Hartack Derby Trophies Top Sports Memorabilia Auction

A group of five Lemon & Son brand sterling silver engraved Kentucky Derby trophies won from 1957 to 1969 by legendary jockey Bill Hartack, was the top offering at Julien's Auctions' three-day Sports Legends auction held over the weekend online and live in the company's auction house in Beverly Hills. The trophies sold for $317,000.

Hartack's five wins (aboard Iron Liege in 1957; Venetian Way in 1960; Decidedly in 1962; Northern Dancer in 1964; and Majestic Prince in 1969) tie him with Eddie Arcaro for most Derby victories by a jockey.

The weekend's auction also featured nearly nine hundred game winning jerseys, medals, memorabilia, and collectibles from sports stars such as Michael Jordan, Pele, Kobe Bryant, Diego Maradona, Babe Ruth, and Rafael Nadal.

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Body & Soul: Please Do Talk About Me When I’m Gone

It’s not exactly an axiom but it seems almost as soon as a stallion is exported from this country, the racehorses he left behind start making a lot of noise. Without getting too deep into the bushes by matching these stallions with their offspring–while acknowledging Empire Maker, Hard Spun and Daredevil among the previous and recent returnees–we present such examples as New Year’s Day (Maximum Security), Declaration of War (Decorated Invader) and Eskendereya (Mitole).

To this list we have added Super Saver, one of the more surprising exports of the past few years, a stallion who is back in the news after a couple of years at his new home in Turkey (where Daredevil was originally exported). We are not going to engage in any finger-wagging over his exportation, however, even considering the fact that in his absence his son, Eclipse winner Runhappy, has turned out to be the most promoted young stallion in the history of the game. Another son, Competitive Edge, has had a spiffy start at stud, and yet another, the 3-year-old Happy Saver, achieved undefeated Grade I-winning status while pummeling his older opponents in the Jockey Club Gold Cup last month.

Rather, we are going to look at Super Saver within the context of how he has emerged as the savior of an exceptionally iconoclastic sire line by examining the evolution of his tail-male ancestors in biomechanical terms–data which prompted eyebrow-arching when we completed our research.

On pedigree alone, Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver is a good story. His genes are infused with history and classicism which should not be a surprise since he traces in tail-female to the epochal *La Troienne through the branch established by Numbered Account, his fourth dam.

But the irony of this horse’s impact on the breed thus far stems mostly from the almost happenstance survival of his five-generation sire line tracing back to the line-founding Raise a Native through that one’s sometimes “misremembered” son, Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Majestic Prince.

Majestic Prince, a foal of 1966, was a big, strong-bodied chestnut resembling his sire in many visible ways. Although we do not have his biomechanical measurements, we have his daddy’s, and those of his four sons who made some impression at stud: Coastal, Eternal Prince, Simply Majestic and Majestic Light. Based on their critical measurements, most of Majestic Prince’s sons had mixed biomechanics which led to their modest records as sires of sires.

Except, of course, for Majestic Light.

Although he may have appeared to the naked eye to be a bit light, except for his bay color, Majestic Light was, indeed, a close physical replica of Raise a Native (and by implication Majestic Prince). He had the same height, heart girth and almost identical measurements through the ilium, femur and tibia–the power and acceleration compendium through the hip and hock–as Raise a Native.

However, he differed substantially in the length of his rear cannon, which turned out to be quite a bit longer than his grandsire’s, and one not common in the stallion population at the time. The rear cannon provides the leverage through the upper leg and hip for enhanced thrust, or power. Indeed, more than one biomechanics analyst commented at the time that the long rear cannons of Majestic Light and his son Wavering Monarch were reminiscent of Dr. Fager, whose overall composition may have left him a bit of an outlier among the population during his lifetime, and therefore may have impacted his fortunes.

Hold that thought.

When we compared the measurements of the tail-male descendants of Wavering Monarch that have long been identified as mostly inheritable in both Thoroughbreds and the overall animal species, we found that the long rear cannon was virtually identical in Majestic Light, Maria’s Mon and Super Saver, but the others were closer to that of Raise a Native.

What spurred our research further was when we started to compare the entire Super Saver tail-male line to how the North American stallion gene pool has evolved physically since the 1970s. To do this we employed a computerized model that points out how a particular stallion resembles other stallions in overall “size and scope.” The program identifies clusters of neighbors, so to speak, much in the way thousands of small towns in Europe, for example, developed as remnants of medieval society. In almost all cases generations of neighbors intermarried and came to be similar to each other in appearance if not also group-think.

What this program gives us is a snapshot into which cluster a stallion “fits”–i.e., is he likely to be consistent in siring quality given the proven sires in that cluster similar to him physically. We chose four eras in which to examine this data.

  • Group 1: 850 stallions who were born from in the second half of the 20th Century and who went to stud prior to 2000;
  • Group 2: Group 1 plus those who went to stud in the years between 2000 and 2015;
  • Group 3: Group 2 plus those who retired between 2016 and 2020, minus abject failures;
  • Leading Sires: Group 3 edited to 250 stallions who had achieved major status since the 1960s.

The results are quite interesting. For example, Raise a Native consistently came up in each group as most similar to Roberto and Affirmed, which indicates that these three would have been successful at stud no matter when they went to stud. As it turned out, Majestic Light has Roberto, Affirmed and Red Ransom in his clusters along with his son Wavering Monarch. The latter numbered his sire as a neighbor but only among the smaller group of leading sires; among the other groups he was closer to Quiet American and his sire Fappiano–two substantial individuals with genetic connections to the aforementioned Dr. Fager.

The line took a completely different turn through Maria’s Mon who most often comes closest to Lemon Drop Kid, Forestry and Broad Brush, while his son Monarchos is almost a throwback numbering Roberto, Red Ransom, Affirmed and Majestic Light in his clusters. As for Super Saver’s sons Runhappy and Competitive Edge, we can only point to Afleet as showing more than once in their clusters.

Super Saver? Remember we told you to hold that thought about Dr. Fager? That’s because we ran him through the same program and found that starting with the Group 2 stallions, he and Super Saver came up as close to Scat Daddy, Empire Maker and Kitten’s Joy. This gives us a hint if Super Saver is repatriated that mares by those stallions might make useful mates. But it also gives us an indication that Dr. Fager may have “fit in” better in the 21st Century than he did in the 20th.

In this case, it certainly appears to make a difference how they carry on.

Bob Fierro is a partner with Jay Kilgore and Frank Mitchell in DataTrack International, biomechanical consultants and developers of BreezeFigs. He can be reached at bbfq@earthlink.net.

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Lamoreaux: ‘Cripple Crown’ Or Not, There Is Nothing Like The Belmont

Something is glaringly missing in all the conjecture about this year's so-called Triple Crown – the energy and the engrained memories that all you “improvers of the breed” bring to the sport.  When Chic Anderson up in the Belmont announce booth intoned, “they're on the turn and Secretariat is moving like a tremendous machine,” my feet felt like they came off the ground and the sweat poured out of me as a full-throated roar enveloped the race track.  

Even if you weren't there but are old enough to have seen the race on television, it's a memory that must be forever etched in your psyche, Secretariat running like  the wind at the end of a mile-and-a-half.  My longtime CBS colleague Heywood Hale “Woodie” Broun, who was part of that broadcast team, said he saw fans waving their $2 winning tickets in the air, never intending to cash them in. “That was to be their souvenir because when you are in the presence of  something marvelous, some little piece of it, like a piece of glitter, drops on you and you've got it. You've got that ticket.  Part of Secretariat's glory is with you!” 

That's what separates the Belmont crowd — with a Triple Crown on the line —  from other major sporting events. It's a fan's race, corporate connections or a large stash of cash be damned!  Connections and money may be a prerequisite to attending any Super Bowl or seventh game of the World Series.  But any guy or doll with an eye on history can usually force their way into “Big Sandy” on Belmont day — just not this year.

A record 120,139 showed up in 2004 when the popular Smarty Jones lost his Triple Crown bid to Birdstone. Still, another 102,199 came in 2014 to watch West Coast heartthrob California Chrome lose to Tonalist.  And 90,327 were rewarded when undefeated Justify brought home the bacon two years ago.  While there won't be any spectators Saturday at the 152nd Belmont, the betting handle could be huge and that would really be something to celebrate for a Thoroughbred sport that is forever looking over its shoulder because of a lack of unity in its leadership. 

When the Covid pandemic took over our lives a few months back, the usual calendar markers — birthdays, weddings, Belmonts — were snatched from us. And the Belmont took a bigger hit when it was not only placed first in the Triple Crown lineup, but also had its distance shortened to a mile-and-an-eighth. That shouldn't be too tough a get for these maturing 3-year-olds, but it will not really battle-test them.  For nearly a century now the Belmont has always been the musclebound cleanup hitter.  Now it's just a table setter trying to get on base.

For the record, the “test of the champion” Belmont has a storied history.  It was first a “wrong way” race, run clockwise, English style until 1920.  It had its beginning in Jerome Park, birthplace of modern American racing located in the Bronx, New York.  Leonard Jerome, founder of the American Jockey Club had a daughter, Jennie, who gave birth to Winston Churchill.  And, on a grand opening day in September of 1866, the biggest celebrity in the house was Civil War Commanding General of the Army Ulysses S Grant, soon to be President of the United States. 

Turf writer Joe Palmer and his classic book, “This Was Racing”

I found those incidental facts in “This Was Racing,” selected columns by the splendid turf writer Joe H. Palmer, published in 1953.  Palmer, a Kentucky-born college professor and PhD candidate who went on to grace the sports pages of the New York Herald Tribune alongside the columns of his Hall of Fame pal, the great Red Smith, had no doubt that the Preakness and even his sacred Kentucky Derby paled in comparison to the Belmont.  

In his opinion, “The Belmont is a better race than either of them, and who has to tell you so?  Why, a Kentuckian, probably now barred.  If you doubt it, read down the list of winners and then dig into the books to see how they went into the stud and sent the great racers back.” 

Palmer loved the race track too,  “It hasn't the homey charm of, say, Keeneland or the intimacy of Pimlico, or the nostalgic somnolence of Saratoga — (but) Belmont lies over other metropolitan tracks like ice cream over hay and the quality of its racing is the highest in the nation.”

The Belmont has always held a sweet spot with me, ever since I began covering the Triple Crown for CBS News back in 1969 with Woodie Broun. That's the year Canadian industrialist Frank McMahon, owner of Majestic Prince, uttered the immortal words, “the Cripple Crown.” 

We were interviewing McMahon on the eve of the race, where his horse was a short favorite over arch-rival Arts and Letters and rumors were rampant that Majestic Prince was not sound. The pair had been a neck apart in both the Derby and Preakness, with Arts and Letters flying at the end, but coming up a head short each time.

Frank had been out partying the night before and looked it.  Woodie asked him what it was like to be on the cusp of history.  He stared into the camera for what seemed like an eternity and then out came something like, “Well Woodie,  the Cripple Crown …”   Majestic Prince finished a  game second to Arts and Letters, but came out of the race lame and never raced again.  

So, maybe that's all we have this year, a “Cripple Crown” that few denizens trackside will be talking about this Belmont day due to the peculiar circumstances surrounding the race.   And to all those who want to shake up the old order or to change the classic Belmont distance, beware.  History is never kind to those who ignore it.

For now, let's consider the words of Joe Palmer from Kentucky, who wasn't shy back in the day in reminding the hard-bitten New York bettors that on Belmont day it's history that matters most.   “On race day I want a band.  I don't care if it plays 'The Sidewalks of New York' or 'Camptown Races' when the Belmont field comes out, but I want it to say something that says to the assembled multitude, 'Look chums, this isn't the ninth race.  This is the Belmont!'”

E.S “Bud” Lamoreaux III is a creator and former executive producer of CBS News Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt.  He won four Eclipse Awards for national television excellence.

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