The pressure that had been building on Ronnie Franklin before the Preakness only intensified after it was over. With each ride he was watched more closely and criticized with greater intensity. The strain and wear inflicted upon him in public only added to the miseries that afflicted him in private.
And it was all beginning to show in the form of highly erratic performances at Pimlico.
About a week after the Preakness, in the eighth race, Ronnie rode an unruly mount called Big Vision and had difficulty controlling him. After initially streaking for the finish line, Big Vision suddenly and inexplicably took off in the direction of the outside fence. Ronnie appeared powerless to redirect him, and instead of enjoying an easy victory, the young riding wizard ended up embarrassed and in fifth place.
After the race, Fred Colwill, the chief steward, happened by the unsaddling area and saw something deeply disturbing. He watched as Ronnie raised his boot and kicked Big Vision in the stomach. That was highly uncharacteristic behavior for Franklin, who saw himself as an animal lover and a man who enjoyed a special rapport with Spectacular Bid and other horses.
So what might have driven a kindly disposed kid to such a despicable and aberrant act of animal cruelty? No one asked that question or even bothered to look for a deeper meaning. No one asked if maybe too much was being heaped on the young rider or if he had other emotional issues that were affecting him.
When Colwill confronted him, Franklin didn’t bother to deny the incident. He was fined the paltry sum of $100, and that was an end of it. Apparently, in the eyes of the Maryland Racing Commission, he was rehabilitated.
But only about a week later Ronnie was in trouble again. Riding in another race, right out of the gate he lost control of a two-year old called Croatoan. The horse immediately moved sharply to the left and interfered with not one but two horses, Fully Loaded and Ambitious Ruler. To his credit, Ronnie immediately pulled on the reins to redirect Croatoan, but the damage was done. Fully Loaded and Ambitious Ruler’s chances to win had been scuttled. And there were still more surprises. In the stretch, Croatoan bumped yet another horse, the unfortunately named Feta Cheese, before crossing the wire in first place.
Needless to say, a claim was put in against Ronnie, and his number was ultimately taken down by the stewards. He and Croatoan were stripped of their first-place finish and placed seventh.
It was an unusual ruling. A rider’s number wouldn’t normally be taken down for something the horse had done in the first three strides unless it was obvious that the rider had intentionally ridden into someone else’s path.
The disastrous ride aboard Croatoan put Franklin under review for suspension. That was standard procedure for a jockey in a disqualification. But on another level the situation was highly unusual since a suspension would disqualify Ronnie from riding in the Belmont Stakes, which was then only less than a week away.
Buddy Delp came roaring into the situation, of course, and made it all about himself. About steward Clinton Pitts Jr., who was in the stand that day, he said, “I’m sure he hates my guts”—as though that factored into it. Buddy often said, with more than a little paranoia, that Maryland’s stewards were out to get him. In this case, he believed they were using Ronnie as a proxy.
To ward off any evil intentions, Buddy promised a big legal imbroglio if punitive measures were taken against Ronnie. “If they try to suspend Franklin for something that he did without malice, I’ll appeal it to the highest court in the land . . . to see that he doesn’t serve a day,” Buddy vowed.
In the end, the stewards determined that Ronnie had done enough to correct his mount, and no further penalty was warranted.
These incidents became ammunition in the hands of an intellectual assassin. Andrew Beyer had the ability, the interest, and the forum to ensure that no one overlooked Ronnie Franklin’s failings. By this time Beyer was one of the most influential racing writers in the nation. Putting that prestige to work, he wrote a scathing piece in the Washington Post that demeaned Franklin’s riding skills and discredited his legitimacy to run for the Triple Crown.
Beyer eviscerated Franklin but did so in a column full of sophistries, telling only the half of the story that supported his thesis and concealing the other half that discredited his points. For instance, Beyer wrote that Ronnie “did not display much aptitude when he launched his career at Pimlico a year ago.” Somehow, in making the case for Ronnie’s lack of “aptitude,” Beyer forgot to mention the kid’s long list of victories in 1978, his high total purse earnings, or his Eclipse Award as the nation’s top apprentice. Continuing his belligerence, the columnist wrote, “He’s riding even worse now [than last year].” Again, he de-emphasized an important point. Franklin had just won both the Derby and the Preakness.
Beyer attempted to justify his ludicrous statements by proving what a poor performance Ronnie’s winning ride had been in the Preakness. “He went to ridiculous lengths to [keep Spectacular Bid] out of trouble,” he informed his readers. Cordero was “so far away from the rail you could have driven a tank inside him. . . . If Cordero had gone into Row A of the parking lot, Franklin would have been in Row B.” Beyer suggested that Franklin’s fondness for the outside, his “willingness to lose several lengths,” was all due to a crippling fear of trouble.
But Beyer never mentioned something that every rider in America knew all too well: Angel Cordero Jr. could be a terrorist out there, fearlessly playing chicken with any willing, or unwilling, partner he had set his sights on. Many of the best riders had fallen prey to Cordero’s brilliantly conceived and executed traps, and in Jacinto Vasquez’s colorful phrase, they had been “barbecued.” Did Beyer believe the Preakness was the proper venue for Ronnie to prove he could handle Angel when so many magnificent and veteran riders couldn’t?
The journalist might have fashioned himself an iconoclast, but there was nothing clever or illuminating or particularly honest about his piece. It felt as if it had been written by an intellectual bully.
The words on the page were ultimately more telling about the author than the youthful subject. The journalist might have seen Ronnie’s recent struggles in the context of his past successes. Instead of doing backflips to prove Ronnie was a poor rider, Beyer might have used the skills of a journalist to look for the underlying causes of the kid’s troubles. He had donated all of his column space to a kind of smarmy ass kicking, a man beating up a boy. Instead, he might have devoted his valuable ink and newsprint to answering the question of why this steel-plated kid was suddenly so fragile. Better yet, he could’ve taken the time to ask Ronnie’s parents or friends, or he might have picked up the phone and demanded answers from Buddy or the Meyerhoffs or other racing professionals.
Beyer didn’t do any of those things. He saw Franklin’s agony and then kicked him with sadistic gusto. Unfortunately, there was no commission to review the cheap shots of writers, and no one ever got suspended or fined for kicking a kid and making him feel worthless.
Every one of Beyer’s cruel and ill-considered words was accelerant to something that was already raging out of control inside the teenager’s brain. At least the writer from Harvard proved one thing: education didn’t inoculate a man from being obnoxious or abusive.
Ronnie wasn’t the only one on his team who’d been abused a little by the press. A couple of weeks earlier they’d all been so excited to return to Baltimore, a place that loomed huge in their sentiments. And yet now departure from that same place was a delicious escape, a much-needed retreat from a town that had been far less hospitable than any place called “home” should ever be.
If New York was an exile of sorts, at least it was a swanky one. The Bid’s team moved into Manhattan’s finest accommodations, at the venerable Plaza Hotel. Ronnie and Gerald had their own plush rooms and a mindset that they would enjoy the big city.
At night, they relaxed their way; they snorted coke from Gerald’s Baltimore supply, and they consorted with prostitutes. “Ronnie would fuck a snake,” Gerald said with a laugh, though he knew his buddy wasn’t the only one.
Perhaps Ronnie was giving into his animal appetites, like many a young man. Or maybe in a world that felt more and more like it was closing in on him, Ronnie desperately required someone to lie down with him and provide him the small comforts, the ones that are often sought by worried men.
The racing days following those racy nights were all business. Buddy knew that one of the blind spots in Ronnie’s training was a total absence of experience at Belmont Park, the longest and most challenging race track in the country. The Bid had raced there once before, in the Champagne Stakes, but that was in the brief interlude when Georgie Velasquez was up.
Buddy had a plan to rectify that situation. He scheduled Ronnie for a few races at Belmont Park, one on the Wednesday before the Stakes and two more on Saturday, the big day itself. The Wednesday race was for two-year-olds and was interesting for one notable reason: Ronnie and Cordero were slotted right next to each other at the gate.
Angel was still seething from Ronnie’s comments after the Preakness, when he had called Cordero a poor sport and shamelessly bragged that he had pushed Angel to the inside. Cordero still blamed Ronnie for the fact that his horse’s legs were cut up in the race.
Now, just two days before the Belmont, Angel stomped his way to the paddock with Greg McCarron, another veteran rider, beside him. “I’m gonna drop that son of a bitch,” Angel confided to McCarron.
True to his word, as soon as the gates opened, Cordero plowed his horse, Ski Pants, right into Franklin and his mount, Lorine. As two-year-olds, the horses were inexperienced and unpredictable, the type that might inadvertently interfere with each other. Nevertheless, Cordero’s intent was strikingly obvious. He went straight at Franklin and made no apparent attempt to correct his horse; instead, he drove his animal hard and deep into Franklin’s and kept driving until Franklin almost went down, horse and all.
In fact, Cordero’s attack on Franklin had a violent ripple effect that might have brought down several horses. It was like amusement park crash cars, but the vehicles were terrified and weighed more than one thousand pounds.
“I thought I was gonna be dropped,” Ronnie said, clearly shaken by the experience. “I thought I had no chance of stayin’ up, that I was goin’ for sure. God had to help me a little bit. I was halfway down.”
“I was just glad I wasn’t in between them,” McCarron admitted.
After the race, Buddy Delp was understandably livid. He railed to the press about Cordero’s malicious behavior. But he was also enraged at his protégé, who he believed needed to stand up for himself. “If you don’t go in there and hit that son of a bitch don’t bother coming home tonight,” Buddy told Ronnie after the race. “‘Get your ass in that room and you kick the crap out of him.’”
In his zeal for combat, Buddy seemed to forget that he was sending a boy to fight a man. Cordero was thirty-seven years old and life-hardened. He’d been a boxer in his youth and a fearless brawler ever since. Angel was one tough hombre, as intimidating and unforgiving as they came.
Ronnie was just nineteen. He had grown up on the streets of his union shop of a neighborhood, facing bullies who were the regular-sized sons of steelworkers and factory laborers, pipefitters and teamsters. He was without fail smaller than his opponent in every fight he’d ever been in, but he never walked away from a challenge.
Now there was no choice. Buddy Delp, his employer, his mentor, his father figure, demanded that he go and stand up to Cordero, and that was exactly what he did.
Whatever was bubbling up in Ronnie, however, was already boiling over in Angel. When Ronnie stalked into the room, he was immediately in Angel’s eye. And nothing stood between them but sheer contempt and a murderous rage. “Te voy a matar!” Cordero shouted. (“I’m going to kill you,” in Spanish.)
And just like that they went from competitors to combatants in a fight for their lives. Ronnie swung his helmet at Cordero’s head and then came at the Puerto Rican with his fists swirling. He connected to Angel’s head once or twice before Cordero pulled him to the ground. There they grappled like high school wrestlers until others jumped into the fray to separate them. “If they didn’t break it up,” jockey George Martens, an eyewitness, said, “it was going to be a biggie.”
If Ronnie and Angel were Ali and Frazier, Buddy was Don King. In other words, while the two athletes did the fighting, Delp ran his mouth and threatened legal action if Angel was not suspended. “Cordero intimidated Ronnie Franklin once, down in Florida,” Delp admitted, “but he’ll never do it again.” And then Buddy said something really interesting and unintentionally revealed an ugly truth. “I’m the only man who can frighten Ronnie,” he earnestly said.
Harry Meyerhoff did his best to throw his weight around. He told the organizers of the Belmont Stakes that if his horse and rider were in danger, he would skip their race altogether.
It was like a Mexican standoff. Everyone had his gun barrel pointed at someone else, and everyone was in someone else’s crosshairs. In the end, however, it was the stewards who didn’t blink. Despite the pressure that Buddy and Harry applied to them, they refused to be intimidated and did nothing to punish Angel for his outsized and aggressive behavior. In fact, they exonerated him. “Cordero’s mount did come in sharply,” they allowed in a written statement. “However, she hit the gate and was turned to the outside, causing Franklin to take up. Due to these contributing factors, no punitive action was deemed appropriate.”
Ignoring the fact that one of the riders was in his thirties while the other was still in his teens, the stewards found them equally culpable for the post-race fight, and they fined them both $250. “THE STEWARDS DO NOT WISH TO COMMENT ANY FURTHER,” a press release stated. In other words, they didn’t feel like they owed anybody any explanations for their outrageous decision.
Others pointed out that there was a plausible excuse for what the stewards did. Angel was a favorite of the trainer Angel Penna. Penna trained horses for Dinny Phipps. And Phipps was the chairman of the board of trustees of the New York Racing Association, the organization that oversaw many of the state’s tracks, including Belmont. To make a long story short, Cordero was closely connected to the stewards’ boss.
“[Cordero] tried to bury Franklin,” Buddy Delp moaned. “He wanted him on the ground. He should be suspended thirty days for this, or six months.”
Buddy had a rock-solid point and he should have left it at that, but it wasn’t in his nature to stop talking. “I don’t understand Cordero,” he continued. “Apparently, he can’t stand somebody else being successful. He shows me no class whatsoever.”
Steve Cauthen, the nineteen-year-old Triple Crown–winning rider from only the year before, knew how brutal the profession was. “You’ve got to get in fistfights sometimes, just to hold your own,” Cauthen said. In a room full of strugglers and dues payers Cauthen knew that Ronnie would never be seen as anything more than lucky.
The other jockeys thought God smiled on young guys like Cauthen and Franklin who got to work with successful trainers and well-bred horses while all they got was a long, hard journey to the top and endless struggles.
There were no favorite sons in the jockeys’ room, where mettle was earned mano a mano and never given. “Sometimes [another rider will] want to take you on just to measure you,” Cauthen said. “You’ve got to stand your ground. Horse racing is life or death. If somebody puts your life in danger [out on the track], you let him know about it. Sometimes . . . you have to get dead serious about it.” To Cauthen and all of the jockeys, “dead serious” meant attacking a brother jockey if the situation warranted it.
Cordero knew how the game worked. He could effortlessly transition from a killer in the jockeys’ room to a charismatic charmer in the press room. To him, it was just one more aspect of being a successful jockey.
After the supposed steward-brokered resolution of hostilities between Cordero and Franklin, it was time to meet the press. Angel stood in front of the cameras and smiled his infectious smile and patted his young rival on the back as though he was a kindly uncle to him.
And then Cordero stepped up to the mic. The tiny Black Hispanic rider met the lily white room of tall Anglo writers, took their reins, and rode their sympathies with as much skill, dexterity, and deception as he’d ever displayed on a horse. He dazzled the boys of the media with an array of carefully chosen words. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s over,” Angel said with his big, toothy smile. “We shake hands and became friends.”
Ronnie gave a weak smile and said nothing. And Cordero continued on. “I never caused any trouble, and I’m not planning any trouble,” Angel said. “I paid $250 [in fines,] and if I’m going to fight I’ll go to the Garden and get a million dollars. Far as I’m concerned, it’s over.”
It was a virtuoso performance—contrite without an admission of guilt and sincere enough to convince a roomful of cynical men who knew he was full of it.
Franklin, on the other hand, was transparently sullen. He was twenty minutes late for the meeting. He was good enough to pose for the propaganda photos with Angel, but after that he quickly left the premises without uttering a single word.
Cordero could fool a lot of people but not himself. He knew it wasn’t “over,” as he had said. In fact, it was far from over. The tipoff was his referring to Franklin, the lucky white kid who had called him “a spic,” as a “friend.”
Por favor.
Cordero could afford to bullshit it any way he wanted to. He had forcefully made his point to Delp, Franklin, and everyone else. He’d thumped that kid right there on the track, in front of the crowd and the cameras and the stewards, and he had come within a hair of putting Franklin, and for that matter himself, under the hooves. In case anyone didn’t know already, he was letting them know: Angel Cordero Jr. was capable of anything. And he wasn’t afraid of a goddamn thing—neither falling under the horses nor flying afoul of the stewards.
Worse yet, everyone could see that Buddy’s running, roaring mouth and so-called prestige were worthless. Delp couldn’t do a thing to protect Franklin on the track or in the jockeys’ room even if he wanted to.
Now it was as if Ronnie was walking through a rat-infested alley in a bad neighborhood without a single cop in sight. And here came Angel to chase him down that alley, not with a switchblade but with a stomping horse.
It couldn’t be a more dangerous game, something underscored in the next day’s Baltimore Sun, where, wedged between stories about Franklin and Cordero, was a long piece about Ron Turcotte, the jockey who’d ridden Secretariat to glory.
Only eleven months earlier, at the very same Belmont Park, Turcotte’s horse had bumped into the heels of another, and he had been launched from the saddle. He had hit the ground with tremendous force and instantly knew that something was tragically wrong. “I couldn’t feel my stomach or legs,” Turcotte said. Three of his vertebrae were broken, something he instinctively knew as he lay there inert amid the hoof prints; he was paralyzed and would never walk again.
And that was horse racing under “normal” conditions. Cordero was begging tragedy, playing crash cars with horses and endangering virtually everyone around him.
Yet somehow it was all good for business. The chaos and the tumult only heightened anticipation for the Belmont Stakes and the possibilities of what might happen there when the hotheaded Cordero and the impetuous Franklin met again.
The night before the race Ronnie rested alone in his suite at the Plaza. As he tucked into his luxurious bed, his worries flew away as he slipped into the sweet comfort of sleep. There, in the middle of the night, his eyes twitched rapidly beneath his closed lids, and images of himself racing flickered in his brain. In that theater of his mind he was high up on “Big Daddy,” smacking him like hell, as they zoomed down the homestretch toward the wire.
There was no Buddy there to lean into him and no Cordero to run over him. It was almost like Middleburg; there was only the Bid and the track and the clouds and him. Together, the horse and jockey won the Belmont and the Triple Crown, and he hoisted the trophy high above his head.
That was his dream.
But while Ronnie hallucinated in bed, Spectacular Bid was at the stables having his own nocturnal adventures. The Bid’s groom was Mo Hall, a man at midlife who was at the top of his profession and respected by everyone in the industry who knew him. He handled Buddy Delp’s best horses. He was assigned the Bid after the original groom, Tots, had almost cooked the horse alive in his stall.
Mo came to Buddy courtesy of his trusted young veterinarian, Jimmy Stewart. Dr. Stewart had known Mo since they were both young men. Back then, the groom worked for an English-born trainer named Judy Johnson, the first woman licensed to ride horses at a para-mutual track in Maryland and a steeple chase racer during World War II. When Judy retired, in 1978, Mo was without groom work for a little while. He had been relegated to the lowest job at the track, hot walking. Stewart told Buddy that Mo was available, and Delp snapped him up.
Hall’s talent for his work was undeniable, but he did have one troublesome quality. He liked to drink. He hid bottles of VO all over the place. One was at the bottom of an oak barrel; another was in between where the hay was stacked. He had hiding places everywhere.
Mo’s problem was usually no problem for his employer. No one could easily tell that he was drunk even though everyone knew that he was a drinker. His habit may have been self-destructive, but it didn’t usually interfere with his work.
The night before the Belmont, Mo went through his usual progression of duties. He spread an extra-heavy straw bed in the Bid’s stall because that was the way the star horse liked it. Next, he wrapped the great colt’s swift legs with bandages and fastened them with safety pins. Because Bid could be a noncompliant customer and an unusually smart horse, Mo had to sprinkle pepper flakes on the bandages and wrap the safety pins in tape. All of this protected the four-legged athlete’s delicate limbs from his own kicks and bites in the night. But with whiskey on Mo’s breath, some of the small details weren’t on his mind.
He forgot to tape the safety pins.
So while Ronnie dreamt of victory in the night, Bid worked to undo it. He opened one of the untaped pins with his mouth, and it fell deep into the lush straw bed. Sometime during the night his foot found that pin and he stepped on it with the full force of his massive frame, driving it deeply into the hard material of his left forehoof.
The pin traveled a good distance into the Bid’s foot, at least a quarter of an inch. It was a serious and painful injury, the equivalent of a human having a pin shoved under his fingernail. In other words, it was quite literally torture.
Mo, like all good grooms, lived by the mantra, “No hoof, no horse.” He obsessively and routinely checked his horses’ hooves for stones or other obstructions. He found the pin and immediately removed it, but his anxiety was not assuaged. He knew the Bid was in serious trouble.
At about 5:30 a.m. Delp’s limousine rolled up. Mo was already outside waiting for him. “Boss,” Mo said, his face stricken and creased with worry, “you got a problem; the horse is lame.”
Buddy went into the Bid’s stall and picked up his left foreleg to examine the hoof. He could see the puncture. They took the Bid out of his stall and jogged him to determine if he was favoring the leg and if he was sound enough to run. “He’s a little off,” Gerald told Buddy.
They treated the horse themselves. First, they bathed him in warm Epson water. Then, they iced him. Even as they treated him, they were also considering their options.
There was some disagreement about the proper course. “Dad, you’ve got to scratch this horse,” Gerald told his father.
But Buddy wasn’t so sure. He’d had a long and successful career, but this was his pinnacle, his chance at immortality, and his launching pad to greater wealth. He wasn’t about to let it slip away. “I’m one to nine to win the Triple Crown,” Buddy said. “I’ll probably never be here again. If the horse jogs sound this afternoon I’m running him.”
The real decision belonged to Harry Meyerhoff, so Buddy quickly picked up the phone and called the boss. Harry was still back at his suite in the Plaza when he received Buddy’s call. His face became careworn as he listened closely to Buddy’s report.
Meyerhoff had made a fortune making hard decisions. And he approached this one methodically. The way he saw it, they basically had three options: they could race the horse, they could scratch him, or they could alert the stewards and let them make the decision.
“Well, what do you want to do?” Buddy asked Harry.
“Whatever you think is best, Buddy,” Harry told him. “It’s your call. If you don’t think he should run, we won’t run him.”
Harry always put his horse first, but he relied on Buddy, his expert, to tell him what was best. In this case, however, Buddy had a lot on the line. They all did. Objectivity about what was “best” for the horse might be in short supply.
The Bid would soon go into syndication. His breeding rights were expected to fetch something north of the $14 million Affirmed had raised. It would be a huge payday for Meyerhoff, but he was already rich. Buddy had the most to gain or lose since he was successful but a working man. Whatever they got to syndicate the Bid, the trainer would be compensated handsomely with a nice percentage. It would be a single payday unlike anything Buddy had ever experienced before, the kind of money that would change his life.
Just how significant the money would be most likely depended on how well the Bid performed in the Belmont. The Triple Crown would be the greatest luster of all for the record-breaking horse, the final seal of approval for a thoroughbred that was not only an incredibly consistent winner but also as fast or faster than any other horse in recorded history. The Belmont was all that stood between the Meyerhoffs and Delp and all of that money.
Buddy told Harry: “We should be okay to go.”
The standard procedure would have been to inform the officials as soon as possible about the horse’s condition. But Buddy, in fact, did the opposite and hoarded the information. “You don’t tell officials things,” Tom Meyerhoff said, “because then they’ll come and walk [the horse] and they’ll say he’s lame. They’ll see what they want to see.”
That was true under normal conditions. And the Meyerhoffs and Buddy were already adversarial with the New York officials. They had just had a bad experience with them in the Cordero imbroglio, even threatening to pull their horse from the race. They weren’t about to entrust their hopes for the Bid to a group of men they considered to be dishonest clowns. Buddy had told Harry that the horse was sound, and as far as Harry was concerned, the horse was sound. That was it.
Buddy convinced Harry that the horse was ready to go, but he could not convince himself. He still harbored deep concerns about Spectacular Bid’s health and ability to perform at peak level. Leaving nothing to chance, he summoned Dr. Alex Harthill to the Bid’s stall.
Harthill was an old friend of Buddy’s, and the two men shared a special rapport based on a single character trait. “They were both bullies,” Harthill’s daughter, Alexis, said.
“Doc” Harthill was well known in racing circles as the most brilliant and forward-thinking equine veterinarian in the world, but like many geniuses, he was quirky and problematical. Despite his many singular medical virtues, he also had a bad personal reputation and was banned from even stepping foot on the Belmont premises.
Delp nicknamed Harthill “Robin Hood,” a reference to the vet’s penchant for charging rich horse owners lavishly exorbitant fees yet not even accepting a nickel from anyone with a sick horse who was financially strapped. That was just one of the good doctor’s many contradictions.
Harthill was born at a veterinary hospital in 1925. That facility belonged to his father, a veterinarian and Harthill’s hero. Alex grew up at his father’s side with an acute interest in his dad’s work, but he took equine science to a level far beyond anything that his father or anyone else knew. As a result, he became one of the most respected men in the equine world. By his own estimation he had treated twenty-six Kentucky Derby winners over his long career, eloquent testimony to the esteem with which he was held.
Nevertheless, Harthill’s excellence as a doctor and skill as a surgeon took a back seat to his brilliance as a chemist. It was that last skill that often put him at odds with those who policed racing. “[He] seemed to live on the edge of racing legality,” the Daily Racing Form wrote. And indeed, in an era when human athletes were just beginning to understand and utilize performance-enhancing drugs, Harthill had already perfected their use at the track. He did so to create a competitive edge, and he had no qualms about flouting the rules.
Harthill was arrested in Louisiana for allegedly bribing a testing laboratory employee. Later, he admitted to using clenbuterol, for at least one of his patients, before the FDA had approved it. In 1964 he secretly used Lasix, which was then banned, on Northern Dancer and enabled that legendary colt to win the Kentucky Derby. All of this, in addition to the Dancer’s Image episode in 1968, gave him a nefarious reputation.
No one questioned Harthill’s passion to help horses. And no one could relieve their suffering, promote their healing, and help them perform like he could. But many also saw beyond the genius to a rogue, an unprincipled man who was primarily out for himself. They whispered that his great talent was a device to gain him an advantage at the betting window. Whether or not that was true, for him the ethics and rules were clearly malleable and meant to be bent or broken in order to serve his needs.
Mark Reid found out the hard way how elusive Harthill could be. Reid was just starting his career as a trainer when he traveled out to Kentucky to buy something new at the yearling sale at Keeneland. In that era, the bidders bought the horses first and then had them X-rayed to make sure that they were sound and without preexisting problems.
Reid bid on a horse for close to $50,000, which to him was a huge sum of money. He won the colt and then went with a Kentucky veterinarian to X-ray the horse. Reid saw the doctor furrow his brow as he examined the pictures of its legs. “This horse has a broken bone,” the vet said.
The doctor showed Reid the photo and pointed out a break in the little loop-shaped bone that holds the ligament to the ankle. “It was broken right in half,” Reid said.
Just then Harthill happened by, and Reid, who knew him a little, called out to him and asked him to also take a look at the X-ray. “Man, oh, man, look at that line!” Harthill said. “That is ug-lee.”
That was all Reid needed to hear. He took the X-ray and the bill of sale to the office and asked for his money back. “Look,” Reid said. “This horse has a fracture, and there are no fractures according to the Conditions of Sale.”
“Alright, Mark,” the official told him, “we have to have a veterinarian represent us and take a look to make sure that everything is on the up and up. We normally get Dr. Harthill.”
“Great,” Reid said, “have Dr. Harthill look at it.”
Reid left so that the perfunctory process could play out, but he was confident. After all, it was Harthill who had just examined the X-ray. But when Reid was summoned back to the sales office, he was in for a big surprise. “You know,” the sales official said, “Dr. Harthill didn’t see anything wrong with this X-ray.”
Reid was livid and wasn’t about to get stuck with the $50,000 bill for a lame colt.
“Where’s Harthill?” he asked the official.
“He just left.”
Reid ran out to the parking lot, where he saw the good doctor from a distance. “Hey, Harthill,” Reid shouted, “stop.”
Harthill turned around, saw Reid, and made a break for it, sprinting as fast as he could through the car lanes and laughing loudly as he went. Reid took off after him. “Stop, you simple son of a bitch!” Reid screamed.
But Harthill kept running and laughing.
That was Dr. Harthill. Costing an eager, earnest, and hard-working young man almost $50,000 just to protect his own little racket at Keeneland was nothing to him.
Dr. Harthill was a severe man by anyone’s measure. He was a drinker, a womanizer, and a brawler. In fact, he would challenge any man to a fight at the drop of a hat. And if someone really got on his nerves, he’d simply haul off and sock that bastard without any warning.
Harthill was brutal in his personal life too. He was verbally abusive to virtually everyone in his family, especially his wives. His first wife would call her sister and tearfully pour her heart out about the ugly things he said to her. She died when their daughter was only about five years old, and Harthill remarried, this time to a wealthy Californian.
Like his first wife, Harthill’s second spouse felt forced to walk on eggshells around him so as not to provoke his “hair-trigger” temper. To them, he was a Jekyll and Hyde, at times charming but also excitable and crude. They both feared he would become physically violent.
To Harthill wedding vows were meaningless, and he did whatever he liked with women without regard to his marital status. And so it was that he met Judith Zouck, a female trainer in an era when they were mighty scarce.
Zouck’s career began in 1970, at a time, she said, when “a man [wasn’t] going to give a woman horses to train.” So she learned to get ahead by partnering with men. One of them, Billy Christmas, was a kindly and highly experienced Maryland trainer who used his status to pick up clients for her. The work filtered through him for appearances, but it allowed her to make money, and she was always listed as the trainer of record. The situation was unfair, but given the constraints of the era, she found it tolerable and equitable.
Zouck’s life changed forever when one of her horses developed breathing issues and a friend suggested that she call Dr. Harthill for help. She took that advice and found herself in the presence of a man much older than she was but for whom she felt a deep attraction. “[He was] brilliant,” she said, “and those eyes!” She couldn’t resist his piercing, deep-blue eyes.
Harthill’s seduction was more than just physical. He was a powerful man in racing, and he gladly used his influence to help him succeed. And with Harthill’s connections Zouck quickly became a hot commodity. “He got me horses from Calumet and Green Tree, and all the other huge stables,” she said.
Although she enjoyed the business that he got for her, Zouck soon came to realize how highly dependent she was on him. Her professional and personal lives had become intertwined, and Harthill was at the center of both.
Just as Judith realized how vulnerable she was, the real Harthill showed up with all of his many mysteries and complications. She packed up and moved from Maryland to Kentucky to be with him. “And that’s when I found out that he was still married,” she said.
Harthill had hidden his status from her. When it was finally revealed, she was in too deep to make an easy decision. “I had put all my eggs in that basket,” she said. “And I go to Kentucky and find out he’s married, and I go, ‘Oh, crap, now what do I do?’”
She gave Harthill an ultimatum: “Either you can get divorced,” she told him, “or I’ll just go back to Maryland.”
It wasn’t much of a choice: Harthill could stay with his beautiful young companion or return to his second wife and the constant fighting in their marriage. He quickly initiated a divorce. Though Zouck was technically the victor in the struggle for Harthill’s affection, she soon learned that he was no prize. “He was charming,” she said, “but he was evil.”
Alexis Harthill understood. She loved her father deeply, but she also knew that he had two sides. “He could go off on anyone,” she said. “Even his children were not immune. The only people he didn’t go off on were his clients, his bread and butter.”
Judith soon felt the full brunt of Harthill’s ugly side. “All of a sudden, the ‘new’ wears off,” she said. She found out that with Harthill small disagreements led to outrageous reactions. He never punched or slapped her, but he intimidated her on a daily basis. “He chased me around the house with a big-ass cattle prod,” Judith said. “He threatened me. I was held at gunpoint. I had all four tires of my car slashed. My gas tank was sugared. And he tried to kill my horse.”
Separating from Harthill was even more excruciating than living with him. Judith left their home, taking only what she thought were a few personal or meaningless items and established a new residence for herself in Louisville. Harthill had set her up with the top players, but she’d had her own success with them. She was confident and believed she could continue doing well even without Harthill’s backing.
But where he had once been her vocal benefactor, he now stymied her. He stalked her; he called her and breathed heavily into the phone when she answered. He threatened her. And he badmouthed her all over town.
With no other choice, Judith hit the road, going farther and farther away from him at every stop. She went from Louisville to Lexington, and then to Birmingham, Alabama. She would go anywhere they raced horses and where she was unlikely to run into him.
Finally, Judith learned she could be successful without Harthill or the paternal assistance of any man. On her own, she signed a contract to train for John Franks, one of the nation’s most successful horse owners. She also picked up a bevy of Lexington-based breeders as clients. Eventually, Judith amassed a stable of fifteen horses of excellent quality, and she did it all compliments of her own salesmanship and training acumen. “I was doing great,” she said.
But in the spring, Judith returned to Kentucky and discovered that Harthill had not forgotten her. In fact, he was waiting for her. When she arrived at Keeneland on business he had her arrested for “stealing” two tacky beanbag chairs she took with her when she moved out.
Harthill instructed the police to humiliate her and cuff her right in the secretary’s office. The officers refused to comply, apprehending and cuffing her in private and leading her out discreetly. Nevertheless, the mere fact that she had been arrested at all for such a foolish complaint was testament to Harthill’s power.
And it spoke volumes about the relative power of men and women.
Judith was mature and accomplished enough that she no longer had to hide behind a man to get clients. And yet it was still possible for a commanding male, like Harthill, to overwhelm her and push her around. He quite literally had the wherewithal to threaten her entire career.
Harthill’s petty vengeance knew no bounds. He took the beanbag incident all the way to a courtroom. But it boomeranged on him. Listening to the testimony and the hair-raising stories of Harthill’s behavior, the judge issued a restraining order against him. And just like that it was over. Harthill complied, and his constant threats were finally ended.
But Zouck was never really free of him. She was so utterly traumatized by the experience that many years later he still haunted her thoughts. That was true even after he had passed away. “One of my biggest fears,” she said, “is that when I die, I am going to have to meet him again.”
This brilliant and blemished doctor, this wild man, was the person to whom Buddy Delp turned for help on the biggest day and in the most desperate situation of his life.
There was only one little problem.
Harthill’s ban from Belmont Park meant that it wouldn’t be easy to get him to the Bid’s stall. It would require a little skullduggery. Harthill was stuffed into the trunk of a car and smuggled to his patient like a Greek outfoxing the Trojans. He emerged from his dark and inglorious hiding place only when he was safely beside the Bid’s barn.
Harthill examined the horse and treated him as only he could. But what he did for Spectacular Bid was known only to himself and God. He told no one else.
One former jockey who knew everybody in Spectacular Bid’s circle well had a hypothesis. “Look,” the jockey said, “nobody in racing will want to say that the horse was shot with painkillers, but Harthill was more than just a great vet; the guy was a fucking chemist.”
Nobody knew Harthill better or disliked him more than Zouck did, but she denounced that theory as strenuously as she could. “Alex wouldn’t do that,” Judith said. “Alex would treat the horse with respect. I saw the good and the bad in Harthill, but he loved horses. He was a brilliant veterinarian. And never, ever, would he jeopardize a horse’s health over something like that.” But Judith knew better than anyone that Harthill sometimes hurt the things he loved.
And his own words suggested that his love of horses could be overstated. Once, speaking to a respected journalist about a trainer who was an old buddy, Harthill revealed where his real loyalties were. “[We] went way back,” Harthill said. “If [he] had asked me to give [his horse] strychnine, I would have.”
Harthill may have been exaggerating, but his point was crystal clear. There was absolutely nothing the good doctor wouldn’t do to help out an old friend.