Native Dancer

by John Eisenberg

  Finally, the colt had proved Partridge right after the trainer put Arcaro on him. Left at the gate in his first start with the Master, he had come back to beat several older horses at the wire, stunning observers. After three more races with Arcaro, including the Preakness, he was breaking quicker and racing closer to the lead, with his late charge seemingly unharmed. “Native Dancer will know he has been to the races,” Arcaro told reporters shortly before the Belmont.

  Winfrey was concerned. The trainer knew that Vanderbilt wanted to win at the track where he had served as president and now stabled his horses, his home on Long Island not far away. Winfrey fretted Thursday in an interview with a Newsweek reporter. “When you’ve got three come-from-behind horses in a small field,” he said, referring to Jamie K., Royal Bay Gem, and the Dancer, “you just don’t know what will happen.”

  Adding to the uncertainty, the weather soured badly on Saturday. Forecasters had wrongly predicted rain for the Derby and Preakness, and now, as if the percentages needed evening, a forecast of sun for the Belmont proved equally wrong. After a grey, humid dawn, rain fell through the morning, briefly eased, then pelted New York all afternoon, accompanied by a chilling wind. The Dodgers game at Ebbets Field was rained out. Bassanio was scratched from the Belmont. Many fans chose to watch the race on TV rather than make the soggy trip to Queens, but 38,000 still left their homes and came out in the miserable conditions, evidence of the Grey Ghost’s popularity.

  Belmont officials had limited the betting to win and place wagers, wanting to avoid a reprise of the $46,000 minus pool that had occurred at the Preakness. Fifty-eight cents of every betting dollar was still put on the Dancer, who was made the heavy favorite at 9–20 odds. There was also support for Arcaro and Jamie K at 5-2, and surprisingly, for Royal Bay Gem at 6-1. The Preem, at 122-1, attracted almost $4,000 in wagering, leading James Roach to write in the Times that “New Yorkers would bet on a zebra if tickets were sold.”

  Six horses were loaded into the starting gate at 4:46 P.M. as rain continued to fall. The Grey Ghost was in the fifth post, just to the outside of Jamie K. Surprisingly, the racing strip had held up; it was still rated fast despite the rain. Bryan Field was at the microphone for CBS as a coast-to-coast TV audience later estimated at 9 million tuned in. It was time to find out if the Grey Ghost belonged with the Yankees, Hogan, and greats from other sports.

  He was the first horse out of the gate, but Guerin took him back as Ram o’ War went to the lead, assuming the front-runner’s role that Dark Star had commanded in the Derby and Preakness. Kamehameha moved forward and followed the leader as the field passed the grandstand for the first time, with Jamie K. running easily in third. Kamehameha soon faded, but the other two leaders held their positions around the first turn and all the way up the backstretch, with Ram o’ War setting a slow pace—a half mile in 50⅕ seconds, a mile in 1:15. The Dancer was in third, racing behind Arcaro and well off the rail, with Royal Bay Gem in fourth, three lengths farther back. The Preem and Kamehameha were so far back they could barely be seen through the rain. The Preem would finish forty-five lengths behind the winner, with Kamehameha another twenty back after his saddle almost slipped off.

  Arcaro had blamed the loss in the Preakness on the fact that he’d had to charge sooner than planned to fend off Royal Bay Gem, leaving Jamie K. without the energy to make up those final inches on the Dancer in the final yards of the race. Now, as if to show that he had meant what he said, the Master sent Jamie K. to the lead right on schedule, sweeping around tiring Ram o’ War on the second turn and taking the lead at the head of the stretch. Instead of letting the Dancer set the pace and trying to catch him, as he had in the Preakness, Arcaro was going to make the Grey Ghost chase him.

  Guerin shadowed the leader, also making a move on the turn and passing Ram o’ War entering the stretch. The Dancer was less than a length behind Jamie K. as the horses moved in tandem, straightened for home, and pulled away from the field, sending Royal Bay Gem, unable to keep pace again, back toward the followers. As expected, the Belmont was down to the Dancer and Jamie K., the two best horses sprinting through the stretch as they had in the Preakness, only reversed this time, as Arcaro wanted, with Jamie K. clinging to a lead and the Dancer chasing him.

  With a quarter mile to go, Jamie K. was still in front. The horses had raced the Kentucky Derby distance, a mile and a quarter, supposedly the limit of what some believed the Dancer’s pedigree would support. Either the Grey Ghost would summon the necessary resolve, surge to the lead in the next 440 yards, and prove his greatness, or he would falter, giving his doubters all the ammunition they needed. There were no mitigating circumstances in play, no excuses to grasp; just a good horse and a great jockey in front of him and time starting to run out as an adoring but circumspect sports world watched.

  Jamie K. was driving hard, but the Dancer gained ground as Guerin urged him on. The grey colt pulled closer with one stride, even with another, then nosed into the lead passing the eighth pole. A roar from the crowd rose, muffled in the soggy chill. The Dancer had rallied in the stretch of many of his races, and he was doing it again, his powers of acceleration fully engaged, his legs a blur. Arcaro was working Jamie K. frenetically, arms pumping as he brandished the whip, but the Dancer’s lead grew from a neck to a head and even more as he neared the sixteenth pole. The Dancer had answered the challenge.

  Maddeningly, he eased up again for an instant, as he so often did after finding no one in front of him in the stretch, and his surge stopped. Arcaro’s horse held his ground, a head behind, and for a moment, a breathless moment, it seemed he might come back at the Dancer in the final yards. Here, truly, was a reprise of the Preakness, with Jamie K. trying to run down the Dancer as the soaked crowd shrieked.

  But then, just as abruptly, as if he sensed the challenge, the Grey Ghost accelerated again, his lead steadying and even expanding. Arcaro and Jamie K. were close behind, but safely behind, unable to gain ground. The horses covered the final yards frozen in those poses, clearly separated, their positioning resolute. As they reached the finish line, almost two and a half minutes after the starting gate had opened, the Dancer was in front by a neck.

  Guerin and Arcaro eased their holds and stood up in the irons after crossing the finish line. The crowd exhaled, drained by the spectacle they had witnessed—a spectacle washed of color by the miserable weather, but still as taut and uncertain as an Alfred Hitchcock film. Immediately, even as Guerin and the Dancer turned and headed for the winner’s circle, there was a rush to put the race in context. Had the Dancer, to paraphrase Mullin’s cartoon, proved his greatness? What was the racing world to make of him winning two of the three Triple Crown races, but by the narrowest of margins?

  The answer was on the tote board, where the time of the race was illuminated: 2:28⅗. Knowing fans immediately recognized a feat creditable only to equine greatness. It was the third-fastest winning time in the history of the Belmont Stakes, just two-fifths of a second behind the record set by Count Fleet in 1943 and equaled by Citation in 1948. The Dancer had covered the last quarter mile in 24⅖ seconds and the last half in 49⅕, a remarkable burst for a horse so late in such a long race. The Dancer’s time for the last half was, in fact, faster than his time for the first half. If the Belmont was, indeed, the test of champions, he had passed. Some experts would surely continue to wonder about a horse that never seemed to win going away, but there could be no more wondering about his endurance or class.

  “When this one was over, there were no longer any reasonable doubts” about the Dancer, Red Smith wrote in the next day’s Herald

  Tribune. “Vanderbilt’s grey just was too much for Jamie K. in the stretch run of one of the most stirring of all Belmonts,” added Charles Hatton in the Morning Telegraph.

  Vanderbilt met the horse at the winner’s enclosure, rain dripping from his hat. He congratulated Guerin, handed the shank to Murray, shook hands with Winfrey, and stood back as a crowd gathered around the enclosure, the umb
rellas occluding a view of the horse from the grandstand. It was almost 5 P.M., and the air was so chilly that wisps of fog came from the Dancer’s mouth when he exhaled. It seemed closer to November than June. Vanderbilt’s smile shone through the gloom. His horse was magnificent, a champion—indisputably.

  CBS was going live, with Red Smith squinting through the rain as he interviewed any familiar face he could locate. “He doesn’t waste any effort, that lazy so-and-so,” Bill Winfrey said, referring to the Dancer’s midstretch lulls. “He just does what he has to do to win, but he does it. There was never any doubt with me that he was a champion, but he surely proved himself to the others today.”

  Arcaro, of course, had been the most vocal of those “others,” steadfastly refusing to admit that comparing the Dancer to other greats might be appropriate. But as he spoke to reporters now, beaten by the Dancer for the eighth time, he knew the time had come. “After the Preakness, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to beat that grey horse the next time around,’ ” Arcaro said. “And I had him for sure at the head of the stretch. But then he got that neck on me, and I just couldn’t get by him.” The great jockey stopped, shook his head, and continued: “And if we were to have gone all the way around the track again, Native Dancer still wasn’t going to let me get past him.”

  At last, the Master was convinced.

  EIGHTEEN

  Eddie Arcaro knew he was putting himself in danger when he accepted an offer to ride Native Dancer in the American Derby after refusing for so long to join the operatic chorus of praise for the horse. “I guess I shouldn’t have said so much about the Dancer,” the smiling jockey told reporters several days before the race. He surely wished he had never said a word when he turned for home before 37,000 fans at Chicago’s Washington Park on August 22, with the sluggish Dancer in fourth place, six lengths off the lead. “If I get beat on this horse, I’m the biggest bum alive,” Arcaro had told a Life magazine reporter hours earlier. Now his worst fears were on the verge of being realized.

  The Dancer was making his fourth start since winning the Belmont, having easily won the Dwyer Stakes on July 4 at Aqueduct, the Arlington Classic on July 18 at Chicago’s Arlington Park, and the Travers Stakes on August 15 at Saratoga to run his winning streak to six races in a row, his overall record to seventeen wins in eighteen starts, and his career earnings to $677,420, fourth on racing’s all-time list. His superiority among his three-year-old class was unquestioned, his place among America’s racing’s greats was assured, and he was expected to cruise in the American Derby, even without his regular jockey, Eric Guerin, who was sitting out a suspension. But now he was in trouble as he entered the stretch run to the finish line.

  In the Dwyer, three weeks after the Belmont, he had raced with a sizable weight handicap for the first time, giving a dozen pounds to four outclassed rivals who had sat out the Triple Crown season. A holiday crowd of 35,865 bet him down to 1–20, and he hovered near the lead up the backstretch before unleashing his familiar rush on the second turn, easily taking control. A colt named Dictar chased him to the finish line without seriously challenging, although the winning margin was just one and three-quarters lengths after the Dancer’s usual loafing act in the stretch. Guerin called it the colt’s “easiest race,” explaining that it was relatively close at the end because “he just wanted to play.” Jeanne Vanderbilt accepted the trophy in the winner’s circle, her husband in Europe on business.

  Interestingly, the Morning Telegraph reported that fans in the high-end clubhouse seats warmly applauded the colt before and after the race, but that scattered fans in the grandstand, where ticket prices were cheaper, booed the Dancer. Given his overwhelming popularity, which would manifest itself throughout the summer, it was hard to know what to ascribe the discordant notes to, but the only possibilities were jealousy, general crankiness, or the belief that the horse was overrated because he seldom won easily. Whatever its source, the strain of anti-Dancer feeling never surfaced again in measurable quantities.

  The colt’s next race, the Arlington Classic, a one-mile event labeled as the richest race ever run for three-year-olds, figured to be far more interesting than the Dwyer. A $155,000 purse lured Triple Crown stalwarts Jamie K. and Royal Bay Gem to the track in suburban Chicago, as well as a dangerous sprinter, Van Crosby, co-owner of the track’s record for seven furlongs. Away from his most ardent supporters in the East and assigned 126 pounds to 120 for the rest of the field, the Dancer encountered skepticism. Harold Simmons, the trainer of Van Crosby, said his colt had a real chance to beat the Dancer over the shorter distance. John Partridge, trainer of Jamie K., said the weight disparity should make up the inches that had separated his colt from victory in the Preakness and Belmont.

  Bill Winfrey agreed with Partridge, telling reporters upon arriving in Chicago that “on cold, hard figures, Jamie K. should beat us.” But the Dancer’s trainer also offered his theory about the horse in the wake of the Triple Crown season: “We have reason to believe Native Dancer does not fully extend himself once he gets to the front, and that he wins only by the margin necessary to get the job done. That was the case in the Preakness and Belmont, at least. The Classic should give us a chance to test this theory.”

  With 39,460 fans crammed into the track and a national TV audience watching on CBS, midwestern bettors backed Jamie K. down to 4-1 and Van Crosby to 9-2, with the Dancer at 7–10, his highest odds since the Derby. The atmosphere was electric; Chicago racing was flourishing, with the summer meetings drawing the country’s best horses, trainers, and jockeys. “It was right there with New York, if not better,” longtime racing official Tommy Trotter said. The Dancer was late getting saddled because of the crowd around him, throwing off the schedule for CBS’s telecast. The horses were rushed to the starting gate without a post parade.

  Breaking from the fourth post position on a track rated “heavy” after rains late in the week, the Grey Ghost was sixth after the first quarter, with Van Crosby setting the pace and a 19-1 shot named Sir Mango close behind. Guerin moved the colt up to third as he headed into the turn, then asked for a run. The Dancer responded as if he had heard the doubters and wanted people to know what he thought of them. His head dropped and he bolted past Van Crosby and Sir Mango, taking the lead at the top of the stretch.

  Fans searched the pack for Jamie K. and Royal Bay Gem, expecting the late-runners to make their usual charges as they straightened out for home. Both were straggling near the rear, outrun and outclassed this time. It was the Dancer’s day. For once, he didn’t ease up after taking the lead. He pulled away steadily through the stretch, his lead growing with every stride as he passed the eighth and sixteenth poles and headed for home. The turf writers from around the country who had gathered in Arlington’s press box to chronicle “the fourth jewel” of the 1953 Triple Crown broke into applause at the sight of the Dancer crushing his rivals.

  His lead at the wire: nine lengths.

  The racing world’s response: wow.

  “He never let up, did he?” a smiling Vanderbilt said to Guerin in the winner’s circle.

  “Not one bit, sir,” Guerin said. “I think we could have spotted them twenty pounds with the way he ran today.”

  Arch Ward, longtime sports editor of the Chicago Tribune and originator of baseball’s All-Star Game, wrote lavishly of the Dancer in his column the next day. “It was one of the most devastating knockout punches in the history of big-time racing,” he wrote. “His closest pursuers looked as if they were in another race as the Dancer sped under the wire. He has done everything that can be asked of a three-year-old. He has beaten the sprinters, the middle-distance horses and the long-winded. He has gone to the front early. He has been hemmed in. He has come from far back. He has won on fast, sloppy and heavy tracks. Yesterday, he was at his glorious peak.”

  The Dancer was shipped back to Belmont and then on to Saratoga, where he had won four races in twenty-six days the year before and now was treated like a visiting potentate as he trained f
or the Travers. When he worked out two days before the race, all activity at the Spa ceased. Fans eating breakfast on the clubhouse porch pushed their chairs back, left their food, and went to the railing to watch. Sweepers leaned on their brooms, taking a respite. Trainers put down their stopwatches, and exercise riders on other horses stopped. Winfrey sent Bernie Everson out with instructions to cover a mile. The Grey Ghost circled the track and came through the stretch to waves of applause. “It was a moment for a horse owner, horse trainer—and exercise rider—to remember,” James Roach wrote in the New York Times.

  The Travers was memorable for what happened not during the race, but before it. More than 28,000 fans, the most in Saratoga history, filled the track. A great crowd swarmed the Dancer in the shaded paddock before the race. With little security in place and no barriers separating the horse from his public, fans came up and stroked him, petted him, spoke to him, and even plucked hairs from his tail. Winfrey became alarmed, but Harold Walker held the shank tightly and the horse remained calm.

  “I’m standing there by the horse and someone comes out of the crowd and walks around Native Dancer and looks at his legs and comes and rubs his hand up the legs, and I said, Who is this?’ ” Claude Appley recalled. “Bill Winfrey came over to me and said, Who is this?’ I said, ‘I don’t know who it is.’ Bill went over to him and said, ‘I’m sorry, you have to leave.’ What it was, I think, people felt they owned him.”