Background Check: Spinaway

In this continuing series, we examine the past winners of significant filly/mare races by the lasting influence they've had on the breed. Up today is the GI Spinaway S., currently the first Grade I of the year for 2-year-olds in the country.

Dating to 1881, back when the Kentucky Derby was running for just the seventh time, President James Garfield was assassinated in office, and there was what would become a legendary shootout at the O.K. Corral, the Spinaway has seen its share of history. The race itself is named after 1880's top 2-year-old filly, who beat colts seven times in stakes that year. She was by Leamington, who, among his spate of top progeny, also sired Aristides (winner of the inaugural Kentucky Derby) and Iroquois (the first U.S.-bred horse to win the Epsom Derby and St. Leger across the pond). Spinaway herself foaled a couple of nice runners and was granddam of 1904 Spinaway winner Tanya, remembered today for winning the 1905 Belmont S.

Contrary to more recent trends, the Spinaway S. has actually increased in distance from its beginnings. It started as a five-furlong contest, was bumped up to 5 1/2 furlongs in 1901, increased again to six panels in 1922, and has been run at seven-eighths since 1994. With the unprecedented Tapit filly deadheat in 2016 and a number of missed years early on, the Spinaway has officially recorded 131 individual winners. How they have fared as broodmares!

Some of the Spinaway winners who belong on this list were previously featured in our “Background Checks” for the GI Alabama S., GI Test S., or GIII Schuylerville S.; please see those earlier profiles for notes on Hot Dixie Chick, Meadow Star, Talking Picture, Numbered Account (who already appeared in two!), Moccasin, Risque, and Sallie McClelland. Following are the some of the other most important Spinaway winners by what impact they have had on the breed through their sons and daughters.

Alanesian (1954, Polynesian–Alablue, by Blue Larkspur): This E. Barry Ryan/Normandy Farm-bred mare produced three stakes winners, including Princessnesian, one of the handful of mares to win the Hollywood Gold Cup. A number of significant winners trace to her, including champion granddaughter Revidere, but the legacy she's left on the breed–through sons, grandsons, and the like–is absolutely staggering. Without her son Boldnesian, there would be no Seattle Slew. Without her grandson Ride the Rails, there would be no Candy Ride (Arg). And without her great-great grandson Harlan's Holiday, there would be no Into Mischief.

Sunday Evening (1947, Eight Thirty–Drowsy, by Royal Minstrel {GB}): She produced just one stakes winner–1964 Test winner Time for Bed–but this Greentree Stud homebred's daughters and descendants produced champion 2-year-old Silent Screen; champion 3-year-old filly Dark Mirage; multiple European champion Indian Skimmer; Irish champion Bluebird; GISWs Missy's Mirage, Classy Mirage, Java Gold, Swagger Jack, Timely Writer, and Timely Assertion; and many more.

Myrtle Charm (1946, Alsab–Crepe Myrtle, by Equipoise): One daughter won the Frizette and Alcibiades, but it was another daughter who produced My Charmer, dam of Horse of the Year and incredible breed-shaping sire Seattle Slew. A smattering of other nice horses appear in the family, including Seattle Slew's half-brother, G1 Two Thousand Guineas winner Lomond, but nothing else could compare to the accomplishments of the great Slew. Myrtle Charm was bred by Brownell Combs and Leslie Combs II.

Bellesoeur (1945, Beau Pere {GB}–Donatrice {GB}, by Donatello II {Fr}): Bred in California by Louis B. Mayer, co-founder of MGM Studios, this mare was extremely prolific, with nearly four dozen stakes winners produced by her and her daughters in just the first couple of generations alone. She remains relevant although distant in pedigrees today, as last year's ill-fated Medina Spirit traced directly to her, as did 2015 Canadian Horse of the Year Catch a Glimpse.

Our Page (1940, Blue Larkspur–Occult, by Dis Donc {Fr}): This Royce G. Martin homebred produced five foals, all colts. All were stakes winners and all were sires, the best of whom was undoubtedly Bull Page. He was Canadian Horse of the Year in 1951 and an influential Canadian sire. His most long-lasting effect on the breed is as broodmare sire of Nijinsky II and a son of his was the broodmare sire of Storm Bird. Our Page was named Broodmare of the Year in 1948 when Bull Page was just a yearling.

Loves Only You traces to 1939 Spinaway winner Now What | Horsephotos

Now What (1937, Chance Play–That's That, by High Time): She produced Next Move, a dual champion in the U.S. and a 12-time stakes winner of races that are almost overwhelmingly designated as Grade I today. A number of other top horses trace to the Three D's Stock Farm-bred as well, but her pièce de résistance is surely great-great granddaughter Pasadoble, who singlehandedly founded a dynasty of champions. Pasadoble's greatest foal was her first: multiple French, English, and U.S. champion Miesque, who in turn produced champion East of the Moon, additional MG1SW Kingmambo,  and two other GSWs. Other champions of the last two decades descended from Pasadoble include Alpha Centauri (Ire), Six Perfections (Fr), Rumplestiltskin (Ire), and Loves Only You (Jpn).

Blue Warbler (1922, North Star III {GB}–May Bird {GB}, by Thrush {GB}): It may be more of a challenge to find this mare of a century ago in pedigrees today, but it can still be done. Her handful of foals included champions Barn Swallow and Balladier. The latter was a good sire whose sons Double Jay and Spy Song can still be found buried in many a current runner.

Court Dress (1904, Disguise–Hampton Belle {GB}, by Hampton {GB}): Records start getting spotty this far back, but there's no doubt this mare has a vast number of top-class horses tracing to her, including leading sires Deputy Minister and Exclusive Native.

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Seattle Slew License Plate Celebrates Fifth Anniversary

The Kentucky Equine Education Project (KEEP) Foundation is celebrating the fifth anniversary of its specialty Seattle Slew license plate.

Since its release on May 1, 2017, the number of Kentuckians who have chosen to use the plate has continued to increase annually. From each purchase and renewal of the plate, $10 is donated to the KEEP Foundation to be used for educational initiatives related to the state's horse industry. To date, funding from the license plate has totaled nearly $140,000.

The KEEP Foundation's Seattle Slew specialty license plate would not have been possible without the gracious support of Karen and Mickey Taylor, the owners of Seattle Slew, and Bobby Shiflet, owner of the Tony Leonard Collection, who donated the photo of Seattle Slew that was used for the license plate.

“The KEEP Foundation's Seattle Slew specialty license plate has paid incredible dividends for the Commonwealth by directing these funds toward essential education and workforce development projects,” said Elisabeth Jensen, Chair of the KEEP Foundation Board of Directors. “We look forward to where the next five years will take us and we have no doubts that it will match the incredible success that we have seen over the past five years. The KEEP Foundation will be forever grateful to the Taylors and the Tony Leonard Collection for making this success possible.”

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This Side Up: Two Very Different Lives, One Passion

No matter what privileges or disadvantages we take into the starting gate, and no matter how many circuits we get to run, all of us ultimately pull up at the same finishing line. But it is not just that humbling reckoning, reached within days of each other, that united Billy Turner and Josephine Abercrombie. Their lives, though wildly contrasting, were animated by the same bond of vitality that sustains many who grieve them.

“Mrs. A.”, as she was known to those blessed by her friendship or patronage, embraced the extraordinary opportunities to which she was born with so commensurate an appetite that one might ask how anyone could have compressed so much into a mere 95 years. Besides her careers as horsewoman and breeder, she threw herself with equal gusto into walks of life as diverse as boxing, skiing, dancing and Broadway.

Nor did Mrs. A. measure her benedictions only in material terms, having so prolonged the fulfilment she found in Pin Oak that the stable was only dispersed a matter of weeks before her loss. That said, the fact is that she was never going to require a GoFundMe page to sustain her final days, as was poignantly the case for the 81-year-old trainer of Seattle Slew.

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Affectionate tributes to the skill and charm of Billy Turner did not tiptoe around the corrosion of his prime by a struggle with alcoholism. But he would be very comfortable with that, given his own, hugely commendable candor in reflecting, in later years, on the demons that had accompanied him to one of the summits of Turf history. Turner was only 37 when a $17,500 Bold Reasoning colt came his way, and it's right that people understand why he appeared to receive such scant reward.

Before the Derby, many considered Seattle Slew insufficiently seasoned after just three sophomore starts. The habits of trainers today, however regrettable, make Turner appear to have been ahead of his time. But his true legacy was securing the male line of Bold Ruler, with all its old school virtues.

Like so many of our finest horsemen, Turner learned the ropes in steeplechasing. But in trying to keep his weight down, even as his height soared (by six inches in his 19th year alone), he yielded to temptations natural in a fraternity that rode so hard—and drank so much harder. Then, in soaking up the pressures of a Triple Crown campaign, he found the press equally willing to normalize excess at the bar. (Which charge I, for one, am certainly not going to refute). Those pressures, by the way, can be judged from Turner's pronouncement to a reporter while Slew was still a juvenile. “If he doesn't win the Triple Crown,” he said, “I haven't done my job.”

Turner and exercise rider Mike Kennedy on the way to the track with Seattle Slew in 1977

Doubtless the succor he found in drink contributed to Turner's notorious sacking by the owners of Seattle Slew; certainly it dragged him into desperate times thereafter. Much to his credit, however, he regrouped. If the home stretch brought fresh difficulties, in healthcare and its costs, it's edifying to know that Turner had overcome a still greater challenge, in his own life, than the one he met with Seattle Slew. By any measure, this was a man of accomplishment.

True, while renewing his personal stability, he could not fully reverse the professional odds that had steepened in the meantime. Even so, a Hall of Fame nomination should surely have been revived for Turner by the time he retired in 2016. Fully two decades after the glory days of Slew and Czaravich (Nijinsky), after all, he had supervised a 21-for-55 near-millionaire in Punch Line (Two Punch) plus a third Grade I winner in Gaviola.

The latter was by Cozzene, who also happened to sire the horse that first brought Mrs. A. to the attention of many of us Englishmen.

As in selecting her long-serving farm manager, Clifford Barry, Mrs. A. showed unerring judgement in entrusting Hasten To Add to Newmarket's peerless Victorian throwback, Sir Mark Prescott.

In 1993, Hasten To Add became subject of one of the great gambles in the long history of the Cesarewitch H.

“How far is this race?” asked Mrs. A., when Prescott introduced her to the project.

“Two and a quarter miles.”

“Gee, and how often do they pass the stands?”

“They don't,” Prescott replied. “It's a dogleg course, starting in Cambridgeshire and ending in Suffolk. And it's a handicap. The topweight concedes 28 lbs to some of the others.”

Prescott recalls a moment of silent incredulity at the other end of the phone.

“Really? And how many runners are there?”

“Thirty-six.”

“This I gotta see.”

On the day, when the cavalry emerged from the drizzle and mist, Hasten To Add was just in front. While apparently engaged in a desperate duel to the line, however, he was overhauled by two others on the other side of the track. But Mrs. A. avowed that for all the world she would not have missed an experience she condensed as “all those Dukes ['Dooks'] and Duchesses, standing in the rain looking at nothing…”

Mrs. A.'s immersion in the world of boxing confirmed her to be equal to any social milieu. On the Turf, of course, we take pride in the fact that nowhere else does High Life meet quite so comfortably with Low Life. To the young man I was then, that lent an exotic glamor to this Houston heiress, with her five husbands—and five divorces! But I'm not sure I quite understood, at the time, that Low Life fundamentally comprises a ruinous succession of low days; or that it can do, at least, with the kind of problems that had meanwhile withdrawn Billy Turner from the limelight filled so joyously by Mrs. A.

There's always been a seductive glamor to the Runyonesque margins of our sport, and I've seen good people succumb to it: smart, talented people deceived that flirting with addiction, whether to alcohol or betting or umpteen other temptations, would redeem them from the dread charge of dullness.

People who think this way are also tempted to suspect that the greatness of Seattle Slew, for instance, could only be drawn out by parallel flair. Either a double-edged sword, they say, or none at all.

Well, that's a pretty dangerous formula for living. Doug Peterson was just 26 when the owners transferred Seattle Slew to his barn from Turner. Though he secured the champ his Eclipse Award, as an older horse, Peterson would disappear from the racetrack barely a couple of years later, lost in a spiral of drugs and drink. Like Turner, he showed the resilience and character to embrace rehab; he edged his way back to the track, after stints as an entry clerk and in the gate crew, and in 1999 he saddled 40 winners from just 175 starters. But he was only 53 when he died, from an accidental overdose, in 2004.

All these different lives, rotating with the twists of fate like a kaleidoscope against the shining light of the racehorse. All these different legacies, too. From intimate, domestic ones we cannot know; to the kind of public benefaction that prompted Mrs. A. to found her school in Lexington. But if so many of our comforts prove shallow, or even downright perilous, then how wonderful that we can all share the immortality available through the medium of a Seattle Slew or Sky Classic.

With his famously eccentric libido, Seattle Slew's genetic bequest was a fragile one. Its rescue is one of many debts, by no means confined to such lessons in horsemanship, our community owes to John Williams. Lest we forget, we are blessed to have in our midst the most exemplary people. And little wonder, when they share devotion to the horse: this paragon of constancy, courage and beauty, so innocent of our avarice and addictions.

We may envy the worldly fortune of Mrs. A., and the wealth of experience it supported; but her loyalty is within the compass of the poorest among us. She brought Barry to the farm in 1984. Donnie Von Hemel trained for Pin Oak for 30 years, Graham Motion nearly as long, with Mike Stidham a novice at around 15 years. Before the dispersal, Barry told TDN: “She's about as competitive a person as you could come across, but there'd never be a finger pointed. It was always just, 'We got outrun today and we'll do better tomorrow.'”

That's a motto that would serve us all well—whether seeking the next Seattle Slew, or patching up some old claimer; whether drilling oilwells, or just seeking an oasis in a world full of dangerous mirages.

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Billy Turner, Trainer of Seattle Slew, Passes Away

William H. “Billy” Turner, the trainer of the 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew, passed away peacefully in cancer hospice care at his home in Reddick, Florida Friday evening, Dec. 31, according to a press release from Pavla Nygaard at the Ocala Jockey Club. He was 81 years old.

Turner was born February 29, 1940, in Rochester New York, and grew up riding and fox hunting in Pennsylvania's horse country. He began his career as a steeplechase jockey as a teenager under trainer Burley Cocks. He rode for five years, until 1963, when his 6'2″ height made it difficult to continue. He worked as an assistant trainer until 1966.

At the age of 26, he went out on his own and was based for most of his career at Belmont Park. Given Seattle Slew as a two-year-old in 1976, he trained the colt to an Eclipse Award in an unbeaten, three-for-three season that culminated with a win in the Grade I Champagne. He went on to become the first undefeated Triple Crown  winner, and would go on to become the Horse of the Year in 1977. The colt was taken away from him after tasting his first defeat in the GI Swaps S. at Hollywood, and handed over to trainer Doug Peterson.

Turner won 533 races in his career, and in addition to Seattle Slew, trained other major stakes winners such as Czaravich, the winner of the Carter H., Withers S., Jerome H. and the GI Metropolitan H.; Play On, who won the Withers S., and was second in the GI Preakness; and Punch Line, who won 21 races in his seven-year career, including the Fall Highweight H. at Aqueduct.

A resident of Marion County, Florida since his retirement from training in 2016, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer almost two years ago, which had metastasized. He was admitted to the hospital Friday, Dec. 17, after suffering significant shortness of breath. He had chosen not to receive further treatment for his cancer. He was transferred to hospice care on Tuesday. His wife Pat was next to him when he passed, according to Nygaard.

The press release reads: “Just a few days ago, a GoFundMe effort was launched to assist Billy with medical and other expenses, and to give the chance to those who knew him to express words of support and their memories of this consummate gentleman and horseman. The outpouring of love and financial support was immense, and Billy's wife Pat spent a big part of his last two days reading Billy from the 18 pages of messages sent from around the nation.”

“Billy Turner passed away this afternoon peacefully at home,” said Pat Turner. “I want to take a moment to thank every person who contributed to his physical care and lifting him up in your thoughts and prayers. I was able to read him all the messages sharing your kindness and admiration of him. It meant a great deal to me to be able to let him know how loved he was in his last moments.”

A memorial and celebration of life service will be held at a later date.

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