NEWS
Fourstardave dies of heart attack at Belmont Park
Posted: Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Multiple graded stakes winner Fourstardave, who earned the nickname "The Sultan of Saratoga" for winning at least one race at Saratoga Race Course for eight consecutive years, died at age 17 from an apparent heart attack on Tuesday morning at Belmont Park.Trainer Leo O'Brien, who campaigned the popular gelding by Compliance throughout his career, said Fourstardave was out for a jog on the Belmont training track when he suffered the heart attack.
Fourstardave, who also jogged on the training track on Sunday and Monday, had been shipped from his retirement home in Ocala to Belmont for Saturday's New York Showcase program.
"They were going to parade him during the races," O'Brien said. "He had been put into some light training for the last couple of weeks so he would look OK. We were just jogging him this morning, just as we had the last three days."
"He was grand about the whole thing and never turned a hair," O'Brien said. "He was jogging alongside the pony today, stopped, backed up, and keeled over. It was heartbreaking. I guess he died doing what he loved to do."
O'Brien said owner Richard Bomze has already been in touch with New York Racing Association officials about burying the venerable star at Saratoga Race Course, which annually runs a stakes race on the Travers Stakes (G1) undercard in the gelding's honor.
Fourstardave had been paraded in front of the Saratoga crowd in the immediate years after his retirement but had not made the trip from Another Episode Farm near Ocala recently.
"He was a tremendous horse. I'd like to have one like him again," O'Brien said. "Hopefully, they'll try to bury him in Saratoga. We're trying to get that sorted out right now."
Bred in New York by Bomze, Fourstardave made 100 career starts from two to ten, posting 21 victories, 18 seconds, and 16 thirds while earning $1,636,737.
Fourstardave won 13 stakes events, including six at Saratoga. He posted his first victory at the upstate New York track in the 1987 Empire Stakes going six furlongs on the main track in his third career start.
Fourstardave would later go on to capture back-to-back runnings of the 1990 and '91 Daryl's Joy Stakes (G3)—the race now named the Fourstardave Handicap (G3). He also won the West Point Handicap in 1989 and '91 and the '88 Albany Stakes.
In the 1991 Daryl's Joy, Fourstardave established a Saratoga Race Course record for 1 1/16 miles on the turf in 1:38.91, a mark that still stands.
"He loved Saratoga and he loved the heat. That's why we had him in Florida," O'Brien said. "He was the kind of horse that gave you everything."—Tom Law
