Category: Horses

Seabiscuit was named American Horse of the Year in 1938 and in six years, between 1935 and 1940, won 33 of his 89 races and a record $437,730 in prize money. Seabiscuit was bred, and initially owned, by Gladys Mills Phipps, under the name Wheatley Stable.

 

An aptly named son of Hard Tack – hard tack, a.k.a. ship’s biscuit or sea biscuit, was a hard, coarse kind of biscuit formerly issued as rations for sailors – Seabiscuit was a small, unprepossessing yearling with short, spindly legs. Having shown some promise at two, and three – although evidently not enough to satisfy his original trainer “Sunny” Jim Fitsimmons – Sea Biscuit was bought, for $8,000, out of a claiming stakes race at Saratoga in August 1936 by prominent owner Charles Howard and sent to veteran trainer Robert Thomas “Tom” Smith.

 

Smith recruited Canadian jockey John “Red” Pollard to ride Seabiscuit and by the end of his three-year-old campaign had coaxed the little horse to nine wins from 23 starts, including the Bay Bridge Handicap and the At the World’s Fair Handicap, both at Bay Meadows. In 1937, Seabiscuit tried, but failed by a nose, to win the biggest prize on horse racing, at the time, the Santa Anita Handicap, a.k.a. “The Hundred Grander”, worth over $125,000 to the winner. In 1938, with George Woolf replacing the injured Pollard in the saddle, he tried again but, after suffering an interrupted passage, was again edged out by the minimum margin.

 

Later in 1938, Seabiscuit faced 1937 Triple Crown winner War Admiral in the so-called Pimlico Special – dubbed the “Match of the Century” – over 1 mile 1½ furlongs at Pimlico Racecourse in Baltimore, Maryland. Seabiscuit made the running, but jockey George Woolf, acting under instruction from Pollard, allowed War Admiral to draw alongside heading into the far turn, so that his mount could “eyeball” his rival. When asked for extra effort in the closing stages, Seabiscuit easily drew away to win by 4 lengths.

 

Seabiscuit was officially retired to stud in 1939 after sustaining an injury on his one and only start. However, in 1940 he came out of retirement for just one race, the Santa Anita Handicap, which had eluded him twice before. On his third attempt, reunited with Pollard, he made no mistake, beating stablemate Kayak by 2½ lengths in a record time.

Sired by Raise A Native, who the New York Times called “the most influential sire of American Thoroughbred stallions over the last 20 years”, and with a pedigree that could be traced back, on both sides, to the Darley Arabian, Alydar was bred to be a champion.  However, despite winning 14 of his 26 starts – including 11 stakes races – and over $950,000 in prize money, Alydar is best remembered as the only horse ever to finish second in all three American Triple Crown races.

 

Bred and owned by Calumet Farm and trained by John Veitch, Alydar was named in honour of Prince Ali Salman Aga Khan, also known as Aly Khan. Lucille Markey, owner of Calumet farmer, always addressed His Highness as “Aly Darling”, so Alydar was a contraction of her playful term of endearment.

A big, muscular chestnut, who stood a little over 16.1 hands high, Alydar was renowned for his generous disposition on, and off, the track. In fact, trainer John Veitch said of him, “From a standpoint of heart, no other horse I ever [trained] had as much.” Alydar would probably have been a champion at two or three years had he not been born in the same generation as Affirmed.

 

In 1977, as a two-year-old, Alydar actually beat Affirmed twice, in the Great American Stakes and the Champagne Stakes, both at Belmont Park. He would have to wait until what turned out to be their tenth, and final, meeting in the Travers Stakes at Saratoga the following season to do so again. Even then, Affirmed beat him by 1¾ lengths, but was disqualified after jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. was deemed to have caused interference on the far turn.

 

In the interim, Affirmed had beaten Alydar into second place, albeit by ever dwindling margins, in all three Triple Crown races. Affirmed won the Kentucky Derby by 1½ lengths, the Preakness Stakes by a neck and the Belmont Stakes by a head – that is, an aggregate of less than 2 lengths – to become the eleventh horse in history to win the Triple Crown Trophy.

 

At the time of his death, in 1990, Alydar was the top North American sire. He was humanely euthanised after being found in his stable with a broken hind leg and fracturing another bone in the same leg 48 hours later.

According to Timeform, Sea The Stars was the joint-eighth greatest racehorse of all time – or, at least, since Timeform Annual Ratings began in 1948 – rated alongside such luminaries as Shergar and Dancing Brave. Owned by Christopher Tsui and trained by John Oxx in Co. Kildare, Sea The Stars was beaten just once in his nine-race career, on his racecourse debut at the Curragh in July, 2008, when he finished fourth, beaten a head, half a length and a neck.

 

In an extraordinary, unbeaten campaign as a three-year-old, he not only became the first horse since Nashwan, in 1989, to with the 2,000 Guineas, the Derby and the Coral-Eclipse, but also added the Juddmonte International, the Irish Champion Stakes and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, for a total of six Group 1 wins.

 

Sea The Stars was sired by Cape Cross out of Urban Sea, making him a half-brother to 2001 Derby winner Galileo. Despite this fact, doubts about his stamina before the Derby meant that he lined up at Epsom as second favourite behind the stoutly-bred Fame And Glory, trained by Aidan O’Brien. Nevertheless, Sea The Stars moved smoothly through the mile-and-a-half contest, tackled pacemaker Golden Sword entering the final furlong and, thereafter, never looked in any danger. Fame And Glory ran on well to finish second, ahead of stable companions Masterofthehorse and Rip Van Winkle, but none of the O’Brien trio was ever going to reach the winner.

 

A tough, versatile performer, Sea The Stars beat Rip Van Winkle again when dropped back to a mile and a quarter for the Coral-Eclipse at Sandown a month later but, in a tactical affair, had to dig deep to fend off his old rival in the closing stages, winning by just a length. After further victories, at odds-on, in the Juddmonte International and the Irish Champion Stakes, Sea The Stars headed to Longchamp for the final race of his career, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. In a rough race, despite taking a keen hold in the early stages, he quickened clear for an impressive 2-length win over Youmzain, landing odds of 4/6 and taking his career earnings to over £4.4 million.