The NYRA racing show that now comes on daily on either FS1 or MSG+ is a treasure. You do have to have an interest in the sport, and with that interest you are likely one who gets a bet down more than now and then.
Gabby is from a Mid-Atlantic racing family, principally Maryland, putting horses out on the tracks in that region. Her father was trainer, her mother is a trainer, her sister Lacy is a trainer, and as Gabby recounts in an interview in Thoroughbred Today with the editor Claudia L. Ruiz, her entire upbringing was around horses, and the family conversations about horses. 24/7, horses.
Being a regular viewer of the racing show, there is little in the interview that comes as fresh knowledge. But there is one nugget that really threw me. When pressed to name her favorite horse Gabby mentioned Tepin, but then to me, quite surprisingly, Dr. Fager.
Dr. Fager last raced in 1968, and none of his breeding will show up in any horse today unless you produce a breeding chart that goes back 50 years. I don't know Gabby's age, but for sure American Pharoah is her first Triple Crown.
I don't know how much of Dr. Fager Gabby might have known about prior to the piece they did on the show about Richard Aller, a man who has made it his mission in life to convince the world of Dr. Fager's greatness, and how it peaked in 1968 when, as a four-year-old, the good Doctor won an unprecedented four Eclipse awards: Horse of the year, Handicap Horse, Sprinter and Turf Horse. No one has done that since.
1968 was my first year of going to the races, and Dr. Fager has remained a favorite ever since I saw the NYRA races he was in that year. I have made a few blog postings about his career.
It was more than refreshing to hear of someone who couldn't possibly have seen Dr. Fager talk of his greatness. It would be like me talking of Babe Ruth.
(As an aside, my father used to tell me he saw Babe Ruth almost throw guys out at first on a single, his arm was that good. Watching an ESPN game from the motel room last week in Saratoga I saw an Atlanta pitcher rope a single to right field, an opposite field single. I don't know any of the names, but the ball was hit so hard and fielded so cleanly by the right fielder that the pitcher was thrown out at first. The right fielder's throw, as most things are these days, was clocked at 103 miles an hour. There can't be many 9-3 putouts made on a batter who is out before he reaches first base.)
I don't think Gabby was on the show when the 9th race from Saratoga on Sunday, August 26th was telecast. She usually eaves the show in the final week.
Times on turf races can be faster than dirt races. Turf racing at the Belmont meet prior to going up to Saratoga produced some wicked times and fractions. The turf courses were concrete racing strips. And after the rains stopped at the Spa, the turf times started to get fast wicked fast.A :21 and change first quarter for a turf sprint race can be expected. What is not expected is a :204/5.
Such a first quarter was registered in that 9th race by Girls Know Best. This was followed by a flat :43. Five furlongs was a 543/5, These are smoking fractions. It would have been surprising to see a front-runner sustain this pace. And it turns out they didn't.
The winner Chateline was always close behind and passed Girls Know Best in the stretch and won going away by three lengths, with a final time of 1:004 This was only two ticks (two fifths) off the track record of Lady Shipman's 1:002 in 2015.
When then the :204 went up I immediately thought of Dr. Fager. He ran a :221, 434, 1074 in the 7 furlong 1968 Vosburgh Handicap, under 139 pounds, finishing in 1201, a track record that stood for decades, eventually beaten by Artax, who carried nowhere near 139 pounds.
Dr. Fager never had the opportunity to run turf sprints, since that type of race was not carded in his era. But just imagine if he had set out of the gate in a race on turf that was only going to last 5½ furlongs.
My guess is Gabby can imagine what the result might have been.
http://www.onofframo.blogpsot.com
You must have had your stop watch with you. 139lbs is punishing - they used to call it an "impost".
ReplyDeleteEvery race run produces a chart, a historical record of how the race was run, all all the details of the day. It's like an official scoring sheet for baseball. You can recreate races from the information in the charts. I keep a framed copy of Dr. Fager's Vosburgh nearby.
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