Look Back: Searching Finds Victory in 1956 Top Flight

In conjunction with Tom Hall's Throwback Thursday features in BloodHorse Daily, BloodHorse.com each Thursday will present corresponding race stories from the pages of the magazine. 

This week is a recap of the 1956 Top Flight Handicap May 26 at Belmont Park won by Searching. Following is a BloodHorse staff report recap with the headline "Top-Flight Filly." 

Mrs. Ethel D. Jacobs last summer made one of the most fortunate purchases of recent years when she bought from Ogden Phipps a 3-year-old War Admiral filly named Searching.

The filly had started 13 times the previous year without winning and she had had no more success in seven races in 1955 before Mrs. Jacobs got her for a reported $15,000 early in June.

In her first 10 starts for the Jacobs stable, she won six races. On Sept. 3 at Aqueduct she won her first stakes, a division of the Vagrancy Handicap. She backed this up with a score in an overnight handicap named for Joe H. Palmer and when the season was done F. G. (Pat) Farrell gave her 111 pounds in the BloodHorse Handicap behind Misty Morn (115), High Voltage (113), Gandharva (112), and Blue Sparkler (112).

Between the 1955 Beldame Handicap, in which she had a poor post position and got no breaks, and the recent Top Flight Handicap, Searching showed her poorest form since coming into her own, if you can call winning only half your races poor. Never was she beaten more than six lengths and her only times unplaced were two starts at Santa Anita Park and one try over the Garden State track. Searching's stride seemed partial to deeper and slower tracks.

Saturday's Top Flight got off promptly at 4:55 p.m. Brookmeade Stable's Gandharva took the track soon after the break in a manner to make the overnight handicappers look smart. The Brookmeade pair (Flower Bowl was the other half) were morning-line choices at 5-2 but the unimpressed crowd of 36,775 in the afternoon quickly pushed them back to second choice and made Searching favorite at a shade over 2-1.

Wheatley's High Voltage set out after Gandharva, closely followed by stablemate Misty Morn, while Searching settled into the middle of the pack of 10. Gandharva remained in front down the long backstretch and into the one big turn of the race. Then the bottom fell out. With Parlo moving on the rail under Pete Anderson and Searching swinging wide under Conn McCreary, the leaders were sucked down the drain.

Once past the two early leaders, Parlo and Searching went at it. The only difference in the last quarter was the three pounds extra weight Parlo was carrying. At the finish Searching was a half-length ahead of Parlo and 1 1/2 lengths ahead of Rico Reto. Searching was timed in 1:42 3/5.

The Wheatley Stable fillies, High Voltage and Misty Morn, have not shown their best this year but the Top Flight was the first time High Voltage had carried less than 120 against her own sex and Misty Morn was chasing colts of late.