Smarty Jones Forced Into Retirement

Smarty Jones, a wildly popular horse who stayed unbeaten until he lost his Triple Crown bid by a length to Birdstone in the Belmont Stakes, has been retired to stud because of chronic bruising in the joints of all his ankles, his owners announced Monday.

Throughout the Triple Crown, Roy and Pat Chapman, who bred and owned the colt, said they hoped to race him beyond this year. But the game may have changed when the Chapmans signed a breeding syndication deal, estimated at $39 million, with Three Chimneys Farm in Midway, Ky., soon after the Belmont.

Then Smarty Jones’ return to the races was delayed by a minor injury, and last Thursday a scan showed that he had the chronic bruising.

Although Larry Bramlage, one of the veterinarians consulted by the Chapmans, said that 90% of horses can return to racing and be as good as before with this type of injury, Smarty Jones will go to stud with eight wins in nine starts and an earnings total of $7,613,155, which ranks fourth, behind Cigar, Skip Away and Fantastic Light.

“The horse comes first -- especially a horse as important as this one,” said Roy Chapman, who owns several automobile dealerships in the Philadelphia area. “If everything went right, he might have made next year’s Dubai World Cup, but he might not. There were just too many ifs for a horse of this caliber.”

The ratings for NBC’s telecast of the Belmont were the highest since 1981, and the crowd at Belmont Park was a record 120,139. But what the struggling game got from Smarty Jones was a quick fix, not unlike the temporary boosts before the early retirements of Derby winners War Emblem, Monarchos, Fusaichi Pegasus and Charismatic in recent years. Last year, Mineshaft, who would be voted horse of the year, was retired before he could run in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Funny Cide, winner of last year’s Derby and Preakness, has remained in training because he is a gelding.

In a teleconference to announce Smarty Jones’ retirement, his owners, trainer John Servis and Robert Clay, president of Three Chimneys, were put on the defensive.

“I don’t think you could say that we’ve taken the money and run,” Pat Chapman said. “If we were just interested in the money, we could have sold him after the Arkansas Derby, when we could just about have named our price.”

Smarty Jones’ earnings include the $5-million bonus the Chapmans received after he swept the Arkansas Derby, another race at Oaklawn Park and the Kentucky Derby. The Pennsylvania-bred colt missed another $5-million bonus when he finished second in the Belmont.

“We would have missed next year’s breeding season if we had waited to see if the horse had sufficiently recovered to race again,” Clay said. “There’s no doubt that economic considerations play a part in any decision.”

Servis and Stuart Elliott, the jockey who rode Smarty Jones, worked in the minor leagues at Philadelphia Park and were not well-known nationally.

“This is a fairly common injury in horses, caused by the wear and tear of racing,” Servis said. “He would need three months of rest before he could resume training, and that would knock him out for the rest of the year. I don’t see any way he could earn on the racetrack in a year what he can earn next spring in the breeding shed. And then you would have the emotional trauma if anything happened to him.”

Under the terms of the breeding syndication, the Chapmans and Three Chimneys each will have control of 30 shares. A stud fee is expected to be announced soon. In Kentucky, Smarty Jones will occupy the stall of Seattle Slew, the 1977 Triple Crown champion who died in 2002. Other stallions standing at Three Chimneys include Silver Charm and Point Given, who also won two Triple Crown races.

The Smarty Jones saga started when Bob Camac, a Philadelphia trainer, suggested the mating of Elusive Quality with the Chapmans’ broodmare, I’ll Get Along. Camac, who would have been Smarty Jones’ trainer, was murdered by his stepson in 2001.

Despondent over Camac’s death, the Chapmans were going to leave the business, but George Isaacs, a farm manager in Florida, persuaded them to at least keep two promising horses, one of whom was originally named Get Along. Pat Chapman changed the name to honor the childhood nickname of her mother, who had the same Feb. 28 birth date as Smarty Jones.

Before Smarty Jones got to the races for Servis, he reared in a workout starting gate at Philadelphia Park, hit his head on an iron bar and fell to the ground in a bloody, unconscious heap. The colt was nursed back to health and less than four months later won his first race by more than seven lengths.

Smarty Jones was hardly tested in most of his wins, taking the Derby by 2 3/4 lengths and the Preakness two weeks later by 11 1/2 , a stakes record. He joined Majestic Prince, who also lost in the Belmont, and Seattle Slew as the only horses to win both of those races while remaining undefeated.

“I think the move he made in the Preakness was just a preview of things to come,” Servis said. “He did everything effortlessly, which is something most horses don’t do. It hurts me to lose him, because he might have gone on to show that he was one of the best horses of all time, and now the people won’t be able to see that.”

Smarty Jones brought unheard-of recognition to Philadelphia Park, where thousands of fans -- more than would attend races there on an average day -- would arrive early in the morning to watch the colt work out. Smarty Jones, who won his first two races in Philadelphia, was to run in the Pennsylvania Derby there on Sept. 6, en route to the Breeders’ Cup.

Elliott, 39, was criticized for his ride in the Belmont, in which Smarty Jones had a clear lead at the top of the stretch. Many experienced horsemen felt that the horse, the only one to run in all three races, fell victim to the rigors of the series and the 1 1/2 -mile distance of the final race.