Forget Seattle Slew? An impossible feat
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His eyes would mesmerize, this is what they still remember. And neither horse nor human met the glare of Seattle Slew and ever felt the same again.
"When you looked him in the eye he would look into your soul," said Karen Taylor, who owned Seattle Slew with her husband, Mickey, for almost all of the horse's 28 years.
Maybe it's hard to imagine a horse can be an athlete, that it can march like a champion and burn with enough competitive zeal to stare down another horse and make that animal shrink. But in the spring of 1977, the spring of Seattle Slew, the great jockey Angel Cordero was riding lead in the Kentucky Derby on a horse named For the Moment when he felt the cold glaze descend upon him.
He looked to the side to see a sprinting Seattle Slew. Then he saw Slew's eyes, and Slew's eyes stared at him. And in that instant the jockey felt something slip away. Seattle Slew was gone, thundering into the distance.
Later, when the reporters descended upon Cordero, all he could see was the eye.
"He was giving me different looks like he was trying to intimidate me," Cordero said that day. "I said, 'That horse is a champion.' "
It has been 27 years since Seattle Slew slopped through the mud at Belmont Park and jockey Jean Cruguet stood in the saddle for the last several strides, jubilantly waving his whip over his head as Slew tore to the Triple Crown.
It has been 27 years since an undefeated horse won the Triple Crown, and yet nobody forgets.
Yesterday, the Taylors were at their Ketchum, Idaho, home doing what they've done for much of the past three decades, working as the owners of Seattle Slew. The horse has been gone for two years now, and yet so much remains to be done. They have a Seattle Slew store, a Web site (www.seattleslew.com) and a 4-by-2-foot plasma flat-screen television on which they watch every race they can find that includes Slew's children or grandchildren.
Which could be nearly every day. The list of Seattle Slew's descendants could go on for paragraphs — Slew of Gold, AP Indy, Cigar, Landaluce and Swale, to name a few.
"Just being undefeated is one thing. Eventually, he accomplished everything he tried to accomplish, sometimes in a very unique fashion," Mickey Taylor said.
All this week they are talking about Smarty Jones. Smarty Jones is everywhere, smiling from magazine covers, riding with a police and helicopter escort from his home stable in Philadelphia to New York. It's become a Smarty Jones world all because Smarty Jones has never lost a race. But no matter how good Smarty Jones is tomorrow in the Belmont Stakes, even if he strides triumphantly into the winner's circle and his owners hold the great trophy aloft to the roar of 100,000 New Yorkers, the best he can do is be as good as Seattle Slew.
That is how dominant Slew was in the fall of 1976 and the spring of 1977.
"The moment he looked at you, you were friends for life," Karen Taylor said. "He was an intelligent, independent, wonderful horse. He had a kingly presence with the way he walked. You had to bow first at his stable and then he would let you enter. Everything in Slew's life was a competition."
The Taylors found him in the summer of 1975 at an auction in Lexington, Ky., and there was nothing normal about him. He wasn't timid. He didn't step gently from his stall — he burst from his stall. They purchased him for $17,500 and it turned out to be a steal. Because they were from White Swan, near Yakima, they named him for the biggest city in their home state. Because they liked alliteration and wanted to reflect the background of another initial owner, they called him Slew after the slews, or swamps, of South Florida.
Then he tore apart the racing world. He had such energy, even for a racehorse. He would burst from the stables and bound out to the tracks. His home stable was at Belmont, and maybe being in New York made him more arrogant and confident than if he had been someplace else.
The track at Belmont is longer than most, yet he would tear onto the sandy track and gallop like every day was the Belmont Stakes. On the week of the Belmont in 1977, he ran so fast that his rider led him into the middle of the track rather than against the pole like most trainers do with their horses because he feared Slew would think it a race and sprint too fast.
"Slew had fun when he was out there running, and he learned to toy with the competition," Taylor said.
What a time it was. Seattle Slew was the talk of New York much the way Smarty Jones is today. Every morning, the Taylors would go out to the track to watch Slew run, then be bombarded by swarms of reporters. Then there were the parties. There was one at the World Trade Center and another at the 21 Club. It felt as though they were bigger stars than the horse.
Then, just as he had in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, Slew raced past another field. The Triple Crown was his. The owners' first reaction?
"Relief," Taylor said.
Slew almost died the next year. He developed an infection after a problem with a jugular vein. But he recovered and raced against 1978 Triple Crown winner Affirmed at Belmont that September. Slew won by three lengths. Two races later, he retired to stud.
In 2000, he developed a neurological problem, and the Taylors rushed out to Lexington to be with him. Every morning, Karen Taylor would walk to Slew's stall and gently sing to the great champion.
Is that you, Seattle Slew?
Seattle Slew, Seattle Slew, how he flew!
Mommy loves Seattle Slew,
Slew's the greatest.
Finally, 2½ years later, in 2002, Slew died and the last undefeated Triple Crown winner was laid to rest, his great legacy unchallenged. Until maybe now.
Les Carpenter: 206-464-2280 or lcarpenter@seattletimes.com