"And a Way Out Yonder Ahead of Them All"
Remembering Ruffian: Part 3 by Steve Haskin
Those lyrics from the song “Stewball," which was first recorded in 1940 and later recorded by Woody Guthrie, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and Joan Baez, tells the story of an eighteenth century horse in England. Baez later would change some of the lyrics and dedicate the song to Ruffian.
Although the lyrics that headline this column refer to Stewball, to me they will always conjure up visions of Ruffian.
And now we come to Part 3, a chapter that will still be disturbing to many, but is as much a part of her life and legacy as her triumphs, and keeps her closer to our hearts than most other great champions.
Although we left you in Part 2 with Ruffian’s impressive victory in the Coaching Club American Oaks, Part 3 actually begins a week before that race.
It was still only June, but after the Mother Goose it already had become obvious that Ruffian had run out of competition from her own sex, and further procession-like romps would offer little intrigue and make promoting her races difficult.
Of course, she still had to get through the testing mile and a half Oaks, but she had an air of invincibility around her and there were few fears of her getting beat. So it was only natural that the New York Racing Association turn its attention to the boys and try to find a way to bring them into the national spotlight.
The “Big Boy” out there was the mighty gelding Forego, the defending Horse of the Year, who seemed unstoppable from seven furlongs to two miles. But his big races would be in fall when the championships are decided. So NYRA turned its attention to the 3-year-old colts.
"it already had become obvious that Ruffian had run out of competition..."
However, unlike the previous four years, the wealth was spread during the 1975 Triple Crown, with Foolish Pleasure winning the Kentucky Derby, but managing only second-place finishes to Master Derby in the Preakness and Avatar in the Belmont. The reigning 2-year-old champion and budding superstar ran strong races both times, but not enough to create a buzz, which was the intent two years earlier when it was proposed by the Philip Morris Company to have Triple Crown winner Secretariat take on his illustrious stablemate Riva Ridge in the inaugural Marlboro Cup, originally intended as a match race between the two Meadow Stable colts. That concept would morph into an invitational race attracting the best horses in the country, as well as Canada.
Considering the situation in 1975, NYRA decided to come up with a new concept called the “Race of Champions,” a $300,000 showdown between that year's three Triple Crown race winners Foolish Pleasure, Master Derby, and Avatar. But Avatar had already flown back to California following the Belmont and trainer Tommy Doyle had no desire to send him back east, so that put an end to the “Race of Champions, even though the connections of Foolish Pleasure and Master Derby had accepted.
Monmouth Park, meanwhile, was bold enough to propose a $400,000 match race between Ruffian and Foolish Pleasure, even with Ruffian still having another race to run. NYRA decided to change its original concept and follow Monmouth’s proposal by having a match race between the same two horses, upping their purse to $400,000, and take $50,000 out of that total and pay Master Derby’s owner Verna Lehmann to withdraw their horse from the original race, as she was still willing to run.
Foolish Pleasure’s trainer Leroy Jolley had been OK with his colt, who had good natural speed, taking on the two colts, but was against having a three-horse race with “that great filly in there,” feeling Foolish Pleasure would be too busy focusing all his attention on trying to run with Ruffian while his Preakness conqueror sat back waiting to take advantage of any speed duel. He felt it would not make for a true race and certainly not a “real match race.” So NYRA paid Lehmann not to run and she accepted.
NYRA chairman Jack Dreyfus explained “She stood by all the negotiations, and when it developed that it would be only Foolish Pleasure and Ruffian we decided to reward her for her patience and cooperation, for which she also receives our sincere gratitude.”
The race would be run at 1 ¼ miles with the usual scale weight for 3‐year‐olds, 126 pounds for the colt and 121 for the filly. The winner would receive $225,000 and the loser $125,000.
Jolley accepted for owner John L. Greer, and Ruffian’s owner Stuart Janney also accepted, much to the dismay of trainer Frank Whiteley.
There was also the matter of jockeys, as Jacinto Vasquez was the regular rider of both horses. Whiteley said it was entirely up to Vasquez, but added, “If he chooses Foolish Pleasure, he will not be allowed to ride Ruffian in the Coaching Club, because I'd rather have a jockey who is accustomed to the filly, and he can get accustomed to her in that race.” But there was no way Vasquez was going to give up the mount on a superstar like Ruffian, so Jolley gave the mount to Braulio Baeza.
On June 14, one week before the Coaching Club American Oaks, NYRA made the announcement on the match race. At that time, Monmouth Park executives reportedly were in the process of wrapping up their deal in the Manhattan office of a major commercial sponsor when Monmouth Park president Phil Iselin received a phone call informing him of the NYRA deal. Iselin reportedly hung up and simply said, “Gentlemen, I have nothing to sell you.”
Like Whiteley, Janney actually was not overly thrilled with the idea, but he called Whiteley and said, “Frank, we’re going to have to do something one of these days and I’d rather do it in New York.” Whiteley balked at it, but Janney told him he felt obligated because the media and the public wanted to see it.
Whiteley felt there wasn’t a horse in the country who could beat Ruffian, and he was thinking ahead more to the fall when he’d get the chance to, as he put it, “whip ‘ol Forego’s ass.”
So just like that, all the talk was now about Ruffian taking on the Kentucky Derby winner. Like two years earlier when Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in tennis’ “Battle of the Sexes,” we now had an equine version of it. NYRA had buttons made up with head shots of each horse and the heading “The Great Match” and smaller ones that simply said “Him” and “Her."
"So just like that, all the talk was now about Ruffian taking on the Kentucky Derby winner."
Ruffian, as expected, won the CCA Oaks over a stubborn opponent in Equal Change, who held her margin down to 2 ½ lengths. On July 1, she and Foolish Pleasure both turned in bullet five-furlong works. The day before the race, Whiteley blew Ruffian out an easy three furlongs, while Jolley decided to go straight into the race off the five-furlong work.
There was a strange feeling in the air the afternoon of July 6, whether it was something foreboding I can’t really say. But I could feel it. I had never seen a match race, but I knew Whiteley was dead-set against it, and I remember hearing from my good friend Floyd Williams, the stallion groom at Darby Dan Farm who was a groom at Washington Park when Swaps met Nashua in their much-hyped match race, about how bad Swaps’ foot was going into the race. Sure enough, Swaps ducked out badly at the start and never looked comfortable, as Nashua took the track from him and went on to win by 6 ½ lengths in what turned out to be an anti-climactic race, much like the famed War Admiral – Seabiscuit match race was in 1938. The fear in 1975 was that Ruffian and Foolish Pleasure were going to be asked to run way too fast early with half the year still left and all the big championship races still to come.
The media, however, was having a field day with the match race and despite the tension, you could feel the excitement growing all afternoon.
I couldn’t stand the wait and went to the backstretch and waited for Ruffian at the barn. I followed her through the tunnel to the paddock. As she walked down the ramp leading to the tunnel, Whiteley was in front of her and I was behind her. I took a black and white photo of them just as Whiteley turned his head back and for some reason looked down at Ruffian’s legs. It was not the shot I was expecting.
I did make up an 8" x 10" print of it and kept it in a drawer in our family room, but found it too disturbing and too eerie to look at.
Years later, I searched for that photo, but never found it. After a while I just decided that as unique and newsworthy as that photo may have been it would be too upsetting for people and was not meant to be seen. I never looked for it again.
Joining the rest of the fans in the saddling paddock, I did manage to get another shot of Ruffian walking out to the track. In hindsight, even with all the surrounding anticipation of the race, it was a reverent moment. I had no idea that this would be the last time I would be photographing her.
Up to that point in my career I had never seen or heard of a top horse breaking down, and the thought of a horse suffering a fatal injury and having to be euthanized never even crossed my mind.
When they broke from the gate they were going so fast that Foolish Pleasure wound blazing the half in :44 3/5 and three-quarters in 1:08 3/5, unheard of in a 1 ¼-mile race.
So, when Ruffian was pulled up down the backstretch while battling eyeball to eyeball with Foolish Pleasure, it seemed at first surreal, and for a split second I thought Vasquez had simply eased her back off Foolish Pleasure and let him go because the pace was so brutal.
Whiteley watched the race with Janney and knew right away it was bad. He said he was too numb to think about anything except getting down to her. When he got to the track the guards wouldn’t let him on because the race was still ongoing and Foolish Pleasure hadn’t yet crossed the finish line. Veterinarian Jim Prendergast was at the gap and proceeded to drive Whiteley to his stricken filly on the backstretch. Whiteley could see right away the fracture was compound, and when he saw all the dirt ground in there, he told Janney later, “We haven’t got a shot.”
No one in the stands knew how serious the injury was and just saw Ruffian being loaded on to an ambulance. I went to sleep that night not knowing Ruffian’s fate. It wasn’t until the following morning that I heard on the radio that the great filly had been euthanized. It was so hard to accept. For me, the age of innocence in racing was over.
The best surgeons and veterinarians had quickly been called and assembled, including Dr. Alex Harthill and Dr. Edward Keefer, a cardiovascular surgeon at New York Hospital. Keefer was an innovator in his field, setting up the first transplant bank for human blood vessels, and was profiled in the New York Times Magazine. And even though he was not a veterinarian, he helped save the life of Hoist the Flag and devised the first artificial leg for a horse, the top-class sprinter Spanish Riddle. Keefer used to fox hunt with Cynthia Phipps, who knew about his miraculous work with Spanish Riddle. Phipps introduced him to her uncle, Stuart Janney, who said he would appreciate any help he could get with Ruffian’s surgery, and Keefer designed and built Ruffian's cast.
Keefer made the cast and put it on her leg following the surgery, but she kicked it right off after coming out of anesthesia. She had been given tranquilizers, but they couldn’t control her for very long.
Ruffian had awakened from the anesthesia flailing her legs in all directions. Two men had to try to hold her down and keep her from re-injuring herself. Despite their efforts she threw the cast off and all that was left to do was operate again or put her out of her misery. Dr. Harthill called Janney, who was staying with the Phippses, and Janney told him, “Don’t let her suffer anymore.”
“It was unfortunate we were in a learning period at the time,” Keefer said prior to his death in 2000 at age 84. “Vets are really doing a hell of a job now and have improved tremendously in their knowledge and how to handle these catastrophic occurrences. As for Ruffian breaking the cast, the vets didn’t have the equipment and the drugs they have now. They have much better tranquilizers, and the anesthesia is more sophisticated.”
Later that night, Ruffian was buried in the infield at Belmont Park. There were only four people there – Whiteley, his foreman and right-hand man Mike Bell, Vasquez and Bill Rudy of the New York Post.
“They covered her up and Mike went down into the grave and put two blankets on her,” Whiteley recalled. “I was afraid the damn grave was going to cave in on him. The next day was tough, but what the hell, I had to go on. I never thought it would have the impact it has for so many years, but she was in a lot of people’s hearts.”
Ruffian’s grave remained a small speck in the vast Belmont infield with virtually no access for visitors for the next 48 years until a complete renovation of the track forced it to be moved to her place of birth, Claiborne Farm. People can now visit her and in many ways feel her presence, either for the first time or to relive that magical aura that emanated from her five decades earlier.
Even though so many years have passed, whenever a young filly bursts on the scene and does something spectacular, the same words can still be heard: “Could this be the next Ruffian?” It has become obvious by now that, like Secretariat, those are summits that will never be reached.
A half-century later, Ruffian, as Whiteley said, is still in a lot of people’s hearts, and there she will remain, forever equaling and breaking records; a powerful gust of wind that blew through the Sport of Kings all too briefly.
Author Walter Farley, in describing The Black Stallion, could easily have been describing Ruffian – “You've never in your life seen a horse run so fast! He's all power--all beauty.”
That was Ruffian: All power--all beauty. And that is how she will always be remembered – as the song says, forever “dancin’ and a prancin’ ahead of them all.”
