Native Dancer (40 page)

Read Native Dancer Online

Authors: John Eisenberg

BOOK: Native Dancer
2.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Harold Prince and Vanderbilt had lost touch after Vanderbilt’s third divorce, but they reconnected one day at Belmont in the
early 1990s. A mutual friend, Tommy Volano, a music publisher and horse owner, brought them together. “ Tommy said to me,
‘I want you to come to Belmont with me. I’ve got a reason,’ ” Prince recalled. “I said, ‘Great’ He had cooked up a lunch with
Alfred, who could no longer see. Alfred would sit under the TV monitor and listen to the races. Sit there all day. He couldn’t
see the races, but he could hear them, and he so wanted to be there. It was wonderful to see him again. And it was the last
time I saw him.”

Vanderbilt was still racing a small stable, with his horses now trained by Maryland-based Mary Eppler. She won some stakes
races for him, and then Vanderbilt, at age eighty-three, sent her to a 1996 Florida sale of unraced two-year-olds with orders
to find a Kentucky Derby prospect. She delivered. A colt named Traitor, purchased for $102,000, won the Futurity—the same
race for juveniles that Native Dancer had won in 1952—and finished second in the Champagne Stakes. He was considered a top
contender for the Kentucky Derby the next spring.

“ Traitor looked like another great horse, and Dad was very excited,” Heidi Vanderbilt said. “It brought back memories of
Dancer. Dad thought he could get to the big races again with Traitor.”

The Dancer’s Derby loss had become a painful memory for Vanderbilt through the years. He had never entered another horse in
the race and didn’t even return to Louisville for years. Then his passion was rekindled when Traitor came along. “Before Mary
bought Traitor, I told her that I was getting pretty damn old, and that if I’m ever going to win a Derby, I’d better do it
soon,” Vanderbilt told
Los Angeles Times
racing writer Bill Christine one morning at Hialeah in March 1997.

It didn’t happen. Traitor had surgery to remove chips in his right knee in the fall of his two-year-old year, then missed
two weeks of training the next spring when he lunged into a fence after a workout at Hialeah. He was declared out of the Kentucky
Derby, then was permanently retired when he tore a ligament in his left foreleg during a gallop at Pimlico before the Preakness.

Vanderbilt was devastated.

“It was a huge disappointment,” Heidi Vanderbilt said. “He’d had this wonderful career in racing, with this gap of one race,
and when Traitor couldn’t go, Dad realized that he wasn’t going to have that race. There was no way to make it okay. You couldn’t
say, Well, I’ll get it later.’ If he hadn’t been blind, this might not have become an issue. It wasn’t like he talked about
it. He rarely referred to it. But I knew what happened. When Traitor got injured and he was so upset about it, it had to do
with Dancer losing the Derby. He was upset about Traitor, but also about Dancer. I think it’s common as you get older to choose
the things you didn’t have and reflect, and that certainly happened with Dad and the Derby. He never put on a grand opera
about it. He never spoke in these terms. But not winning the Derby was very important to him. That loss in 1953 was a very
big sadness and a very big sorrow.”

On November 12, 1999, Vanderbilt spent the early morning at Belmont, then returned to his home near Mill Neck, on Long Island,
and went to his bedroom to take a nap. He never awakened. “My father went to the track this morning,” Alfred Vanderbilt III
poignantly told reporters who called within hours, working on obituaries. In death, at age eighty-seven, he was recalled as
a racing man without peer, an owner, breeder, track operator, and industry leader, and, perhaps, the last great sportsman.

A memorial service was held, appropriately, in the clubhouse at Aqueduct, and hundreds of mourners came to pay their respects
on a foggy, misty morning. Harold Prince, Clyde Roche, and Vanderbilt’s daughter Victoria were among those who spoke, and
at the end of the service, the mourners were asked to turn to the track. A filly ridden by a jockey wearing Vanderbilt’s cerise
and white silks came out of the mist and raced through the stretch as the crowd applauded. It was the last ride for Vanderbilt’s
colors.

In one of his last interviews, Vanderbilt told turf writer Tom Keyser of the
Baltimore Sun
, “I’m interested in what happens in racing because it’s been my whole life, but it ain’t what it used to be.”

No one could argue. Racing had fallen far from the high of the early 1950s, when crowds of 50,000 routinely attended major
events and the sport was deeply ingrained in the public’s awareness. Although still a multibillion-dollar industry with its
share of intense fans, and still popular in Kentucky, Southern California, and across the country during the Triple Crown,
racing was no longer regarded as a major sport in America by the end of the century. It had been passed and lapped many times
by pro football, pro basketball, hockey, golf, and even stock car racing.

The biggest blow, unmistakably, was the rise of other forms of gambling, beginning in the 1960s. Racing no longer had the
betting market cornered once gamblers were able to go to Las Vegas or buy a lottery ticket to scratch their itch. The sport’s
concurrent decline in popularity was not a coincidence. Although the rise of off-track betting and simulcasting increased
betting totals, fans were discouraged from going to the races, thus emptying grandstands and ruining the atmosphere.

“In their anxiety to get more betting, they took the people out of it,” Allen Jerkens said. “In the fifties, people would
bring fifty dollars to the track, and if they blew it, they blew it. Now there are all these gimmick bets, and so many races
to bet. How much does the public have to bet? In the old days, you would go to the paddock, look at the animals, make a decision,
and bet. Now you’re too busy betting on a simulcast race, betting numbers, betting gimmicks. It’s taken away the horse part
of the game. A lot of the younger people aren’t interested in the animals themselves. That hurts racing.”

Industry infighting and numerous political missteps were also ruinous, as was the sport’s inability to connect with a younger
crowd. Fabled champions such as Secretariat and Seattle Slew resonated beyond the sport’s boundaries, but overall, racing
failed to maintain even a semblance of the vast constituency it had gripped in Native Dancer’s day. In the end, critically,
it failed to use television correctly, stubbornly clinging to the outdated notion that the medium might ruin attendance as
other sports, most notably pro football, used it to catapult to spectacular prominence.

“The people in racing have only themselves to blame,” Joe Tannenbaum said. “They continued to see TV as a nemesis, and the
sport virtually dropped off the screen, except for the major events. And that was very, very damaging.” Added Tommy Roberts,
“It’s just incredible, looking back and knowing what you know about the power of TV. You say, ‘How could they be so blind?’
But they were.”

The sport still had a wondrous past and a sizable following, however, and as the century ended, there was a rush to put the
chronicle of American racing history in order. A panel of racing experts convened by the Associated Press was asked to select
the best horses of the century. Native Dancer tied for third with Citation, behind Man O’ War and Secretariat and ahead of
Triple Crown winners such as Seattle Slew and Affirmed. One could only wonder what Eddie Arcaro, who died in 1996, would have
said about a tie between the Dancer and Citation. A similar panel commissioned by the
Blood-Horse
placed the Dancer seventh.

“He’s never really received the acclaim he should,” said Tommy Trotter, a panelist in the end-of-the-century voting. “Secretariat
was beaten once as a two-year-old. Native Dancer was unbeaten. Secretariat was beaten three times as a three-year-old. Native
Dancer lost once by a head. Secretariat didn’t race as a four-year-old. Native Dancer didn’t race much, but he carried 130
pounds and 137 pounds and won and was voted Horse of the Year. It might be that people don’t think of him because he seldom
won easily, but his record speaks for itself.”

Joe Hirsch said, “He was one of the unluckiest horses of all time. He had a remarkable record, winning twenty-one of twenty-two.
To win them all wouldn’t have been human. But if not for those inches that cost him the Derby, he would have gone undefeated.
And while they talk about a Triple Crown being rare, an undefeated career is really rare. Colin went undefeated in 1905. So
did Personal Ensign eighty years later. That’s it, two in history. And Native Dancer was almost the third. If he’d won the
Derby, somehow made up those final inches on Dark Star, there’s no telling what people would think of him now.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to the many people who donated their time and their memories of racing’s golden age. Here are those who were interviewed
or helped in any way: Claude Appley, Mary Appley, Ted Atkinson, Dale Austin, William Boniface, Tim Capps, Costy Caras, Frank
Chirkinian, Bill Christine, Frank Curry, John Derr, Judy Ohl Deubler, Leonard Dorfman, Dominick Dunne, Dorothy Everson, Clem
Florio, Bob Fortus, Jackie Gibson, Tom Gilcoyne, Beth Guerin, Dr. Alex Harthill, Joe Hickey, Allen Jerkens, Joe Kelly, Blanche
Kercheval, Ralph Kercheval, Tom Keyser, Leonard Koppett, Chick Lang, Charles Ray Leblanc, Jinx McCrary, Jim McKay, J. C. Mergler,
Mervin Muniz, William Passmore, Lulu Pate, Pete Pedersen, Joe Pons, Harold Prince, Laura Riley, Tommy Roberts, Dr. Jack Robinson,
Clyde Roche, Chris Schenkel, Dan W. Scott, Dan W. Scott III, Bayard Sharp, Bill Shoemaker, Bert Sugar, Joe Tannenbaum, Tommy
Trotter, Alfred Vanderbilt III, Heidi Vanderbilt, Jeanne Vanderbilt, Carey Winfrey, Elaine Winfrey, Vic Ziegel.

The Maryland Jockey Club, Churchill Downs, Alfred Vanderbilt III, Carey Winfrey, Claude and Mary Appley, the Library of Congress,
the
Baltimore Sun
, the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, the New York City Public Library, the Keeneland Library, and the Maryland Horse
Breeders Association provided microfilm and/or hard copies of old newspapers and magazines, or other research tools. Ray Paulick
of the
Blood-Horse
was kind to grant access to his magazine’s incredibly comprehensive morgue files. Books that helped provide background and
understanding included
Their Turf
, by Bernard Livingston;
The Fireside Book of Horse Racing
, edited by David F. Woods;
The Tumult and the Shouting
, by Grantland Rice;
The Best Sports Stories of 1954
, by Arno Press;
The Thoroughbred
, by E. S. Montgomery;
This Was Racing
, by Joe H. Palmer;
The Fifties
, by David Halberstam;
The Fifties: The Way We Really Were
, by Douglas T. Miller and Marion Nowak; and
The American Dream: The 50s
, by the editors of Time-Life Books. Gerry Strine’s superb 1985 interview with Bill Winfrey, published in the
Blood-Horse
, was invaluable, as evidenced by the credit it receives throughout the text. Also helpful, not to mention inspiring, were
John McNulty’s classic 1953
New Yorker
article, “A Room at the Barn,” Marshall Smith’s 1953
Life
feature on the Dancer, and the turf writing of columnist Evan Shipman and others from the long-defunct
Morning Telegraph
. Those were the days.

Special thanks to my agent, Scott Waxman, for helping make the book a reality; Les Pockell at Warner Books, whose suggestions
for the manuscript were insightful; Alfred Vanderbilt III, who took a keen interest in the project and helped in countless
ways; Olive Cooney, who provided origins of inspiration, a stack of research material, and lots of enthusiasm; Beverly Bridger
at Sagamore Lodge, who helped me understand the Vanderbilts; the editors of the
Baltimore Sun
, who gave me a year off to write; Steve Proctor of the
Sun
, who read the manuscript and made helpful suggestions; and Jean Eisenberg, who read every version of the manuscript as it
progressed. Most important, I’m grateful to my wife, Mary Wynne, and my children, Anna and Wick, for their patience, understanding,
and love. This book is for them.

Other books

Unintended Consequences by Stuart Woods
Daughter's Keeper by Ayelet Waldman
A Parachute in the Lime Tree by Annemarie Neary
The Princess and the Snowbird by Mette Ivie Harrison
The Eighth Witch by Maynard Sims