jack300s
03-04-2005, 10:22 PM
This article in the LA Times makes for some nice reading. Long story.
BTW, TVG will show all of his stakes races starting at 8:30am on Wednesday.
By Bill Christine, Times Staff Writer
Unlikely racing legend John Henry won the Big 'Cap in 1981 and 1982. He remains strong, and ornery, at 30.
For a dozen years, John Henry looked out of his 20-by-20-foot stall and across the shedrow at Forego, who won three horse-of-the-year titles, one more than John Henry did.
Forego died in 1997, and now John Henry looks across at Cigar, a two-time horse of the year but sterile in the breeding shed.
There have been no pikers in the John Henry wing of the gray Hall of Champions barn at the Kentucky Horse Park.
John Henry seems determined to outlive them all at the Lexington, Ky., tourist attraction. Forego and Kentucky Derby winner Bold Forbes both died at 27, but John Henry, at 30, is Old Man River incarnate.
All horses gain a year on Jan. 1, but Wednesday will be John Henry's actual 30th birthday, and the horse park crew plans to festoon the barn and roll out candles and cake. No confections for John Henry, though. He had stomach trouble enough three years back, and almost died, so on Wednesday, it will be alfalfa and oats as usual. His handlers mix in the diced carrots and apples that he likes.
Not many thoroughbreds see 30, but John Henry, extraordinary when he raced, is among the leaders in longevity as well.
"He was not the best racehorse," said Joe Hirsch, the retired columnist for the Daily Racing Form. "He was not the fastest or the busiest. He wasn't the greatest weight carrier, and certainly not the handsomest or the most personable. But he was the most remarkable horse who ever raced — anywhere."
He won two Santa Anita Handicaps, in 1981 and '82, a stand-alone record until it was matched by Milwaukee Brew in 2002 and '03. John Henry earned $6,591,860, once the record in North America and still good for ninth on the earnings list.
On March 9, 1975, at Golden Chance Farm near Paris, Ky., Once Double, a broodmare who had never produced anything of note, foaled a small, misshapen colt. John Henry was what breeders call calf-kneed. His knees were straight and sprung backward.
The farm's Verna Lehmann, whose husband had won the Derby with ex-claimer Dust Commander in 1970, was told by her veterinarian that there was little hope John Henry would ever make a runner, and if he did race, his legs might not be able to support the strain.
John Henry's sire was Ole Bob Bowers, a stallion who came from a long line of orneriness. Ole Bob Bowers, who had won a stake, the old Tanforan Handicap in Northern California, was just as antisocial as some of his forbears. Not long after John Henry was foaled, Ole Bob Bowers was sold for $900.
At Golden Chance, "sell" was the operative word for the Once Double colt. He was consigned to an auction at Keeneland in January 1976, and John Callaway, of Woodsong Farm, bought him for $1,100. Callaway said later that he might have gone to $5,000, but there were few bidders.
Callaway, who liked to name his horses after songs, named his new purchase in honor of John Henry, the legendary figure who performed Herculean feats in the building of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. In one song, John Henry's epic death after a drilling race with a steam-powered machine was described this way:
"John Henry was a steel-drivin' man,
"He carried his hammer all the time.
" 'Fore he let the steam drill beat him down,
"Die with his hammer in his hand,
"Die with his hammer in his hand."
At Callaway's farm, John Henry moved like a train that had left the tracks.
"He couldn't pick up his feet," Callaway once said. "He would stumble over a matchstick."
A year after he'd bought John Henry, Callaway sent him to another sale at Keeneland, where Harold Snowden Jr. bought him for $2,200. Snowden had the unruly colt gelded in March 1977, then sold him for $7,500 to Akiko McVarish, a bloodstock agent. When McVarish's vet saw John Henry's knees, he told her to ask for her money back.
After the refund, Snowden sold John Henry again, this time for $10,000, to Louisianans Colleen Madere, Dortha Lingo and John Lingo, her son.
In his seventh start for this partnership in 1977, at Evangeline Downs in Lafayette, La., John Henry won the Lafayette Futurity. Then he failed to finish better than third in nine more races in Louisiana. He hit bottom running for a $20,000 claiming price at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans, where he ran 10th in an 11-horse field.
By March 1978, the Lingo group called Snowden and gave him the chance to own John Henry for the third time. Snowden took him back, for a couple of unraced 2-year-olds he said were worth $20,000 or $25,000. Those horses would win 25 races, but earn only $82,000.
Snowden ran John Henry once at Keeneland, where he beat only two horses, and not long afterward a New York trainer, Bobby Donato, called to see if Snowden had any cheap horses for sale. John Henry was sold to Sam Rubin, an inveterate horseplayer and Manhattan bicycle importer, for $25,000.
Donato figured that John Henry had a foot better suited for grass racing, and by the end of 1978 he had won grass stakes in Illinois and Pennsylvania.
Donato and Rubin had a falling out, and from 1979 until his last race, in 1984, John Henry did his running for the late Lefty Nickerson and Nickerson's good friend in California, Ron McAnally. Under McAnally, John Henry won 12 of 18 starts at Santa Anita, including the two Santa Anita Handicaps, and twice — the second time when he was 9 — he won the Arlington Million in suburban Chicago. McAnally, who won the Big 'Cap a third time, with Mr Purple, in 1996, does not have a starter in the 68th renewal Saturday.
When John Henry ran, he weighed about 900 pounds, much less than the average thoroughbred. He measured 15 hands, or 60 inches, at the withers.
"He weighs about 1,100 pounds now," said Tammy Siters, who with Cathy Roby cares for John Henry at the Kentucky Horse Park. "He's got the rear end of a quarter horse and the stomach of a broodmare. But he's a sound horse."
In January 2002, Michael Spirito, a veterinarian at the Hagyard-Davidson-McGee hospital, across the street from the horse park, removed about eight feet of John Henry's intestine during a 90-minute operation.
"He had a fatty tumor that was strangling one of his bowels," Spirito said. "It's a condition that comes with old age. If we hadn't operated, he would have died."
There are at least two thoroughbreds in Kentucky older than John Henry, but probably not many more. The retired stallions, Lyphard, 35, and Stop The Music, 34, live at Gainesway Farm. Lyphard was leading sire in France and the U.S. Stop The Music, who sired Temperence Hill, winner of the 1980 Belmont Stakes, won the 1972 Champagne Stakes after Secretariat was disqualified.
The oldest of the 11 Triple Crown winners has been Count Fleet, who swept the series in 1943 and died at 33 in 1973. Seattle Slew, the 1977 winner, was the 11th and last Triple Crown champion to die, at 28 in 2002.
According to the Thoroughbred Almanac, the oldest "prominent" thoroughbred was Merrick, who lived to be 38. Merrick, foaled in 1903, ran a stupefying 205 times and won 61 races.
According to one popular formula for comparing a horse's age with a human's — multiplying the horse's age by three and adding eight — John Henry is 98.
"To look at him, you'd think he might be in his early 20s," Siters said. "He's only got a couple of gray hairs, under his forelock."
But the old-timer hasn't mellowed.
"The only time he's nice is when he's sick," Siters said. "So from that standpoint, I guess we'd prefer him to be in good health and unfriendly. He'll bite and kick you if you're not careful. We're going to allow people to take pictures of him [Wednesday]. At least for a while. But if he starts acting like he might kill somebody, we'll have to send them off."
vBulletin® v3.8.9, Copyright ©2000-2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.