BackTrack: Added Distance no Problem for Citation

Citation won going away. To horse owners at New York, that "away" was the best part of the Belmont Stakes. Citation and the other comets in Calumet Farm's galaxy would do their blazing at Chicago for the next 10 or 12 weeks. The heat wave was moving westward.

In his first appearance of 1948 on a New York track, the son of Bull Lea turned in a performance that had the metropolitan critics using such positive adjectives as "great." Like a great performer in any field, he made a hard one look easy.

Until Citation turned into the homestretch and Eddie Arcaro turned him loose, the 80th running of the famous Belmont Park feature had its elements of drama. The winner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness stumbled as he left the gate. He recovered at once and accepted the challenge of Glen Riddle Farm's Faraway. The Riddle silks had come down in front of four Belmont fields. This was not to be their fifth. Faraway ran with the Calumet colt for a little better than seven furlongs. It was the first of the Triple Crown races in which any of Citation's rivals had hung on so tenaciously.

But Citation's even, effortless stride (:24, :24 2/5, :24 1/5, :24 2/5) measured faultlessly by Arcaro, had Faraway wrung out with more than half a mile to go. As Faraway faded and Escadru took up the challenge, Citation drew clear by about three lengths. Escadru cut the margin to two lengths, but it was like a man pulling himself up a rope.

About three furlongs from the wire, Arcaro let Citation run. He had been husbanding his mount. A mile and a half was farther than Citation had ever been before. It was farther than the Bull Leas reputedly liked to run. But with only three furlongs to go, and the used-up Escadru about four lengths to the rear, the jockey felt justified in spending some of the colt's reserve.

Citation responded instantly, opened up eight lengths on Better Self, which Warren Mehrtens had been saving for a late challenge. The King Ranch colt was able to dispose of Escadru, but he wasn't in the same horse race as Citation. Escadru saved third, Vulcan's Forge was fourth, five lengths behind him.

The crowd roared its delight. For the badly beaten underdogs there was sympathy, but it was mostly forgotten in admiration for the champion. People even cheered Arcaro, a startling reversal of form at a New York track. As a surprise, the demonstration for the jockey ranked even with Belmont Park's unprecedented gesture of having a band for the occasion.

Citation won the Belmont Stakes the way his admirers hoped he would. He beat the best field that could be mustered against him, and won in 2:28 1/5, time that equaled Count Fleet's record for the stakes. He had handled 12 furlongs with superlative ease. It seemed likely, unless an ambush lurked at Chicago, that the colt would not be put to a searching test within his own division. It would be in international competition, or other weight-for age races, that the test would come.

A worried Jimmy Jones had saddled Citation for the Belmont. A happy one led him to the winner's circle. He knew he had a superlative colt, he felt that Citation had been improving right along, even after his decisive wins in the Derby, Preakness, and Jersey Stakes. But until the colt had gone a mile and a half, he wasn't comfortably certain as to his range. After the Belmont, he knew.

Double Triple for Calumet

During the 50-odd years in which the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes have been raced in the same season, seven 3-year-olds had made the sweep prior to 1948. Citation was the eighth. He was the second Triple Crown winner for Warren Wright's Calumet Farm. Whirlaway, which successfully brought off the corner in 1941, was Calumet's first. (Pensive got a near miss.) Citation's feat placed Calumet even with William Woodward's Belair Stud, which won Triple Crowns with its home-breds Gallant Fox (1930) and Omaha (1935).

Calumet Farm ordinarily does not declare its goals. It races its horses so long as they are sound, retires them when they begin to show the effects of campaigning. But Citation will be at Chicago this summer for the rich Arlington Classic and the American Derby, plus other well-endowed stakes. Barring mishap, Citation will easily pick up the $35,000-odd needed to make him the leading money-winning 3-year-old in American Turf history. Assault set the present record in 1946, when he earned $424,195. After that, Stymie and the world money-winning championship would seem to be the next logical targets.

The son of Bull Lea has won nine stakes this year, been second in another. His wins: Seminole, Everglades Handicaps, Flamingo, Chesapeake, Derby Trial, Kentucky Derby, Preakness, Jersey, Belmont Stakes. His second: the six-furlong Chesapeake Trial Stakes, behind Saggy.