Native Dancer

by John Eisenberg

  The eyes of the nation were on the race. Television industry analysts later estimated that almost 20 million viewers were watching CBS’s live telecast in almost 8 million homes, the totals equal to those for the World Series and far exceeding those for any previously televised horse race. Seventy-two percent of the TV sets that were on from coast to coast were tuned to the Derby as Bryan Field gathered himself in front of the microphone and prepared to call the race. America was riveted. Man O’ War had raced to immortality more than three decades earlier, before radio, with few of his fans seeing him run; and then Seabiscuit and Citation had come along as the champions heard ’round the country, the heroes of racing’s radio days. Now the Grey Ghost was on the verge of joining them as the first great horse America had actually seen.

  At the Louis Restaurant, the racing-mad eatery near the Jamaica Racetrack in New York, a packed house of customers was gathered around a TV set. There was no doubt where their allegiances lay. “We had a big picture of Eric Guerin on the wall; he had come in to eat and we were big fans of his,” Costy Caras recalled. “Plus, Vanderbilt was a very popular man with the racing crowd. They knew he had put a lot into the sport. People wanted him to win.”

  Halfway across the country, in New Orleans, Tim Capps, destined to make racing his career as an author and industry official, was also watching TV. He was eight years old. “We didn’t have a TV in our house, but our neighbor across the street did and we went over to watch the race there,” Capps recalled. “We had just moved down from North Carolina and my father was in the seminary. I was just starting to read about horses and get interested. I was enthralled by Native Dancer. He was my first ‘favorite’ horse. I thought his name was great. I had read enough to know Alfred Vanderbilt was famous. And he was grey. He just jumped off the screen. We had gone over to our neighbor’s house to watch some other things on their TV, college football bowl games, but the Derby really grabbed me. I wanted Native Dancer to win.”

  So did Judy Ohl, a seventh grader in Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, north of Allentown at the foot of the Pocono Mountains. “My father worked at Bethlehem Steel and brought the New York papers home in the evenings,” she recalled years later. “There was always an article about Native Dancer, and I had become a big fan of the horse even though I had never seen him in the flesh. But he had a presence that came through even in black-and-white pictures in the paper. It was very exciting to get to see him race live on TV.” She was watching the Derby in her den with her best friend from parochial school. “The reception was terrible and the picture was fuzzy, but we didn’t care,” she recalled.

  Thousands of other girls across the country had also fallen for the Grey Ghost Lulu Vanderbilt, the daughter of Alfred’s brother, was one of them. A teenage student at Foxcroft, an exclusive boarding school in Virginia, Lulu had clipped out newspaper articles and put them in a scrapbook, watched the Gotham and Wood on NBC, and sent several telegrams to the smiling, dapper man who was always standing next to the horse in the winner’s circle—her uncle Alfred. “My girlfriends got sick of hearing me prattle on about the horse,” Lulu recalled. “I sent Alfred a telegram before the Derby.”

  She had planned to watch the race, but a rare chance to escape the dorm changed her mind. She was spending the day at a steeplechase race in Middleburg, Virginia. “We got out so seldom, and I was so convinced that Native Dancer was going to win that I decided to go,” she recalled.

  At 4:42 P.M., Ruby White, the veteran starter at Churchill Downs, pushed a button that opened the flaps to the starting gate. Out came the eleven horses. The tote board in the infield was showing the final odds: the Dancer and Social Outcast at 7–10, still odds-on after all, with Correspondent at 3-1, Royal Bay Gem at 7-1, and Straight Face at 11-1. Of the $778,556 in the win pool, almost exactly half—$386,333—was on the Dancer and Social Outcast. They had so dominated the wagering that Dark Star was 25-1 as the fifth choice of eleven.

  There was immediately an incident along the rail: Ace Destroyer veered out and grazed Correspondent, squeezing Arcaro and his horse back. That allowed jockey Henry Moreno, on Dark Star, to swing in from the tenth post and take the lead without a struggle coming through the stretch the first time. Arcaro rallied quickly, jumping into second, two lengths off the lead, as he headed past the grandstand and reached the first turn. Dark Star covered the first quarter in a routine 23⅘ seconds.

  The Dancer broke cleanly, without incident, and Guerin settled him off the pace, in sixth, as he passed the grandstand the first time. Some observers later suggested that he was too far back, that he had wanted to run and Guerin had restrained him, that he could have—and should have—raced nearer the front, in third or fourth. Guerin disputed the suggestion, insisting that while it may have appeared that he was holding the Dancer back, in fact, the colt was uncomfortable on the track and struggling to find his stride. In any case, the Dancer was in sixth as he moved into the first turn, in front of early stragglers such as Royal Bay Gem, Social Outcast, and Money Broker.

  Al Popara, the jockey on Money Broker, wasn’t pleased. Under orders from trainer Tennessee Wright to race near the front and near the rail, he was stuck on the outside and in a pack, moving at a slow pace. He later told a United Press reporter that he had wanted to remain behind Native Dancer through the first turn and then make a move, “but the pace was too slow,” so he decided to “circle the Dancer,” cut in front, and drop down to the rail.

  A former Golden Gloves boxing champion from Hayward, California, Popara, at twenty-four, was one of the least experienced jockeys in the race. He was four years into his career, having just the year before ridden his first “name” mount, Gushing Oil. Tough and hungry, he had ridden Money Broker and other horses with success over the winter in New Orleans, then used his winnings to move his wife and four children out of a trailer and into a house. He was making his Derby debut on Money Broker but had almost lost the mount two days earlier when Churchill’s stewards suspended him for ten days for rough riding. That would have knocked him out of the race in New York, where a suspended jockey was unable to take any mounts, but a suspended jockey in Kentucky could still ride stakes mounts previously contracted, so Popara was in the Derby.

  He was moving Money Broker out and around Guerin on the first turn when Money Broker lugged in toward the rail and bumped the Grey Ghost just as Curragh King, the long shot that had been racing immediately in front of the Dancer, veered out and into the Dancer’s path. The simultaneous bump and squeeze knocked the Dancer badly off stride. “Hey!” Guerin shouted. Bill Shoemaker, riding Invigorator to the inside of the Dancer, had a clear view. “It happened right to the outside of me: Native Dancer was usually a lot closer to the pace, but Money Broker bumped him good and knocked him back,” Shoemaker recalled years later. The chart caller for the Daily Racing Form wrote that the Dancer was “roughed at the first turn by Money Broker.” Guerin righted the Dancer, pulled him back, and veered to the outside, ending up in eighth place as he straightened out of the turn.

  The possibility of rough riding had certainly existed. Not once in the prior seventy-eight runnings of the Derby had a horse been disqualified, so the jockeys had a license to be bold. And Churchill Downs still hadn’t installed film patrol cameras, even though the innovation was more than a decade old. The result was an old-school free-for-all—in every race, not just the Derby. “There’s more than a bit of rough riding here; the classic phrase ‘every man for himself’ seems, at times, to be the motto in the jockeys’ room,” James Roach wrote in the New York Times that week, adding that “the jockeys are well aware those big [film patrol] lenses aren’t focused on their every move.”

  Popara’s intentions would be intensely debated, as would Guerin’s response. This much was certain: with seven horses ahead of him as he came out of the first turn, the Dancer’s jockey asked his horse to run to start making up lost ground—and run the Dancer did. Steaming up the backstretch toward the second turn, the Grey Ghost quickly passed four horse
s and closed in on the leaders. It was later estimated that he took only 23 seconds to run this middle quartermile segment of the race. “That is as fast as horses travel,” Evan Shipman later wrote in the Morning Telegraph.

  Up front, little had changed. With six furlongs down and four to go, Dark Star and Correspondent were still running first and second, with Arcaro stalking the leader from a half length behind. The Master was in perfect position to strike. So was Straight Face, with Teddy Atkinson up; the Greentree colt had moved into third, a length behind Correspondent. The Dancer was a length behind Straight Face as he moved through the second turn. The bump on the first turn had set him back, but he was just four lengths behind Dark Star now with a half mile to go.

  As he negotiated the second turn, Guerin moved down to the rail to save ground; he had raced wide until now, forcing the Dancer to cover extra ground. Moving to the rail put him behind Correspondent and Straight Face, raising his chances of getting blocked off, but with so much distance still to be covered, he had time to sit back and see what developed.

  Derby contenders and pretenders are separated coming out of the second turn, when they have raced a mile and start digging deep to cover the final quarter. At that point, everyone—jockeys, fans, trainers, and owners alike—discovers which horses have enough stamina to compete to the end and which don’t. Fifty yards into the stretch run to the finish line, Arcaro was stunned to discover that his horse was among the pretenders. Correspondent had pulled away from every rival in his three races at Keeneland in April, but now, after racing in Dark Star’s shadow for a mile, he slowed and drifted wide. He would finish fifth. Straight Face also drifted wide, his stride suddenly snagged, his chances gone. He would finish sixth. Royal Bay Gem, the third betting choice, had started his usual finishing kick on the second turn and was moving up fast on the outside, but he had too much ground to make up in too little time against horses of this caliber. He would finish fourth.

  With horses fading everywhere, the race was suddenly as clear as the blue Kentucky sky. Dark Star, at 25-1 odds, with five wins in ten career starts, was in front with three-sixteenths of a mile to run. Native Dancer, at 7–10 odds, with an 11-0 record, was two lengths behind. The other nine horses were out of it. Either Dark Star would hold on for the upset, or Native Dancer, as he had so often, would swoop around the leader and win going away, realizing the defining triumph so many had foretold.

  There was every reason to believe the Dancer was on the verge of winning. The Grey Ghost had won most of his races from this exact position, swooping in from the head of the stretch to pass horses who, in many cases, had credentials superior to Dark Star’s. The bump on the first turn was forgotten. The Dancer was in position to take over.

  Surprisingly, he gained not an inch on Dark Star for a hundred yards, through the top half of the stretch run. Moreno, who had judged the pace brilliantly until now, alertly moved his dark brown colt from the middle of the track down toward the rail, cutting off the Dancer’s open lane to the finish line. Guerin had to move the Dancer yet again, swerving off the rail and to the outside of Dark Star as he tried to rally. Only then, trailing by a length and a half with a furlong to go, did the favorite begin to run.

  Dark Star had little left That was obvious. Moreno was just trying to coax his horse to the finish line. He glanced back at the sixteenth pole, saw the Dancer, and admitted later, “I was pretty scared when I saw that big grey behind me.” His and everyone else’s eyes were on the Dancer. The race hadn’t turned out as planned, but the Grey Ghost had fluttered hearts before and come out fine, and he bore down on the leader with his trademark fierceness now, gaining ground with every step.

  It was in the issue of Life magazine on newsstands across the country that week that the Dancer’s stride had been measured at twenty-nine feet, and every inch of it was on display now as the colt closed on Dark Star. The lead was down to a length in one stride, then less than a length inside the sixteenth pole, Guerin beating a tattoo on the Dancer’s flank, the crowd roaring, millions watching at home.

  He was a half length behind with one hundred yards to go, then, after another step, a head behind.

  Just a head to win the Derby.

  Covering twenty-nine feet with every stride, the Dancer drove hard, his innate competitiveness firing him, his chances still alive.

  The finish line loomed, but the Dancer took another colossal step and closed more ground, his head bobbing deliciously close to Dark Star. All he needed was another stride, two at the most.

  Dark Star lunged, the Dancer made a final reach, and both crossed the finish line as millions shrieked.

  The race was over.

  The impossible had happened.

  The Dancer had lost.

  FIFTEEN

  Vanderbilt watched from his box above the homestretch, standing alongside Jeanne, Bill and Elaine Winfrey, Ralph and Blanche Kercheval, and Louis Cheri. Like the rest of the country, he thought the Dancer was in perfect position at the top of the stretch, with just one horse to pass. Like the rest of the country, he watched in disbelief as the colt failed to gain ground on Dark Star until it almost seemed too late before making his remarkable run in the final furlong.

  “Did he get it?” Vanderbilt shouted amid the din as the horses crossed the finish line.

  “I don’t think so,” Winfrey said.

  Vanderbilt knew it was true. The crowd roared when it was announced that the stewards were reviewing a photo of the finish, but Vanderbilt left for the apron alongside the track, certain that Dark Star had won. He was making his way through the grandstand when the announcement came, and he grimly accepted condolences from strangers, with a nod of his head. His innate aristocratic restraint served him well now. He had won and lost hundreds of races at dozens of tracks over the years, and he knew as well as anyone to expect the unexpected, but this was hard to take. After simmering for almost two decades, his Derby dream had been dashed in two minutes.

  “Alfred jumped up and left immediately, so I said, Well, I’ll go congratulate the Guggenheims,’ ” Jeanne Vanderbilt recalled. “We knew them quite well. I went over to where they were sitting, but they had already left. I came back and sat down. Everyone was just stunned, absolutely shocked. It was almost incomprehensible. So close at the end! People started filtering by the box, saying how sorry they were. There was an aura of people trying to figure out how this could have happened.”

  Vanderbilt made it to the apron, where the jockeys were weighing out and heading to the jockeys’ room to change for the next race. Vanderbilt spoke briefly to Guerin, trying to discern what had happened, and gave Al Popara a murderous stare. “If looks could have killed somebody, I would have been dead,” Popara told Derby historian Jim Bolus years later. Money Broker had finished eighth, eleven lengths behind the winner, after bothering the Dancer on the first turn.

  Lester Murray and Harold Walker took the Dancer from Guerin. They had watched the race from the apron, not far from the finish line, after leading the Dancer over from the barn and sending him out for the post parade. Murray sat on the ground, shank in hand, until the horses came around the far turn and headed down the stretch with the crowd roaring. Then he rose into a half-crouch and made a fist, his face flush as Dark Star held on.

  “Did he get it?” the groom said, wheeling and asking Walker as the horses crossed the finish line.

  “I don’t think so,” Walker said quietly.

  Murray had been one of the stars of the week, regaling reporters with stories of the Grey Ghost. The big man with the old felt hat had become a familiar figure. Now, as Dark Star’s handlers hollered and rejoiced, Murray snapped the shank on the beaten favorite. Walker led the horse back to the barn, with Murray bringing up the rear. The crowds that had surrounded them all week were suddenly gone. Murray would later swear the Dancer looked back as he walked away, seemingly confused that he wasn’t getting to go to the winner’s circle, where he had always gone after a race.

  It was a day many
would never forget, in countless ways, for countless reasons. So many Americans had never seen a major horse race, much less a Kentucky Derby, much less a Kentucky Derby with an undefeated grey favorite being hailed as the next Man O’ War. And now the horse had lost as millions of fans watched, the defeat incomprehensible to many.

  At the Louis Restaurant in Jamaica, a house full of customers turned away from the TV screen in disappointment. “My mother, father, two brothers, and myself, we were all rooting for Eric and Native Dancer,” Costy Cavas recalled. “There was a lot of sadness when he didn’t win.”

  Judy Ohl, the seventh grader in Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, was jumping up and down in her den and screaming as the horses came down the stretch. “It was devastating when he didn’t win,” Judy said. “I’ll never forget the feeling. It seemed so unfair.”

  Lulu Vanderbilt, Alfred’s niece, was in the crowd at the steeplechase race in Virginia when she heard the news. “They came on the loudspeaker and announced that Dark Star had won the Kentucky Derby,” Lulu recalled. “I was so dumbfounded that I just sat down in a field. I was in complete shock. It was horrible. And I’ve talked to other people who had the same feeling that afternoon. That race just killed people.”

  Tim Capps burst into tears. Watching on his neighbor’s TV as an eight-year-old in New Orleans, he couldn’t comprehend the emotions he was feeling, but profoundly, they would lead to a career in racing. “It was kind of a riveting moment,” Capps recalled. “I had no personal connection with the horse, but I was in love with him and I got so upset when he lost that I cried. After that, I started reading a lot more about horses and racing. I was on my way. Secretariat was the defining horse for later generations, but for people of my generation, it was Native Dancer. And for some reason, the image that always stands out is him losing the Derby. If you were born in the 1940s or thereabouts and follow racing, you’ll never forget that day.”