BH 100: Shooting Star

This feature originally appeared in the September 17, 2016 issue of BloodHorse.

The following words from the pages of the June 24, 1974, issue of The Blood-Horse introduced a unique juvenile filly to the magazine’s readers: “Ruffian is the name—a name many think will be in the headlines for some time to come. Ruffian is a 2-year-old filly, a beautifully balanced dark bay filly as big as most 3-year-old colts, as poised as a more experienced campaigner.”

The race report was for the first New York stakes of the year for juvenile fillies, the grade III Fashion Stakes over 51⁄2 furlongs at Belmont Park. Stuart Janney Jr.’s enormous homebred daughter of Reviewer had equaled a track record in her maiden voyage at the same distance, winning by 15 lengths. Facing stronger competition in the Fashion, Ruffian set a stakes record in her 63⁄4-length victory.

Ruffian’s trainer, Frank Whiteley, a veteran of early morning clocked works and coffee, had seen his fair share of good horses, yet this one had grabbed the attention of this hardest of hardboots.

The article reported, “Whiteley said he had thought from the first that Ruffian was going to be a good one. He has never had, he added, a filly as impressive as this one is now. The second win, Whiteley said, was particularly pleasing because ‘sometimes they go the other way—the first win usually is the best.”

Well, Ruffian certainly didn’t go the other way. Her third start was a nine-length rout of the Astoria Stakes (gr. III) in stakes-record time. Monmouth’s grade I Sorority Stakes fell to the Janney hooligan, but the margin of victory was narrower, 21⁄4 better than the rest, and she equaled the stakes record.

The usually taciturn Whiteley waxed much more like a smitten schoolboy about his filly crush: “Ruffian’s a big, strong, easy-running horse, the kind that makes a runner, and she’s every bit that. She’s fast enough to frighten the Hell out of me—has been since we picked her up. From the very beginning we said she would be something special and now she’s showing it—God, is she. Look at that hindquarter, that is where she gets that thrust from, but you would never know it, she has such an easy way of going.”

Ruffian’s rising fame earned her the cover—her first but certainly not last—of the September 2 issue of The Blood-Horse, with the caption “Unbeaten Ruffian—Another Race, Another Record.” The occasion was the final two days of the Saratoga meet that carded the grade I Spinaway Stakes for fillies and Hopeful Stakes for all 2-year-olds. Ruffian’s Spinaway was a 123⁄4-length laugher.

The “What’s Going On Here” column for that issue relates a favorite Ruffian story reported by The Blood-Horse’s New York correspondent Bill Rudy: “On the day of the Hopeful, (trainer) Laz Barrera (later of Affirmed fame), who had a colt in each division, was standing on the steps of the racing secretary’s office, and he remarked, ‘if that filly (Ruffian) was in the Hopeful today, she would win by 20 lengths,’ and he was being serious. He started to walk away, but he stopped and added, ‘If the two divisions of the Hopeful were run as the first and eighth race, she would win them both.’ ”

Ruffian missed the rest of the year because of an injury, but the undefeated 1974 Eclipse Award winner bided her time for 1975, where heroics and heartbreak waited in tandem.

Already a star of the racing scene, Ruffian returned in April 1975 in the same fashion, winning an Aqueduct allowance race by open lengths. She strung the grade III Comely to her unbeaten string by 73⁄4. The Filly Triple Crown became the next goal. Should Ruffian win, she would join the illustrious company of only three others: Dark Mirage, Shuvee, and Chris Evert.

Ruffian not only won but annihilated the 3-year-old filly competition. She steamrolled the Acorn Stakes (gr. I) by 81⁄4 and the Mother Goose Stakes (gr. I) with an arrogant superiority by 131⁄2. The margin of her victories and the ease with which she accomplished them attracted fans incrementally. By the time she had won the Coaching Club American Oaks, Ruffian, like Alexander the Great, had no more worlds to conquer in her division.

A match race involving the unbeaten Ruffian and the best of the 3-year-old colts, including the Triple Crown leg winners Foolish Pleasure, Master Derby, and Avatar had been proposed, and the Janneys were the first to accept. Throughout complicated negotiations embroiled around the politics of such an event, the race came down to a $350,000 match race between Foolish Pleasure and Ruffian at 11⁄4 miles with each carrying scale weight (126 for him, 121 for her) July 6 at Belmont Park.

The particulars of the match race are well documented and the outcome well known: Foolish Pleasure won; Ruffian broke down and died.

The Blood-Horse chose her image to grace the July 14 cover of the issue that covered the match race with the simple caption

“Ruffian—Buried At Belmont.” In his “What’s” column editor Kent Hollingsworth summarized the depth of loss felt by her legion of fans: “Like an exquisite piece of 16th century Venetian glass of singular grace and beauty held aloft for all to admire, that inexplicably slips from grasp and smashes. Gone. So suddenly, so irretrievably. Without a culpable party or condition on which to vent retribution and frustration.”

Read more BloodHorse 100 features here.