracting 100,000 people a year.
Adios, Cowboys!
For more than 50 years, the Texas Prison Rodeo was a popular local tradition. But in 1986, engineers declared the prison’s rodeo facility unfit to safely hold the massive crowds. The prison couldn’t afford to pay for the necessary reconstructions, so the Texas Prison Rodeo closed for good.
Lots of Texans have lobbied to bring it back, but as Dan Beto, director of the Sam Houston State University Correctional Management Institute of Texas, told the Houston Chronicle: “When we had a prison rodeo, we had a lot of inmates who had some agricultural background . . . Most of the inmates who come to the prison system now are from major metropolitan areas. You’re dealing with a different kind of inmate, a different culture, a different time.”
So You Want to Be a Jockey?
Want to don the silks and mount a winner at the starting gate? Well, before you quit your day job, read about what it takes to make a career as a jockey.
Q: How old do you have to be to start working as a jockey?
A: Most states allow jockeys to work as young as 16, as long as they have parental permission.
Q: How much can jockeys weigh?
A: There’s no international standard, and limits vary by state and track. But in general, first-year jockeys weigh 102 to 105 pounds, and experienced jockeys don’t exceed 113 pounds.
Q: What kind of training do you need?
A: Although there’s no set career path for jockeys, most start out working in stables, walking or grooming horses. Then they work up to exercising horses during workouts and advance to jobs as apprentice jockeys. Along the way, of course, they must acquire exceptional riding skills. Eddie Arcaro, who won more than 4,700 races and is the only rider to have won the Triple Crown twice, started out at 15 as an exercise boy. He soon became an apprentice to several experienced riders, and he won his first race after working at the racetracks for just two years.
At the apprentice stage, riders get an apprentice license. When they’ve had that for at least a year, they can apply at almost any racetrack to get a full jockey license, which is required to run in all professional races.
Q: How does a jockey earn money?
A: For each race, jockeys earn mount fees (ranging from $25 for a low-profile race to $100 for a big race like the Kentucky Derby). But the real money comes from taking home a percentage of the race purse . . . though that means you’ve got to win, place, or show. Most jockeys earn between $25,000 and $30,000 per year. Superstar jockeys, though, can earn millions of dollars, and the top 100 jockeys in the world—like Garrett Gomez and Rafael Bejarano—average about $6 million a year.
Q: How likely is it a jockey
will be injured on the job?
A: Horseracing is one of the most dangerous sports in the world—jockeys have a 5 percent chance of getting seriously injured each time they ride. (Compare that to NASCAR racing, where drivers have about a 0.25 percent chance of getting into a serious accident.)
Q: For how many years can a jockey ride?
A: There is no age limit.
Q: What is the Jockeys’ Guild?
A: The Jockeys’ Guild is the union that protects professional jockeys. Its original purpose was to improve the working conditions for jockeys, especially by offering health insurance and survivor benefits for the families of jockeys who are killed on the job. Eddie Arcaro, Sam Renick, Lester Haas, and others founded the union in 1940. In late 2007, the Jockeys’ Guild filed for bankruptcy as a result of the rising costs of its health insurance plan and decreased income from racetrack associations. But financial reorganization is underway, and the racing community is committed to keeping the organization intact.
Q: What are the guild’s membership requirements?
A: To be a member in good standing in the Jockeys’ Guild, riders must have a valid jockey license, comply with the regulations of all racing jurisdictions, have ridden 100 mounts in the previous or current calendar year, and pay membership dues. Jockeys aren’t required to join the union to ride, but because membership is the only way to receive benefits, most of them do join.
Military Mounts
These two horses were war heroes.
Babieca Saves Spain
Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid (“the Lord”), was an 11th-century Spanish military hero who always led his armies from the back of his white Andalusian horse, Babieca. There are two legends offering theories for how El Cid got Babieca:
•El Cid’s godfather gave the young man the pick of any horse in his herd, and El Cid chose a white stallion whom his godfather thought was the weakest of the bunch. In response, the godfather muttered, “Babieca, babieca,” which means “stupid” in Spanish.
•The second story paints Babieca as one of the Spanish king’s best horses. When a mounted knight challenged El Cid to a duel, the king gave him the white stallion to ensure that the fight was fair.
Either way, El Cid and Babieca were inseparable. They were already legendary when the warrior led his army into one last battle against the Moors for control of Valencia in southern Spain. El Cid actually died before the battle—he’d been wounded in a skirmish outside the city’s walls and passed away just before the siege at Valencia. But his followers tied his corpse upright in his saddle and put a sword in his hand, and Babieca carried El Cid into the fray, inspiring the Spaniards and panicking the Moors, who believed El Cid has risen from the dead. Thus, the Spanish kingdom was saved.
Onward, Rienzi!
In 1864, Confederates attacked Union general Phillip Sheridan’s troops in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Sheridan was about 12 miles away at the time, attending a meeting in the town of Winchester. But when he got word that his men were under siege, he jumped on his horse Rienzi, who galloped across the war-torn countryside and delivered Sheridan to the battlefield. Once there, the general orchestrated a successful Union counterattack against Confederate troops, a victory considered by many historians to be a crucial turning point in the war.
Shenandoah was his most famous effort, but in all, Rienzi saw service in 19 battles and sustained several wounds. His efforts earned him a lasting tribute when he died in 1878: Rienzi was stuffed and put on display—first at a U.S. Army museum in New York City (it burned down in 1922) and then at the Smithsonian Institution’s Hall of Armed Forces History, where he remains today. Reinzi also got a name change. After the horse’s heroics at Shenandoah, Sheridan renamed him Winchester.
More military mounts on page 202.
Who’s Got Mail?
“Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows . . . Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.” Get ready to ride the Pony Express—by the numbers.
1
Mail deliveries lost during the 18 months the Pony Express existed (April 1860 to October 1861).
3
Partners who founded the Pony Express: William Russell, William Waddell, and Alexander Majors. They wanted to reduce the amount of time it took to get mail across the expanding United States; the fastest route before the Express took 24 days. The Pony Express averaged 10 days in the summer and 12 to 16 days during the winter.
$5
Initial price to mail a letter via the Pony Express. By July 1861, it had dropped to $1.
6
Besides the mail, items a rider usually took with him: a water bottle, a Bible, a knife, a revolver, some other type of gun, and a horn to alert station masters that he was coming.
9 days (and 23 hours)
Length of time it took for the first Pony Express run to travel from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. The riders carried 49 letters and five telegrams. When the final rider arrived in California on April 13, 1860, the New York Times reported that “citizens paraded the streets with bands of music, fireworks were set off . . . the best feeling was manifested by everybody.” The fastest ride was seven days and 17 hours in 1860 for a ride that brought President Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address to the West Coast.
11 years
Age of the youngest Pony Express rider. The oldest was in his 40s. Most were about 20.
$100
A rider’s pay per month, on average.
125 pounds
Maximum weight for a Pony Express rider.
200
Number of relay stations along the route. The stations were set up 10 miles apart because that’s about how far the horses could travel at a full gallop without stopping. At every station, a rider would pick up a new horse. Every 75 to 100 miles, a new rider would take over.
400+
Number of horses that the Pony Express used. Each one weighed less than 900 pounds and stood around 14½ hands tall.
1860
Year Congress authorized money to build a telegraph line between Missouri and California to connect the eastern United States with its new western settlements. It took 17 months to build, and it was the completion of the telegraph in October 1861 that put the Pony Express out of business.
1,966 miles
Distance between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California.
$200,000
Amount of money the owners lost on the Pony Express. They invested about $700,000 initially and expected to get a subsidy from the U.S. government to cover some of their expenses. But when the Civil War broke out in 1861, that money was no longer available, and when they sold the operation in 1861, they had to take a loss.
Conquer with the Mongols
Here’s one vacation just for horse lovers.
Some of history’s greatest horsemen rode on the barren steppes of Mongolia. The 13th-century troops who served under Genghis Khan were skilled riders who traveled all over Asia, capturing everything along the way. In just 250 years, these mounted warriors conquered more people and a larger area than the Romans did in four centuries. By the time of Genghis Khan’s death in 1227, his empire stretched from Beijing, China, to the Afghan border, from Siberia to the border of Tibet, and through Turkey and into Europe.
Horse Play
Mongolia is still one of the world’s most horse-dependent cultures, but its people are now famous for their peaceful and welcoming hospitality. But intrepid travelers know that it’s still possible to witness—and even experience—the life of a warrior for the mighty khan. A British company called High and Wild sponsors a Mongolian adventure that begins when visitors arrive in Ulaanbataar (Mongolia’s capital) and trade their Western garb for traditional Mongolian warrior robes. Then it’s on to warrior training camp in the Gobi Desert grasslands, where visitors ride small, fast Mongolian horses and learn the horsemanship, discipline, and battle tactics that made Genghis Khan’s warriors the greatest of their day. At
night they guard the herds as Mongol warriors once did and even learn to sing ancient Mongolian camp songs and drink an alcoholic beverage made from fermented mares’ milk.
The English Triple Crown
England has its own Triple Crown, and the term actually originated there in 1853, when a horse named West Australian won the country’s three major races. Like the American version, the English Triple Crown includes only three-year-old Thoroughbreds, and it’s as hard to win the title in England as it is in the United States. Only 15 horses have done it, the last in 1970. The races are . . .
•The 2,000 Guineas Stakes: First run in 1809. This one-mile race occurs in late April or early May at Newmarket Racecourse in Suffolk.
•The Epsom Derby: First run in 1780. This race is one mile, four furlongs, and 10 yards long. It’s run the first weekend in June at Epsom Downs Racecourse in Surrey.
•The St. Leger Stakes: First run in 1776. Every September at Town Moor in Yorkshire, horses gather to compete in this race, which is one mile, six furlongs, and 132 yards long.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Horse Lover's Companion Page 11
