Horses of Different Colors

By Tom Callahan

Concerning John Henry and Tom and--dead last--Mary

The champion Thoroughbred race horse of this year will be chosen next week by racing writers. It is almost certain to be John Henry, a six-year-old bay who won eight of his ten races in 1981 and $1,798,030, to extend his record winnings to $3,022,810. John Henry is not a steel-driving man exactly; he is a gelding, a tragic condition referred to around the backstretch as the unkindest cut of all.

Young race horses are gelded for being too excitable or too unexcitable: they won't train or they won't race. Geldings must have some quality, because the object is to wind up with a useful race horse. They must not have too much quality, because the big money is in breeding. Successful colts become richly syndicated stallions. At the last Keeneland summer sale, the Cartier's of horseflesh, one yearling went for $3.5 million, more than any horse ever won, even John Henry. In this coldblooded, blueblooded business, it is a nice thought that a peasant like John Henry, who was once sold for $1,100, is going to be Horse of the Year.

Nice thoughts and horse racing do not always go together as well as they do in a Mickey Rooney script. Maybe because so many impressions are formed at the movies, horse racing is romanticized. The picture of Mickey and Elizabeth Taylor whispering in their pets' ears to go faster neglects the fact of a lot of rough little rogues cursing and beating the horses' rumps with sticks. During Spectacular Bid's stirring three-year-old season (1979), just when Bid's teen-age jockey Ron Franklin was about to be mistaken for Mickey, Franklin hopped down off a gelding named Big Vision one day and kicked him right in the stomach. So much for sentimentality.

Besides John Henry, other eminent geldings were Kelso, who made $1,977,896 from 1959 to 1966, and Forego, whose six-year career in the '70s brought $1,938,957. Today Kelso is employed in Maryland as Mrs. Richard C. du Pont's favorite saddle horse, while Forego is a pensioner in Kentucky. These are unusually fine fates for unusually fine geldings, and John Henry can breathe easy too. More typical are the fates of Neapolitan Way and Hugable Tom.

Back in 1974, the gelding Neapolitan Way finished a heroic second in the Preakness despite a cut leg. However much this endeared him to his owner and trainer at the time, his next proprietors were not as moved, and the ones after that probably never thought of it. The old campaigner tumbled down the ladder until, by Preakness day two years ago, he was reduced to cheap $14,000 claimers. With time out for bowed tendons, Neapolitan Way is still running up mileage, now at age ten.

Hugable Tom, whose death in September is under investigation, was foaled six years ago at Calumet Farm in the lushest Kentucky bluegrass. Although he won his first race, the next few were disappointments, and Hugable Tom was gelded. He became a useful horse.

While he never won a rich stake race himself, Hugable Tom served as Alydar's "rabbit" in the Flamingo, burning out the field per orders. Alydar won; Tom finished last. The story of his life: sold, claimed, reclaimed and claimed again. In the past two years Hugable Tom won eleven races, including his final one on June 20. Afflicted with degenerative hoof disease at the end, alleged to have been neglected by his trainer and said to have had to rely on backstretch helpers for food and water, he was "put down," and his carcass rendered into soap. The studs get the tombstones.

Stallions and mares have their sad stories too, of course. But the most ill-starred horse of any sex this year was a filly, a most exceptionable filly. Her name was Sunshine Mary.

She was indisputably the worst Thoroughbred race horse in Florida, the country and probably the world. She always finished dead last. In ten races she never beat even one other horse, losing the ten by a total of more than 300 lengths. "She couldn't beat me the last eighth of a mile," said her first trainer, Louis Underwood, "and I'm 76 years old."

Sunshine Mary ran pretty well in the morning, not at all in the afternoon. Every manner of bit, blinker and rider was tried, to no avail. Finally Hialeah barred her. Then a sentimental new trainer came along, John Valkanet, and somehow he saw quality in her.

In Mary's eleventh race, at Calder Race Course, she showed it. She finished tenth in an eleven-horse field--by a nose.

Her next start, she beat four horses. Sunshine Mary was moving up. Valkanet's method was just to pet her, just to love her. "After a while, she didn't bite me any more," he said. "When she heard my voice, she put her head on my shoulder and I'd pet her nose. I loved her like it was some kind of Mickey Rooney story."

On the final day of August, Sunshine Mary broke from the Calder gate last, as usual. She was moving up strongly on the rail when, coming to the section of fence that is usually open in the morning for the horses leaving the track after workouts, she turned left and tried to jump the fence. She broke her neck. The veterinarian had to destroy her. Valkanet wept. Sunshine Mary's body was turned down by a petfood company and sent to the dump.

Race fans are sentimentalists. Some will recall 1981 as the year of John Henry. Others will remember it as the year of Sunshine Mary. --By Tom Callahan. Reported by Jamie Murphy/New York

With reporting by Jamie Murphy

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