Back To The Future: The Day Citation Beat Man o’ War

When Gulfstream Park staged the “Race of the Century” 56 years ago this spring, 17,300 fans packed the grandstand. They stared out onto a horseless track, where an empty starting gate was parked ceremonially at the 1 1/4 miles position. They rooted, cursed and cheered home their picks.

Not a single person ended up witnessing the race. Yet those in attendance–and a nation of fans who tuned in via the NBC Radio broadcast or read about the outcome in coast-to-coast newspaper coverage–seemed to be in vehement agreement for weeks afterward that the best horse didn't win.

The Race of the Century on Apr. 6, 1968, was a promotional stunt, the sport's first major attempt at using a computer simulation for a form of entertainment. It was also, in part, supposed to serve as a testament to the emerging–even intimidating–power of computing technology.

It might have been a bust on both attempts.

But if your barometer is the old marketing adage “even bad publicity is good publicity,” the event could retrospectively be considered a hit.

Morning Telegraph chart of the 'Race of the Century'

The imagined get-together of 12 of the greatest Thoroughbreds from different eras drew a decent amount of ink and interest in its day, and even today the concept of a “fantasy race” lives on. Every few years now in the 21st Century, as new fan favorites get added to the list of “greats,” the idea of a recreated showdown among epic champions keeps getting dusted off and repeated, powered by whatever latest and greatest technology happens to be in vogue.

In 1968, the entity that made its case for being the pre-eminent prognosticator of America's all-time historical horse race was a British technology team from the University of Liverpool's Department of Computation and Statistical Science.

Several months earlier, a panel of 150 stateside sports writers and broadcasters had been tasked with voting on the 12 luminaries who would line up in the digital starting gate, and they came up with (in eventual randomized post-position order) Count Fleet, Exterminator, Man o' War, War Admiral, Nashua, Citation, Tom Fool, Kelso, Buckpasser, Equipoise, Swaps and Native Dancer.

There was some pre-race griping that the selectors had concentrated too heavily on horses who had competed between 1948 and 1968. Today we would say that a “recency bias” contributed to the lack of better representation from horses who had competed in earlier times.

 

First came the knockout…

In partnering with the British computing team, Gulfstream was riding on the tails of a publicity experiment hatched by boxing promoters and a Miami radio station that had featured a computer-generated “tournament” among heavyweight greats past and present.

That venture had drawn criticism because, somewhat improbably, all the highest-ranked dead boxers and all the Black champs got eliminated via computer, leaving the popular (and white and still-living) Rocky Marciano and Jack Dempsey to slug it out.

Both retired champs were conveniently hired on for promotional purposes. The underdog Marciano scored a surprising “knockout.” Muhammad Ali ended up suing the promoters for $1 million in damages because he claimed his reputation had been tarnished by losing to the ghost of Jim Jeffries.

As columnist Robert Lipsyte explained in the New York Times, not many in the boxing industry seemed concerned that the computerized championship had come off like a badly scripted pro wrestling match. “People within boxing were not terribly exercised about the tournament,” Lipsyte wrote. “They are respectful toward anyone who can come up with a gimmick to make a buck, and are generally tolerant of fixed fights.”

Native Dancer | Coglianese

In racing, presumably, there would not be as much acceptance for outcomes that were more orchestrated than computed.

Britain had already had a brief go at accepting bets on computer-generated racing in 1967, when bookmakers enlisted the help of programmers to stage “The Computer Gold Cup” after a bout of foot-and-mouth disease had shut down real horse racing for 40 days. Punters ended up not clamoring for that sort of action, and with the return of the real thing, simulated racing was cast aside.

It was against this backdrop that Gulfstream supplied the Liverpool team information about the selected horses' class, weight-carrying ability, and overall race records, and in turn the programmers fed that data into the computer. Final and fractional times, point-of-call margins, and winning margins were also included, but the computing team disclosed that those factors would not be given as much emphasis.

It took two full weeks to upload what was essentially past-performance data for a 12-horse field into the machine.

Man o' War's trainer, the then-84-year-old Louis Feustel, openly predicted the star colt who had won 20 of 21 races in the era just after World War I would “gallop” in the 1968 simulation despite the impressive credentials of his rivals.

“I'd have to fear Buckpasser a little. And maybe Citation,” Feustel told the New York Times several days prior to the event. “But Man o' War was the greatest. Even when he was walking or jogging, he wanted to get there first.”

 

Overwhelming fave…

Not many racegoers and turf writers disagreed with Man o' War's trainer. There was no pari-mutuel betting on the race, but Gulfstream had a pick-the-winner contest that offered prizes, and about 50% of the public chose “Big Red.” An estimated 40% of the published picks in the press also had him on top.

Yet some pre-race writeups tried to get inside the “brain” of the computer. Steve Cady of the New York Times took a contrarian approach in his handicapping by noting that despite setting American or world records at five different distances while winning under imposts up to 138 pounds, “An ominous note for Man o' War could be the emphasis placed on class of competition.”

Big Red's competition was practically non-existent late in his 3-year-old season, when he scared most it away and started favored at odds as low as 1-to-100 in six match races and four stakes that attracted only two other starters.

This, Cady reasoned, would count against Man o' War based on what reporters had been told about the computing methodology. The programming blueprint gave more credence to horses from larger foal crops who raced more often against larger fields.

Man o' War was made the (ridiculously high) 4-1 morning-line choice, with Count Fleet, who swept the 1943 Triple Crown, at 5-1, and Citation, the 1948 Triple Crown champ, at 6-1.

All entrants were assigned 126 theoretical pounds, and for the most part, they were “ridden” by the jockeys most associated with their prime performances in real life. The event was scheduled to be run prior to the first live race on Gulfstream's normal Saturday card.

Count Fleet grave marker | Sarah Andrew

When the race went off, the University of Liverpool team transmitted positions and margins to Gulfstream at five-second intervals, and it was the job of press box impresario Joe Tanenbaum to formulate that data into a narrative and call the race over the public address system and for NBC.

There was a gasp of disbelief from the masses facing the empty track when Tanenbaum announced that Braulio Baeza had sent Buckpasser to the lead. Buckpasser had just retired the previous season after being named a champion in all three years he raced, and the crowd would have been well aware that this audacious move was totally contrary to the leggy, elegant colt's standard off-the-pace tactics.

Buckpasser led by a head over Citation, with Man o' War stalking another head behind in third in the early going. Fans staring at the running order on otherwise blank closed-circuit TVs saw little change as the stalkers allowed Buckpasser to open up by two lengths entering the backstretch. The top trio held their same positions past the half-mile marker, but Buckpasser's  leading margin had been sliced in half.

Around the far turn, Citation, the sport's first million-dollar-earner, swooped to the lead and now the main danger was clearly Man o' War, relentless in his pursuit and less than a length behind.

Big Red drove furiously at the smooth, efficient-striding Citation, extending his stride at a point in the race where jockey Clarence Kummer was usually easing him up in a romp. Man o' War loomed within a head 70 yards out, but Citation was emboldened by the challenge, surging under Steve Brooks to edge away by a neck at the wire.

Buckpasser hung on for third, ahead of Exterminator, Kelso, Swaps, Nashua, Tom Fool, War Admiral, Northern Dancer, Equipoise and Count Fleet.

 

Aftermath, and beyond…

An un-bylined New York Times recap reported the results with a tone of incredulity.

“Although no press box handicapper would fault Citation, a number expressed the opinion that 'Man o' War must be spinning in his grave,'” the story stated. “One handicapper who had picked Citation confessed that he believed 'Man o' War would have run all those horses off the track, but when I saw the factors they were considering for the computer, I figured the answer would come out Citation.'”

Even the simulated two-minute winning time for the 10-furlong race came under criticism, with some turf scribes noting that it was a fifth of a second shy of the actual Gulfstream track record established by Citation's lesser-heralded stablemate, Coaltown, who did not even come close to getting voted into the Race of the Century.

Russ Harris of the Miami Herald wrote that “the manner in which the dream race was run created a broad credibility gap between the data machine and oldtime racing fans.”

Citation at Belmont | Horsephotos

Sports columnist Arthur Daley of the New York Times put it this way: “Computers are only as reliable as the information fed them. This one obviously [shuffled] through cards that had been folded, bent, spindled and otherwise mutilated. How else can you explain a front-running whirlwind like Count Fleet lagging all the way and running last? How else can you explain a come-from-behind charger like Buckpasser blithely stepping in front even though he always loafed once he was in the lead?”

Maurice Hymans, the linemaker for the race, agreed. “Buckpasser never went to the front. Can you imagine Count Fleet being outrun to the first turn by Buckpasser? Why did they have to go to England to do this? Don't we have computers in this country?”

Turf writer Sam Engleberg, described by Harris as a renowned speed handicapper, expressed a frustration that would resonate today with horseplayers everywhere.

“They ought to smash the machine,” Engleberg said. “Twenty years after he's dead, I lose a bet on Man o' War.”

Lipsyte, of the New York Times, was still writing about the Race of the Century four months after it occurred, and his column about computers and sports from Aug. 12, 1968, contained profoundly prophetic words about how technology would unfold over the next six decades.

Although Lipsyte did not use the term “sports analytics” that we now hear every day, he aptly predicted it.

“In the future, the matings of Thoroughbred stallions and mares will be completely directed by computerized information, and stroke analysis in golf, play analysis in football, and scoring in ski-jumping will be electronically aided,” Lipsyte wrote. “There is no reason, except money, why professional baseball and football teams could not have elaborate systems designed to pin-point weaknesses and call plays. As long as computers are programmed by human beings, sports can only profit, through increased efficiency and fewer injuries, from electronic coaching aids.”

Yet Lipsyte also warned of the ominous effects of an over-reliance on technology, both inside and outside the world of sports.

“The Machine, you see, will eat anything a man feeds it and will swallow everything,” Lipsyte wrote. “People who are fearful of such things as rifles, projectiles, unsafe automobiles and sharp objects are almost unanimous in their fear of The Machine. They are terrified that their one human characteristic, rational thought, will be borrowed, improved upon, and never returned.”

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This Side Up: Plus Ca Change….

At a time when so many people seem to be allowing a duty of vigilance to crumble into morbid defeatism, it seems a little unfair that our sport should be going through such a hard time even as we approach the 50th anniversary of the most luminous tour de force in the story of the modern breed.

Of course, as some powerful evocations of the time have lately reminded us, Secretariat arrived as a sunbeam into a wider world darkened by Vietnam and civic unrest. And nor should we deceive ourselves that even our own, notoriously insular community was back then immune to some of the things that vex us in 2023.

For instance, without reprising what have doubtless become tiresomely familiar objections to tinkering with the Classic schedule, let's not forget that Secretariat faced down a Triple Crown drought stretching to Citation in 1948. Obviously a still longer wait followed Seattle Slew and Affirmed, but we've found two horses equal to the task in the last eight years. Even so, the trainers are somehow trying to bully us into reconciling the paradox that they want more time between the races and therefore (assuming this indeed renders those races more competitive) to extend the intervals between precisely those Triple Crown winners that supposedly represent our best route to wider engagement.

Well, the world moves on. And it's not as though the Thoroughbred has ever permitted hard and fast rules anyway.

On the one hand, it's pretty unarguable that the old school, by exposing their horses more, helped the public to develop a rooting interest. If Flightline (Tapit) was perhaps as talented as we've seen since Secretariat, in making just six starts he barely scratched the surfaced of national attention.
And I do like to think there were other, incidental gains in the aggressive campaigning of horses, whether in terms of educating the animal or showcasing the type of genes that breeders should wish to replicate. But if Mage (Good Magic) is only the latest proof that modern trainers can prepare a raw horse even for a challenge as notoriously exacting as the Kentucky Derby, then let's roll back to that summer of '73.

Okay, so Secretariat himself had made nine juvenile starts from July 4. But if you would presume experience to be an asset at Churchill on the first Saturday in May, then how much more crucial should it be for the template itself, the most venerable race of all: the Derby at Epsom, that crazy rollercoaster with its twisting hill? Yet half a century ago, in a field of 25, the race was won on only his second career start by Morston (GB).

He was bred for Classic stamina, at any rate: by St Leger winner Ragusa (Ire) out of an Oaks runner-up (herself by a St Leger runner-up) who had already produced the 1969 Derby winner Blakeney (GB). Ragusa, incidentally, was out of a mare imported from a very old American family that had earlier produced Hard Tack, the sire of Seabiscuit. The St Leger, remember, is run over 14 furlongs. As the Japanese have reminded us, the lifeblood of the Thoroughbred is not brute speed but class: the ability not just to go fast, but to keep going fast.

That is certainly the hallmark of Galileo (Ire), whose legacy saturates the 244th running of the Derby on Saturday. With 93 juveniles and just a dozen yearlings still to come, he is represented by a single son, Artistic Star (Ire), unbeaten for one of the outstanding trainers in Europe yet available at tempting odds. Of the remaining 13 starters, eight are by sons of Galileo (including two by principal heir Frankel {GB}); two are out of his daughters; and one is out of a mare by another of his sons. That leaves just two runners to have bobbed to the surface of a European bloodstock industry that squanders mares, by the thousand, on stallions that cannot remotely satisfy the definition of class given above.

But, yes, the world moves on. Sometimes it just moves on in the wrong direction. It's a pretty dismal reflection on where our sport stands today that its greatest race has been shoehorned into the middle of lunch to avoid the F.A. Cup Final. Because what American readers may not realize is that this particular soccer match, in its heyday, also once brought England to a standstill—but has in recent years, even as the game has boomed, also lost much of its popular traction. With many managers resting star players for this tournament, you might even say that the F.A. Cup has shared the same decline in popular culture as the Derby (for which Parliament itself used to take the day off).

Fixed television schedules are also a thing of the past, with the young especially expecting to do most of their viewing “on demand.” That puts live events at a premium. In Britain, however, broadcasting rights for the most prestigious sporting events—including both the F.A. Cup Final and the Derby—are ringfenced for free channels. (Which obviously invites the paradox that the most coveted events, with no competition from channels with subscription revenue, are least likely to achieve their true market value.) Unusually, the F.A. Cup Final is broadcast simultaneously by both the BBC and ITV. And since the latter also has the rights to the Derby, racing has been unceremoniously shown its place.

By an unmissable irony, the match that has elbowed the Derby aside is being contested by Manchester City and Manchester United. As such, it is what the soccer world knows as a “derby” match between local rivals. The origin of this usage is tenuous, but some have ascribed it to the Epsom race. Horseracing, after all, long precedes football (in all its variations) in popular culture.
Yet now we find the Jockey Club taking out injunctions in anticipation of animal rights protests, even for a race in such innocuous contrast to, for instance, the Grand National. And that is without the current traumas of Churchill Downs having remotely penetrated wider consciousness on that side of the pond.

But let's resist adding another “basso profundo” to the prevailing chorus of miserabilism. Let's hope for another infectiously exciting chapter in the Epsom epic: maybe a final Derby for Dettori, who has already won two of three British Classics on his farewell tour; or perhaps one more for another old master, Sir Michael Stoute.

His runner hadn't even seen a racetrack before Apr. 20. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mage! Passenger (Ulysses {Ire}) is actually out of a War Front mare. Fifty years on from Morston, then, perhaps Passenger would be an apt reminder that the more the world changes, the more it stays the same.

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This Side Up: Veterans Would Have An Instant Solution

Coming from a culture where most wagering stipulates a fixed dividend, in the startling event that your horse happens to see through his part of the deal, I tend to view the morning line on American races as named for the hangover evidently being suffered by its compiler. Certainly by the time the market has been soberly hydrated with dollars and cents, I won't be expecting anything as close to an even play as the 4-5 listed about Forte (Violence) overcoming the wide draw that appears to introduce his only real jeopardy in the GI Curlin Florida Derby at Gulfstream on Saturday.

We all know that anything can happen in a horse race, but some imaginative contortions are required to see any of his rivals bridging the abyss dividing them from the champion juvenile. After all, the most competent among them are keeping him company out wide anyway. There has to be every chance, then, that the GI Kentucky Derby favorite will arrive at Churchill without having been put under any meaningful pressure in five months since having to deal with Cave Rock (Arrogate) in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Keeneland in November.

This, as we know, is the modern way. If his Hall of Fame trainer is satisfied that Forte's best shot of winning the Derby is not even to run until March, and then only to outclass two fields of inferiors in his backyard, then we must respectfully stand aside. It's a different race, nowadays, and contested by a different kind of horse; and it is hardly Forte's fault that so few credible contenders have been tempted to slipstream their way to 40 starting points for the runner-up.

(To listen to an audio version of this column, click below)

 

Nor is he vulnerable to the way a similarly light schedule has backfired for Instant Coffee (Bolt d'Oro), who was deliberately kept under wraps between Jan. 21 and last weekend. It looked a safe enough gamble, in that the starting points awarded down to fifth place in the GII Louisiana Derby gave the hot favorite plenty of margin for error. In the event, however, he missed out altogether after trying to make up ground into a quickening pace and running a tepid finish.

There may be dozens of different reasons for that, so we can't assume that another race in between might have sustained him better through that mile and three-sixteenths. But what I do know is that horsemen of the old school, finding themselves in this kind of pickle, would certainly not be panicking. And that's because they would know that there are still 40 points available in the GIII Stonestreet Lexington S. on Apr. 15.

Now obviously if you decide that the model Derby prep today comprises races on Jan. 21 and Mar. 25, then I can't imagine that you'll suddenly be willing to salvage the situation with a race at the modern equivalent of five to midnight. That's a shame, because a lot of people involved in this talented colt deserve their shot at an experience that owes much of its mystique precisely to the fact that a) no horse gets a second chance; and b) as a result, nor do very many horsemen.

I can think of one man who wouldn't be squeamish about a three-week interval between the Lexington S. and the Derby. In fact, D. Wayne Lukas was probably disappointed in 1982 when Churchill moved the old Derby Trial from the Tuesday before the race back to the Saturday. The couple of Trial winners he had that decade were doubtless a little rusty by the time they ran midfield in the Derby, a full week later.

At 87, and 40 years after his first winner in Hot Springs, Lukas is already enjoying the most lucrative Oaklawn meet of his career and he's a long way from finished. Besides upcoming engagements for barn leaders Secret Oath (Arrogate) and Last Samurai (Malibu Moon), Lukas has seven declared on Saturday's card including 'TDN Rising Star' Caddo River (Hard Spun) in the GIII Oaklawn Mile.

Until recently a barnmate of Instant Coffee, Caddo River ran second in the GI Arkansas Derby two years ago. And actually Lukas has a candidate for the latest running with, I suspect, a rather better chance than odds that may yet extend past the 20-1 of the “hangover” line. Bourbon Bash (City of Light) broke his maiden by eight lengths at Saratoga last summer but then bombed out in consecutive Grade Is and was then given a chance to start piecing things quietly back together in sprints. He hadn't quite learned to settle when runner-up to a talented rival around a second turn last month, but then caught the eye with the way he handled a poor trip when fifth as rank outsider for the GII Rebel S.

Lukas evidently believes that Bourbon Bash can stretch out effectively and, if he's right, his revival could yet open up a final fairytale. But we must note that this colt is out of a sister to Volatile (Violence), who has helped to make the sire of Forte primarily, to this point at least, a speed brand. That duly also remains a caveat about the crop leader, who will probably be depending heavily on damsire Blame on the first Saturday in May, when he'll be facing a 10th furlong in much more exacting company.

Ironically this will actually be only Bourbon Bash's third sophomore start, scarcely the standard Lukas treatment. Lukas has said that the horse doesn't need mental seasoning, but has needed time to strengthen. He's certainly fired some bullet works over the past month or so but, who knows, maybe he'll end up having to complete his preparations in the Lexington S.- the last port of call now that the old race-week Trial has been absorbed into the Derby undercard as the GII Pat Day Mile.

Tim Tam, the last horse to double up the Trial and the Derby, had previously won both the races chosen for Forte's own road to Churchill: the Fountain Of Youth S. and Florida Derby. In fact, the Kentucky Derby was his 10th sophomore start. So where would Jimmy Jones have learned a fool thing like that, running a future Hall of Famer four days before the Derby? Well, I can't quote chapter and verse–but I can give you a Citation.

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