Secretariat. William Nack

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СКАЧАТЬ 1969—59 performers, 90 wins, and $1,357,144.

      While his two-year-olds were often precocious and brilliant, and for five years he was America’s leading sire of juveniles, Bold Ruler’s ability to transmit stamina became suspect. His sons Bold Lad, Successor, and Vitriolic, as well as his daughters Queen of the Stage and Queen Empress, were all champion two-year-olds in their divisions. Yet each failed to return as a champion three-year-old, the year the distances stretch out. No son or daughter of Bold Ruler, in all the seven seasons he dominated the sire standings, had ever won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, or Belmont stakes.

      As he added championship upon championship to his record at the stud, his value as a stallion climbed to an incalculable level. Gladys Phipps was the founder of a major racing dynasty, one supported largely by dozens of valuable broodmares at Claiborne Farm, and she and her heirs were interested in maintaining and building on it, not selling the fruits of it piecemeal.

      Money could be made in many ways, but there was only one Bold Ruler, and he was the stuff to build and serve a racing dynasty. William Woodward, Sr., was fond of saying, “Upon the quality of the matron depends the success of the stud.” Bull Hancock later agreed with that, but he would add, “Remember, Mr. Woodward’s big success came when he got Sir Gallahad III as a stallion. As long as I have a Nasrullah and a Princequillo, an Ambiorix, Double Jay and Hill Prince, I’ll be on top.” (Ambiorix, another import from France, and Double Jay were leading stallions in America in the postwar resurgence of Claiborne as a thoroughbred nursery.)

      Mrs. Phipps had the greatest stallion in the history of the American turf in this century, and his breeding services were not for sale. Owners of mares would have to enter into an unusual agreement with the Phippses to get a mare bred to Bold Ruler. In general, a breeder would offer the Phippses a prospective broodmare for Bold Ruler. If the mare was acceptable, she would be bred to Bold Ruler for two seasons, or until she had two foals. First choice of the foals was determined by the flip of a coin. Thus, Bold Ruler was the Phippses’ lever in acquiring foals out of some of the finest broodmares in the world, broodmares they did not own. And one of the breeders with high-class mares was Ogden Phipps’s friend, and a fellow member of the Jockey Club, Christopher T. Chenery.

      Chenery had been sending mares regularly to Bold Ruler at Claiborne, where he had Hill Prince standing at the stud, since Bold Ruler stood his initial season there. The first mare Chenery sent him was Imperatrice, and in 1960 the twenty-two-year-old matron had a filly foal that Mrs. Chenery named Speedwell. The Meadow Stable’s Speedwell was Bold Ruler’s first of many stakes winners. Chenery sent his mare First Flush to Bold Ruler in 1961, and she had a filly foal named Bold Experience, who eventually won $91,477 at the races.

      In 1965, Chenery ceased sending mares singly to Bold Ruler. Instead, in a coin-flip arrangement with the Phippses, he began sending two mares to Claiborne every year. The Phipps-Chenery deal, matching the greatest sire in America with some of Chenery’s choicest mares, was anything but a smash: the biggest winner, the stakes-winning Virginia Delegate who started fifty-five times and won $67,154, ended up a gelding.

      Then events began unfolding in the spring of 1968 that set the stage for the most monumental coin toss in racing history, a curious flip in which the winner lost and the loser won—but neither knew it at the time.

      For the breeding season of 1968, Chenery sent the mares Somethingroyal and Hasty Matelda across the Alleghenies to Claiborne Farm. Each was bred to Bold Ruler. Each conceived. Each had a foal the following year.

      Hasty Matelda had a colt foal.

      On March 19, 1969, Somethingroyal had a filly foal.

      Just a month later at Claiborne Farm, Somethingroyal entered her heat cycle, and on April 20 she was separated from her suckling foal and taken to a stall at one end of the black creosote board breeding shed at Claiborne. In the adjoining stall, his head sticking into Somethingroyal’s stall over an open half door, was a “teasing” stallion named Charlie, a mongrel of Percheron and saddle horse ancestry. Somethingroyal was already believed to be in heat, but the breeding men wanted to be sure, so they walked her into that stall next to Charlie the teaser. Charlie nipped at Somethingroyal, sniffed at her, nuzzled her. She did not protest, backing up to Charlie, squatting, and exposing herself to him. “She was red hot,” said the keeper of the stallions, Lawrence Robinson. But Somethingroyal was not mounted by Charlie, as are some of the virgin mares. A few of the thoroughbred stallions at Claiborne come into the breeding shed screaming and whinnying. Such carryings-on can frighten a maiden mare, especially when the screamer mounts her for the first time. Docile Charlie, among his other jobs at the farm, was trotted out to mount such nervous mares—though he did not have intercourse with them—to get them used to it.

      Somethingroyal was taken around the breeding shed, where the road runs past the huge sliding front doors, and walked inside the large 35-by-35-foot room. Robinson signaled Snow Fields, Bold Ruler’s groom. Fields went to the main cinder block stallion barn and unfastened the sliding bolt from Bold Ruler’s stall, with its fireproof ceiling and stained oak walls and heavy oaken door. Snow slipped a bridle on the horse, inserting a straight, stainless-steel bar bit in his mouth, clipped a lead shank to it, and walked the horse the short distance from the stall to the front of the breeding shed.

      Robinson met Fields outside the shed, took the shank, and walked Bold Ruler through the door, turning him around in the nearest corner so that he faced Somethingroyal, who was standing in the center of the room with her back to him. One man held Somethingroyal. Her hind legs stood in an indentation on the gravel floor where the hind legs of hundreds of other mares had stood while breeding and bearing the weight of the stallion. Other men—including Dr. Walter Kaufman, holding a pint cup—waited nearby.

      Bold Ruler’s penis dropped from its flap as he walked into the breeding shed. He was a fifteen-year-old horse who knew what he was about. The mood was sober and businesslike.

      Fields immediately dipped a sponge into a bucket of warm, clear water and washed Bold Ruler’s penis, which was beginning to stiffen. Some stallions excite themselves into readiness by sniffing at a mare, but Bold Ruler was not one of them. All he needed to do was look. Robinson restrained the horse, who soon began prancing, and waited until he saw the horse was ready, watching for the penis to harden fully. Irving Embry, at the front of Somethingroyal, lifted up her left front foot, a precaution designed to prevent her from kicking Bold Ruler while he mounted her. Another man moved in and lifted the mare’s tail. Privacy was neither demanded nor afforded.

      Robinson brought the horse forward and raised the shank. Bold Ruler mounted Somethingroyal in an instant. Holding the shank with his left hand, standing on the left side of the horse and mare, Robinson gave Bold Ruler one final assist: with his right hand, he guided the penis in. Bold Ruler was inside Somethingroyal no more than two and a half minutes, and Robinson watched for the single most compelling sign that the horse had covered the mare, watched for the flagging of the horse’s tail, the dipping of it during orgasm. Some stud horses dismount during copulation, either to rest or prolong the pleasure of it, but Bold Ruler rarely did. “He was one of the most wonderfullest coverin’ horses you have ever seen,” Robinson said. “The first time up, every time.”

      Bold Ruler flagged. And as he dismounted Somethingroyal, Dr. Kaufman came to the horse’s side with the pint cup to catch a dripping for examination. Then Fields, with a sponge dipped into a soap and disinfectant solution, washed the horse again. Bold Ruler was then led from the barn, no more than five minutes after he walked into it, and was turned out to romp on the greenery of his nearby private pasture.

      Kaufman later checked the dripping, in a routine examination, to make sure the horse had ejaculated. He had.

      Two days later, on April 22, Somethingroyal was returned to the breeding shed for a second and final mating СКАЧАТЬ