Just as the Dancer was preparing to make his debut in the Assault Purse, there was a distracting snag involving Winfrey. Kitchen Maid, a Vanderbilt filly with a kidney ailment, ran second in a race at Jamaica on April 10, and her urine test came back positive for caffeine, a banned stimulant. New York’s racing commissioners investigated, and there was tension for a day with Winfrey facing a possible suspension and Vanderbilt insisting the Dancer wouldn’t run in the Triple Crown without his trainer. But the commissioners quickly exonerated Winfrey, determining that he had treated Kitchen Maid with medicine from a bottle that didn’t list caffeine among the ingredients.
Then there was another snag. Supporting Hatton’s opinion that the Dancer had “terrified” rival trainers, only two other horses were entered in the Assault Purse on April 13. Jamaica officials initially said they would still hold the race, then changed their minds and canceled the Grey Ghost’s three-year-old debut. The track caterers received a record number of cancellations for lunch, but more than 24,000 fans still came to the track on a rainy Monday, thinking the Dancer might still appear as originally scheduled. They went home disappointed. The Dancer worked three furlongs in 35 seconds that morning at Belmont and spent the afternoon in Barn 20.
The colt had been training at distances beyond the Assault’s six furlongs, so he probably wouldn’t have benefited much from the race. But he needed the work, and with race-goers desperate to see him, Vanderbilt proposed running him in a public trial with two other Vanderbilt horses in between races at Jamaica the next day. Jamaica officials consented. Winfrey drove over from Belmont the next morning and found the racing surface in good condition despite recent rains. The trial was on for that afternoon.
It so happened that John McNulty had chosen to spend that day at the barn researching his article on the Dancer for The New Yorker. McNulty observed Lester Murray standing on a bucket in stall 6 and meticulously braiding the colt’s hair for a half-hour before the van arrived to take him to Jamaica. “I’m going to fix you up pretty, you big bum, before all those people look at you,” said Murray, who continually moistened his fingers as he worked the braid until he got it just as he wanted. The van arrived then, and Murray gave the horse a hard slap on the rear as the Dancer was led outside.
The Dancer rode over in the van with his trial “opponents”: First Glance, a six-year-old who had won the Excelsior Handicap in his last start, and Beachcomber, an unraced three-year-old gelding. The Dancer made his first public appearance of 1953 at 3:41 P.M. on Tuesday, April 14, at Jamaica, ridden by Eric Guerin in a yellow sweater and blue cap. Caposella introduced him, and a chilled crowd gave him an ovation. “Hundreds of horse players ran to the trackside from near the mutuel windows, where they had been engaged in the engrossing business of betting on the sixth race. Running out to see the Dancer close, they looked like hundreds of water bugs skating on the surface of a brook,” McNulty wrote.
Winfrey wanted Beachcomber to challenge the Dancer early in the six-furlong trial, then have First Glance pressure him late, thereby giving the Dancer the exercise he needed. But it didn’t work out as planned. Beachcomber broke slowly and lagged behind. The Dancer and First Glance were raced under heavy restraint. “The grey went past the stands with his head almost pulled around to face the crowd,” the Morning Telegraph reported. The Grey Ghost covered the six furlongs in a slow 1:14. It was unclear if he had benefited. Still, Winfrey proclaimed him ready for the Gotham in four days.
After the Dancer was safely back at Barn 20, McNulty watched Winfrey, Murray, Harold Walker, and J.C. Mergler rub their hands up and down the colt’s legs, checking for signs of distress—a routine safeguard. The Dancer was fine. Soon, McNulty was alone with Murray in front of the stall, eyeing the colt.
“He keyed up,” Murray told McNulty. “He a little mixed up in his mind, but he all right. He don’t know was that a race he was in or wasn’t it. They had the gate, they had the other two horses, they had the crowd yelling. But you know what I think got him mixed up in his mind? It looked like a race to him except one thing. They never brought him back to no winner’s circle. This horse never been in no place else but that winner’s circle. Every single, solitary time he run a race. He don’t know what to make out of it, no winner’s circle this time. It’s got him mixed up.”
The public’s fascination with the Dancer was evident in the response to the trial. Every aspect of the workout was analyzed and debated among horsemen and newspaper columnists, as if great truths were obtainable. How did he look as he came down the track? When he was eased up? Was this sufficient preparation for the Gotham? Was Winfrey still behind schedule? What about those ankles? Morning Telegraph columnist Evan Shipman wrote that he “couldn’t see how the horse could have accomplished what he did with more authority,” and wisely added that it was a mistake to make too much of the event.
“There is a brain there,” Shipman wrote of the Dancer, “and nothing sluggish or idle about it. The horse is well aware that a work is not a race.”
Shipman, an influential veteran columnist, was a great believer in the horse. “Native Dancer is well on his way to becoming a great popular champion in the world of sport, his appeal reaching far beyond the ordinary limits of racing,” he wrote. “Sports writers naturally welcome such champions and do their part toward creating them, but there has been nothing artificial about the growth of this particular legend. Several unbeaten two-year-olds have failed to inspire anything like the same adulation, and some truly great thoroughbreds have failed to kindle the imagination of the larger public. But there is no denying that Native Dancer possesses the intangible quality we call ‘color,’ without which any champion is just another name in the record books. It is not forcing a simile to compare this rugged youngster with the great one-punch fighters. He appears to have the same instinct for competition, the same ability to force an issue to a conclusion at the crucial moment.”
His popularity was undeniable. But the Kentucky Derby was less than three weeks away, and the horse still hadn’t raced as a three-year-old. Critics continued to voice concern that Winfrey had brought him along too slowly, and Winfrey confessed years later that even he was concerned after the canceled race and botched trial. But “the only thing I could do was run him in the Gotham,” he told the Blood-Horse in 1985.
The pressure was building. “Huge Audience to See Gotham on TV Saturday,” blared a Morning Telegraph headline several days before the race. Caposella would call the race on the national telecast, with Sammy Renick handling the commentary and interviews. It was the Dancer’s first appearance on TV, local or national, and “his presence in the starting field assures the largest TV and radio audience in the history of turf broadcasting,” the Morning Telegraph wrote. Even larger, in other words, than the Kentucky Derby the year before.
Eighteen horses were entered in the Gotham, forcing Jamaica to split the field into two divisions. The Dancer landed in the weaker di-
vision, with no rival even close to his class other than a colt named Isasmoothie who had won the Pimlico Futurity six months earlier, and another colt named Magic Lamp who had occasionally shown promise. But although the other division featured Derby contenders Laffango and Invigorator and figured to be far more competitive, NBC wasn’t televising it. The public didn’t really care about Laffango and Invigorator. This was the Grey Ghost’s show. Vanderbilt’s friend Jock Whitney came to the paddock before the race to show support. Bettors sent the horse to the post at 1–6 odds. He had worked a speedy half mile in 46⅖ seconds at Belmont the day before.
The crowd cheered when the Dancer broke sharply from the starting gate, but Guerin, as he had in every race the year before, settled the horse off the lead. The Dancer raced along in fourth, to the outside of the front-runners, Magic Lamp and a sprinter named Virtuous, as the pack moved at a slow pace around the first turn, up the backside, and into the second turn. Then Guerin lowered himself and began scrubbing the horse’s neck, asking for a run. The Dancer charged up to sec
ond, now trailing only Magic Lamp, then stalled, sending a shiver through the crowd as he turned for home.
But any concern quickly dissipated. Guerin drew his stick and waved it in front of the Grey Ghost’s eyes as they headed for home, and the horse burst past Magic Lamp and opened up a lead. The outcome was never in doubt through the stretch, although the Dancer failed to continue to draw away from Magic Lamp as Guerin waved the stick at him. The winning margin was two lengths.
In the other division, Invigorator and Laffango pressed each other all the way up the backside, through the turn, and down the stretch. Laffango won in the end, and many observers felt that both horses looked sharper than the Dancer, not that that was a surprise with the Dancer coming off such a long layoff. “He got very, very tired in that race,” Winfrey told the Blood-Horse in 1985, adding that it was the horse’s “only race” in which he wasn’t fit Yet Laffango’s time of 1:44⅕ was only a fifth of a second faster than the Dancer’s, and given the slow pace in the Dancer’s heat, it was obvious the Dancer could have gone faster. As much as his time and his inability to put away Magic Lamp provided new fodder for the doubters, he was just warming up. His winning run in Gotham, wrote columnist Arthur Daley in the New York Times, was “not unlike Babe Ruth hitting one out of the park against batting practice pitching.” The real show, in other words, had yet to begin.
TEN
Five days after the Gotham, an unequivocal challenge was issued to the popular assumption that Native Dancer was so superior to the rest of his three-year-old class that he couldn’t lose the Kentucky Derby. A California-based colt named Correspondent blazed to a five-length victory in the Blue Grass Stakes, a major pre-Derby test at Keeneland, in Lexington, Kentucky, outclassing two horses that had excelled during the winter racing season in Florida: Straight Face, winner of the Flamingo Stakes, and Money Broker, winner of the Florida Derby.
With Eddie Arcaro directing him, Correspondent set a track record on a sunny Thursday afternoon, covering a mile and an eighth in 1:49, one-fifth of a second faster than Coaltown’s winning time in the 1948 Blue Grass. Coaltown was the memorable Calumet speedster who had opened a six-furlong lead on Citation in the Kentucky Derby before finishing second to his stablemate and eventual Triple Crown winner, so even though the Blue Grass was Correspondent’s first stakes victory and just his sixth win in fourteen career starts, he was running in fast company now.
Owned by Gordon Guiberson, a Texas businessman now living in California, and trained by Wally Dunn, a Canadian-born horseman now based at Santa Anita, Correspondent instantly dropped to 2-1 in the Kentucky Derby future book in Caliente, Mexico, as the clear second choice behind Native Dancer. The nation’s three-year-olds had been competing against each other through the winter in California and Florida and the early spring in New York, Maryland, and Kentucky, and the picture was finally beginning to crystallize as the Derby neared.
Tahitian King, the colt who had nearly upset the Dancer in the Futurity, had failed to fill out while wintering in New Orleans and was running well below his prior form; he was now deemed a long shot even to run in the Derby. Laffango, winner of the other division of the Gotham, was out after experiencing swelling in his left front ankle following his impressive victory. So much for the two horses weighted closest to the Dancer on the Experimental Free Handicap ranking of 1952 two-year-olds.
With those two out and Calumet Farm failing to produce a dangerous springtime three-year-old for only the second time since the end of the war, the horses emerging as the top threats to the Grey Ghost were Royal Bay Gem, Straight Face, and now Correspondent Royal Bay Gem was a late-blooming overachiever, an undersized black colt who had sold for just $7,500 as a yearling, and at first glance, appeared incapable of racing even a mile without faltering. He had made twenty-two starts, mostly in allowance races, as a two-year-old, winning only three with a late-running style. But his owner, a white-haired Texan named Eugene Constantin, and his bow-tied trainer, Clyde Troutt, kept believing in him and running him in Florida early in 1953, and their faith finally paid off. The Gem beat eighteen other horses, including Straight Face, to win a wild Everglade Stakes; his jockey, Jimmy Combest, rallied him from fifteenth on the first turn to a two-length victory. He then came from far back in the Flamingo Stakes and Fountain of Youth Handicap to finish second in both. In his most recent start, the Chesapeake Stakes, at Bowie, Maryland, he was last in a fifteen-horse field in the early going, then charged through the pack to win by two lengths. With his gaunt frame and lack of stature, he didn’t look the part of a Kentucky Derby horse, but his formidable late move was a good fit for the race, which always had a big field.
Straight Face was a more typical Derby horse, a long-legged bay sired by Count Fleet and bred and owned by Jock Whitney’s Green-tree. He was so contrary as a yearling that he had been gelded and held out of competition until August 1952 while Tiger Skin raced as the stable’s top two-year-old, but Tiger Skin was put to death after fracturing a leg in October and Straight Face emerged, winning two stakes races in Kentucky late in 1952 and then the Flamingo. He had come out of Florida with a sore knee, and Correspondent had put him in his place in the Blue Grass, but with his breeding and long stride, he was still regarded as a rising threat.
Other horses in the mix included Invigorator, who had finished in the money in nineteen of twenty-five starts and would have Bill Shoemaker, the nation’s hottest young jockey, on him in the Derby; Ram o’ War, a long shot who had won a division of the Fountain of Youth; and Money Broker, who had run in midwestern claiming and allowance races as a two-year-old but leaped forward at three, finishing second in the Louisiana Derby, first in the Florida Derby, and third in the Blue Grass. Winfrey and Vanderbilt were also considering running Social Outcast, who had finished fourth in the Chesapeake Stakes.
Correspondent was ahead of them all after having won the Blue Grass so impressively. Sired by Khaled—soon to gain fame as the sire of Swaps, the 1955 Kentucky Derby winner and later a popular handicap champion—Correspondent didn’t have a typical Derby rÉsumÉ. He had gone winless as a two-year-old, finally breaking his maiden in his seventh career start, a seven-furlong allowance at Santa Anita in late January 1953. A third-place finish in the Santa Anita Derby on February 21 had hinted at what was to come, but no one could have foreseen how brilliantly he would bloom upon arriving in Kentucky in early April as a fringe Derby horse.
With Arcaro on him—others had ridden him as he competed against Decorated and Calumet’s Chanlea through the winter at Santa Anita—Correspondent easily outran Money Broker in a six-furlong allowance at Keeneland on April 10, then just missed setting the track record for seven furlongs in another allowance a week later. That day, Arcaro went to the whip when a long shot named Dark Star posed a challenge in the stretch, and Correspondent pulled away easily.
Straight Face was still the betting favorite in the Blue Grass six days later, the public choosing to put its faith in a Greentree colt with more than $150,000 in career earnings and a better record than Correspondent in stakes races. But as 10,824 fans watched at Lexington’s intimate track, the second choice proved far superior to the favorite. Arcaro took him to the front and set a scorching pace—22⅘ seconds for the first quarter mile, 464/5 for the half—and when Straight Face and Money Broker began to close on the far turn, Arcaro let out the reins and shook his stick, and Correspondent took off. The colt was in front by three lengths as he entered the stretch and never stopped pulling away.
“I don’t know that there’s a three-year-old in the country that could have beaten that colt today,” said Greentree’s trainer, John Gaver, who had traveled from New York to saddle Straight Face. Teddy Atkinson, Straight Face’s jockey, refused to indulge reporters wanting him to compare Arcaro’s horse to Native Dancer. “There’s no common ground to make a comparison yet,” Atkinson said.
Arcaro dressed quickly after the race. A private plane was waiting to take him to New York, where in forty-eight hours he would race again
st Native Dancer in the Wood Memorial, the final Derby prep race on the East Coast. Arcaro was booked on Social Outcast, Vanderbilt’s second-string three-year-old. The jockey’s choice for a Kentucky Derby mount was down to two, Correspondent or Social Outcast, and while the choice seemed obvious now, Arcaro refused to admit it.
“I told Mr. Vanderbilt that I’m coming to New York with an open mind, so you won’t get any answers out of me!” Arcaro shouted goodnaturedly to reporters.
“I’ll bet you’ve got a lot in the back of your mind, though, Eddie,” one reporter said.
“I guess I have,” Arcaro said, “but I’m not going to tell you newspaper guys.”
Arcaro, at thirty-seven, was racing’s biggest star, its Rocky Marciano, its Joe DiMaggio, the athlete-cum-celebrity whose name resonated well beyond his sport’s boundaries. Winner of five Kentucky Derbys and a pair of Triple Crowns—on Whirlaway in 1941 and Cita-
tion in 1948—he was a character Damon Runyon might have invented, brash and big-nosed (hence his nickname, Banana Nose), small and strong-armed, gifted and glamorous. Champion horses came and went, but Arcaro was always present, the familiar, flamboyant jockey who loved to tell stories and dance at nightclubs, yet still dominated his peers with a matchless blend of coordination, unerring judgment, and strength.
Born in Cincinnati in 1916, he had left school at fourteen, become a jockey at fifteen, and started riding for Calumet at eighteen. He won his first Derby in 1938 and led the nation in earnings for the first time in 1940, then again in 1942, 1949, 1950, and 1952 as long associations with Calumet and Greentree served him well. He was still in his prime, having won four Triple Crown races on four different horses since 1950, including the Derby the year before on Hill Gail. Gregarious and glib, he was beloved by reporters and was the darling of the manly racing crowd that admired his talent and winked at his lifestyle.
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