Native Dancer (34 page)

Days after the Dancer was shut down for the year, Jock Whitney announced that Tom Fool would be permanently retired at the
end of his four-year-old season. He would race in the Sysonby and Pimlico Special, then embark on a new career as a stallion
at Greentree Farm in Kentucky. The dream race between Tom Fool and the Dancer would never occur, a victim of injuries, timing,
and happenstance.

Without the Dancer to challenge him, Tom Fool easily won the Sysonby and Pimlico Special to end his season unbeaten in ten
starts. Only two horses opposed him in the Sysonby, and he won so handily that jockey Teddy Atkinson was easing him through
the stretch. He also had only two horses to beat in the Special, and he won by eight lengths, setting a new track record for
one and three-sixteenth miles.

There was little suspense when the sport’s end-of-the-year honors were announced in December, as voted on by various panels
of racing secretaries and writers. The Dancer was the champion male three-year-old. Tom Fool was the champion male handicap
horse.

They were the only candidates for overall Horse of the Year honors, but the balloting wasn’t close. Tom Fool won all polls
easily, almost unanimously.

The voting results were hard for some of the Dancer’s fans to fathom. The Grey Ghost had won nine of ten starts, two-thirds
of the Triple Crown, and $513,425 in 1953. He ranked fourth on the sport’s all-time earnings list. He had lost one race in
his life; Tom Fool had lost nine. How could Native Dancer not be the Horse of the Year? On the other hand, Tom Fool had, indeed,
accomplished more in some ways in 1953. He had carried 130 or more pounds in four starts; Native Dancer never carried more
than 128. He had won every time out, whereas Native Dancer had lost the Derby. And he had often dominated, winning many races
by sizable margins; Native Dancer had often needed to rally in the stretch. The public loved the Dancer’s sense of drama,
but racing insiders were more impressed with Tom Fool. John Turner, the director of racing at Pimlico, told the
Daily Racing Form
that Tom Fool as a four-year-old was the best horse he had seen in twenty-five years.

Interestingly, when various panels of experts almost a half century later were asked to rate the best horses of the twentieth
century, the Dancer always finished ahead of Tom Fool, the Greentree colt being penalized in the long run for not winning
a Triple Crown race or winning at any distances longer than one and a quarter miles. Tom Fool was the experts’ choice at the
time, but the Dancer was judged superior in the end.

“Native Dancer and [1979 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner] Spectacular Bid are the two greatest horses I have ever seen;
they did things even the Triple Crown winners never did,” Joe Tannenbaum said. “Native Dancer’s victorious races were awesome.
He had an all-conquering run once Guerin let him loose. He gave the impression that if there was a brick wall in front of
him, he would just run right through it to finish first. He had a charisma when racing that made you think that if you didn’t
know who he was, just by watching him you’d say, ‘There goes a champion.’ His stride, his drive, his nerve, everything about
him was exceptional. It was almost like he shouldn’t even be running against other horses, he was so much in a class by himself.”

A race against Tom Fool would have provided the ultimate test for him, but it never happened. The horses were on the track
together only once, when they paraded through the stretch on Red Cross Day at Belmont in early November 1953. The fans cheered
and longed to see them loaded into the starting gate and sent running, but instead they went their separate ways, Tom Fool
to a stud career and the Dancer to Sagamore Farm, where he would spend the winter recovering from his injury and prepare for
1954. The question of which would have won, had they raced, became one of racing’s great mysteries, endlessly debated, never
resolved.

W
hen the Dancer made his stakes-race debut as a four-year-old in the Metropolitan Handicap, a mile race at Belmont, on May
15, 1954, it was clear he was no longer just a champion with a large following. He had become a cultural landmark, his renown
stretching beyond racing’s boundaries into crevasses and corners of the country that racing had seldom reached.
Time
, the nation’s foremost newsmagazine, had assigned a reporter to trail the colt and prepare a cover story.
TV Guide
, a weekly magazine devoted to the new medium, had named him one of the three most popular TV figures of 1953, along with
comedian Arthur Godfrey and host Ed Sullivan. Millions of viewers, as many as watched the Triple Crown races, were expected
to tune in to CBS’s national telecast of the Metropolitan, with Bryan Field calling the race.

The Dancer hadn’t raced in a major event in nine months, and more than 39,000 fans came to Belmont on a cloudy Saturday afternoon
to watch him run. His prolonged absence forged an insatiable curiosity before the race, similar to the scene before the Dancer’s
1953 debut in the Gotham Stakes. Hundreds of fans swarmed the paddock to get a closer look at a colt now standing 16.3 hands
high and weighing 1,250 pounds, truly a grey monster in his racing tack. Old-timers couldn’t recall a larger crowd around
Belmont’s saddling shed and walking ring.

The riding tack was brought in and the Dancer reared magnificently when Winfrey tightened the cinch belt around his waist,
drawing a gasp from the crowd, but the horse was composed again within moments, seemingly waiting to be led to the track.
“He’s the coolest horse I’ve ever seen,” Winfrey said to a reporter. “He knows when it’s time to race, and he anticipates
it. But none of this bothers him in the least.”

Blue-coated security guards had to cut a swath through the herd to get the Dancer and his eight rivals to the track for the
race. A wide-eyed stew of horsemen and racing officials huddled inside the ropes, fixated on the colt.

Other champions had raced to the forefront of the American public’s consciousness before, but never, safe to say, had one
become such a popular figure, such a hero to so many. Television was partly responsible, of course. The Dancer’s career was
the first of equine distinction to have unfolded live in living rooms across the country, and it did so just as the powerful
sense of intimacy that TV generated was being realized, with viewers feeling, however irrationally, that the actresses, newsmen,
athletes, and horses they saw on the screen were so familiar they were almost part of the family. Fans drawn to their sets
by the spectacle of racing and the phenomenon of the medium had watched the Dancer win and lose and win and win, always dramatically,
with a closing rush, and had become as attached to his races as they were to the other programs now dictating their nighttime
routines, such as
Dragnet
, the police drama starring Jack Webb,
I Love Lucy
, and Sullivan’s New York-based variety show. The Dancer was, in a sense, like Godfrey and Sullivan, the star of his own show,
and what a TV classic it was, faithfully incorporating danger, suspense, and, with one unforgettable exception, a happy ending.

Tom Gilcoyne, a marketing executive from New Jersey who later became the historian at the National Museum of Racing in Saratoga,
had followed racing since the 1920s and seldom seen such hysteria over a horse. “Native Dancer and Milton Berle made TV popular,”
recalled Gilcoyne, who saw the Grey Ghost in person in the Futurity, Withers, and Belmont and otherwise followed him on TV.
“He gathered up the sorts of fans who had never been to a track and brought them to racing. He was different, a grey. You
could really watch him during a race. It wasn’t just a bunch of bays and browns running around. You could pick him up on the
TV screen and follow him, and when he made his surge, you surged with him. People cheered him like they cheered their heroes
on the football field.”

It wasn’t just the power of the medium, however; the “message” in the Dancer’s races—his winning qualities—was also essential
to his popularity. There were reasons why he had become America’s horse instead of Tom Fool as the public debated their respective
merits. The two were equally gifted, exemplifying the thoroughbred breed at its finest with their power, speed, and heart,
but the Dancer was more idiosyncratic, exuding the smoky allure of a legend. He preferred to take the harder road—coming from
behind instead of dominating, relaxing in the stretch instead of pulling away—yet no matter how hard he made it on himself,
he always prevailed. He also had a distinct personality: he was a cutup around the barn in the mornings and had been labeled
“a lazy so-and-so” on national TV by Winfrey, yet as Evan Shipman had written, he was the consummate professional, always
knowing when it was time to stop fooling around and go to work. Hard-core race-goers loved his class. Casual fans loved his
coloring and individualism. Everyone, it seemed, loved being on his side.

“No one has ever quite documented how or why the legend of a champion grows,”
Time
wrote of the Dancer. “The present has its press agents as the past had its poets. (Was Achilles really that good, or did
Homer just make him seem so?) But a legend’s feats endure because of what he adds: an undying spirit of competition, an ability
to inspire awe, a willingness to gamble on losing, the guts to lose and rise again, an elusive mixture of spirit and showmanship.
Whatever it is called—flair, class, style or what Hemingway once termed ‘grace under pressure’—it is the quality that breeds
sport legend.”

The Grey Ghost had it. Jock Whitney, sending out the dangerous Greentree gelding Straight Face to try to beat the Dancer in
the Metropolitan, gazed at the grey favorite being saddled in the crowded paddock before the race. “If anyone beats him, I
hope it’s my horse,” Whitney mused, then reconsidered and corrected himself with a wan smile: “It’s strange, but I hope the
Dancer wins.” The comments were overheard by the
Time
reporter, who later printed them. Even the opposition was rooting for Vanderbilt’s champion.

The Dancer’s return to the races was welcomed by a racing public looking for action. The 1954 Triple Crown season was under
way, the Kentucky Derby already run and the Preakness coming up, but it was a pale imitation of the 1953 drama featuring the
Dancer, Dark Star, and Jamie K. A tough little grey named Determine had won the Derby, but his owner, Andy Crevolin, had shipped
him back to California rather than run him in the Preakness. None of the three-year-olds had the makings of a star, and with
Tom Fool at stud, every other horse seemed pint-sized compared to the larger-than-life Dancer.

The Grey Ghost was more exciting just preparing to race than the others were at full speed. The colt had actually made his
1954 racing debut eight days before the Metropolitan in a weekday afternoon allowance at Belmont, “and as he stood in the
stall with his handlers before the race, he was so massive and rock-like that he could have been hewn from New Hampshire granite,”
Evan Shipman wrote. “Immobile, he was as weighty as a monument. But he did not remain immobile for long. Twice, he reared
majestically while Les Murray clung to the shank. His eye, usually so calm when action was imminent, was wicked and fiery,
like that of a seed bull.”

Now, there was a racehorse.

The Dancer had spent the winter under Ralph Kercheval’s care at Sagamore Farm instead of traveling with Winfrey and the rest
of Vanderbilt’s horses to California; he had then rejoined the stable at Belmont in March and trained under Winfrey until
now. Winfrey and Vanderbilt had chosen the obscure spot to prep him for the Metropolitan, and 21,792 fans came to Belmont
to see him shake off the rust that had accumulated during his long layoff. John Campbell, the respected New York racing secretary,
had assigned him 126 pounds, five more than Laffango, an old rival, and from twelve to eighteen pounds more than the rest
of the field, mostly fringe four-year-olds. The race, titled the Commando Purse, was just six furlongs, the shortest distance
the Dancer had raced since the spring of his two-year-old season.

Even though the late-running Dancer was better at longer distances and there was a chance he could get caught in traffic and
not have time to rally, the bettors, predictably, leaned heavily on him, backing him down to 3–20 odds by post time. Justifying
the support, the colt raced as if he had never stopped, following his familiar blueprint of “rating” near the lead until the
turn, then accelerating and zooming to the lead as he straightened for home. Showing no signs of the foot injury that had
ended his 1953 season, he reached the finish line slightly more than a length ahead of Laffango, who was a neck in front of
a colt named Impasse. It wasn’t an overpowering performance and the winning time of 1:11⅘ was modest, but “there is no way
of knowing how fast the Dancer might have gone had he been urged,” the
Morning Telegraph
reported. “Guerin never touched him with his stick and had only to move his hands to take command, then scrubbed intermittently
through the final furlong as the rivals behind him struggled desperately under whip, hand and heel.”