Native Dancer

by John Eisenberg

  Vanderbilt had bought Cousin for $20,000 as a yearling in 1950, thinking that if he couldn’t breed a Derby winner, maybe he could buy one. Cousin lost his first start as a two-year-old in 1951, then won three in a row and was shipped to Saratoga, where he won the Flash Stakes, Saratoga Special, and Hopeful Stakes within four weeks. “What a horse he could have been if he’d gotten straightened out,” Appley recalled. “But he was crazy from the word go. After I galloped him the first time, I came home and told my wife, ‘I got on the damnedest horse today.’ ”

  While dominating at Saratoga, Cousin refused to train on the main racing strip. “He’d get to the track and fall over like he’d been shot and refuse to get up,” Appley recalled. Jock Whitney offered Vanderbilt the use of Greentree’s private training track in Saratoga, and Cousin resumed training. Whatever aversion the horse felt for the main track didn’t extend to the afternoons: in the Hopeful, he defeated Tom Fool, Greentree’s best two-year-old and later a handicap champion.

  “Cousin was a nut, but he could run,” recalled Bayard Sharp, Vanderbilt’s friend and fellow Jockey Club member. “We were all helping Alfred with the horse at Saratoga. Alfred came to me and said, ‘I have this nut and he hates my lead pony and I can’t get him to the track to work. Maybe we can fool him. Would you lend me your lead pony?’ So I did. And it didn’t help. Cousin kicked the hell out of my lead pony and never got to the track. But then we got to the Hopeful, and here we’ve all helped Alfred with the horse, lent him lead ponies and whatnot, and Cousin goes and beats us all.”

  To most observers, the victory marked Cousin as a contender for the 1952 Kentucky Derby, but within the stable, concerns about his behavior overshadowed the achievement. He had thrown Guerin before the start, almost lain down in the starting gate, and then again refused to train on the main track after the race. “They brought in a vet,” Appley recalled, “and the vet said, ‘This horse is plum crazy.’ ”

  Winfrey somehow got him through two more races in the fall of 1951, but he ran seventh in the Anticipation Stakes and eighth in the Futurity after curiously breaking into the air coming out of the starting gate. Vanderbilt and Winfrey hoped he would mature over the winter and come back more willing in the spring, but he was even more difficult, occasionally consenting to light training but otherwise refusing to follow orders. He produced a third-place finish in two starts at Jamaica in April 1952, and Winfrey went ahead and shipped him to Churchill Downs with contingencies. If the colt trained agreeably, he would run in the Derby, ending Vanderbilt’s streak at eighteen years without a Derby horse. But if he caused problems in training, he would run in the Derby Trial, a smaller prep race run at Churchill Downs four days before the big race, and Winfrey and Vanderbilt would then reassess.

  A disaster unfolded. Cousin refused to train at Churchill and put on a monumental show of stubbornness one morning in front of hundreds of disbelieving railbirds. Winfrey waved a bullwhip, took the colt to the paddock, walked him around the track both ways, and brought in an older horse to try to convince him to run, all to no avail. Finally, after an hour of balking, Cousin extended himself mildly on a single trip around the track, then returned to the barn. Reporter Jerry McNerney of the Louisville Courier-Journal wrote the next day that Cousin had “behaved as if he were related to the mule family.”

  Winfrey knew how badly Vanderbilt wanted to run in the Derby, but he also knew he couldn’t enter such a contrary horse in such an important race without knowing if a genuine effort would ensue. Thus, Cousin was entered in the Derby Trial, his last chance to prove himself.

  Vanderbilt, in the midst of his term as the president of the Thoroughbred Racing Associations, spent the morning of the Trial at the barn, chatting with reporters and track officials.

  “What are you going to do with that crazy horse?” asked Churchill’s track director, Tom Young.

  Vanderbilt laughed. “You mean, what is Cousin going to do with us?”

  That afternoon, the colt balked at entering the starting gate, broke sixth in a field of eight, and quickly lost interest, finishing last, more than forty lengths behind the winner. Vanderbilt left town. Cousin was out of the Derby. “If the horse had run as fast as Alfred did in running to catch his train after the race, we’d have won by seven lengths,” Winfrey told reporters. Cousin was removed from training, sold, and sent to Europe, where he raced with success on a steeplechase circuit before being killed in a race.

  The Dancer was convalescing in New York as Cousin unraveled in Louisville. The grey colt returned on schedule two months later, having given his sore shins time to heal. He resumed training in July at Belmont and was shipped to Saratoga.

  Saratoga Springs had been a summer place unlike any other for decades, thriving on illegal gambling as bribed politicians looked the other way and bookmakers worked out of bars, the backs of stores, and glittering nightclub-casinos on the nearby lakefront. “You talk about a live town,” recalled Tommy Trotter, a New York racing official in the early fifties. “There were nightclubs going, celebrities from Hollywood, just a fun town. I’d be eating breakfast at a little grill across from the track at seven in the morning, and here would come the showgirls, coming in from doing the shows, along with guys with their tuxedos still on. It was absolutely wide open, all high-class, just top racing and shows at night and gambling.”

  But dramatic changes were afoot in 1952. An anticrime panel led by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver had discouraged organized crime with televised hearings in which sweating mobsters were grilled. Saratoga’s bookies were gone, its casinos shuttered; racing’s Gomorrah had reluctantly discovered religion. The members of horse racing’s high society, who regarded Saratoga’s meeting as their annual convention, still spent their days at the track dressed in jackets, hats, and other formal wear, rooting for their horses from private boxes; then gathered at night for elegant dinners, yearling sales, and big-band parties lasting until dawn. The Spa, as the town was known, was still a seersucker jacket in the sun and a dance in the dark. But the grand hotels were closing, and high rollers were no longer promenading down Broadway.

  The start of the racing meeting was met with relief as a sign that not all of the town’s traditions were changing; there were still few better settings for racing, few tracks with fans more knowing and caring. The sport’s best stables were still present, their horses exercising on steamy mornings and racing through hot afternoons. As always, Vanderbilt’s cerise and white colors were hung on the barn nearest the track. He loved August at Saratoga. It was where his society roots and passion for racing blended most seamlessly, and where he had first learned about racing as a boy. Now, as then, he commuted from Sagamore Lodge in the nearby Adirondack Mountains, where he had spent his boyhood summers and where his wife and children were now staying. Vanderbilt spent the weekdays with his family and his weekends at the races and sales amid the racetrack fraternity he considered his second family.

  The owner was anxious to see the Dancer back in action, as were Winfrey, Murray, and everyone in the barn. The grey colt had shown potential in his two victories in April, but he had a lot of catching up to do after such a long layoff. Two-year-olds were campaigned as rigorously as possible in the early fifties. This was a custom that horsemen had maintained through the first half of the century, before big money invaded the breeding industry and turned top horses into valuable commodities that needed more conservative handling and preservation for stud duty. Seabiscuit made an astonishing thirty-five starts as a juvenile in 1935, and twenty-three more the next year. Whirlaway raced sixteen times at age two in 1940, one more start than Count Fleet made as a juvenile two years later. Vanderbilt’s Bed o’ Roses had raced twenty-one times in her championship juvenile campaign of 1949, so, clearly, Winfrey wasn’t afraid to push a young horse. The Dancer was painfully raw by those standards, having made just two starts as August began. It was almost as if his career had not even begun.

  Winfrey and Vanderbilt planned to change that at Saratoga. The mon
th-long meeting at the historic wooden track on Union Avenue was a hothouse for two-year-old racing, with the best juveniles in the East and Midwest gathering and sparring in a series of stakes. There was the Flash Stakes on the first day of the meeting and the prestigious Hopeful Stakes on the last day, and in between, such races as the Saratoga Special, the Grand Union Hotel Stakes, and the United States Hotel Stakes. Cousin had won three, including the Hopeful a year earlier, and Winfrey and Vanderbilt wanted to push the Dancer even harder and run him in four. It was an audacious blueprint. Years later, any trainer who suggested running an inexperienced juvenile four times in twenty-six days—against top opposition, no less—wouldn’t have a job the next day.

  It was deemed a routine projection in 1952, however, and the Dancer’s busy month started with the Flash on August 4. Skies were sunny in central New York after a morning rain. The usual eclectic blend of society icons, gamblers, and horsemen was on parade among a crowd of 15,000. Jock Whitney and his sister, Mrs. Charles Shipman Payson, the co-owners of Greentree, flew in from Casco Bay, Maine, where they summered, and greeted Vanderbilt in his box overlooking the finish line. Guests staying at the elegant Gideon Putnam Hotel, nestled in the trees near town, came to the track and lingered in front of the betting windows.

  The Dancer was made the favorite in the Flash at 4-5 odds, but he was beaten out of the gate and up the backside by Tiger Skin, a Greentree colt who had won his first race, and then was passed on the turn by a long shot named Torch of War. But just as he had in his first two races months earlier, the Dancer accelerated when turning for home, with minimal urging from Guerin, and quickly moved ahead. Torch of War faded and Native Dancer sprinted alone down the stretch, reaching the finish line two and a quarter lengths in front of Tiger Skin.

  Winfrey watched the race from Vanderbilt’s box and soon found his way to the barn. The grey colt had put on quite a show, beating able, fresher horses as if they, not he, were coming off a layoff. Winfrey elected to give the colt twelve more days off before bringing him back in the Saratoga Special, a six-furlong event known for its unusual financial conditions: the owners put up the $17,000 purse themselves and the winner got it all. That attracted a solid field, including Tahiti, another undefeated son of Polynesian, and Tiger Skin.

  The race was run on the day of the Travers Stakes, Saratoga’s most important race, but rain fell through the morning and early afternoon, limiting the crowd and leaving the Dancer to negotiate for the first time a track rated “sloppy.” He was still the favorite at 7-10, and as usual, he was settled behind the leaders after breaking from the gate, with Guerin positioning him along the rail. Doc Walker, a long shot, set the pace for the first half mile, with Tahiti and Tiger Skin close behind and the Dancer fourth. Coming out of the turn, Guerin swung the colt off the rail and asked him to run. The Dancer blew past Doc Walker and coasted to the finish line three and a half lengths ahead, with Tiger Skin and Tahiti out of the money.

  His superiority was indisputable. Joe Palmer wrote in the New York Herald Tribune that “as far as Saratoga is concerned, Native Dancer has only one barrier left, Tahitian King.” That was yet another undefeated son of Polynesian. The horses met a week later in the Grand Union Hotel Stakes. Eleven horses were entered in the sixfurlong race. New York racing secretary John Campbell assigned Native Dancer the top weight, 126 pounds, meaning the horse would carry that much as a handicap, the total including Guerin. “Native Dancer is tops with me,” Campbell told reporters. Tahitian King was given the next-highest weight assignment, 122 pounds, along with Laffango, a colt making his Saratoga debut after winning four straight races in New Jersey.

  With three tough horses in the field, six of the other eight entrants were scratched on the day of the race. “They were waiting in line at scratch time this morning, and I didn’t blame them for wanting to get out,” said John Gaver, the Princeton-educated trainer for Greentree. They were scratching mostly to avoid the Dancer, of course. “If he doesn’t win this one, I’m not only going to be surprised, I’m going to be very disappointed,” a confident Vanderbilt told reporters shortly before post time.

  The horse’s reputation was beginning to spread. The largest crowd in Saratoga history—26,232 fans—jammed the track on an afternoon that, Joe Palmer wrote, “was cool enough for a lady to wear a mink if she had one, and warm enough that if she didn’t, she could pretend she had left it at home.” All eyes were on the Dancer and Tahitian King. The Dancer broke first from the starting gate, then dropped to third along the rail, behind Laffango and Tahitian King, as the pack moved up the backside and into the turn. At his favorite spot—turning for home—the Dancer swept wide of the leaders, passed Tahitian King and Laffango, opened up a lead, and coasted to the finish line three and a half lengths in front. So much for the battle of unbeatens. Tahitian King was no match for the Dancer. The colt had now won five in a row without Guerin even once using the stick to urge an extra effort, and imaginations were beginning to stir. The Associated Press reported that the horse had “run like another Citation, or as some predict, another Man O’ War.”

  It had been a long month; as always in August at Saratoga, the afternoons and evenings were hot, and the mosquitoes were terrible. The Dancer, like many greys, had a sensitive hide, so the buzzing of mosquitoes and flies agitated him. Murray also was annoyed.

  “You just like me, you bum,” the groom grumbled as he pinned bandages to the Dancer’s legs after a morning workout. “That buzz makin’ me sweat That buzz terrible.”

  Finally, J.C. Mergler, the barn foreman, brought a fan into the Dancer’s stall to cool the horse, and also constructed a mesh screen that went over the front of the stall and kept bugs away. Of course, it wasn’t entirely clear if the fan and screen were there more to protect Murray or the horse.

  One more race remained on the Dancer’s Saratoga docket: the Hopeful Stakes, the culmination of the Spa’s juvenile season. Having already beaten all rivals on the grounds, the Dancer was virtually conceded the victory and was sent to the post at 1–4 odds. Another record crowd of almost 25,000 fans, the largest closing-day crowd in Saratoga’s history, came to watch, certain they would see the Grey Ghost complete his sweep of four stakes wins in twenty-six days. To their surprise, they saw him tested for the first time.

  Tiger Skin had already lost twice to the Dancer, but Teddy Atkinson, the fine contract rider for Greentree, had noted the grey’s custom of accelerating in the turn and charging from behind down the stretch, and he altered his tactics accordingly. This time, when Guerin and the Dancer swept wide and began their familiar charge from sixth place—a little farther back than usual—Atkinson squeezed Tiger Skin between the long shots that had set the early pace and he took the lead at the top of the stretch. For a moment, he opened daylight on the rest of the pack as the Dancer briefly stalled; he had gotten the jump on the grey. Guerin went to the whip for the first time in the Dancer’s career, striking him twice on the right flank. That was all that was needed: the Dancer came on steadily, caught Tiger Skin at the eighth pole, and pulled away. He eased up once he had the lead but still won by two lengths. Dismounting, Guerin spoke to Atkinson within earshot of reporters. “You have to ride him to really see how good he is,” Guerin said with a smile.

  The Dancer’s subsequent victories in the Futurity and a preceding tune-up ran his record to 8-0 by the end of September. He had accomplished enough to warrant taking the rest of the year off. His superiority among his two-year-old class was established. His undefeated record, earnings of $191,970—$27,000 shy of the all-time record for a two-year-old—and world record at six and a half straight furlongs argued for his inclusion on the list of American racing’s greatest juveniles. There was more to lose than gain, it seemed, by having him make another start and risk his place in history.

  But as Vanderbilt and Winfrey discussed their plans, thoughts of history ran second to concerns for the future. Two-year-olds were always raced with an eye to their three-year-old seasons, and the Dancer wa
s no different. In fact, his success had only heightened interest in his prospects for the Kentucky Derby and the rest of the Triple Crown the next spring. Did he have the tools to win all three races, the surest pathway to American racing glory? The question was still unanswered, despite all the Dancer had accomplished. He had never raced around two turns or farther than six and a half furlongs, and the spring “classics” for three-year-olds were much longer, the Derby at a mile and a quarter, the Preakness Stakes at a mile and three-sixteenths, and the Belmont Stakes at a withering mile and a half. Though the Grey Ghost’s dominance at shorter distances was established, his capacity for carrying his weight over longer distances—the mark of a champion—remained uncertain, especially since Polynesian, too, had excelled at shorter distances and wasn’t yet considered a safe bet to sire horses with stamina.

  Horsemen typically began testing their two-year-olds at longer distances in the fall, inaugurating the process of sorting out the contenders and pretenders for the Kentucky Derby. Winfrey and Vanderbilt weighed several options and entered the Dancer in the East View Stakes, at a mile and one-sixteenth, on October 22 at Jamaica. The race lacked the purse and importance of the Hopeful and Futurity, but the racing press wrote that it might reveal more about the Dancer’s Triple Crown potential than his prior eight races combined. Was the Grey Ghost a legitimate Derby horse or, like Cousin, just a talented temptation destined to frustrate Vanderbilt? The owner was certainly curious, his memories of the Cousin fiasco still fresh. “You know Cousin was a prime motivation as the Dancer came on,” Alfred Vanderbilt III said.

  In the twenty-five days between the Futurity and the East View Stakes, Winfrey put the horse through a regimen of longer workouts aimed at building his stamina. Five other horses were entered in the race, including Laffango, winner of the Champagne Stakes, a prestigious race covering a mile, in his last start. Almost 20,000 fans came to Jamaica on a cool, cloudy weekday afternoon to see the Dancer’s attempt to prove he had stamina as well as speed. All other activity at the track halted as the horses were loaded into the starting gate. The fans buttoned their topcoats and rubbed their hands, anticipating a show in the early autumn chill. “Even the hard-bitten pros felt a twinge of excitement,” Newsweek reported later.