JC / Railbird

Racing History

Genuine Risk, 1977-2008

Only two days after Proud Spell very likely clinched this year’s filly championship comes the news that Genuine Risk, the champion filly of 1980, died in her Virginia paddock this morning. Genuine Risk won 10 of her 15 career starts, including the Demoiselle and Ruffian Handicap, and never finished worse than third (PDF), but what earned the chestnut mare with the distinctive blaze her fame was being the second filly to win the Kentucky Derby:

She remains the only filly to have finished in the money in every Triple Crown race, placing four lengths behind Codex in the Preakness after the colt drifted into her path in the stretch and carried her wide (a controversial finish some horseplayers are surely still nursing grudges over) and losing by a nose to 53-1 Temperence Hill in the Belmont. As usual, the Sports Illustrated Vault is a trove of good stories, including William Nack’s recounting of the Firestones’ delirious rush to the Derby winner’s circle and the “talk show” that followed the stewards’ decision to let stand the Preakness order of finish. William Leggett was on scene for the Belmont, an upset so shocking it hushed the crowd.
Genuine Risk was retired from racing in 1981 with an injury; she was not a successful broodmare (PDF), although she was, as Maryjean Wall recalls, “a very loving mom.” Of her two living foals, Genuine Reward made it into training with Bill Mott, but both were unraced, and she was pensioned in 2000, kept in comfortable retirement by her doting owners.

Seabiscuit’s Fishy Finish

Vic Ziegel revisits Seabiscuit’s 1940 Santa Anita Handicap win:

One of sports’ greatest what-ifs took place 65 years ago today in the $100,000 Santa Anita Handicap, which was then racing’s richest prize. What if — and why didn’t — the jockey on Kayak II use his whip when he seemed ready to pass the leader near the finish line?

Kayak finished second and, the chart notes tell us, ‘might have been closer to the winner had he been vigorously ridden in the last sixteenth.’ Which is racing’s dignified way of saying, ‘You can smell it from here.’

Kayak’s owner didn’t complain, was thrilled in fact. He happened to own the winner as well. A 7-year-old, racing for the last time, named Seabiscuit.

Hm … Ziegel writes that owner Charles Howard was rooting for the win because it “would make Seabiscuit the game’s leading money-winner, and enhance his reputation when he went to stud.”

After →