The Toss of a Coin
The Ownership of Secretariat
In a foal sharing agreement in 1965, Meadow Stable founder Christopher Chenery began sending two mares at a time to the heralded stallion Bold Ruler, who was owned by the prominent Phipps family, and standing at stud in Claiborne Farm. The subsequent destination for the resulting pair of foals would be determined in a coin flip arrangement between the parties.
As the esteemed journalist and author Bill Nack would so eloquently later pen, "Then events began unfolding in the spring of 1968 that set the stage for the most monumental coin toss in racing history, a curious flip in which the winner lost and the loser won — but neither knew it at the time."
This is the true story of how a coin toss determined the destiny of a certain 1970 progeny of the sire Bold Ruler and dam Somethingroyal.
Bold Ruler (Nasrullah – Miss Disco by Discovery), foaled in 1954 at historic Claiborne Farm in Kentucky, was bred and raced by Gladys Mills Phipps’ Wheatley Stable. He raced from 1956 through 1958, achieving a lifetime record of 23-4-2 from 33 starts, with earnings of $764,204. Even more than his success on the racetrack, what distinguished Bold Ruler most was his stud career at Claiborne Farm. He was the leading sire in North America from 1963 to 1969, and again in 1973 thanks in large part to the successes of his most celebrated son.
Somethingroyal (Princequillo – Imperatrice by Caruso), foaled in 1952, raced only once but she became the alpha broodmare at Christopher Chenery's Meadow Stud in Virginia. Of her 18 foals, 11 were winners, including Sir Gaylord, the 1962 Kentucky Derby favorite before being injured just prior to the race.
In short, Bold Ruler had speed and Somethingroyal carried stamina, and the outcome of their 1969 pairing proved to be historic. Here’s how it happened.
It was decided by the respective parties that a combination of The Meadow's best blue-blood mares — specifically, two mares among Cicada, Hasty Matelda, and Somethingroyal — would be sent to Bold Ruler in the back-to-back breeding seasons of 1968 and 1969, with the expectation that these auspicious pairings would result in four regally bred foals.
All went according to plan in the first part of the agreement — the 1968 breeding season — with the two selected mares conceiving and delivering a healthy foal in the early spring of 1969. Hasty Matelda produced a dark bay colt, while Somethingroyal had a brown filly.
But plans went astray the following year. In the 1969 breeding season, the Meadow returned Somethingroyal to Bold Ruler, this time along with Cicada, but only Somethingroyal would conceive, as the breeding with Cicada didn't take and she never got pregnant.
By the time of the coin toss scheduled later that year, both parties understood that only the ownership of three foals would be decided, not four.
At Saratoga during that summer of 1969, Chenery’s daughter Penny Tweedy met Ogden Phipps and Phipps’s trainer Eddie Neloy in the racetrack offices of James Cox Brady, chairman of the New York Racing Association. They were gathered for a determining coin flip.
We will let Mr. Nack take it from here as he recounted that fateful meeting:
"It was time to flip the coin.
Each knew the consequences of winning the toss.
Under the rules of the flip arrangement, the winner of the flip would automatically get first choice of the first pair of foals — the two born in 1969 — either the Somethingroyal filly, or the Hasty Matelda colt. The loser, while getting the second choice of the first pair, automatically would get the first choice of the second pair of foals. And the winner would get the second choice of the second pair.
But there would be no second foal in the second pair. Somethingroyal was pregnant, but Cicada was barren.
So neither party wanted to win. The winner would get only one of the three foals, the first choice of the first pair. The loser of the flip would get the second choice of the first pair and also the only foal to be born in 1970 — the foal that Somethingroyal was carrying on that day in August.”
When the moment arrived for the coin to sail through the air, it was the very odd scenario in which both parties wanted to lose the toss. Confusing? Perhaps, but it may help to remember the simple sum of the math — the winner (getting only one foal) lost and the loser (getting two foals) won.
History shows the Meadow Stable as the lucky loser of the coin toss, yet would eventually emerge as the winner by virtue of receiving the Somethingroyal foal that was yet to be born.
Nack wrote that following that historic toss, "Ogden Phipps returned to his box seat and dourly told his son, Ogden Mills Phipps, 'We won the toss.'"
And as they say, the rest is history.
Except there was not much of historical note concerning the two foals born in 1969 who comprised the first part of the two-year breeding arrangement between Bold Ruler and the Meadow mares.
The Phippses chose the filly out of Somethingroyal. The Bride, as she was named, started only four races as a two-year-old, finishing out of the money each time, and soon was retired for broodmare duty at Claiborne Farm.
Hasty Matelda’s colt, meanwhile, as the second choice of the first pair, went to The Meadow Stable. Named Rising River, he proved to be unsound and reportedly sold for $50,000 before being sent first to Spain, then Hungary, and finally Uruguay, for stud duty.
The Bride and Rising River have become footnotes to a fascinating story in horse racing history. The leading character —Somethingroyal's chestnut colt born on March 30, 1970 — would become the 1973 Triple Crown champion and rewrite the history books altogether. His name was Secretariat.
Pictured at top is the actual 1921 Morgan Silver Dollar used in the coin toss scene of the Disney Studio film, "Secretariat."