The Saturday EveningTHE WAIFS

By WilliAM FAULKNERFrom His New Novel, The Town

May 4., 1957 - 159 How ~Hodgeof IllinoisStole the State's Millions

A NoveletteBy WilliAM SAROYAN

SUNNY JIM FITZSIMMONS:"I Like the Kentucky Derby, But-"

I Like the Derby; ButBy SUNNY JIM. FITZSIMMONS, as told to Jimmy Breslin

Timepiece in hand, Sunny Jim clocks some of his friends at Hialeah. "Each time a horse of minegoes out on the track-even for a workout-I don't feel easy until I've got him back safe in the barn."

It's a great show,says racIng's most famoustrainer, but it's not much of atest of horseflesh ....

Nashua made a big move when the horsesstraightened into the stretch. Swaps had beenleading most of the way, but now Eddie Ar-caro was putting Nashua's mind to his busi-ness, and I was starting to perk up. Then, assimply as you please, Swaps pulled away in acouple of strides and went on to win the 1955Kentucky Derby while Arcaro was trying toget Nashua together for another run.

"Well, the horse ran his race and got beat,"I told the writers and horse people around me."Looked to me like we have no excuses. I'llfind out about that a little later. Anyway, heseemed to come out of it all right, and I'm gladfor that"

Then I went to my car and drove home fordinner. This wasn't at Churchill Downs. I wasat Belmont Park, on Long Island, more than700 miles from Louisville and Nashua, thehorse I trained. I watched the race on television.

I Like the Derby'-Butwas basic. By the time your horse walksonto thc;ltrack, the:Derby is an anticlimaxto a trainer., You're tired, and your bigworry is that'the horse comes out of the'race alLright. The Derby is a mile and aquarter of the hardest going for a three-year-old colt. It comes on the first Satur-day in May, and at this stage of his career,

" a three-year-old is likea growing teen-ager _who is taking finalexaminations in school.If he gets pl!lsheda little too hard, it doessomething to him., A three-year-old in the early spring is

a fragile animal. At night he may besnoozing in the barn, just as valuable ahorse as can be found. The next morning,his value may be gone. A cbugh, a legbanging against the stall wall-any of ahundred things can happen to a younghorse. And ifI Wereto point too much for'the Derby with a still-groWingcolt, the'chances are I would break him down andruin any future he might have had.

At'the same time, I can't pass up therace. Each year, there are around 9000 'Thoroughbreds foaled. Some 2000 go onto win at least one race as two-year-olds,but only about 130 are considered good'enough by their owners to be nominatedfor the Derby. Those 130 are narroweddown to a starting field of around four-

PreventiveMaintenance

She doesn't mean a thing to me.I kriow a dozen better.it'sjust that I would hate to seeAnother fellow get her.

By Thomas B. Con'gdon

teen to sixteen. So you can see that you'reluckyjust to have a horse good enough'tobe entered in the,race.

The Kentucky Derby is the best-knownrace in my Spoilt.It is,popular with mostof the people in the. country, even thosewho never go to horse races. I like tothink of the Derby as racing's front par-lor. The Derby shows off what a nicesport racing is.

It is the race every trainer wants' towin, and once you win it, you want itagain too. Like me-I'm not satisfied

, with three winners-Gallant Fox, Omahaand Johnstown. My ambition is to be upthere with Ben Jones, who has trained sixDerby winners.

" Each spring, while I'm trying to g~t acolt ready, for a full career on the track,all I hear is Derby, Derby, Derby. Itplaces a trainer in the middle. It's a temp-tation to try too hard with the colt.

Right ,before the Derby, you've al-ways got a lot of c6lts that break down,or don't seem up, to a race, and have tobe scratched. Equipoise, one of the bighorses in racing history, was scratchedthe morning of the Derby. In 1954,Turn-to -and Porterhouse, both consid-ered, among ,the favorites, didn't lastthrough training.

You don't want,to have that happenwith your horse, especiallywhen yo,ucon-sider how much ',money a Derby startercan cost .the person who owns him.Nashua, 'for example, had expensivebreeding. William Woodward, Sr., waspart ofa syndicatewhichpaid $372,000forNasrullah, the imported stallion that siredboth Nashua and the horse I hope tohave in this year's race, Bold Ruler. By

the time 'Nashua retired,to stud, he hadwon $1,288,565, the most money anyhorse ever took down, and a darn sightmote than 'his trainer ever will. Nashua'wassold for $1,251,200.

As for Bold Ruler, he won $191,288asa'two-year-old, and has what could be acouple of rich years ahead of him. A man

_training a horse in this class had betterworry about the long term, or he is likelyto wind up'delivering groceries for somestore. It would be a bad gamble workingBold Ruler too hard for the Derby. Thoseare the words of a mild man. I supposeothers could make it stronger.

I don't know everything about racing-far as I'm concerned, the longer a personis in the sport the more he has to learn-but I know some of the.more obvious an-swers on the Kentucky Derby. I've beenin this business for a long time. If any-body cares to be picky and pin me down,I was hired for my first job on a racetrack

"the day Pres. Grover Cleveland was,.' inaugurated for his first term. I'll save youthe trouble of looking up the date. Thatwas seventy-two years ago. Since then, in,

i addition to my three Derby winners, I'vetrained some 200 winners of ninety otherimportant stakes races. The total win-nings come to something like $6,000,000.I've also had many wimiers of ordinaryraces.

Now, when all those people at Louis-ville this week stop fussing around athaving a good time and settle down for,the Derby, they won't necessarily see thebesthorse in the fieldwin. There are manyraces over the year which prove differ-ently. It isn't often that the ,winner goeson to sweep the Triple, Crown of three-year-aIds classics, the way two of minedid. That means winning Pimlico'sPreakness and the Belmont Stakes, as wellas the Derby.

Many times a three-year-old whichdoesn't do well in the Derby starts comi~gto true form later on in the year. In JetPilot's year, 1947, he beat Phalanx by ahead. Phalanx went on to be a big horsethat year. So did Faultless, the third-placefinisher that day. Faultless, for example;won the Preakness a week later, an'd Jet

, Pilot broke down in the race and finishedfar up the track .. More recently, NativeDancer and Nashua-, were beaten atLouisville. '

A trainer daesn't really'know his own-horse by Derby time, much less the rest ofthe field. A horse doesn't mature until he.is four or even five.-A young horse canfool you badly. Granville, which was myhorse in the 1936 Derby, shows that.

Granville was a nervous colt, and he,would become too jumpy for his owngood before a race. He always ~eeinedtoknow, right off in the morning;.if he,wasto run that day. So I tried the tricks I al-ways do on a horse of this type'.I thought

-Granville associated a race with the lightbreakfast we fed him those mornings. So"I had him fed lightly for a couple of daySwhen he was not running. Then I'd ha\\'ehim taken from his stall and walkedaround a bit at the time he normallywould be saddled for a race. This, I fig-ured, .would ease him-if only throughfamiliarizing him with the race-day rou-.tine.

But it didn't work. On a day when hewas going to run he would be the same asalways-jumpy as a cat. He knew allabout it. Don't ask me how. hlthe DerbyGranville still was nervous" and he got inajam at the statt and threw Jimmy Stout,his jockey.

Take any year and it's, the san1estory.Trainers don't know the answers before a

,Derby. In 1918, Willis Sharpe Kilmer

paid $15,000to get a work horse for SunBriar, his speedy colt. Sun Briar nevergot to the Derby, but the work horse did.He was Exterminator, a horse I considerthe best handicap runner I ever saw. In1949,Ben Jones thought Ponder was justa plodder, and said so right up to posttime at Louisville. But Ponder was theonly one of his Calumet Farm horses incondition for the race, so he entered him.Ponder started to run in the stretch, andthey still haven't caught him.

In 1951,Sol Rutchick, the trainer, wasagainst. putting Count Turf in the race.He told Jack Arniel, the owner, to forgetabout it. But Arniel wanted his horse inthe Derby, so he took Count Turf therewith Slim Sully, an assistant trainer. Thenight before the race, Arniel, who owns arestaurant in New York, called up Rut-chick and told him the horse was going towin by four lengths. Rutchick laughed.Count Turf won just like the restaurantman said he would-by four lengths. Itwas the biggest day the horse ever saw.He wasn't too much after that.

On the other hand, there have been bighorses which never entered the Derbybecause nobody figured at the time thatthey were in that class. Seabiscuit is agood example. I broke him for racing asa two-year-old in 1935. He didn't looklike much of a horse, just a cheap sellingplater. I raced him more than thirty timesas a two-year-old. The next year I hadhim in a $3000 claiming race, which hewon. Then I stepped him up to a $5000race, and he won that too. But nobodywas buying him-even when he won a$7500 race. I told the Wheatley Stableowner, Mrs. H. C. Phipps, to sell thehorse for $8000, if she could.

One afternoon at Saratoga I told herbrother, Mr. Ogden Mills, who was thenpart owner of the stable, that the pricehad better be raised. "And I'm not toosure you should sell him at all," I said."He might be a useful horse."

But I wasn't emphatic. Seabiscuit wasnot the kind of a horse you go on a limbfor. So Mr. Mills went into the club-house and took an $8000offer from Dr.Charles Strub, boss of Santa Anita RaceTrack, who was buying the horse forCharles S. Howard. IloWlird and hisl'rainer, Ih' Ililt Tom SlIlilh, IICVl'rIHidl'Vl'I_1 _1'11_'1'_11_11_11'_'_11_11'1'11'. --- ---

Well, anything anybody wants to knowabout Seabiscuit is in the record booknow. He wasn't ready for the Derby, buthe matured later on and became one ofthe greatest horses we've ever had.Around race tracks, they talk about hismatch race with War Admiral, a Derbywinner, as if it had just finished. Seabis-cuit won it. I'd still like the answer to thisone.

Bill Corum, the Churchill Downs presi-dent, and the rest of the people connectedwith the Derby over the years feel thebest thing that can happen is for a horsethat is strictly an outsider to come upwith one big day and beat the kind ofhorses I've been talking about. It makesthe race that much more popular all overthe country, where evef~body likes anunderdog. This adds charm to the Derby,they say, although I didn't see it that waywhen Nashua was beaten, and if some-thing like that happens to Bold Rulerthis year I won't go for it, either.

After the Kentucky Derby the fielddwindles for the Preakness a couple ofweeks later. By the time June and theBelmont Stakes come around, only thebig horses are in it, as a rule. The cream isat the top by now, but at Derby time it alllooks like milk. Sometimes a horse thatjust doesn't figure takes it all.

Most people don't realize that theDerby horses are not the top Thorough-breds in the sport. Maybe they will be

someday, but a still-maturing three-year-old is no match at even weights with anolder handicap hor·se.The true test of ahorse comes when he is four and up, andcarries weight assignments in handicapevents. Horses such as Tom Fool andArmed never got to the Derby, but a yearlater they would have been too_strongfora horse fresh from Churchill Downs. Andit would be unfair to match this year'sDerby winner with either Bardstown orSummer Tan, the top handicap horsesaround now. Both are mature five-year-olds. Needles, last year's winner, wouldhave needed a fifteen-pound weight ad-vantage before it would have been fair toput him in with Nashua, then the handi-cap chalppion.

Even in the Derby itself, the horses arenot of the same age. Every January first,a horse automatically has a birthday-ready or not. Breeders try to arrange it so

a horse will be foaled as early in the yearas possible, but it doesn't always workthat way, nature being what she is. SoSwaps came out on the track a full sixweeks older than Nashua in the 1955Derby. I don't know how much differ-ence it made, but I'd always rather haveit the other way around.

For me, training a horse is a constantworry, and the Derby conditions make itharder still. Each time a horse of minegoes out on the track-even for a work-out-I don't feel easy until I've got himback safe in the barn. When a horse runs,all the weight lands on one thin leg, hislead leg. That's the one which comesdown on the track first after each lunge.This fragile sliver of leg is all that standsbetween a sound horse and a badly dam-aged one. The younger the horse, themore the danger. And a Derby horse, asI've pointed out, is young.

About the best way to show the workwhich goes into getting a horse ready forthe Derby-and how you hope to keephim from being injured-is to put downthe training schedule, and the thinkingbehind it, for Bold Ruler this year. He wasthe top two-year-old in 1956, but in theRemsen Stakes, in November, at JamaicaRace Track in New York, he reared upcoming out of the gate and finished farup the track.

He seemed all right when he got backto me, but he might have hurt himself at

the start. If the right facilities had beenavailable, I would have turned out BoldRuler for a month of relaxation. I didthis with Nashua after he finished histwo-year-old season. But I wanted BoldRuler right where I could see him all thetime, so I had him shipped to Hialeahalong with the rest of the string I plannedto race in Florida.

There Iput Bold Ruler in slow trainingfor about three weeks, gradually increas-ing his workouts in preparation for theHialeah meeting. We started him withslow gallops-the same pace as you'd usegoing through the park. After a gooddose of these gallops, I slipped a three-mile gallop into Bold Ruler's routineevery once in a while. I like long gallopsfor my horses. It gradually develops theirheart and lung muscles without strain,and prepares them for the faster work-outs.

Usually it takes six to eight weeks III

get "a leg up" on a horse, meaning I\Ihave him ready for some speed. But BoldRuler really hadn't been out of trainin "so I could have worked him fast after twoweeks. I started by "breezing" till'horse-sending him along at a good clip,mostly his own pace-for seven eighth~of a mile. I did this with Bold Ruler twoor three times, then had him go a goodhalf mile all out. I looked for the colt tocover this distance in about forty-sevenseconds, which he did. Then I pushed himup for a good run of five eighths of amile. He did that in a minute.

After that I thought Bold Ruler wasready for his first start of the season. Ientered him in the $20,000 BahamasHandicap at Hialeah, a seven-furlongrace-a furlong is an eighth of a mile.Bold Ruler beat a good field of Derbyeligibles that day, and the first big stephad been taken by a horse I hope you'llsee in the Derby.

The winter racing at Florida and Cali-fornia nowadays is a big help to modernDerby colts. It used to be that you wouldtake your horse to Aiken, Columbia, orCamden, South Carolina, and winter himthere. Winter racing was almost non-existent, and trainers were afraid of tak-ing a chance on it. So they wound up try-ing to get their horses ready for theDerby exclusively. That was making thetemptation to (Continued on Page 51)

(Continued from Page 48) push a coltalong even harder to resist, and the cas-ualties among three-year-olds were high.

In that first Florida race of his thisyear, Bold Ruler broke the track record,but I didn't care about that. Fast timesdon't mean much to me, even in training.For example, before his next start, in theEverglades at Hialeah, Bold Ruler did amile in 1:35. It was figured out later thatonly twenty-nine horses in history hadever run a mile that quickly. My ownJohnstown was one of them. Well, BoldRuler was beaten by a nose by GeneralDuke in the Everglades the next Satur-day, which proves what workout timesmean. Actually, I was worried by thatworkout clocking. It was much too fast,and nine out of ten colts could have beenhurt by it.

Workout times do mean something ifa horse runs a distance three seconds orso slower than he should. Then some-thing is wrong with him. But I think Icould see that myself without any clockstelling me. All I look for is a good soundstride and no limping or coughing after-ward. Nobody ever got paid for runningagainst a clock.

When Bold Ruler wasn't on the trackthis winter, he was living the life of anyhorse I train. The routine is the same foras long as the horse runs. At 4:30 or soeach morning, the stable starts stirringand the horses begin getting their break-fast. Bold Ruler eats three times a dayjust like everybody else, so we try forsome variety in his meals. He goes.through twenty pounds of hay and elevenquarts of oats during a day. That's thebasic food. Then we give him some headlettuce, dandelions, carrots and a littlesugar. We keep his water bucket filledwith water brought up from Hot Springs,Arkansas. I drink this water myself.

The more Bold Ruler eats, the better Ilike it. Every good horse I've ever hadwas a big doer at mealtime. It meansthey're relaxed. In Bold Ruler's case, heisn't a nervous horse at all. He's extraplayful, however, and likes to take a nip ,at you. Otherwise, you generally find himasleep.

After breakfast, Bold Ruler is riggedwith riding tack, and I have him broughtout and walked in a circle along with therest of the horses scheduled to work thatday. I sit ill the middle and watch eachhorse. If I don't like something I see-maybe the look of his coat or the clear-ness of his eyes-the horse goes backin the stall and a veterinarian exam-ines him.

Each exercise boy then receives in-structions on what I want done with thehorse he is riding. This isn't a rule-of-thumb thing. I figure all this out the nightbefore with my sons, John and James. Wekeep records of every workout of everyhorse we've had in the past thirty years.

When a horse is finished working, he iswashed, then rubbed with a special oil. Agroom "hot-walks" him-slow walkingaround a circle until the horse is cooleddown. The horse spends the rest of theday in his stall. He usually snoozes,munches on hay and then looks out tosee what's going on. Afternoons, a groomwalks him for an hour or so to break themonotony.

Once Bold Ruler was over the firstcouple of races, win or lose,he was on thelong haul which we hoped would bringhim to the Derby. He won the $100,000added Flamingo Stakes at Hialeah, nos-ing out General Duke. But then, in theFlorida Derby at Gulfstream Park, Gen-eral Duke came back to even their scoreand to set up what could become anotherrivalry such as the one between Nashuaand Swaps. From there it was to be theWood Memorial at Jamaica on Apriltwenty-second, and then the train ride to

. Louisville and the Kentu.cky Derby.These races were steppingstones to the

Derby, but actually they were more thanthat to me. My idea of getting a horseready for the Derby is to have him fit foran entire campaign, not just the one race.With Bold Ruler, once he was fit enoughto go in that first race, the Bahamas, hewas in condition for a season whichwasn't going to end until sometime dur-ing November in New York. The Derbyis just one of a string of big races that wewant Bold Ruler to be in.

I think this way, but around the time of, the Wood Memorial, the Derby starts

getting the upper hand. Everybody talksabout it, and I want to win it. So I haveto watch extra carefully that we are notrushing the horse toward it. In Nashua'scase, he beat Summer Tan in the WoodMemorial in one of the best races I'veseen. He came out of it fine and shippedto Louisville. He lost the Derby, as I saidearlier, but he came back to win thePreakness and Belmont Stakes easily thatyear. Later on, Nashua won a flock ofothers, including the match race with

, Swaps. He didn't have just the one race inhim at Derby time.

The bosses-that's what I call the peo-ple who own the horses I train-had topay $411,000in 1956just for the upkeepof the twenty-nine-horse string I had.These bosses are the backbone ofracing.I wish my horses were as sound as thebosses. Anyway, I've got to have a lot ofwinners to meet the costs. Winning onebig race, if you break the horse downwhile you're at it, isn't going to pay manybills. I run a stable in a pretty expensiveway, so I have to make sure the methodspay.

Whatever horse sense I have comes be-cause I was born in a place most peopledon't think of as Thoroughbred coun-try-Brooklyn. But in the days of myboyhood, 1880 and thereabouts, Brook-

lyn was the horse-racing center of the na-tion. I was, in fact, born in what becamethe middle of a race track, SheepsheadBay. The house my family lived in wassold later to make way for the track.

I was ten when I got my first job ashelper around the stable. From there Iworked up to jockey. When I put on toomuch weight, I turned to training. I'vefound, over these years, that horses keepme alert and active. In seventy years I'venever gofup later than 5:30in the morn-ing. So I'm usually in bed about 9:30 atnight, although a good television show,like a fight or a shoot-'em-up withplenty of horses in it, might keep me upsomewhat later.

People make quite a thing of the factthat I still do some cooking and occa-sional personal laundering. When awayfrom home with my two oldest sons, Johnand Jim, who are with me on the track,we find it more convenient to "batch" itand split up the light housework. I gotplenty of experience at taking care ofmyself while barnstorming around half-mile tracks during my early days withhorses. In a large family like mine-Ihave six children, seventeen grandchil-dren and twenty-two great-grandchil-dren-it is a good thing for a fellow to beable to shift for himself.

Best way I can show how a horse keepsme young is to tell you about an after-noon at Belmont Park last October thir-teenth. In the Jockey Club Gold Cup attwo miles, Nashua made his last appear-ance before retiring to stud. He ransmartly, setting a record as he won, andeverybody was feeling sorry that he wasfinished.

But I didn't have any time to be walk-ing around and moping. I was back in thesaddling enclosure making sure every-thing was all right with a two-year-old,Bold Ruler. He was to run in the neXlrace, the Belmont Futurity. He won therace and the $91,000 first money, andthen I knew I had something to keep melooking ahead.

This year there are other two-year-oldsin the barn-among them Nasco. He's afull brother to Bold Ruler. In Floridathis winter I thought he might developinto something pretty good. I expect I'llbe around to see about that too.

I don't take any vacations-haven'had one in as long as I can recall-and Idon't have any time to sit around andfiddle the day away talking about whahappened at Gravesend Bay in 1895, orsome such thing. I'm too busy thinkingahead with my horses. Right nm , I'mthinking about another Kentucky Derby.I just hope Bold Ruler will be fit and runas good a race as he can.

If you're worried about the betting-well, I don't know all the answers there,either. Oh, I've had some luck in m:time. T.ike thf'. rl"v whf'n M"v mv"

If you're worried about the betting-well, I don't know all the answers there,either. Oh, I've had some luck in mytime. Like the day when May, my sonJohn's wife,was looking for somebody togo partners with her on a bet on OneThrow, a horse that ran in the EvergladesHandicap at Hialeah in 1952. Nobodywould go in with her, s01 loosened upand put up half of the two-dollar bet.The horse won, and I got ,thirty dollarsback for my dollar-whic4 I promptlyhad to turn over to my granddaughter.

That's pretty good betting for me. Thebiggest bet I ever made was $100 one dayat Saratoga on Man 0' War, an 11-20shot. He was a sure thing to win the race,I figured.

Man 0' War was beaten by Upset thatday, the only race he ever lost. That put anew word in the English language and adent in the Fitzsimmons bankroll. And itwas another illustration of how little anyof us really know about horses. For theKentucky Derby, that goes double.

THE END

"When a horse is finished working, he is washed, then rubbed with a special oil. Next a groom 'hot-walks' hill1-I";l(IH 1111 II", H" :lround the circle until he is coo.1'd duwlI "

•

Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons (light hat) scans his horsesas they come in fr()rn a dawn workout at Hialeah.