Horse Racing: What Price Victory

France’s Prix de 1’Arc de Triomphe always seems to bring out the patriot in horsemen — just possibly because of its $270,000 purse. The field of 20 thoroughbreds that paraded to the post at Longchamp last week carried the silks of six nations, but the horses’ nationalities were a little confused.

Sea Bird, the French champion and 6-to-5 favorite, was also 1) the winner of the English Derby and 2) a grandson of the U.S.’s Native Dancer. Russia’s Anilin had British ancestors. Ireland’s Meadow Court, the 1965 Sweeps winner, boasted a British sire, an American dam, and a trio of owners composed of two Canadians and Bing Crosby. Then there was the U.S.’s Tom Rolfe, bred in Kentucky, with a name that goes all the way back to Pocahontas. His daddy and granddaddy were Italian, and his owner is an American who lives in Ireland.

French horses had won the Arc 32 out of 43 years, and most of the 60,000 fans who crowded into Longchamp last week were rooting for Sea Bird to make it 33 out of 44. Tom Rolfe was practically a long shot at 8 to 1. True, he had won the Preakness, the American Derby, five other stakes, and $518,205. But he was used to running counterclockwise, on flat dirt tracks. Like most French races, the Arc is run clockwise, and Longchamp’s 1½-mile grass track is anything but flat: in the middle, it is 38 ft. higher than at the start and finish. Jockey Willie Shoemaker still insisted that Tom Rolfe had a chance. “This colt is hickory,” said The Shoe.

The trouble with hickory is that it bends, and so did Tom Rolfe—in the wrong direction. Fighting for the lead around the last turn, just three-eighths of a mile from the finish, he tried to go left instead of right. By the time Shoemaker got him straightened out, the plucky little (950 lbs.) colt had lost a good deal of ground and most of his enthusiasm. Charging up from sixth place, looping the leaders and pulling away in the stretch, favorite Sea Bird romped to an easy six-lengths victory —while Tom Rolfe faded all the way back to sixth, behind four French horses and Russia’s Anilin.

The French had won the war. But what price victory? The day before the race, Owner Jean Ternynck, a Lille textile manufacturer, had agreed to lease Sea Bird to Kentucky’s John Galbreath for stud duty in the U.S.—at $1,500,000 for five years. If Ternynck had waited another day, experts agreed, he undoubtedly could have demanded twice as much.