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Our job was to keep it under control, so he wouldn't fly apart."
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In comparing the two horses, Turner said Smarty Jones appeared more controllable than Seattle Slew. Seattle Slew raced one more year, as a 4-year-old, winning five of seven races that season and ending up with 14 victories in 17 career starts.
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The race took place 22 days after the Belmont. The moment the gates opened, he wanted to run as fast and as hard as he could, not exactly the right recipe for winning at a distance of a mile and a half.Īfter winning the Belmont, Seattle Slew was flown to California and ended up finishing fourth, 16 lengths behind, in the Swaps Stakes at Hollywood Park. Though immensely talented, the horse was hard to control. Turner feared that the Belmont would be Seattle Slew's toughest test. I don't think he is as good as Seattle Slew, but if he wins the Belmont he will be a deserving Triple Crown winner." But after what he did in the Preakness, it is impossible to knock him. It was a speed race where two horses ran in front the whole way around in the slop. Even after the Derby, I wasn't that impressed with him. "He surprised me, " Jean Cruguet, Seattle Slew's rider during the Triple Crown, said of Smarty Jones. He won three races there against modest competition. Smarty Jones won a couple of minor stakes races before shipping to Oaklawn Park in Arkansas earlier this year to prepare for the Derby. Seattle Slew was already an established star by the time he won the Kentucky Derby. Slew will be looking down, hoping this horse can do it." It can be done again, but we did it first. Everyone says it's one of the toughest things ever to do. "We'll just have to add one little word - the first undefeated Triple Crown winner. "It would be fine with me if Smarty Jones did it," said Mickey Taylor, one of Seattle Slew's owners. Like Smarty Jones, Seattle Slew was 8- for-8 going into the Belmont. Each colt was a headstrong horse whose trainer worked to get him to relax in the early part of his races. Smarty Jones was the first Derby starter for his trainer, John Servis, and owners, Roy and Pat Chapman. Turner had never run a Derby starter before, and neither had Seattle Slew's owners. Seattle Slew cost just $17,500 as a yearling, and Smarty Jones was bred in Pennsylvania and did not appear to have a fashionable pedigree at the time of his birth. "There's clearly something that goes with that mystique that you don't experience with other horses."Įach came from rather humble beginnings. "They're dealing with the mystique of an undefeated horse," said Seattle Slew's trainer, Billy Turner.
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Isaacs, already had an idea that the son of Elusive Quality might have some talent, but neither he nor anyone else could have imagined how bright the horse's future might be, that he might become the next Seattle Slew. On the day of Seattle Slew's death, a yearling named Smarty Jones - just 14 months old at the time - was strolling the fields of Bridlewood Farm in Ocala, Fla. Perhaps the wait will not be so long after all. That is among the reasons no horse has won the Triple Crown in 26 years, the longest drought in racing history. The sport just did not produce horses like the great Seattle Slew anymore, colts that were so fast, so talented, so consistent and so durable that they are simply in a class by themselves. When the 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew died on May 7, 2002, it seemed there might be an eternal wait before horse racing saw another horse anything like him. Facebook Twitter Email Kentucky Derby & Preakness Stakes Champion Smarty Jones gallops under exercise rider Pete Van Trump at Philadelphia Park on Friday.