His Memories Worth a Million

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. —  Nineteen years ago, the noses of John Henry and The Bart hit the finish line almost simultaneously in the first Arlington Million, and nobody--including jockeys Bill Shoemaker and Eddie Delahoussaye and the NBC crew, which erroneously declared The Bart the winner--knew which horse had won.

“Will you take a dead heat, Sam?” somebody shouted to Sam Rubin, the owner of John Henry, who watched the heart-pumping finish from the box seats.

“No,” Rubin quickly replied. “I want to win it or lose it.”

First place in 1981--in the first $1-million thoroughbred race run in the U.S.--was worth $600,000, which was $200,000 more than what the second-place horse would earn.

Hearing that NBC had prematurely declared The Bart the winner, Franklin Groves, the owner of the horse, and his party headed for the winner’s circle. As they arrived, the placing judges, having looked at the official finish-line photo, hung up John Henry’s number as the winner.

Seeing that, Sam and Dorothy Rubin and their trainer, Ron McAnally, left the boxes for the winner’s circle.

“Going down, we passed The Bart’s people as they were coming back,” McAnally recalled this week. “Boy, was that grim. You wanted to look the other way, but how could you?”

After that Million, McAnally and John Henry finished second by a neck to Tolomeo in 1983, and the legendary gelding returned in 1984, as a 9-year-old, to win the Arlington race a second time. Then in 1991, McAnally saddled Tight Spot for the trainer’s third Million win. The late Charlie Whittingham also won the race three times--with Perrault in 1982, Estrapade in 1986 and Golden Pheasant in 1990--and McAnally can break the tie Saturday at Arlington International if the Argentine-bred Asidero becomes the first South American horse to win the Million, which will be worth $2 million for the first time.

McAnally, who has had 10 starters in the Million, a race that was put on hold in 1998 and 1999 when Arlington International was closed, had hoped to also be running Dark Moondancer on Saturday. But that horse injured his knee in the Eddie Read Handicap at Del Mar on July 30 and will be sidelined until fall.

Asidero, who’ll be ridden by Alex Solis, has won seven of nine starts, all but one of them in Argentina. The 4-year-old colt finished second in his first two tries, early in 1999, then started a seven-race winning streak with a 16-length win in a maiden race. Asidero’s last win before he was sent to McAnally in California was December’s Pellegrini Stakes, the Kentucky Derby equivalent for 3-year-olds in Argentina. In his only U.S. start, Asidero, running for the first time since the Pellegrini, was a sharp 1 1/2-length winner going a mile at Hollywood Park on July 3.

Notes

Two other Grade I grass stakes are on Saturday’s Arlington Million card. Happyanunoit, who has two U.S. Grade I wins to her credit, including the Beverly Hills Handicap at Hollywood Park in her last start, is the 7-5 favorite in the $500,000 Beverly D. for fillies and mares. King Cugat, who has won four in a row, three since May, is the 4-5 favorite in the $400,000 Secretariat for 3-year-olds. . . . Excellent Meeting, who won eight of 20 starts, finished fifth in last year’s Kentucky Derby and earned $1.4 million, has been retired. The 4-year-old filly, who raced for owners John and Betty Mabee and trainer Bob Baffert, won only one of her last seven starts.