These Three Horses Are a Breed Apart

BALTIMORE —  The decline of the American thoroughbred has been the subject of endless discussion and lament for the better part of two decades. The golden era of modern racing -- which produced Secretariat, Seattle Slew, Affirmed, etc. -- ended with the retirement of Spectacular Bid in 1980. Since that time, the sport has had few genuinely great horses and great performances. Its most-watched events, the Triple Crown races, often have been instantly forgettable.

So racing fans ought to savor what is happening in 1997 and, specifically, what happened at Pimlico on Saturday. This crop of 3-year-olds is the best in many years and the best we are likely to see for a long time. They delivered scintillating drama in the Preakness, as Silver Charm edged Free House and the late-charging Captain Bodgit in a head-bobbing photo finish.

Even the most jaded observers were thrilled. Dave Rodman, Pimlico’s track announcer, remarked: “I pride myself on being objective, and I never get emotional about a race. But this was the greatest race I’ve ever seen.” My own assessment is that this was the best race since the Sunday Silence-Easy Goer duel in the 1989 Breeders’ Cup.

What makes these horses so good -- and so easy for the most casual observers to appreciate -- is their competitive spirit. Silver Charm is as tenacious as a horse can be. He looked beaten when Captain Bodgit surged alongside him in the Kentucky Derby, but he wouldn’t let his rival go past. He was relentless in the stretch drive of the Preakness, too. Captain Bodgit is no less admirable. Even when the conditions are against him (as they were on Pimlico’s speed-favoring track), he always makes his big late run.

But neither of these colts has run a race as good as Touch Gold did Saturday. After watching the Preakness films over and over, I still can’t quite believe what he did. Touch Gold stumbled at the start so badly that he hit his head on the ground. In the run to the first turn, he found himself several lengths behind Captain Bodgit. He moved three-wide on the first turn and then rushed into contention on the backstretch, making up many lengths on leaders who were moving at high speed. If Touch Gold had wound up losing by a dozen lengths, he would still be on every handicapper’s horses-to-watch list because of this impossible trip. Yet he finished fourth, losing by less than two lengths to rivals whose races went according to plan.

While visual impressions can sometimes be deceptive, Silver Charm’s winning time for the Preakness-1 minute 544/5 seconds over a racing strip that was not very fast-verified how good these horses are. In my system of speed figures, the top three finishers each earned ratings of 118, and Touch Gold got a 116. The last five Preaknesses, by comparison, were won by Louis Quatorze (112), Timber Country (106), Tabasco Cat (112), Prairie Bayou (98) and Pine Bluff (104). Any one of the top four finishers Saturday could have dominated most Triple Crown events of the 1990s.

Optimists would love to believe that the emergence of these brilliant horses signifies a resurgence of the sport. Silver Charm’s owner, Bob Lewis, expressed that hope after the Preakness when he said: “This speaks so well for the thoroughbred industry. . . . I’m just bullish on the future of the industry.”

But the development of so many good horses in one year is probably an accident of history rather than the start of a trend. The golden years of the 1970s and the lean years of the ‘80s and ‘90s were the direct result of the rise and fall of the American breeding industry. The age of champions represented the full flowering of the industry, whose steady growth had begun in the postwar period. The great stallion Bold Ruler stamped his influence on generations of racehorses; Secretariat was his son, Seattle Slew and Spectacular bid his direct descendants.

When foreign buyers began to dominate American horse auctions in the late 1970s, they took this country’s best pedigrees overseas, and the whole quality of the U.S. horse industry has declined steadily as a result. The brilliant horses in this year’s Triple Crown aren’t the result of the industry’s strength so much as they are genetic flukes. Silver Charm’s sire, Silver Buck, has not distinguished himself at stud and stands for a $6,000 stud fee. Smokester, the sire of Free House, started his career with a stud fee of zero: Nobody wanted to breed to him.

The appearance of so many brilliant horses in the same crop is a phenomenon we should fully appreciate because it is unlikely to happen again. In a couple of decades from now, when everybody is lamenting the continued decline of the American thoroughbred, we old-timers will be boring youngsters with recollections of the fabulous horses of 1997 and the stirring battles they waged. In the words of singer Carly Simon: These are the good old days.