Pre-1980 Preakness Stakes

It seems some collectors are rather slow in putting up old Preakness races, and a few of them refuse to put in embed codes.

Spectacular Bid 1979:



Affirmed 1978:



Seattle Slew 1977 from this link.


Master Derby 1975


Secretariat 1973. Secretariat's move on the first turn is the most sensational in the history of the race. I HATE the music with this race. Just show the race with no trimmings:



Canonero II 1971. This is in Spanish:



Majestic Prince 1969:



Northern Dancer 1964


Greek Money 1962 by a tiny margin over Ridan.

Bold Ruler 1957. Footage is silent:



Bold Ruler, the greatest sire in thoroughbred racing history, sired 1973 winner Secretariat, who in turn sired 1988 winner Risen Star.

Fabius, son of Citation, 1956. Newsreel ighlights:

Kentucky Derby 1970-1979

The decade of champions. Oh, how I miss Chic Anderson!

1970: Dust Commander:





1971: Canonero II:



1972: Riva Ridge:



1973: Secretariat, who set the track record which still stands today and in a freakish performance in which he ran each quarter faster than the previous one:



1974: Cannonade:



1975: Foolish Pleasure:



1976: Bold Forbes:



1977: Seattle Slew:



1978: Affirmed:



1979: Spectacular Bid:

Racing Commentary

Steve Haskin writes racing great Spectacular Bid (1976-2003) was the best racehorse he ever saw.

I wouldn't call the Bid the greatest, but he was up there. It's too bad he had to suffer from a bad jockey earlier in his career or he would have won the 1979 Triple Crown.

1979 Belmont Stakes.

The most disgusting Belmont Stakes of all time: Spectacular Bid, the heavy favorite to win the Triple Crown and should have, was screwed over by a poor ride by jockey Ron Franklin. Bid finished third to Coastal and Golden Act:




Ron Franklin never rode him again. Bid lost only once more, to Affirmed in the 1979 Jockey Club Gold Cup. He came in second. Bid had an undefeated record his four-year-old season.

I wrote about Spectacular Bid and the Belmont in my obituary of the great horse here.

Coastal was a son of Majestic Prince, a horse who won the 1969 Derby and Preakness but lost to Arts and Letters in the Belmont.

You can watch the 1969 Belmont Stakes here. Majestic Prince was sore and should not have run. He went into the race undefeated, and after his loss he was retired. Arts and Letters went on to be Horse of the Year.

Just for Fun

I decided to post this YouTube of Spectacular Bid's unsuccessful bid to become the third consecutive Triple Crown winner in 1979 when a safety pin and his unexperienced jockey threw his chances away:



I was never so pissed off in my entire life over a horse race than I was with this. I have written about this race many times on this blog.

I wasn't the only one sick over this race. Bid's trainer, the late Bud Delp, was so sickened over this race he never watched it again.

"The Greatest Horse to Ever Look Through a Bridle"

The last of the great racehorses of the 1970s has died. Spectacular Bid, 27, died Monday of a heart attack.

Bud Delp, the Bid's trainer, called him, with a lot of justification, the "greatest horse ever to look through a bridle." He was the son of a mare called Spectacular, and sired by the great sire Bold Bidder, who in turn was sired by the greatest sire of the twentieth century, Bold Ruler (Secretariat's sire, Seattle Slew's great-grandsire). He was two-year-old champion in 1978, and he was a shoo-in for the 1979 Triple Crown. He had it all, it seemed.

Except an experienced, competent jockey. The Bid nearly got killed in the 1979 Florida Derby, which he miraculously won, and jockey Ronnie Franklin was verbally and publicly chewed out by Delp. "Bill Shoemaker is just a phone call away," "you idiot," that sort of thing. Franklin was a mere 18 or 19, and I suppose some thought he was the second coming of Steve Cauthen. However, events would prove otherwise.

Bid won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness with flair. But the Belmont was an unmitigated disaster, the one time I screamed at the television set and cussed out Franklin because he so screwed up the ride. Unlike Funny Cide this past Saturday, who was so rank jockey Jose Santos couldn't control him and thus the horse lost his chance at a Triple, Bid was NOT rank, but the idiot jockey put Bid in front too early, and the horse lost out to Coastal (a son of Majestic Prince, who in turn lost his chance at the Triple Crown in 1969 to Arts and Letters) and second-place Golden Act.

Although Delp and racing lore have it a safety pin that poked into Bid's foot earlier had contributed to the defeat, almost everybody who saw the race that day knew Franklin fucked up big time. He never rode Bid again. Instead, the horse's connections brought in Bill Shoemaker, who to this day says the horse is the best he ever rode, even better than the great Forego. Bid lost only one more time, to Affirmed in the 1979 Jockey Club Gold Cup.

Bid didn't win Horse of the Year that year; Affirmed won it for the second straight year, but Bid was three-year-old champion. The next year, 1980, was nothing short of sensational. Spectacular Bid was unbeaten as a four-year-old, winning nine races out of nine. He won the California Triple Crown, and set the world record for a mile-and-a-quarter, 1:57 4/5, at Santa Anita. He set five track records in all that year. To top off his career, nobody challenged him in the 1980 Woodward Stakes, and the Bid "won" in a walkover, the first one since Citation had done it decades before (there's been only one or two walkovers since). I remember seeing that race, and the crowd booed, not at Bid or Shoemaker, but at the fact everybody else was too scared to go up against them.

But getting back to the 1979 Belmont, Delp told ESPN that he had tapes of all of the Bid's races. He has seen the Belmont only once, and he will never watch it again. To this day, Delp, 70, is sickened by that race, a race Bid never should have lost, a race which should have made him the third consecutive Triple Crown winner.

Spectacular Bid, who was at another section of Claiborne Farm when I visited the farm back in 1989 (and thus was the only great of the 1970s who I didn't get to see), moved to Milfer Farm in New York later on. His remains will be buried there.