Duel for the Crown: Affirmed, Alydar, and Racing's Greatest Rivalry - Hardcover

Throughout her two decades as a nationally respected health and fitness writer, Linda Carroll has mastered the art of making complex subjects entertaining and accessible for the average reader. She has written for a wide range of prominent publications, including The New York Times, SmartMoney, Health, and MSNBC.com. Currently, she is a contract writer for NBC News, covering health and business. An accomplished equestrian, Carroll brings more than thirty years of experience in breeding, training, and showing horses. For the past two decades, she has owned and operated Fiery Run Farm, where she has hands-on control of breeding and training her twelve Arabian and Oldenburg sport horses. For more information, visit the farm’s website at FieryRunFarm.com.

For three decades, David Rosner has worked as a sportswriter at major metro newspapers and national magazines. As an award-winning staff writer at Newsday in New York, he spent twelve years covering the full gamut of pro sports—including horse racing. He has covered racing since the spring of ’77 when his first bylined stories as a cub reporter chronicled the harrowing Belmont spill that hospitalized the teen sensation Steve Cauthen. Rosner earned national Associated Press Sports Editors Association awards for investigative reporting and for deadline writing as well as New York State AP and UPI awards for enterprise journalism. He also served as editor-in-chief of the national hockey magazine Rinkside and coauthored The Official Illustrated NHL History.                    

Duel for the Crown CHAPTER ONE

SEEDS OF GREATNESS

RAISE A NATIVE—the sire of Alydar, the grandsire of Affirmed, and the most influential stud horse of his generation—came within a snip of being gelded before he could even get to the starting gate, let alone the breeding shed. That’s how close the story of his two greatest descendants came to ending before it could begin.

From the moment he was foaled early in 1961, Raise a Native was the kind of strapping specimen that Thoroughbred empires get built around. Bounding to his feet quicker than most foals, he was soon out zipping around the rolling bluegrass pastures of Kentucky’s storied Spendthrift Farm and showing off his catlike agility amid bursts of stunning speed. Veteran horsemen at racing’s preeminent breeding farm marveled at how, even as a baby, he had “the look of eagles.” More important, he had the look of his sire: Native Dancer, the legendary iron-gray colt who flashed through America’s consciousness in the early fifties as the first equine TV star. What captured the imagination was the electrifying way “The Gray Ghost” won all but one of his twenty-two career starts, lagging way behind until the top of the stretch and then charging past his rivals as if they were moving in slow motion.

Raise a Native, aside from his chestnut color, was the spitting image of his famous father, with the promise of the same blinding speed. Small wonder that, when he was auctioned at the 1961 Keeneland Fall Sale, Raise a Native commanded $22,000—the most anyone had ever bid on a weanling. Within nine months, he would be brought to auction once again, his new owner hoping to turn a quick profit on his exceptional looks, his value having grown in direct proportion to his developing musculature.

The colt was just the kind of prospect Louis Wolfson was shopping for as he built up his fledgling stable. An impoverished immigrant’s son who had parlayed a Florida junkyard into an industrial empire, Wolfson became rich as a Wall Street financier and infamous as a takeover artist astutely waging proxy fights over America’s corporate giants. Credited with inventing the hostile tender offer, he was branded by Time magazine as one of America’s first corporate raiders.

Wolfson was well into his forties when he was advised by his doctor to find a relaxing pastime to relieve the stress of high finance and, given his longtime interest in watching and betting on Thoroughbreds, he decided to try his hand at owning and breeding them. Although he started modestly by purchasing half a dozen middling horses in 1958, he soon threw himself into the racing game with the same wheeler-dealer fervor he’d honed in his boardroom battles.

By the following year, Wolfson had unleashed a bold assault on the Thoroughbred establishment every bit as audacious as his hostile takeover bids. The more the racing elite dismissed him as a novice too naïve to realize how many generations of bloodlines and sweat were needed to build a winning stable, the more he relished the challenge. Any self-made millionaire fearless enough to take on the likes of Montgomery Ward and American Motors wasn’t about to be cowed by Kentucky’s Thoroughbred institutions—not even mighty Calumet Farm, the racing and breeding dynasty sprawling over a thousand acres of prime Lexington bluegrass.

On his mission to show up the skeptics, Wolfson’s first real order of business was to recruit a trainer capable of instantly putting his new Florida-based stable on the map. He reached out to Burley Parke, a masterful trainer who at fifty-four was already nine relaxing years into retirement at his own California ranch. Renowned as “The Futurity King,” Parke had earned his nickname because of his uncanny eye and unsurpassed talent for bringing along young stock, having schooled a remarkable nine futurity stakes two-year-old champions. When Wolfson tried to coax him out of retirement to work the same wonders for his nascent Harbor View Farm stable, the erstwhile trainer politely demurred. Wolfson persisted with the same powers of persuasion that had forged many a Wall Street deal, finally luring Parke with an unheard-of $100,000 guaranteed salary—more than twelve times what the standard trainer’s fee of 10 percent would have been worth based on Harbor View’s paltry 1959 winnings of $80,161.

In his first year on the job, Parke saddled fifty-four winners and earned $679,865 in purses—making Wolfson’s three-year-old stable the nation’s third-leading money winner of 1960, behind only the aristocratic empires of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney and Harry F. Guggenheim. As unprecedented as Wolfson’s rocket-like rise was, he was impatient to push to the next level. He craved that one yearling that could win the Kentucky Derby as a three-year-old and then become the foundation sire on which a breeding empire could be built. That’s the dream Wolfson was chasing when he sent Parke to Saratoga, New York, in August 1962.

No sooner had Parke arrived at the annual Saratoga Yearling Sale than a copper-colored colt with superb conformation caught his eye. He immediately raced to the phone to call his boss. Picking up the receiver in his office, Wolfson was surprised by the breathless enthusiasm emanating from the phone. Taciturn and reserved by nature, the soft-spoken Parke was not given to hyperbole. But now, he was positively gushing about a Native Dancer son muscled like a gladiator and polished like a shiny new penny. The trainer raved about Raise a Native’s striking good looks, his surprisingly mature body, his huge and powerful hindquarters, and, to top it all off, his impressive pedigree. To be sure, Parke didn’t have to say anything about the colt’s sire because everyone knew everything there was to know about Native Dancer, a TV idol and cultural icon so famous that he’d been the first of his species to grace the cover of Time magazine. Parke did, however, have plenty to report about the colt’s dam: a modest stakes-winning sprinter named Raise You, from whom Raise a Native inherited not only his chestnut coat but also a dose of pure speed. All of which made Raise a Native the most coveted of the ten Native Dancer yearlings parading through the plush auction ring that summer.

Parke told Wolfson that this horse, seemingly born on the steps of the throne, was exactly what they’d been searching for. What he needed to know was how high he could bid.

“Spend what you need to,” Wolfson replied without missing a beat.

The bidding was fast and furious. When the hammer finally fell at $39,000 (more than three times the Saratoga Yearling Sale’s record average), Wolfson had the star he needed to build his farm around.

One thing Parke couldn’t see in the auction ring would become painfully obvious as soon as the robust colt bounded off the van at Harbor View Farm in Ocala, Florida. Raise a Native, it turned out, had inherited something beyond physical brilliance from his famous father: a temperamental disposition. On and off the track, Native Dancer had always done just as he pleased. And now, Raise a Native was proving he was all that and more: rambunctious, headstrong, stubborn. Right from the start, he seemed determined to test Parke’s renowned patience. No matter how unruly his horses were, Parke had always remained unflappable and unwavering, all the while getting even the most stubborn student to submit to his will. The question was, could Parke perform the same kind of magic with Wolfson’s unruly yearling?

Each morning upon his arrival at Hialeah Park’s backside barn, the trainer would be reminded just how much of a challenge he faced. It would start the moment Raise a Native’s groom brought out the tack. As soon as the colt spotted the saddle, his eyes would roll back until the whites were showing, his nostrils would flare, and all his muscles would begin to quiver. He would be bouncing around so much that it took a herculean effort just to get the saddle on his back, let alone girthed up. All this even before he could be led out to the track to begin his workday. Almost all the Harbor View exercise riders refused to even mount the volatile, uncontrollable colt. Only a wet-behind-the-ears seventeen-year-old was brave enough to agree to get on him and face the bronc rides disguised as workouts.

Parke was becoming more and more exasperated with each passing day. Having tried every trick he knew, he was beginning to wonder if it was time for the strategy of last resort: castration. He worried that if they didn’t geld the colt, Raise a Native would never be calm enough to load into a starting gate, much less run a race.

One day, he called Wolfson to explain the situation. “I’m afraid we may need to geld this colt to settle him down,” Parke said quietly. “It may be the only way to get him trained.”

Wolfson took a deep breath, shrugging in resignation. As much as he wanted a Kentucky Derby winner, what he really desired was a colt that would later make his mark in the breeding shed. But if the horse couldn’t be made to run on the track, no one would want to breed to him anyway. Finally, Wolfson let out a sigh and said, “OK, Burley, do what you need to do.”

Even with Wolfson’s permission, Parke was hesitant. He feared that castration might be a huge mistake, robbing future generations of an influential sire. So he decided to postpone the decision until the next time he saw Wolfson in person.

On a beautiful Saturday morning in January 1963, Wolfson, as was his weekly ritual, packed up his three sons and headed over to Hialeah Park to watch his horses work. He was especially interested in seeing Raise a Native. By the time he arrived, the colt was already saddled and making his way from the shed row to the track. Raise a Native seemed on his best behavior prancing down the bridle path on his way to be schooled by Parke at the starting gate. If the inquisitive colt seemed to be paying more attention to the flock of flamingos in the infield than to his rider’s commands, at least he was being so uncharacteristically well-behaved that the exercise boy, for a change, managed to stay in the saddle the whole way without getting thrown. Upon reaching the starting gate, however, Raise a Native, as if on cue, played one of his favorite tricks. He dropped to the ground, rolled onto his side, and lay motionless. This time, Parke was ready. He jumped off his stable pony and ran over to an attending groom to grab a bucket of ice-cold water, which he promptly dumped over the prone colt’s head. Startled, Raise a Native jumped up and shook his head violently, sending a spray of droplets over everyone around him. He stood quietly while Parke lifted the exercise boy back into the saddle, then he meekly walked over to the starting gate. The colt knew he had finally met his match.

The battle won, Parke could now focus on getting Raise a Native ready not for a vet appointment but for a post time. From that moment on, the teacher had an apt, attentive pupil to train for the two-year-old prodigy’s highly anticipated maiden race.

Barely a month later, debuting in a three-furlong “baby” race at Hialeah, Raise a Native started to fulfill his promise right from the bell, flying over the three-eighths of a mile to win by a full six lengths. He was then shipped to New York, where he would take up residence on Belmont Park’s backside in preparation for his next big step up. It didn’t take long for his early-morning works to start drawing attention from the New York beat reporters.

One day that spring, the dean of American turf writers, Charles Hatton, was sitting in his aerie above the Belmont press box watching the morning works as usual when he glimpsed a powerful chestnut flying by. Hatton immediately started pounding out the colt’s public introduction on his battered Royal typewriter: “Raise a Native worked down the Belmont backstretch this morning. The trees swayed.”

If the trees were swaying at Belmont, they were positively bending over at nearby Aqueduct Racetrack once Raise a Native made his New York racing debut there. Over the next few months, he handily won three straight races in track-record times, each performance more spectacular than the previous. The last two, both Aqueduct stakes races, made him something of a phenomenon. Fans started flocking to “The Big A,” crowding around the paddock to catch a glimpse of this rising-star son of Native Dancer now making a name for himself.

Even the most hardened horsemen were becoming gushing fans. “In all the years I have been training horses,” Hirsch Jacobs, history’s winningest trainer, marveled, “Raise a Native is the best two-year-old I’ve ever seen race. I believe he will be one of our all-time greats.”

As it was, Raise a Native was already being compared to his own sire, to Citation, even to the incomparable Man o’ War. Joe Hirsch, Hatton’s respected colleague at The Morning Telegraph, reached all the way back to the nineteenth century’s most fabled champion, calling Raise a Native “the second coming of Hindoo.”

To the understated Parke, it was enough that Raise a Native was “the greatest young horse I’ve ever trained.” The only remaining question was whether the colt possessed the stamina to stay the Kentucky Derby’s mile and a quarter, especially given that his sprinter’s style emulated that of his pacesetting dam more than that of his fast-closing sire. Though he had sped to four wins without ever seeing a horse in front of him, he still hadn’t gone longer than five and a half furlongs. As part of Parke’s plan to answer the nagging doubts incrementally, he took Raise a Native to New Jersey that summer for the Sapling Stakes, a step up at six furlongs.

Prepping for the race, the unthinkable happened. At the end of a fast morning work at Monmouth Park the day before the stakes, the prohibitive favorite pulled up lame with a bowed tendon. He limped off the track, barely able to take any weight on his left foreleg. Parke called Wolfson with the bad news: Raise a Native bowed a tendon and would never race again. Crestfallen as he was, Wolfson didn’t second-guess his trainer or curse his own bad luck. He just said, “Burley, are you going to be OK?” The two continued on for a while, each consoling the other over the premature retirement of what they both considered to be the horse of a lifetime. Just before hanging up, Wolfson injected some words of hope. “Don’t worry,” he said. “One of these days, we’ll grab on to another one.”

LITTLE DID WOLFSON know that Raise a Native would make that happen, too.

The dreams left unfulfilled on the racetrack, where Raise a Native had streaked like a shooting star, would have to blossom in the breeding shed if they were to become a reality. Although his meteoric career flamed out almost as quickly as he ran, Raise a Native had shown enough brilliance to still be in high demand as a stud horse. Because of his precocious talent and the early maturity that made this two-year-old look twice his age, breeders from Kentucky to England were lining up for his services even though he had yet to produce a single foal. They flooded Spendthrift Farm, where he’d been sent to stand at stud, with more than a hundred applications to buy breedings at $5,000 a pop.

When Raise a Native’s first foal crop hit the ground running in 1965, that stud fee would seem like a bargain. His foals were uniformly attractive and well conformed. He was stamping them with his good looks and his athletic ability, no matter what mare they were out of. Four woul...