Be careful what you wish for. When your veterinarian gets almost all of your 15 mares in foal three years in a row, one day you’ll wake up with 50 horses running through your fields. Fifty horses who like to eat, get vet care and have pedicures on a regular basis. But those are just the warm-up costs. The show really begins when the yearlings go into training at megabucks a day. All this is not dissimilar from most businesses, where the shelves have to be stocked, employees paid and the lights kept on. But in that world, the doors are finally opened, the customers barge in and buy up the inventory. In the racing business, you keep the inventory and hope it can run fast.
Not many owners make money in horseracing. They are in it because it’s a challenge, because they like the action, because they’re looking for the Big Horse. The Big Horse will pay a lot of bills. The Big Horse is a major stakes-winner who can compete with the best for preposterous purses, generate black type for his or her family and, if he is an ungelded fellow, establish high value as a stallion. But if you can’t have a really Big Horse, the next best thing is to have a Big Enough Horse like Juggernaut.
For whatever reason, we could not get his mother, Mito’s Touch, in foal two years running. The second year, we threw in the towel and sent her to Kentucky where she was covered by a speed sire named Is It True. She got pregnant right away and when her offspring became a late yearling he was shipped down to Ocala for training. Juggernaut was on the small side, but wide and very muscular. He took to training well, made no mistakes and looked quick. When he worked the first time as a two-year-old, his time was good, but not spectacular. Several ensuing works reinforced our impressions that he might be a nice allowance horse. In horseracing, the preponderance of contests are claiming races, in which another owner or trainer may put up the claiming price and take your horse. Allowance is the level above that. Stakes races, far fewer in number, are at the top of the food chain. Juggernaut turned out better than expected.
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| Bill with Danny Ogus at Calder Race Course |
Getting Ready
Mito’s Touch, Juggernaut’s dam, was all speed, often busting from the gate in front and staying there as long as the distance was no further than six furlongs. Her colt was different, usually breaking mid-pack and overtaking the competition in the stretch, more of a closing sprinter. Sometimes, sprinters like this can win at greater distances, like seven furlongs or even one mile. We sent him to trainer Larry Pilotti at Calder, who called after training hours the next day. “He’s kind of a prick, but I like him,” said Pilotti. We told him “That’s how we feel about you, too, Larry.” Juggernaut was not keen on a lot of fussing around in his stall and he would rather chew nails than have a bath, like most kids. But he was all business on the track.
We took a mild risk and entered him in a $32,000 claiming race, where he was rudely bumped and finished second, very pissed off about the whole thing. No matter, the purses in maiden special races are much better and he won his second start going away. Now, we had a dilemma. Since there are relatively few winners of maiden allowance races in the early months of two-year-old racing, you had to wait, put your horse in for a tag or run him in a stakes race, none of which we wanted to do. We felt Juggernaut was too good to give up for $50,000 so we decided on the $100,000 Criterium Stakes at 5 1/2 furlongs on July 7, 2001. Siobhan’s new friend Karen Brown of Bayer, who was working with her on studies for a new drug, came along for the fun.
It was a murky day in old Miami for the Criterium. Rain stopped before the race, but the track was muddy. Noone can really tell whether a horse will take to a wet track until he’s raced on one and none of the entrants had done that in their short careers. Undefeated Pure Precision was a top-heavy favorite and looked unbeatable on paper. The rest of the field seemed manageable, going by their win times. “Hey, third place gets black type and $10,000,” said Larry, then added every racetracker’s favorite line: “You can’t win it if you’re not in it.” Visitor Karen Brown was pacing around as if she’d bet her mortgage on the race. Then the bells rang, the gates opened and Fate took its curious course.
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| The Juggernaut brain trust with Karen Brown; left to right, Larry Pilotti, Bill Killeen and Dominic Imprescia. |
They’re Off!
Pure Precision, eventually to be a major stakes-winner, blasted to the front, easily outpacing his rivals. Inauspiciously, Juggernaut at 11-1 trailed the field. If anyone had lost confidence, it was not Karen Brown, who was screaming bloody murder in the trainer’s box and making people nervous. Unconcerned, Juggernaut fell 11 lengths behind the leader, a prohibitive deficit in a short 5 1/2 furlong race, before picking up the pace and gaining a little going into the turn. His young but talented rider, Abel Castellano, moved him to the outside, losing strides but clearing him of traffic and asking him to run coming out of the turn. The colt responded and started picking up horses. Karen was making so much noise the people around her considered calling the police. Pure Precision was hopelessly far ahead in the race but as I surveyed the field with my trusty binoculars, third place looked like a possibility. Juggernaut kept gaining through the slop and the others seemed tiring…he moved up to fourth, then third, and visions of sugarplums danced in my head. I thought of all the bills I could pay with my $20,000 as he swept into second. Karen Brown was running up and down the stairs, yowling and terrifying bystanders. Pure Precision’s safe margin at the sixteenth pole kept dwindling…three lengths, two lengths, barely a length and Juggernaut was flying. He passed the favorite like he was standing still and I quickly looked over to see if Karen still had her clothes on. She was so low in her stance urging the horse home she was almost on the floor. I was stunned. I had never won a stakes race before and it never looked like I would win this one. I had to ask a punter for reinforcement on my way down to the winner’s circle. “The one win by a mile, you jamoke…what’s the matter with you!”
Larry, Siobhan and the inimitable Karen Brown were all waiting with big smiles in the winner’s circle. We had our pictures taken, thanked the horse and talked to the Miami Herald reporter, who logically thought Karen was the horse owner. “Where will you be running next?” he asked her. “Damned if I know,” she said, excitedly, “but wherever it is, my ass is there!” Some people just know how to have a good time.
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| Keeneland in the morning. |
The Rest Of The Story
Before leaving the winner’s circle, a stringer for the Daily Racing Form, impressed by Juggernaut’s powerful finish, looked over and said “I guess we won’t see HIM around here again.” The inference being we’d look for grassier climes, more ambitious prospects, maybe take the route other top two-year-olds do to the classics. I assured him Juggernaut would be back for the $100,000 Foolish Pleasure Stakes in September at a mile and seventy yards where we’d find out how he fared going a distance. Larry Pilotti and I had no illusions, however. Juggernaut had sprinters top and bottom in his pedigree; he was built like a sprinter and ran like one. There was no way he’d get the mile and a quarter of the Derby, but there were several major attractions on the sprint trail.
The most prestigeous race of the summer for two-year-olds was the Sapling Stakes at Monmouth Race Track near Long Branch, New Jersey. We vanned Juggernaut up there a week before the race, Larry and I following a few lengths behind in his hot rod Caddy. Pilotti, a reprobate, didn’t like to fly no matter how many statistics on aerial safety you showed him. We hung around the Jersey shore for a week, learning more about the area than you’d ever want to know. The Monmouth track looked very fast, not necessarily the best state of affairs for our horse but perfect for the favorite, Pure Precision, who was off like a shot when the gates opened and never looked back. Races like these quickly define your candidates. We found out we had a quick sprinter who came on late in short races but could not beat the best of his generation at five or six furlongs when the track came up lightning fast.
One question still remained. How far could Juggernaut go? Many sprinters can hold their speed at a mile or more and he finished races like one who might. On September 22, he went off the favorite against distance horses in The Foolish Pleasure and quickly zoomed to an eight-length lead. If you’re wondering how this could be, it’s because time fractions in distance races are slower and a sprinter will have an early advantage. Juggernaut galloped comfortably along the backstretch with no threat in sight, most of the jockeys on the other horses perhaps comfortable knowing they would have more left for the finish than this upstart in front. One of them, the pilot of a colt oddly named The Judge Says Who (which ultimately became a multiple-stakes winner), decided there was a little too much distance between his mount and the leader and began moving in the turn. Juggernaut did not begin slowing down until mid-stretch, however, and won the race comfortably by 2 1/2 lengths with The Judge an easy second. When it was over, we had learned one more thing---our colt could beat good distance horses probably up to a mile and a sixteenth. But how about the best distance horses? We thought we knew the answer to that one but Keeneland Race Track in Kentucky was offering a $400,000 purse which would provide a definitive answer.
It was a big day at Keeneland, where the elite meet to greet and drink Kentucky bourbon all day without falling down. All the big shots were there together with several candidates for the next year’s Derby. The odds on Juggernaut were lower than expected and he broke with the leaders, sitting close until midway round the turn, where the pace and the mile-and-one-eighth distance caught up with him. He finished up the track, a tired horse. “Who WERE those guys?” he wanted to know once back at the barn.
We brought our local hero home to Calder, won a few less glamorous races and retired him when a pesky ankle kept giving him trouble. He lived to the age of 22 in the front paddock of our farm in Fairfield, still grouchy, scornful of blacksmiths but never having to take another bath. In the front of his paddock, which no one else is allowed to use, there is a small fenced-in area where Juggernaut is buried, and atop the grave a tombstone installed, as is appropriate where Best Horses are concerned. The inscription on the stone contains his name, his ancestry and after that, his accomplishments. And at the end one final line inserted by his sad but grateful owners:
“He gave us the Best Day Of Our Lives.”
That’s all, folks….
