At 23, Seattle Slew Shows Little Sign Of Slowing Down

LEXINGTON, Ky. - 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 with 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.

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 epic tale

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 month."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 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.

Trouble for the Slew Crew

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, then a New York-based veterinarian, had helped the Taylors pick 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 connections 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 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 1978, 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 one another.

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 1993, a jury in Lexington found for Hill and awarded him $4.4 million.

Now, the Taylors said they do not speak to 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-by-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.

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."