Native Dancer (28 page)

The two horses veered into the straightaway, the finish line looming in the distance, three-sixteenths of a mile away. Then,
stunningly, just as the Dancer engaged him in a duel, Dark Star faltered. The Dancer gained ground with one stride, more ground
with another stride, then nosed into the lead. Moreno whipped his colt mercilessly, trying to restart the engine, but it had
no impact. Dark Star was fading. He had nothing left. “He was going along nice and easy, and boom, just like that, he stopped,”
Moreno said later.

The crowd roared as the Grey Ghost passed his nemesis and surged into the lead. There was, for an instant, a swatch of daylight
between him and the field. It was his stretch, his race, his triumph in the offing. But then another horse, a bay, made a
move behind him and began to close. Instead of pulling away as Dark Star faded, the Dancer was confronted with a new challenge.
The fans strained to see the jockey’s silks, or the number on the horse’s saddlecloth. Who was this late-running challenger?
A heartbeat passed, and then a gasp went up.

It was Arcaro!

The Master, on Jamie K., had raced easily for a mile, settling his colt’s nerves as he lagged behind Royal Bay Gem. The two
horses brought up the rear through the first turn, up the backstretch, and into the second turn, and no one was watching as
Arcaro passed the flagging Correspondent and Tahitian King in the middle of the pack and surged beyond the Gem as well. Now,
seemingly out of nowhere, Jamie K. was making a run at the Dancer.

In two strides, Arcaro was within a head of the Grey Ghost, racing just to the outside of the favorite as they passed the
eighth pole. The subtext was delicious. Arcaro had complained all spring about the Dancer receiving too much acclaim, and
now he was challenging the colt in the stretch run of the Preakness, seeking to upset the odds-on favorite with a 17-1 shot.
A victory would do even more harm to the Dancer’s standing than Dark Star’s Derby surprise. Arcaro pounded Jamie K.’s flanks
as they came down the stretch, and Guerin, detecting the challenge, took up his stick and pounded the Dancer, too. The situation
was dangerous. The Dancer was running hard, but not too hard; his maddening habit of loafing on the lead could cost him this
time with Arcaro coming after him.

The two horses ran together in the slanting late afternoon sun, casting a pair of long shadows that melded into one as they
covered the final furlong. The crowd’s shriek was mirrored in living rooms across the country as a TV audience later estimated
at 10 million watched the Dancer try to hang on. Guerin put his stick down, then took it up again as Arcaro continued to urge
Jamie K. for more. The Dancer maintained the slimmest of leads, Jamie K. pressuring him but not drawing even as the finish
line neared. Arcaro needed to make up precious inches, the final fractions of the Dancer’s lead.

Jamie K. kept coming… and failed to draw even.

Took another jump… and remained just behind the Dancer.

Frozen in position, running together, yet separated by inches, they reached the finish line.

The Dancer had held on.

Guerin and Arcaro stood up just past the wire, signaling to their horses that the serious running was done. Jamie K. kept
digging until he nosed past Native Dancer heading into the turn. Some observers would refer to that when the two met again
in the Belmont Stakes three weeks later, believing Jamie K. would have completed the upset and won the Preakness with a few
extra strides. Other observers disagreed. “I thought at the time that it was Guerin’s supreme confidence that made the Preakness
close,” recalled Joe Tannenbaum, who covered the race for the
Miami Daily News
. “Guerin didn’t seem to put Native Dancer to a furious drive until maybe midstretch. Otherwise his victory may have been
a little more decisive.”

Decisive it wasn’t—but a victory it was, and an immensely popular one. The crowd stood and cheered as the grey colt was ridden
back in front of the grandstand, where Lester Murray snapped the shank on him and Harold Walker led him toward the winner’s
enclosure. Vanderbilt led a joyous rush to the winner’s circle. “He cut it a little close, didn’t he?” the smiling owner shouted
to reporters as he waited for the trophy ceremony to begin.

“What was the difference between this race and the Derby?” a newsman asked.

“Well,” Vanderbilt replied, “we won this one and we didn’t win that one.”

Guerin hopped off the Dancer wearing a huge smile, his relief apparent as he accepted congratulations from Vanderbilt in the
winner’s circle. Hundreds of fans rushed to the entrance of the enclosure and fanned out along the fence as track police stood
guard. The Dancer stood calmly amid the tumult. The Woodlawn Vase, an ornate silver trophy standing two feet high, was presented
to Vanderbilt, who posed for the win picture with Jeanne, Winfrey, Guerin, Maryland governor Theodore McKeldin, Pimlico president
C. C. Boshamer, and U.S. treasury secretary George Humphrey. Red Smith arrived with a microphone and a camera crew and went
down the line asking questions televised nationally on CBS.

“When did you hear Jamie K. coming?” Smith asked Guerin.

Before answering, the jockey greeted his young son, Ronnie, then fielded the question.

“I heard him coming soon enough,” he said.

“Were you worried?” Smith asked.

“I wasn’t,” Guerin said. “We went to the front a little sooner than I wanted. Dark Star stopped and I found myself on the
lead. But he was holding Jamie K. safe at the end. He responded when I asked.”

Next up, Winfrey admitted he was more worried than Guerin at the end. “The race was a little tight there, Red; Jamie K. surprised
me,” the trainer told Smith. Vanderbilt repeated the theme in his interview with Smith: “I didn’t think Jamie K. would get
that close to my horse. He’s dead game and better than I thought But I’m really proud of my horse, trainer, my jock, groom,
farm, and everything else.”

Vanderbilt was in high spirits. When Ralph Kercheval joined the celebration, Smith asked, on the air, if that was the man
who had raised Native Dancer. Vanderbilt replied, “Yes, Ralph Kercheval raised the horse. And Mrs. Vanderbilt raised me!”

When CBS’s cameras were turned off, Guerin turned and jogged toward the jockeys’ room. Arcaro was waiting at the top of the
stairs leading to the room. He had heard Guerin tell the TV audience the Dancer was “holding Jamie K. safe” at the wire.

“Don’t try to tell me I didn’t have you worried!” Arcaro shouted with a smile.

“Yes, you had me plenty worried,” Guerin said. “But my horse didn’t run his best race. He was doing his best, but I had to
get into him with the whip. It was only the second time I’ve had to do that.”

Later, as he showered and dressed to catch a train to New York, Arcaro told reporters he had been forced to stray from his
original plan. “I had hoped to make my move at the three-eighths pole,” he explained, “but Royal Bay Gem was coming up on
my outside and I knew I couldn’t wait. Maybe if I could have waited longer, the result would have been different. Then again,
maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. Who knows?”

Outside, fans holding winning bets lined up at the windows to receive their money. “There was a huge mob,” recalled Joe Kelly,
then the vice president of the Maryland Horseman’s Association. “The city editor of the
Baltimore Sun
had come out and bet fifty dollars, which was a lot of money, on the Dancer, and while he won the bet, he got caught in the
stampede at the window after the race and his topcoat was torn. Everyone said he broke even—won the bet, tore his coat.”

So much had been bet on the Dancer that his victory created a “minus pool” of $46,012. In other words, even though the Dancer
was racing at odds of just twenty cents on the dollar, so much was going out that the track had to chip in more than $46,000
to ensure that all winning bets were paid.

The winning celebration continued back at the barn as the Grey Ghost cooled out. In a Preakness tradition, the Stevens catering
company delivered a case of champagne for the stable hands.

“I didn’t even know Jamie K.’s name until he came after us,” Lester Murray said, holding a glass of champagne.

Winfrey spoke to reporters. “We had hoped he would win a little easier,” the trainer said. “Frankly, I was more impressed
with his race in the Derby.”

Many others in the racing industry would feel similarly, that the Dancer, despite winning the Preakness, had added little
to his legend. His move at the head of the stretch had been impressive, but he had wobbled to the finish line, some thought,
barely holding off the charge of a horse with an inferior record. It was later estimated that Jamie K. had gained ten lengths
on the winner down the stretch. A superhorse was not supposed to yield so much ground.

On the other hand, he had made a powerful move that smartly disposed of the Kentucky Derby winner at the three-eighths pole,
relatively far from the finish line, yet still summoned enough strength to hold off Arcaro at the end. That was not a feat
to be diminished. “He raced the speed horses into the ground, then held off a great challenge,” Evan Shipman wrote in the
Morning Telegraph
. “Jamie K. had collared him at the eighth pole. If the Dancer had been any less than outstanding, Arcaro’s tactics would
have worked. But Native Dancer was equal to the challenge.”

An hour after the race, Winfrey looked the horse over and pronounced him in “perfect” condition. “We’ll van him back to New
York tomorrow, and we’ll run him in the Belmont,” the trainer said. He needed to leave to attend a victory celebration the
Vanderbilts were hosting at Sagamore Farm that night, with the Preakness trophy serving as a centerpiece. It would be a happy
affair. The trip “home” to Maryland had turned out splendidly for the horse and his owner.

Vanderbilt knew the experts were right to criticize the Dancer’s poor finish, but he didn’t care. He had won a Triple Crown
race, his first after almost two decades in racing. The thrill was incomparable, and he was grateful to those who had helped
make it happen. Back in New York several days later, he pulled Bernie Everson aside after the Dancer’s morning workout at
Belmont and told the exercise rider to go pick out a car. Vanderbilt was buying. Everson selected a light blue Mercury Marquis.

The mood was not nearly so buoyant at Harry Guggenheim’s Cain Hoy Stable. In fact, the news was grim: Dark Star had seemed
fine at the barn after finishing fifth in the Preakness, leaving trainer Eddie Hayward without an excuse for the colt’s failure
in the stretch, but a veterinarian had examined the colt on Monday and, shockingly, discovered a “bowed” tendon in the right
foreleg. Such tears in the superficial digital flexor tendon, while not a death knell, tend to heal slowly, with scar tissue
replacing the torn fibers. That severely compromises the racing mechanism. Guggenheim’s only choice was to retire Dark Star
to stud. The horse’s racing career was over just twenty-three days after he had won the Kentucky Derby. “It is a sad occasion
to have to retire such a game horse,” Guggenheim said. “I am very proud of his accomplishments.”

In time, his Derby triumph would be known as one of racing’s all-time surprises, an unthinkable upset propagated by a group
of onehit wonders. Hayward would never bring another horse to the Derby. Moreno would finish out of the money in his two other
chances. Guggenheim, encouraged by the Derby success, would invest considerably more time and money in his stable, but although
Cain Hoy grew into one of racing’s better outfits, especially after Woody Stephens was hired as trainer in 1955, it never
produced another Derby winner.

Dark Star and Native Dancer would become linked—quite an irony, as they opposed each other only three times in their careers
and finished near each other only once, in Louisville. But the setting for Dark Star’s victory and the arc of the rest of
the Dancer’s career assured their unlikely coupling as the main characters in one of racing’s unforgettable dramas.

Could Dark Star have become a great rival for the Grey Ghost?

His unspectacular overall record didn’t suggest it, but his last three races did. He won the Derby Trial, then led the Dancer
from start to finish in the Derby and also led him through the first mile of the Preakness. In other words, he had raced in
front of the favored grey for more than two miles of Triple Crown turf, faltering only after suffering a career-ending injury.
“I thought Dark Star was vastly underrated,” Tannenbaum said. “He had tremendous speed. Native Dancer was pounds better, and
I feel he would have won the Preakness even without the injury to Dark Star, but Dark Star, in any other year, would have
been a top three-year-old.”

Whether he would have continued to compete at the level he exhibited in his Triple Crown races was unknown, of course. The
Preakness was Dark Star’s final race. The second jewel of the 1953 Triple Crown had been labeled a rematch of champions, a
race that would decide who belonged at the top of the three-year-old class, but in the end, one was eliminated. Dark Star
went back to the obscurity from which he had come, shipped to Kentucky to stand at Claiborne Farm. The Dancer went on, his
grey coat shining ever brighter in the spotlight’s glare.