Tale of a long-ago race connects to racing's current problems

Thoroughbred racing has never been a game for innocents. And yet we all start out that way.

The author's personal fascination with the sport that became a lifelong obsession-as well as a very enjoyable livelihood-really began in 1957 when Bold Ruler and *Gallant Man were three-year-olds. I had been remotely aware of Swaps and Nashua two years before, but by 1957 two other more significant events had occurred: I had read Walter Farley's The Black Stallion and my parents had bought our first television set.

Don't ask me why, but it wasn't the big, black, fiery Bold Ruler I fell in love with. On black and white TV 44 years ago, you really could not tell that it was the big son of *Nasrullah that looked far more like Walter Farley's mythical magnificent beast than that little, dumpy pony of a horse, *Gallant Man.

It was *Gallant Man that came flying from far back with dramatic stretch runs. It was *Gallant Man who was an afterthought, thrown in to a deal to keep a more expensive colt company when Ralph Lowe bought a full brother to champion *Tulyar from the Aga Khan. It was *Gallant Man who represented, in my mind, the underdog, the nobody, the poor boy fighting his way to the top against those evil aristocrats-like Bold Ruler-who always won. A nobody, just like me.

Hey, I was ten, and, as we all begin, innocent.

*Gallant Man lost the Kentucky Derby, maybe because my human hero, Bill Shoemaker, the man I was going to displace as the world's greatest jockey, stood up briefly in the irons at the sixteenth pole. (Who knew I was going to grow up to be 6'3" just because my dad was 6'5"?) At least *Gallant Man had beaten Bold Ruler, who ran an uncharacteristically tame fourth.

*Gallant Man did not run in the Preakness Stakes, but Bold Ruler did, taking the track from the start and winning easily. The little Irish colt won his classic in the Belmont Stakes, as *Bold Nero, that expensive full brother to *Tulyar, served as his rabbit, running Bold Ruler into the ground. *Gallant Man won by eight lengths, setting a Belmont Park track record for 1 1/2 miles that lasted until Secretariat's Belmont in 1973.

Bold Ruler's desultory performance in the Kentucky Derby had long been a mystery, one of those races consigned to the "they're not machines" category in the career of a horse who won 23-of-33 starts and was out of the top two on only five other occasions. These things happen. Horses, like people, have bad days.

That's racing. That's life.

It was a mystery until just the other day when I ran into my friend, John Jacobs, son of Hirsch Jacobs, one of the greatest trainers of the Bold Ruler-*Gallant Man era, at the Fasig-Tipton Calder two-year-olds in training sale. I asked his opinion of the new drug-testing procedures at the sale. As it always seems to do when I run into friends who remember racing as it was truly meant to be, however, the conversation soon broadened to include all of modern racing's problems, including public perceptions of widespread drug use.

To illustrate a point, Jacobs told me a story.

"In 1957," Jacobs said, "Eddie Arcaro was riding some horses for my father as well as riding Bold Ruler for Mr. Fitz (James E. "Sunny Jim" Fitzsimmons, trainer of Bold Ruler). After the Derby, he asked Arcaro what happened to Bold Ruler and Arcaro told him that the horse just didn't warm up well because he was sore and stiff. (It became well-known in racing later that Bold Ruler was arthritic.).

"Arcaro said Mr. Fitz had told him not to worry, though. Bold Ruler would be a different horse in the Preakness, because he had something new to give him that would help him.

"Well, we all know what happened. Bold Ruler did run like a different horse in the Preakness and won easily. Later on, my father saw Mr. Fitz and asked him what he had given Bold Ruler that made such a big difference in the way he ran.

"You know what it was? Butazolidin. Somebody had given him some to try.

Nobody had ever heard of it and it was brand new."

Finally, after all these years. Vindication! Bold Ruler was a hop horse!

Bold Ruler won 11 of 14 career starts after the Belmont and was named Horse of the Year and champion three-year-old colt in 1957. Whether he ran on Bute consistently for the rest of his career, no one alive knows, but Fitzsimmons did not make it into the Racing Hall of Fame by being stupid or reluctant to do whatever he could to win.

What we do know is that Bold Ruler retired to stud at Claiborne Farm and became one of the greatest sires in the history of Thoroughbred racing, leading the American sire list eight times in the 1960s and '70s. His male line lives on primarily through great-grandson Seattle Slew and his sons.

Although the Bold Rulers were incredibly brilliant and precocious, they were also incredibly fragile. There is little doubt that his success contributed to the decline in soundness of the American racehorse that continues unabated to this day.

Which brings us back to racing's current problems: Small fields of undistinguished horses, huge grandstands with a smattering of fans in isolated clusters, and public perception of widespread, illicit drug use. It is a long, unhappy list.

The question is, if Bold Ruler had not raced on Butazolidin-which was, of course, illegal but undetectable at the time-would he have been sound enough to win 11 of 14 starts after the Belmont and become the great champion that he was?

What if he had retired after the Kentucky Derby as the winner of the Futurity Stakes and the Flamingo, but basically just another brilliant, precocious speed horse? Would he have had the kind of opportunity at stud that enabled him to become a great sire?

Maybe. Maybe not.

The point is, use of a drug that has now been legal in most jurisdictions for three decades allowed Bold Ruler to be a great racehorse and a great sire, but with a hidden poison pill-unsoundness. That poison pill, multiplied many times over by other top racehorses that raced on Bute and many other legal medications, has contributed to the unsoundness of the modern racehorse. In the 1950s when Bold Ruler raced, American racehorses averaged 33 starts in their careers. From 1985 through 1994, they averaged but 14.5.

There should be little wonder inside Thoroughbred racing about why racing's popularity has declined. There are many obvious reasons, but one of the most important but least recognized is that the quality of the product has declined.

Before "therapeutic" medications became legal, the best racetracks could offer full fields of quality racehorses that stayed around for long careers and developed fans. Horses-top horses such as Bold Ruler-often ran on consecutive weekends. Jacobs noted that his father's best colt in 1957, Promised Land, who finished fourth to Bold Ruler in the Preakness, later ran on four consecutive weekends, running his best race to win the San Juan Capistrano Handicap at the end of that sequence.

Is there a Thoroughbred alive that could do that today?

In the larger, long-range picture, therapeutic drugs are not humane if they do not help create a sounder, healthier racehorse that can do the job for which he was bred.

As the case of Bold Ruler illustrates, more than 40 years of experience have proven pretty conclusively that allowing unsound horses to show their "true abilities" through pharmaceuticals does not, in the long run, produce sounder racehorses.

When the world was young and innocent, soundness was an integral and necessary part of a racehorse's true ability.

Why not now?

Thoroughbred racing has gone astray over the last 30 years. It is impossible to return to the lost innocence of our youth. But it is not impossible for racing to return to something approaching the rules in place before we were sold the "therapeutic medication" story.

All it takes is the will to do it.