Native Dancer (35 page)

His season was under way, and what a season of possibilities it was. Vanderbilt and Winfrey had charted a course for him unlike
any ever outlined for a top American horse. First, the Dancer would try to emulate Tom Fool and win New York’s Triple Crown
of handicap races—the Metropolitan, Brooklyn, and Suburban—along with the Carter Stakes at Aqueduct. He would then be shipped
across the Atlantic Ocean and race in major events in England and France through the summer and fall. He had already been
nominated for the King George VI Stakes and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, run in July during the Royal Meeting at Ascot, the historic
racecourse near Windsor Castle in England. There was talk of entering him in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, France’s most
important race, at Longchamp in Paris. The trainer of Vanderbilt’s small British division had told reporters he was expecting
the horse in Newmarket that fall. The thinking was that the Dancer was likely to exhaust his competition in America, so why
not try to conquer a new world? If any horse could, it was the Grey Ghost.

America’s handicap division was indeed weak, with few horses seemingly capable of beating the Dancer. Royal Vale was a threat—the
British-bred five-year-old had given Tom Fool several scares the year before—but he hadn’t raced at the same level in recent
months.

A sprinter named White Skies would be dangerous at seven furlongs, but the Dancer would seldom, if ever, meet him. Jamie K.
was still around but had never realized the promise shown in the Preakness and Belmont the previous year. The Phipps family’s
Level Lea had emerged as a late-blooming three-year-old the previous fall, and Vanderbilt’s second-string four-year-olds,
Social Outcast and Find, were improving, but it was hard to envision any of them beating the Dancer.

Straight Face, at age four, was a mystery. He had finished sixth behind Dark Star and the Dancer in the Kentucky Derby the
year before, hindered by ankle and leg injuries suffered during the prep season in Florida. Greentree trainer John Gaver had
taken him out of training after the Derby to have his ankles fired, and he had ended up missing the rest of the year. Returning,
sound, in 1954, the horse had won two allowance races in Florida in January, then finished out of the money in major races
such as the Santa Anita Maturity, Widener Handicap, and Gulfstream Park Handicap. But just when it appeared he was destined
to disappoint, he had come within a fifth of a second of the Pimlico track record for nine furlongs in winning the Dixie Handicap.
That was his most recent race, a week earlier. It would be interesting to see which Straight Face showed up in the Metropolitan.

That the Dancer would be assigned the highest weight in the race was a given, but how much weight was a fair handicap? Speculation
had swirled at Belmont as John Campbell mulled his decision, announced six days before the race. Grey Lag had carried 133
to victory in the Metropolitan in 1923, ceding twenty-six pounds to a rival. Devil Diver had carried 134 in 1944. Tom Fool
had carried 130 the year before, giving three pounds to Royal Vale. Some believed the Dancer might be assigned as many as
135, but Campbell ultimately settled on 130, two pounds more than the Dancer had ever carried, and the same weight assigned
Tom Fool the year before in the Metropolitan. Campbell told reporters the Grey Ghost hadn’t yet shown he was as good as or
better than Tom Fool, so he shouldn’t have to carry more weight. The
Morning Telegraph’s
Nelson Dunstan labeled the assignment “eminently fair.”

In the end, Royal Vale and White Skies weren’t entered in the Metropolitan, and Find was scratched. The second-highest weight
in the field fell to Straight Face, at 117 pounds, thirteen fewer than the Dancer. Jamie K. was at 110, getting twenty pounds
from a horse he had almost beaten on the same track a year earlier. A four-year-old named Count Cain was getting twenty-three
pounds from the Dancer, and a five-year-old named Flaunt was getting twenty-four. The Dancer would race at quite a handicap,
finally facing the test many experts had wanted to see when he was forced to the sidelines in 1953. Could he carry crushing
weights and beat quality opposition under a severe handicap? Vanderbilt himself had said the colt “still had things to prove,”
and the Metropolitan loomed as a worthwhile opportunity, even without Royal Vale and White Skies.

In the minutes before the race, the bettors made the usual rush to put their money on the Dancer, knowing they would get little
in return if he won. Of the $210,712 in win bets pushed through the windows, 53 percent went with the Dancer, lowering his
odds to 1–4 by post time. That made it twenty races in a row in which he had left the starting gate as an odds-on favorite.
Only in the first race of his career, at Jamaica in April 1952, had he been more than even money.

Straight Face was the second choice at 7-1, the only other horse to garner much support, and it seemed he was resolved to
justify the fans’ faith when the starting gate opened at 4:19
P.M.
, with the track rated fast and Bryan Field at the microphone for CBS. Breaking alertly from the seventh post with jockey
Teddy Atkinson dressed in Greentree’s pink silks with black-striped sleeves, Straight Face immediately shot into the lead
and dropped toward the rail. A trio of long shots gave chase up the backstretch along with Impasse, the third betting choice
at 9-1, but the pace was fast, a quarter in 23⅕, and Straight Face quickly opened daylight on the field.

The Dancer was sluggish. He broke sharply, but Guerin took him back as usual and the colt slowly drifted toward the rear,
seemingly not in the mood to run. As the pack separated into two four-abreast waves of horses chasing the leader, with the
Dancer and Magic Lamp at the back of the rear quartet, Straight Face hurtled ahead, covering the second quarter mile in 22⅘
seconds. Atkinson glanced back as he neared the turn, obviously trying to locate the Grey Ghost, but the grey colt was beyond
the jockey’s view: there were too many lengths and too many horses between them. Atkinson turned back and asked for more from
the gelding. His tactics were apparent he was going to try to steal the race from in front, building a lead so large that
the Dancer couldn’t erase it down the stretch. “My goal,” Atkinson said later, “was to put as much ground as possible between
my horse and Native Dancer.”

Shockingly, Straight Face was ten lengths ahead of the Dancer halfway through the race, running about as fluidly and fast
as a horse could run as he angled into the turn. A colt named Jampol tried to move up and run with him but quickly faltered
and dropped back. Count Cain suffered the same fate when he tried to mount a charge. Straight Face’s lead grew to four lengths
on the turn. Atkinson glanced back again, still trying to locate the horse he knew would come after him, but he still couldn’t
find the grey favorite. Where was the Dancer? Fans at Belmont and across the nation were shouting the same question. Vanderbilt’s
horse had made up ground in the stretch before, but he was testing his limits here.

Quietly, from deep in the field, the Dancer started to make his move on the turn. Without urging from Guerin, he lowered his
head, picked up his stride, and shot ahead of the laggards, jumping into fifth place. Jampol and Count Cain were still in
front of him when Atkinson looked back the second time, blocking the jockey’s view, but the savvy Atkinson didn’t need to
see the Dancer to know the challenge was coming. Atkinson turned back around and smacked Straight Face with his stick, desperate
for the effort he felt would be needed to maintain the lead to the wire. The horse passed the quarter pole just before straightening
for home, having covered the first three quarters in a blazing 1:10⅕. His lead was three and a half lengths as he hugged the
rail, in perfect position for the stretch run.

Guerin moved the Dancer wide to avoid traffic as he rallied. The colt was still in fifth as he passed the quarter pole, seven
lengths behind the leader. There were three horses between them, and the Dancer almost casually swept around them all as he
came out of the turn and straightened for home, moving into second place as he charged past Impasse. He was still five lengths
behind Straight Face,

and it hadn’t taken much for him to put the others behind him, so Guerin reached back and struck the colt four times, eliciting
gasps from the fans who had never seen the Dancer’s jockey get so tough with the horse. “I called for him on the turn and
he didn’t answer with all that he had,” Guerin said later, “so I had to call for more, and he came on with his answer then.”

Two hundred yards to go, one horse ahead of him, the Grey Ghost careening down the middle of the stretch. His legs blurred
as he picked up his pace, spotting Straight Face along the rail and feeling Guerin’s stick on his side. A challenge had been
put down, and the Dancer picked it up, his intense competitive urge engaged. He veered sharply across the stretch, toward
Straight Face. Even the lay fan could see what he had to be thinking: “If I’m going to beat that damn horse over there, I’m
going to beat him like a champion, eye-to-eye, where he can see me and hear me and feel my superiority.” It wouldn’t be any
fun beating him from a distance, in the middle of the track.

He started gaining ground, cutting the lead to four lengths, then three at the eighth pole as the crowd’s roar swelled. “He
still had a ton of ground to make up; it looked like it was going to be impossible for him to get up to the lead, but he kept
coming,” recalled Hall of Fame trainer Allen Jerkens, who was at Belmont that afternoon. The lead was down to two lengths,
then one just inside the sixteenth pole, with the Dancer now hovering next to the leader. The grandstand was in an uproar,
the crowd hoarsely imploring the Dancer to keep charging. Atkinson, sensing the challenge he had known would come, pounded
Straight Face with the stick, once, twice, three times with a violent right-handed spank. The Greentree colt had raced magnificently—and
been ridden magnificently—for more than seven furlongs, but there was little left to give.

Guerin had always ridden the Dancer with supreme confidence, knowing he could wait until deep into races to make a charge
because the colt’s finishing kick was so strong. That confidence might have cost the Dancer in the Derby, when Guerin hesitated,
perhaps fatally, at the top of the stretch; but since then, the jockey had all but perfected his use of the powerful racing
machine underneath him. The zenith of their understanding occurred in the final furlong of the Met-

ropolitan, with the finish line approaching, the crowd shrieking, and the jockey on the horse in front of him furiously pounding
away Guerin, cool amid the hysteria, put his stick away. He had seen and felt enough. The Dancer was still running second,
within a head of Straight Face inside the sixteenth pole, the issue supposedly in doubt, but Guerin’s hands went down. The
gesture, as simple as it was stunning, spoke volumes. The horse could take it from there. And the jockey knew the horse could
take it from there.

The Dancer had made up seventh lengths in a quarter mile on a fast horse carrying thirteen fewer pounds—a move that almost
defied belief. Starting from ten lengths behind on the turn, he had circled the field and run down a leader racing furiously
on the rail. Anyone who had doubted him—and goodness knows how many doubts had been voiced along the way—would have to keep
quiet now. With his jockey motionless, trusting him to complete what had been started, the colt pulled even with Straight
Face with fifty yards to go. “The horse’s finish was superb, a spectacle of power; he was in perfect balance, with perfect
equilibrium at all times,” Evan Shipman would write. The next jump put the Dancer in front by a nose. There was no doubt now.
As the finish line approached, the Grey Ghost cocked his head to the side almost imperceptibly, glancing at Straight Face,
seemingly seeking a nod from his opponent that the better horse had won. Then he took another step and reached the wire. The
fans were jumping and shouting, lost in a delirium. The Dancer had pulled it off.

The stewards immediately called for a photo to check the finish, but that was just a formality. The limp crowd and exhausted
jockeys knew that the Dancer had reached the wire first. “He was so far out of it, it was incredible,”
Daily Racing Form
columnist Joe Hirsch recalled almost fifty years later. “But he closed ground unbelievably! That was a very fine Greentree
horse, and Native Dancer beat him right at the end. It was amazing that he could get up there, but he did. It remains, to
this day, one of the greatest races I have ever seen.”

Vanderbilt and Winfrey rushed from their box seats to the winner’s enclosure to greet Guerin. The enormity of the performance
was quickly sinking in. The Dancer had covered the final quarter in under 24 seconds and the mile in 1:35⅕—three-fifths faster
than Tom Fool’s time in the Metropolitan the year before and just two-fifths off Belmont’s track record for a mile, set by
Count Fleet in 1942 while carrying thirteen fewer pounds. It was a performance that left no wiggle room for doubters. Turf
writers didn’t need to pause and reflect before passing judgment. “Magnificent; a dangling Pearl White never produced more
suspense than the famous grey in the final half-mile,” wrote Pat O’Brien in the
Blood-Horse
, referring to the silent movie star who was always being rescued from train tracks just before the train ran over her. James
Roach, in the
New York Times
, called the race “a five-star thriller,” and Shipman called the Dancer’s finish “one of the greatest final quarters ever
run on the American turf.”

Almost a half century later, jockey Teddy Atkinson recalled the stretch run vividly, smiling and shaking his head. “Straight
Face was a very good horse, and especially good that day,” he said from the home in Virginia to which he had retired. “But
Native Dancer was always at his best when he was trailing like he was. He was so far back that day that he really had to come
on. I thought that maybe I had opened up enough of a lead, but I was wrong.”