Native Dancer (16 page)

Although the tracks were outdated and dilapidated and fans were grumbling—the New York Racing Association would be formed
in 1955 to address the condition of the tracks and unify them—the thirst for horses and racing was almost insatiable, it seemed.
Native Dancer loomed over this unprecedented fervor, the horse of all horses, casting a giant shadow as the Jamaica meeting
began. The other three-year-old Triple Crown contenders were sorting themselves out in prep races in Florida, Louisiana, Kentucky,
and California, but the Grey Ghost’s superiority was so presumed that his odds were 7-5 in a popular Derby future book in
Caliente, Mexico. Long-range bettors were already betting on him to win the Kentucky Derby at those marginal odds even though
he hadn’t raced since October.

His arrival at Jamaica’s paddock minutes before the Gotham was presidential, lacking only blaring trumpets. Hundreds of fans
swarmed the enclosure for a closer look at the unbeaten colt. They were stunned by what they saw. As a two-year-old, the Dancer
had seemed coltish, immature, still lacking definition despite his size. That was no longer so. He stood 16.2 hands tall and
weighed 1,200 pounds, with a powerful hind end to match his massive forelegs, which had seemed out of proportion when he was
two. Other than the usual bulge in his right ankle, which Winfrey dismissed as insignificant, he was spectacular.

Eastern horsemen had noticed the differences when he returned from California with the rest of Vanderbilt’s stable in March.

Rumors about his condition had circulated for months after his ankles had been fired and he was taken out of training for
twelve weeks, but it was clear, once he was back East, that he had benefited from the time off. He covered five furlongs in
1:02⅗ on a muddy track at Belmont on March 21, and his conditioning improved rapidly from there.

The goal, of course, was to have him at his best for the Derby. Winfrey plotted a short, intense course of prep races, all
at Jamaica: the Assault Purse, at six furlongs, on April 13; the Gotham, at a mile and a sixteenth, five days later; and the
Wood Memorial, at a mile and an eighth, on April 25. That meant four races in nineteen days, counting the Derby on May 2.
It was a vigorous reentry to racing after such a long layoff, but Winfrey had little choice. The Dancer’s training had been
pushed back when his ankles were fired, and he was just getting into shape.

Predictably, there was criticism. Some horsemen felt mid-April was too late to start giving a Derby horse a diet of prep races;
it was already clear, they said, that the Grey Ghost wouldn’t be in peak condition in Louisville. Others felt Winfrey surely
knew what was needed to have his horse ready, and the Dancer’s training seemed to validate their assumption. The colt worked
a mile for the first time as a three-year-old on April 4, covering it in 1:41⅕ on a fast track, then worked the same distance
in 1:39 on a muddy track four days later. The latter was an impressive work seen by hundreds of horsemen at Belmont, and “the
workout combined with his unbeaten record, seems to have terrified rival trainers,”
Morning Telegraph
columnist Charles Hatton wrote.

Just as the Dancer was preparing to make his debut in the Assault Purse, there was a distracting snag involving Winfrey. Kitchen
Maid, a Vanderbilt filly with a kidney ailment, ran second in a race at Jamaica on April 10, and her urine test came back
positive for caffeine, a banned stimulant. New York’s racing commissioners investigated, and there was tension for a day with
Winfrey facing a possible suspension and Vanderbilt insisting the Dancer wouldn’t run in the Triple Crown without his trainer.
But the commissioners quickly exonerated Winfrey, determining that he had treated Kitchen Maid with medicine from a bottle
that didn’t list caffeine among the ingredients.

Then there was another snag. Supporting Hatton’s opinion that the Dancer had “terrified” rival trainers, only two other horses
were entered in the Assault Purse on April 13. Jamaica officials initially said they would still hold the race, then changed
their minds and canceled the Grey Ghost’s three-year-old debut. The track caterers received a record number of cancellations
for lunch, but more than 24,000 fans still came to the track on a rainy Monday, thinking the Dancer might still appear as
originally scheduled. They went home disappointed. The Dancer worked three furlongs in 35 seconds that morning at Belmont
and spent the afternoon in Barn 20.

The colt had been training at distances beyond the Assault’s six furlongs, so he probably wouldn’t have benefited much from
the race. But he needed the work, and with race-goers desperate to see him, Vanderbilt proposed running him in a public trial
with two other Vanderbilt horses in between races at Jamaica the next day. Jamaica officials consented. Winfrey drove over
from Belmont the next morning and found the racing surface in good condition despite recent rains. The trial was on for that
afternoon.

It so happened that John McNulty had chosen to spend that day at the barn researching his article on the Dancer for
The New Yorker
. McNulty observed Lester Murray standing on a bucket in stall 6 and meticulously braiding the colt’s hair for a half-hour
before the van arrived to take him to Jamaica. “I’m going to fix you up pretty, you big bum, before all those people look
at you,” said Murray, who continually moistened his fingers as he worked the braid until he got it just as he wanted. The
van arrived then, and Murray gave the horse a hard slap on the rear as the Dancer was led outside.

The Dancer rode over in the van with his trial “opponents”: First Glance, a six-year-old who had won the Excelsior Handicap
in his last start, and Beachcomber, an unraced three-year-old gelding. The Dancer made his first public appearance of 1953
at 3:41
P.M
. on Tuesday, April 14, at Jamaica, ridden by Eric Guerin in a yellow sweater and blue cap. Caposella introduced him, and
a chilled crowd gave him an ovation. “Hundreds of horse players ran to the trackside from near the mutuel windows, where they
had been engaged in the engrossing business of betting on the sixth race. Running out to see the Dancer close, they looked
like hundreds of water bugs skating on the surface of a brook,” McNulty wrote.

Winfrey wanted Beachcomber to challenge the Dancer early in the six-furlong trial, then have First Glance pressure him late,
thereby giving the Dancer the exercise he needed. But it didn’t work out as planned. Beachcomber broke slowly and lagged behind.
The Dancer and First Glance were raced under heavy restraint. “The grey went past the stands with his head almost pulled around
to face the crowd,” the
Morning Telegraph
reported. The Grey Ghost covered the six furlongs in a slow 1:14. It was unclear if he had benefited. Still, Winfrey proclaimed
him ready for the Gotham in four days.

After the Dancer was safely back at Barn 20, McNulty watched Winfrey, Murray, Harold Walker, and J.C. Mergler rub their hands
up and down the colt’s legs, checking for signs of distress—a routine safeguard. The Dancer was fine. Soon, McNulty was alone
with Murray in front of the stall, eyeing the colt.

“He keyed up,” Murray told McNulty. “He a little mixed up in his mind, but he all right. He don’t know was that a race he
was in or wasn’t it. They had the gate, they had the other two horses, they had the crowd yelling. But you know what I think
got him mixed up in his mind? It looked like a race to him except one thing. They never brought him back to no winner’s circle.
This horse never been in no place else but that winner’s circle. Every single, solitary time he run a race. He don’t know
what to make out of it, no winner’s circle this time. It’s got him mixed up.”

The public’s fascination with the Dancer was evident in the response to the trial. Every aspect of the workout was analyzed
and debated among horsemen and newspaper columnists, as if great truths were obtainable. How did he look as he came down the
track? When he was eased up? Was this sufficient preparation for the Gotham? Was Winfrey still behind schedule? What about
those ankles?
Morning Telegraph
columnist Evan Shipman wrote that he “couldn’t see how the horse could have accomplished what he did with more authority,”
and wisely added that it was a mistake to make too much of the event.

“There is a brain there,” Shipman wrote of the Dancer, “and nothing sluggish or idle about it. The horse is well aware that
a work is not a race.”

Shipman, an influential veteran columnist, was a great believer in the horse. “Native Dancer is well on his way to becoming
a great popular champion in the world of sport, his appeal reaching far beyond the ordinary limits of racing,” he wrote. “Sports
writers naturally welcome such champions and do their part toward creating them, but there has been nothing artificial about
the growth of this particular legend. Several unbeaten two-year-olds have failed to inspire anything like the same adulation,
and some truly great thoroughbreds have failed to kindle the imagination of the larger public. But there is no denying that
Native Dancer possesses the intangible quality we call ‘color,’ without which any champion is just another name in the record
books. It is not forcing a simile to compare this rugged youngster with the great one-punch fighters. He appears to have the
same instinct for competition, the same ability to force an issue to a conclusion at the crucial moment.”

His popularity was undeniable. But the Kentucky Derby was less than three weeks away, and the horse still hadn’t raced as
a three-year-old. Critics continued to voice concern that Winfrey had brought him along too slowly, and Winfrey confessed
years later that even he was concerned after the canceled race and botched trial. But “the only thing I could do was run him
in the Gotham,” he told the
Blood-Horse
in 1985.

The pressure was building. “Huge Audience to See Gotham on TV Saturday,” blared a
Morning Telegraph
headline several days before the race. Caposella would call the race on the national telecast, with Sammy Renick handling
the commentary and interviews. It was the Dancer’s first appearance on TV, local or national, and “his presence in the starting
field assures the largest TV and radio audience in the history of turf broadcasting,” the
Morning Telegraph
wrote. Even larger, in other words, than the Kentucky Derby the year before.

Eighteen horses were entered in the Gotham, forcing Jamaica to split the field into two divisions. The Dancer landed in the
weaker di-

vision, with no rival even close to his class other than a colt named Isasmoothie who had won the Pimlico Futurity six months
earlier, and another colt named Magic Lamp who had occasionally shown promise. But although the other division featured Derby
contenders Laffango and Invigorator and figured to be far more competitive, NBC wasn’t televising it. The public didn’t really
care about Laffango and Invigorator. This was the Grey Ghost’s show. Vanderbilt’s friend Jock Whitney came to the paddock
before the race to show support. Bettors sent the horse to the post at 1–6 odds. He had worked a speedy half mile in 46⅖ seconds
at Belmont the day before.

The crowd cheered when the Dancer broke sharply from the starting gate, but Guerin, as he had in every race the year before,
settled the horse off the lead. The Dancer raced along in fourth, to the outside of the front-runners, Magic Lamp and a sprinter
named Virtuous, as the pack moved at a slow pace around the first turn, up the backside, and into the second turn. Then Guerin
lowered himself and began scrubbing the horse’s neck, asking for a run. The Dancer charged up to second, now trailing only
Magic Lamp, then stalled, sending a shiver through the crowd as he turned for home.

But any concern quickly dissipated. Guerin drew his stick and waved it in front of the Grey Ghost’s eyes as they headed for
home, and the horse burst past Magic Lamp and opened up a lead. The outcome was never in doubt through the stretch, although
the Dancer failed to continue to draw away from Magic Lamp as Guerin waved the stick at him. The winning margin was two lengths.

In the other division, Invigorator and Laffango pressed each other all the way up the backside, through the turn, and down
the stretch. Laffango won in the end, and many observers felt that both horses looked sharper than the Dancer, not that that
was a surprise with the Dancer coming off such a long layoff. “He got very, very tired in that race,” Winfrey told the
Blood-Horse
in 1985, adding that it was the horse’s “only race” in which he wasn’t fit Yet Laffango’s time of 1:44⅕ was only a fifth
of a second faster than the Dancer’s, and given the slow pace in the Dancer’s heat, it was obvious the Dancer could have gone
faster. As much as his time and his inability to put away Magic Lamp provided new fodder for the doubters, he was just warming
up. His winning run in Gotham, wrote columnist Arthur Daley in the
New York Times
, was “not unlike Babe Ruth hitting one out of the park against batting practice pitching.” The real show, in other words,
had yet to begin.