Native Dancer

by John Eisenberg

  Winfrey continued: “I wouldn’t let him be photographed grazing on the grass, either. If some of those other horses with coughs grazed on the same grass, our horse could catch a cold and there goes the ballgame. No, sir, I’m taking no chances.”

  Joe Tannenbaum, a young racing writer for the Miami Daily News, was covering his first Kentucky Derby. The size and intensity of the hordes around the Dancer awed him. “Winfrey had big crowds of reporters around him every morning,” Tannenbaum recalled years later. Tannenbaum was also fascinated with Vanderbilt: “A lot of people thought he was one of those aloof society people, but he was not around the barns; he was tense about his horses, like a horseman.”

  The writers were following their usual Derby week routine: morning interviews at the barns, afternoons in the press box, evenings at dinners or parties. Joe Palmer, sadly, was missing for the first time since the early 1930s, and CBS, again televising the race nationally, with Bryan Field handling the call, had several dozen technicians on the premises. The network was trying out a new blueprint for its forty-five-minute Saturday afternoon telecast. The first fifteen minutes would emanate from a New York studio, with Mike Wallace and Buff Cobb, the popular husband-and-wife interviewers, previewing the race. They would then throw it to Kentucky, where Mel Allen, the famed baseball announcer, would set the scene. After Field’s call of the race, Allen and Louisville broadcaster Phil Sutterfield would cover the trophy presentation and interview the connections of the winner.

  Many more people would see CBS’s broadcast than any of the newsmen’s stories, a reality beginning to sink in with the citizens of the press box. “Very quickly,” Tannenbaum said, “many reporters rightfully changed their reportorial styles because they believed that most people had seen the race. It was a landmark change in how the job was done.”

  Tommy Roberts recalled, “There’s no doubt the old-time newspaper guys saw their importance being eroded, and they didn’t want to give that up. Before, when Red Smith or Grantland Rice walked into the track, everyone said, ‘Hail Caesar!’ But these new popular figures were emerging through TV, guys like Bryan Field and Fred Caposella. That worried the guys who ran the racetracks. They had grown up with the newspapermen and that world. That was one of the reasons racing was so reluctant to go with TV originally, because the newspaper guys had such sway with the track operators. No one really understood the power of the medium yet. But it was starting to change.”

  Winfrey had told the writers he planned to give the Dancer a final pre-Derby work Thursday morning, but the weather forecast was ominous, calling for thunderstorms. Winfrey considered his options. He didn’t want to work the Dancer on a wet track, and he couldn’t put off the work until Friday, just a day before the Derby. With Vanderbilt’s help, he concocted a plan and proposed it to Churchill officials: the Dancer and Social Outcast could appear in a “trial” between races that afternoon, before the rains came overnight Churchill agreed to the idea just in time to have the Dancer’s appearance trumpeted in the last edition of the afternoon paper.

  There were gasps and cheers when the two Vanderbilt horses appeared on the track hours later, after the third race. Bernie Everson was riding the Dancer, and Willie Nertney, a former jockey who now exercised horses for Vanderbilt, was aboard Social Outcast. Winfrey’s plan was for the two to cover a mile, with Social Outcast breaking in front early to give the Dancer a target to shoot for down the stretch.

  Unlike the botched trial before the Gotham, this went smoothly.

  The horses broke to a start from under the finish line, and as planned, Nertney and Social Outcast jumped in front by five lengths. They increased the margin to eight lengths in the backstretch, with Everson keeping a tight hold on the Dancer. When Everson finally asked him to run as they turned for home, the Grey Ghost put on a show. Picking up steam, he closed to within five lengths of Social Outcast, then four, then two. He was within a head as they crossed the finish line, and although Social Outcast was in front, the Dancer’s devastating finishing kick had the crowd buzzing. Clockers timed him over the final quarter mile in 23⅕ seconds—almost a second faster than any winning horse had ever run the final quarter mile of the Derby. That more than made up for the relatively slow overall clocking of 1:393/5 for a mile.

  As he watched the horses cool out back at the barn minutes later, Winfrey said he was pleased. “I would have preferred that he run a faster first half and a slower second half, but I’m not kicking,” the trainer said. “He’s ready to run Saturday.”

  The crowd watched five more races, but left talking about the Dancer’s remarkable stretch run. It was instant Derby lore. More than 100,000 fans and a TV audience in the millions would see the horse’s expected coronation in the Derby in a couple of days, but those who had seen him run down Social Outcast that afternoon had been given a private exhibition of his greatness. How lucky they felt.

  The field was finalized Friday morning when the owners of a dozen horses paid the $250 to enter. The last horse entered was Dark Star, Eddie Hayward arriving with Guggenheim’s money just twenty-one minutes before the entry period closed. Post positions were drawn in Churchill racing secretary Lincoln Plaut’s office. Plaut placed twelve numbered pellets in a container and withdrew them one at a time. The Dancer drew the seventh post, in the middle of the starting gate. That pleased Winfrey and Vanderbilt.

  The field was easily separated into three distinct groups. The Dancer and Correspondent were at one end, the favorites, and five long shots—Spy Defense, Social Outcast, Ace Destroyer, Ram o’ War, and Curragh King—were at the other end, seemingly overmatched. In between were five horses with legitimate Derby credentials. Royal Bay Gem figured to be the third betting choice, followed by Straight Face and Dark Star. Money Broker had finished in the money in all but one of his eight starts as a three-year-old. Invigorator was always competitive.

  But the Grey Ghost loomed mightily over them all, his record, reputation, and physical presence convincing many on-the-scene observers that this Derby was a constellation with but one star. In a Courier-Journal poll printed on Friday, forty-one of sixty-seven journalists picked him to win. Support for the others was minimal, with ten backing Royal Bay Gem, nine taking Correspondent, three picking Straight Face, two taking Social Outcast, one taking Spy Defense, and one taking Dark Star.

  The Dancer’s hype and popularity were becoming too widespread for some horsemen, most notably Arcaro. Hours after the poll appeared in print, the Master gave scalding answers to several questions from Associated Press reporter Kyle Vance, complaining that Churchill’s racing strip was “full of holes” and “the worst possible track” and that Native Dancer was overrated. “He had better be a hell of a horse,” Arcaro told Vance in a story that moved on the national wires. “He hasn’t proved he is yet. It isn’t fair, the way they’re building him up. It isn’t fair to the horse and it isn’t fair to the jockey.”

  There were other dissenters. Rip Newborn of the Cleveland Press, the one writer who had picked Dark Star in the Courier-Journal poll, explained in an accompanying article that he wasn’t supporting the Dancer because “Polynesian has to show me he can beget a top stayer.” In other words, because the Dancer’s sire had raced most effectively at shorter distances, Newborn was unsure whether his grey son could race the mile-and-a-quarter Derby distance without tiring. It was a criticism that had dogged the Dancer, and now, on the eve of the Derby, it was one of several arguments his few critics were using to pick against him. A grey had never won the Derby. And only fifteen of the twenty-six odds-on Derby favorites had won.

  As much as it seemed unlikely that the Dancer would lose, history suggested that, at the very least, the possibility existed. Thirteen years earlier, a magnificent colt named Bimelech had come to the Derby in circumstances similar to the Dancer’s. Owned by E. R. Bradley, already a winner of four Derbys, the colt was 11-0 and had been saluted by Bradley, one of Vanderbilt’s racing mentors, as “my finest horse.” Bet down to the shortest price in D
erby history, forty cents on the dollar, Bimelech raced near the front, took the lead on the second turn, and held it driving for home, only to have a 35-1 shot named Gallahadion overtake him in the final furlong. Remembering the upset thirteen years later, Courier-Journal assistant sports editor Dean Eagle wrote a column headlined, “Don’t Hock Your Car to Back Native Dancer! Remember Bimelech?”

  On the other hand, two other favorites since Bimelech had run in the Derby at odds of forty cents on the dollar, and both—Count Fleet in 1943 and Citation in 1948—had won. The Dancer would draw similar support. Anyone who knew racing understood that any number of problems could arise in any race to keep the best horse from winning, but the Dancer, many believed, was so plainly superior that, like Count Fleet and Citation, he would sail past any obstacles on his way to the winner’s circle.

  During training hours on Friday, Vanderbilt was standing along the rail watching the Dancer jog by when Clyde Troutt, trainer of Royal Bay Gem, happened by on a pony. After waiting until the Dancer passed, Troutt leaned over and congratulated Vanderbilt.

  “He’s just a splendid horse, sir,” the trainer said. “I’ve got a game one myself, but I can’t beat you.”

  Vanderbilt smiled. The week had been a swirl for him from the moment he arrived, his many friends in racing wanting to help him celebrate the triumph of the Dancer’s greatness. Louis Cheri, his valet, was with him—Louis had become a racing expert himself and wouldn’t have missed the Derby—and Jeanne had joined them later in the week. Vanderbilt had a cold he jokingly attributed to “rose fever”—“If Native Dancer runs as fast as my nose, we’re in,” he said—but it didn’t stop him from making his rounds. Every day he rose early and went to Churchill to watch the Dancer train and to soak up the scene, drinking coffee and giving interviews as the tension built. Other obligations occasionally distracted him—a society hostess gave a luncheon in his honor one afternoon—but he was increasingly fixated on the real reason for his trip, the momentous occasion for which he had waited so long: his chance to win the Derby.

  He and Jeanne were staying at the home of Baylor Hickman, a wealthy Louisville horseman and businessman who had once served on the Kentucky Racing Commission. Hickman lived at Glenview, a magnificent acreage located up the river from downtown Louisville. “There were a lot of people around and they were having quite a time out there; lots of parties and lots of corks being popped,” recalled Dr. Harthill, who was dating and later married Hickman’s daughter, and attended many of the parties that week. “They were celebrating. Everyone thought the Dancer was going to win. It was like it was a foregone conclusion.”

  FOURTEEN

  The sun shone on the Dancer’s Derby. The weather forecasters had called for storms and a sloppy track, but Saturday dawned clear and bright, with temperatures headed for the seventies, no ominous clouds in the distance, and a fast track assured. An existential handicapper might have suggested that the racing gods wanted the Grey Ghost illuminated in the ultimate spotlight on his most important day.

  The colt had gobbled down four quarts of oats at 1 A.M. and slept in the straw until dawn, when Lester Murray brushed him and put fresh bandages on his legs. Bernie Everson took him to the track for a jog after Winfrey, Vanderbilt, and Kercheval arrived. Everson was wearing a cerise and white sweater over a cerise sports shirt with cerise diamonds on white sleeves—no doubt as to whom he worked for. The Dancer cantered up the backstretch and around the turn, accelerated for a quarter mile, then eased up at the finish line and jogged all the way around the track again. Just stretching his legs. Ever curious, he breezed with his head cocked at a detachment of National Guardsmen mustering in the infield.

  Red Smith, the columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, was spending the morning at the barn, recording a minute-by-minute account of the Dancer’s day, as if it were destined to become racing history. According to the column, which ran the next day, Everson was on the shank as the horse cooled out, circling the barn with two blankets over him at first, then one. “Don’t let’s walk all the speed out of him,” Winfrey said after twenty minutes. The horse was put back in his stall, which was freshly laid with new straw. Murray tied his tail up, removed his bandages, and rubbed him down, and he snoozed upright—“like Joe Louis sleeping in the dressing room before a fight,” Smith wrote—before eating two more quarts of oats and snoozing again.

  Someone brought in a copy of Saturday’s edition of the Morning Telegraph, which included long profiles of Winfrey and Vanderbilt. Winfrey glanced at the story, which noted that he had already been a trainer for twenty-one years even though he was just turning thirty-seven. “Why, I just started shaving,” he told Smith. His father, George Carey Winfrey, who had taught him so much, was back in New York, putting his horses through their morning works at Jamaica. The elder Winfrey had never run a horse in the Derby, so when a reporter asked Bill Winfrey if the hullabaloo of the past week had aged him, he knew better than to sound a jaded note. “Far from it; this is what I’ve waited for for 37 years,” Winfrey said.

  Churchill Downs’s gates had opened at 8 A.M., and a great crowd was steadily building. The backside was overrun with grooms, fans, horsemen, reporters, and children, and a steady stream of visitors dropped by Barn 16 to offer best wishes. One, Smith wrote, was a man who had served in the South Pacific with Winfrey during World War II. Another was a newsreel photographer who shot film of the owner and trainer laughing and smiling. “Do you want long faces, too, in case we lose?” Vanderbilt asked. Vanderbilt and Kercheval left at 9:30, just before Johnny Adams, the veteran jockey who would ride Social Outcast in the Derby, came by to discuss tactics with Winfrey. The trainer left shortly after that.

  Tension slowly built as the hours passed. According to Smith’s column, Everson’s wife came by with her husband’s lucky socks—cerise with white diamonds, of course—which he had worn each time the Dancer raced, and Murray and Harold Walker cleaned the barn and ate lunch in a stall. The blare of the track announcer and occasional roars from the crowd interrupted the reverie. Winfrey returned with his wife Elaine, who was pregnant, and showed her around the barn before taking her over to the grandstand to get her settled in Vanderbilt’s box. A young boy leaning against a fence stopped them on their walk and offered Elaine a tip on the race. “Dark Star’s gonna win,” the boy said. The tip was ignored.

  Word arrived that Spy Defense, one of the longest shots in the Derby field, had scratched, with trainer Jack Hodgins offering this explanation to reporters: “I’ve got a good reputation, and I’m not going up against the grey one. Native Dancer is a champion, and you don’t see many champions, so why don’t we just admit it?”

  The nine-race card started at noon in weather so pleasant “many of the male customers put aside their coats and rolled up their shirtsleeves,” wrote James Roach in the New York Times, and “those who were in the infield were able to get a full day of sun-tanning that was at least a reasonable facsimile of the Miami Beach type.” It was a classic Derby crowd, a convivial blend of fashionable women and powerful men. They drank mint juleps, studied the Racing Form, bet, and bought souvenirs including fringed pillow covers, bugles, parasols, and julep glasses.

  Churchill president Bill Corum had hoped Judy Garland and Bob Hope would lead the list of celebrities in attendance, but Garland had become ill after a concert the night before, and Hope had gone to Washington after attending the races on Friday. The list of faces-to-be-seen was still long and impressive, including U.S. senator Lyndon Johnson of Texas and a half dozen of his colleagues; four governors; FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover; former vice president Alben Barkley; actor Charles Coburn, singer Marilyn Maxwell, and Happy Chandler, the former baseball commissioner and governor of Kentucky. The Derby did bring out the heavyweights.

  Mutuel clerks started selling tickets for the Derby at 9 A.M., with the resulting odds unannounced until after the sixth race, the race before the Derby. The Dancer, paired as a betting entity with Social Outcast, was 3-5 on the track-sponsore
d “morning line” printed in the program, but surprisingly, when the odds reflecting the daylong “blind betting” were posted after the sixth race, there was more money to win on Correspondent. The Dancer wasn’t even the favorite! That changed quickly, of course. Even though Churchill bettors obviously loved Arcaro, who was riding Correspondent, they still preferred the Dancer. Within minutes, the Grey Ghost and Social Outcast were down to 6-5 and Correspondent was 2-1.

  Winfrey left Vanderbilt in his box and returned to Barn 16 before the sixth race. Murray put the racing bandages on the Dancer’s legs and brushed him yet again, his coat glistening in the sunlight filtering through his stall. A roar from the crowd signaled the end of the sixth race. A garbled voice on the scratchy backside public address system announced that it was time to take the Derby horses over to the paddock. The horses walked over on the track, traveling clockwise around the outer rail, right in front of the crowd. Harold Walker led the Dancer, with Murray bringing up the rear; it was the first time many fans had seen the favorite live, and they cheered and shouted their support.

  The Dancer was calm in the crowded saddling paddock, where Vanderbilt and Jock Whitney, owner of Straight Face, chatted. Winfrey offered encouragement rather than instructions as he gave Guerin a leg up onto the colt’s back; they were on the same page, knowing how the Dancer needed to run. As always, Guerin would fall off the early pace, stalk the leaders, and make a move turning for home. The jockey’s only concern was that he didn’t fall too far behind this time, with the Dancer racing farther than ever before against ten top opponents.

  The horses stepped onto the track for the post parade, and a line of soldiers and sailors stepped forward in the infield holding the Kentucky and American flags. The University of Louisville band played “My Old Kentucky Home,” and the Armored Center Band from nearby Fort Knox played the national anthem. The sun was casting longer shadows as the horses jogged clockwise through the stretch to the second turn, reversed direction, and approached the starting gate. The crowd loosed a roar of anticipation as Ace Destroyer went into the first stall, followed by Correspondent, Ram o’ War, Invigorator, Curragh King, and Native Dancer, then Money Broker, Social Outcast, Straight Face, Dark Star, and Royal Bay Gem.