[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 54 (Wednesday, April 30, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3854-S3856]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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   RECOGNIZING THE 20-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF SEATTLE SLEW'S TRIPLE CROWN

 Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a 
true Kentucky legend. Triple Crown winners have a special place in 
every thoroughbred racing fan's heart, especially those of us who are 
lucky enough to have enjoyed their successes.
  The last favorite to win the derby and the only undefeated triple 
crown champion in history, Seattle Slew came into the famed mile and a 
quarter race full of promise. Overcoming a disastrous start, the big 
bay righted himself and headed for the front where he would remain for 
the rest of the race, securing the first of the three jewels he would 
collect during the spring of 1977.
  A mere 11 horses in history have won the triple crown, with only 3 
accomplishing the feat since 1948. Select company indeed. If horse 
racing is the sport of kings then Seattle Slew is truly one of its 
emperors.
  Some may think the champion stallion now lives the ``Life of Riley'' 
at Robert and Alice Clay's Three Chimneys Farm in Midway, KY. But, 
Seattle Slew did not stop setting records when his racing days were 
behind him, a fact I know the Clay family is eternally grateful for. He 
has sired dozens of champions who have racked up almost $50 million in 
career earnings.
  The world recognizes that Three Chimneys is known for its champions, 
but even among the daunting lineup stabled in Midway, Seattle Slew 
stands out.
  So, here's to the Clays, Three Chimneys, and most importantly one of 
the great legends in sport, Seattle Slew. As I grow older, 20 years 
seems like a very brief time, but it has been more than long enough for 
this great stallion to leave his indelible mark on the sport and those 
who love him.
  Mr. President, I ask that an article from the April 27 Lexington 
Herald Leader be printed in the Record.
  The article follows:

           [From the Lexington Herald-Leader, Apr. 27, 1997]

                           A Champion Endures

                            (By Mark Story)

       He had no reason to be a champion.
       In a sport where pedigree is everything, Seattle Slew was a 
     commoner, the son of an unproven, unknown sire (Bold 
     Reasoning) who would die not long after Slew's birth.
       He was born deformed, ``turned out in front,'' which meant 
     at least one of his legs was not correctly aligned to the 
     rest of his body.
       In his first year of life, he was so awkward his handlers 
     nicknamed him ``Baby Huey'' after the accident-prone cartoon 
     character.
       Only by a freak of nature could such a horse aspire to 
     greatness.
       But in the world of racing, freaks do occur.
       Twenty years ago this spring, Seattle Slew stamped himself 
     with racing immortality.
       Overcoming one obstacle after another, he became the only 
     horse ever to win the Triple Crown--the Kentucky Derby, the 
     Preakness and the Belmont--with an unbeaten record.
       Then, after almost dying from a mysterious viral illness, 
     he returned to the track as a 4-year-old and re-established 
     his legend, defeating 1978 Triple Crown champion Affirmed 
     along the way.
       As a sire, Slew has also attained greatness, producing 
     champions such as 1984 Derby winner Swale, Slew o' Gold and 
     Capote. The legendary Cigar is a Seattle Slew grandson, as is 
     Pulpit, one of the favorites for this year's Derby.

[[Page S3855]]

       At 23, Slew shows little sign of slowing down. He continues 
     to be a productive sire, commanding a $100,000 stud fee while 
     standing at Three Chimneys Farm.
       Not a bad life's work for a freak.
       ``This horse is all heart, every bit heart,'' said Mickey 
     Taylor, one of Slew's owners during his racing days and his 
     syndicate manager now. ``He tried his best at everything we 
     ever asked him to do. And he had the talent to do about 
     anything we asked.''


                           an obstacle course

       For Seattle Slew, nothing ever came easily.
       His trip through the Triple Crown was an epic tale of 
     problems overcome.
       Derby obstacle. Sent off as the 1-2 favorite by a Derby 
     crowd of 124,038, he very nearly lost the race in the 
     starting gate.
       Fractious in the gate, Slew was caught flat-footed when it 
     opened. He nearly reared coming out of the gate, came very 
     close to making a sideways start and alarmingly near to 
     throwing jockey Jean Cruguet.
       Before he ever started running, he was five lengths behind 
     the field.
       In the Churchill Downs owner's boxes, Mickey Taylor put 
     down his binoculars.
       ``I wished we were anyplace else in the world at that 
     moment,'' he said last week. ``I thought we were cooked.''
       On the track, Cruguet didn't feel much better. But the 
     French jockey made a snap decision. He asked Slew for 
     everything he had. ``It was do or die,'' Cruguet said last 
     week. ``It was easy to decide for me: We had to go.''
       And go Slew did.
       Flying toward the front, he bulled through horses and, 
     miraculously, was within a head of the leader, For The 
     Moment, after a quarter mile.
       More miraculously, Slew did not tire after his sprint to 
     the front. He won by 1\3/4\ lengths over Run Dusty Run.
       The win was sweet vindication for Slew trainer Billy 
     Turner. Early on, Turner had decided never to ask Seattle 
     Slew to do too much in training. He was afraid if he worked 
     him too hard, the horse's natural inclination toward speed 
     would become dominant and Slew would never develop the 
     stamina required to run Classic distances.
       This was a courageous, disciplined training decision--and 
     one widely second-guessed in the weeks leading up to the '77 
     Derby. The joke was that Turner was ``walking Slew up to the 
     Derby.''
       It took guts to stay with it.
       ``This was a very fast horse,'' Cruguet said. ``A lot of 
     people would have burnt him up. Billy did a very good job 
     getting him to stretch out and run distances.''
       Preakness obstacle. But speed was the problem in the 
     Preakness. A talented, fresh speed horse, Cormorant, would 
     try Slew at Pimlico after skipping the Derby.
       Cormorant's connections were so confident they showed up in 
     Baltimore sporting ``Slew Who?'' T-shirts.
       Then Cormorant drew the inside post position, the place to 
     be on a Pimlico track with tight turns and a bias toward 
     speed.
       In the race, Cormorant beat Slew to the front and to the 
     rail. He then held his spot, forcing Seattle Slew to race him 
     around the track on the outside.
       So Cruguet and Slew dug in. They hooked Cormorant in a 
     withering speed duel, running the fastest mile (1:34\4/5\) in 
     Preakness history.
       Cormorant wilted; Slew didn't, and finished the race 1\1/2\ 
     lengths ahead of Iron Constitution.
       Belmont obstacle. In the Belmont, the problem was supposed 
     to be distance. Many thought Slew was not bred to run 1\1/2\ 
     miles. But that turned out to be a breeze; the problem was 
     traffic--not horses on the track, but cars parked around the 
     track. There were so many that Seattle Slew could not get to 
     the track.
       When he finally made it, the race was almost an anticlimax. 
     Slew controlled the pace from the front and easily defeated 
     Run Dusty Run by 4 lengths.
       The 10th Triple Crown winner, Slew was the only one who was 
     undefeated at the time he won.


                           off-the-track woes

       Seattle Slew's racing brilliance was nearly matched by the 
     turbulence that would engulf his owners and handlers over the 
     years.
       At the time of the Kentucky Derby, Karen Taylor, Mickey's 
     wife, was listed as the owner.
       A former flight attendant, Karen Taylor became a media 
     darling in the spring of 1977 for her unassuming ways. ``I 
     live in a mobile home and I drive a pickup truck,'' she said 
     then, ``but I've got a hell of a horse.''
       But by the time the horse ran in the Belmont, it had become 
     public that the ownership of Seattle Slew was more complex.
       It turned out the horse was actually owned through a 
     corporation (Wooden Horse Investments Inc.) by the pension 
     and profit-sharing plans of Dr. James Hill and a logging 
     company owned by Mickey Taylor, Karen's husband.
       Hill, at the time a New York-based veterinarian, had helped 
     the Taylors pick out Seattle Slew at the 1975 Fasig-Tipton 
     yearling sale.
       As an act of friendship, they say now, the Taylors 
     eventually made Hill a half-owner in Seattle Slew.
       New York racing officials looked askance at Slew's 
     ownership structure.
       In court documents from a subsequent lawsuit, Taylor and 
     Hill maintained that ownership of Seattle Slew was set up as 
     it was for tax reasons.
       But in New York, it was against the rules for a practicing 
     veterinarian to have ownership in a horse. The rationale was 
     that it created at least the appearance of a conflict of 
     interest if a vet were treating horses who might race against 
     a horse he owned.
       On August 25 of '77, New York racing officials suspended 
     Hill for 30 days. He called the suspension unjust, but did 
     not appeal.
       For the ``Slew Crew,'' as the horse's connnections were 
     called, the trouble was just beginning.
       After the Belmont, trainer Turner announced that Slew would 
     be taking several months off from training. He even had the 
     racing shoes taken off the horse's hooves.
       But in a controversial decision, the owners overruled him 
     and decided to race Seattle Slew in the $300,000 Swaps Stakes 
     at Hollywood Park in July.
       The race was a disaster.
       Sent off as the 1-5 favorite, Slew never fired and was 
     humiliated, finishing a badly beaten fourth, 16 lengths 
     behind winner J.O. Tobin.
       To this day, the Taylors maintain that Turner signed off on 
     shipping Slew west, but the trainer was widely quoted after 
     the race saying that was untrue. In one interview, he called 
     it ``the dumbest thing I ever heard.''
       ``After the Belmont, (Seattle Slew) was dead,'' Cruguet 
     said, ``. . . The owners, they thought he was a machine.''
       Cruguet said he knew after a quarter mile that he was on a 
     beaten horse. ``This horse had never lost,'' Cruguet said. 
     ``It was not a good feeling.''
       From that day on, things were never the same for the 
     original ``Slew Crew.''
       By December of 1977, the owners had fired Turner. The sides 
     could never heal the breach over the decision to ship west.
       Eventually, Turner would sue the owners, claiming they 
     reneged on a promise to give him a lucrative lifetime 
     breeding share in Seattle Slew.
       Shortly after Turner was fired, Seattle Slew almost died.
       For four days in January of '78, the horse ran a fever. For 
     a time, he refused to eat or drink. His bodily functions 
     ceased. A low white blood cell count suggested a serious 
     infection.
       His owners were distraught. Karen Taylor would cradle the 
     ill horse's head on her lap, and sing him lullabies.
       ``Ninety-nine percent of horses would have died,'' Mickey 
     Taylor said.
       Slew didn't. In fact, he recovered and returned to the 
     track to win five of seven races as a 4-year-old (both losses 
     were in photo finishes). He added to his legacy by defeating 
     Affirmed and was 1978's Champion Older Horse.
       What almost killed Slew? Mickey Taylor said he knows, but 
     will not reveal it until Seattle Slew's career at stud is 
     finished. He did say the horse was not poisoned.
       But even after Seattle Slew's racing career ended, the 
     turmoil among his ``Crew'' did not. By 1992, the owners were 
     suing each other.
       Once, Hill and Taylor had been so close that Hill said they 
     did not need a contract to do business: ``A handshake with a 
     man I trust'' was enough, he said.
       In 1992, Hill filed suit against Taylor, claiming that 
     Taylor had, among other things, siphoned money from their 
     corporation, used corporation money to buy houses for family 
     members and hired and overpaid his relatives.
       In November of '93, a jury in Lexington found for Hill and 
     awarded him $4.4 million.
       Now, the Taylors said they do not speak with the Hills.
       ``There really isn't much there to be said,'' Karen Taylor 
     said.


                      `it's almost like he knows'

       Today, Seattle Slew occupies a 16 16 stall in the main 
     stallion barn at Three Chimneys Farm.
       Among those quartered with him are two of his sons, Slew O' 
     Gold and Capote as well as such well-known horses as Arazi 
     and Wild Again.
       Even at 23, Slew boasts the top stud fee at the farm 
     ($100,000). ``He's one of the most potent horses we have,'' 
     said Three Chimneys Stallion Manager Wes Lanter.
       As a sire, Slew has emerged as clearly superior to the 
     other two modern Triple Crown winners, Secretariat and 
     Affirmed.
       ``It's not even close,'' said William Munn, a thoroughbred 
     pedigree expert based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
       Seattle Slew has had success on both sides of his line. He 
     sired another Kentucky Derby winner, Swale (1984) and another 
     Horse of the year, A.P. Indy (1992). On the other side, 
     Cigar, who tied Citation's North American record with 16 
     straight wins, was the son of a Seattle Slew mare.
       Though there are no guarantees in the world of horse 
     health, farm officials think Slew has a good chance to live 
     into his 30s.
       Many of Seattle Slew's days start about 7 a.m., when he is 
     saddled and ridden around the all-weather track at Three 
     Chimneys, where he has stood at stud since 1985.
       (Continuing his knack for finding off-the-track turmoil, 
     Seattle Slew began his stallion career at the ill-fated 
     Spendthrift Farm, which collapsed financially in 1988).
       It is fairly unusual for horses standing at stud to be 
     ridden, but Three Chimneys rides all its stallions.
       ``We think it keeps them healthy, and we think it keeps 
     them happy,'' said Farm Manager Dan Rosenberg.

[[Page S3856]]

       The man who knows Slew better than anyone, his groom of 15 
     years, Tom Wade, says Slew hasn't changed much over the 
     years. He has a touch of arthritis and his back has drooped 
     just a bit. ``But he's a fit horse,'' Wade said. ``You can 
     look at him and see that.''
       Now, as the 20th anniversary of his Triple Crown 
     approaches, Judy DeHaan, the exercise rider at Three 
     Chimneys, has noticed something funny about Slew.
       ``It's almost like he knows,'' she said. ``He's gotten a 
     little spring in his step again. Lately, it's like `Hold on 
     Judy. We're gonna go.'
       ``Even at 23, on his good days, he's still got 
     it.''

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