The Nomination Is In: The Grade 2 Ruffian at Belmont Park

Ruffian

Thank you to the wonderful people at The Thorofan for allowing me to share my thoughts today on the Grade 2 Ruffian, a 1 mile dirt race at Belmont Park for Fillies and Mares, 4 years old and up.

My first race track romance was with Ruffian.  As a young boy, like many boys my age in an era before instant information, we waited every week for our copies of Sports Illustrated to arrive by mail.  I never saw Ruffian run, but I read about her, was captivated by her, and ultimately horrified at her sudden and gruesome death.  I'm still not, some 40 years later, able to think about Ruffian without getting emotional.  Her death, like the death of George Washington and Tuscan Evening, resonated with me at a very deep level, the level in my soul that makes me a fan and lover of these animals and not someone who can purely think of them as a post position and a price.  It's a beautiful and cruel sport all wrapped into one.

I'm not embarrassed to say I'm not really a very good blogger.  The Turk is celebrating his 8th year of hack handicapping and poorly written sentences, and my traffic in 8 years is about the traffic the good blogs get over a Breeders' Cup weekend.  No matter, I love talking about the horses and my ROI speaks for me when I can't string the words together properly.  I wish I had the time, and talent to write like this piece I found about Ruffian.  This  blog entry at The Vault: Horse Racing Past and Present is  real writer's articulate retrospective on one of the finest race horses ever.    As promised, I'm getting emotional talking about Ruffian, and I'll shut up now and get back to the business at hand! Rest in Peace Ruffian and Trainer Frank Whiteley Jr.

I wish there was more business to be at hand.  Today we have a 6 horse field and you could make a legitimate case for 5 horses to win this race.  While it's a wonderful field, I just wish it was more than six horses.  As a race track investor, the reward must be worth the risk, and I can find much easier marks on any card on any day of the week than this race.  That said, I like to handicap and assemble bets, and while I may not ultimately play it, I follow the same consistent steps for every two part handicap/bet construction and I have found that it is that consistent approach to interpreting the past performances and the race charts that brings me success.

Let's get after it!




Right off the bat, keep your eyes on the weather.  It's going to pour on Friday and maybe it will dry out by Saturday for a very fast track.  If it goes sloppy, our field has 7 total wet starts, with 2 wins both by Carrumba, so that may change thinking slightly at post time.  Our field has a top Beyer of 100 by Cavorting with a variance of (16) Beyer points down to our toss horse, Welcome Aboard.  The Beyer didn't toss the 6 year old, her wretched 5 year old campaign did.

I think Carrumba is the logical choice: 3 wins in last four starts, in the money in all 7 lifetime starts, 2 wins at the distance, 2 wins in 2 tries on off track, 2 wins in 3 starts at BEL, a Grade 3 winner, the Phipps Stable (Barbara Phipps-Janney, owner of Ruffian) runner looks the part of pure class.

I like Spelling Again as a contrarian choice;  owned by Buffalo Sabres Hockey Hall of Fame member and one of the true gentleman of our era.  She'll be near the front and looking to fire off of speed.  I'm not sure the pace scenario will set up for her, but I like this mare quite a bit.

Cavorting makes another excellent argument for the Win.  Her last four starts she's been stretching out at the 7 furlong wire, and the 1 panel extra distance may just be what she wants.  She runs against Grade 1 caliber horses consistently and she has a Grade 1 win.  No wins yet at the distance for the 4 YO, 2 wins at BEL, and she had much success at Saratoga last year, something I generally dismiss.  5 wins in 10 starts.

Include Betty is also a graded stakes regular and Grade 2 winner.  Trainer Proctor is 19% off a 61-180 day layoff, I think she needs another start after this.

There is nothing to dislike about Calamity Kate, you just can't cover them all and the Yes It's True 4 YO with Johnny V up fell off my list a bit.  She seems to still not be able to rate very well and with a cut back in distance I think the thought is to steal the race from the front and hold on.  I'm not sure, its very possible.

As you can see, this is a jam packed quality field. Be careful in a race like this over covering and over investing.  Calamity Kate, Spelling Again and Welcome Aboard will have big prices come post time. If you need action, play Calamity Kate and Spelling Again to Win or Place, or toss them into an exacta box on top of Cavorting and Carrumba.

Behind Every Great Horse....

...Is a Great Trainer. The Turk's been ruminating lately on the greatest trainer's of our generation, and what that even means. Is it the "Super Trainer" with greater then 100 horses and scores of assistant trainers working for them, or is it the old barn variety of a trainer who spends a great deal of time around a core group of horses that he influences every single day on a personal level.

The Turk passes to no judgement because he is not capable of fairly condeming or approving of what the best approach is. I spoke recently about Larry Jones, a trainer who lives his life and trains his horses with an honesty that I appreciate on many levels. I guess on some level, discussing Larry Jones and this next gentleman gives the reader some idea of what I consider the horse trainer image that I consider ideal.

I'd like to highlight a various trainer every few weeks in a recurring series of articles. To lead off this collection of articles , I'd be remiss to not post this obituary from the New York Times on Frank Whitely Jr, in my mind, one of the greatest trainers ever and a member of the NTRA Hall of Fame. Frank was the trainer of Ruffian and Damascus among others, and all I've read about him, including Jane Schwartz's "Ruffian- Burning from the Start"has left me with an indelible image of a man who lived for his craft at the expense of almost all else.

May 4, 2008

Frank Whiteley Jr., 93, Dies; Trained Ruffian
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Frank Whiteley Jr., the thoroughbred racing Hall of Famer who trained the brilliant but ill-fated filly Ruffian, died Friday in Camden, S.C. He was 93. His death was announced by the New York Racing Association. A trainer for nearly a half century, Mr. Whiteley saddled the great gelding Forego and the 1967 horse of the year Damascus. But he was best remembered for Ruffian, perhaps the greatest female thoroughbred in history.

On July 6, 1975, Ruffian, undefeated in 10 starts — setting stakes or track records in most of them — and having swept the filly Triple Crown, was matched against Foolish Pleasure, the winner of that year’s Kentucky Derby, in a mile-and-a-quarter race at Belmont Park.

Coming two years after tennis’s celebrated Battle of the Sexes between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, the match race of the 3-year-olds was billed as horse racing’s equivalent of a glamorous boy versus girl duel, an equine sideshow to the women’s rights movement.
But what promised to be one of horse racing’s greatest days became one of its grimmest. Nearly half a mile into the race, in front by a neck, Ruffian shattered her right front ankle. Flashing her competitive spirit, she continued to run for another 40 yards, compounding her injury, as her jockey, Jacinto Vasquez, somehow managed to keep her upright. In an emotional sports saga that captured national attention, a team of veterinarians operated on Ruffian into the night in the face of virtually hopeless odds. They placed a cast on her broken leg, but while coming out of anesthesia, Ruffian struggled so violently that she smashed it. At 2:20 a.m. the day after the race, she was put down by injection. That night, she was buried at Belmont’s infield, 70 yards beyond the finish line, beneath a flag pole that had been flying at half staff.

Twenty-five years after Ruffian took her fatal misstep, Mr. Whiteley recalled the moment he had first seen her, in a pasture at Claiborne Farm in Kentucky. He said, “She was only a yearling, but she had that quality you only see once in a lifetime.”

On Saturday, in the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby, the filly Eight Belles collapsed with two broken ankles after finishing second to the colt Big Brown and was euthanized.

Frank Yewell Whiteley Jr. was born and raised on a farm in Centreville, Md. He rode horses at shows and fairs and obtained his trainer’s license in Maryland in 1936.
Mr. Whiteley won a Triple Crown race for the first time in 1965, when he saddled Tom Rolfe in the Preakness Stakes. Two years later, he trained Damascus, who won horse of the year honors after victories in the Preakness, the Belmont Stakes, the Travers and the Woodward.
In 1976, Mr. Whiteley took over the training of Forego, who won the horse of the year title that year. Mr. Whiteley was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame at Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 1978.

Mr. Whiteley was “a wonderful horseman, who did it the grass-roots way, and there just aren’t that many around any more,” his fellow Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey told the New York Racing Association. “When they got sick, he gave them aspirin. When they needed to be iced, he hosed them.”

Mr. Whiteley retired in 1984 and conducted winter training for many years in Camden. Last year, he was portrayed by Sam Shepard in the television movie “Ruffian.”
He is survived by his sons David and Alan. David Whiteley trained Coastal, the 1979 Belmont Stakes winner.

Two days after Ruffian’s death, a wreath of 1,200 white carnations in the shape of a horseshoe was placed on her grave by NYRA, an addition to a host of floral tributes there.
Mr. Whiteley glanced that day at Ruffian’s old stall in Barn 34 at Belmont. “That stall will never be occupied as long as I have this barn,” he said. “There’ll never be a horse worthy of entering it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/sports/othersports/04whiteley.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

And the below link will lead you to a Frank Whitely jr. interview conducted in 1983.

http://www.championsgallery.com/bobfrank.htm

Good stuff.