LOUISVILLE – It still is difficult to understand Jean Cruguet’s thick French accent, and that’s too bad because he’s perfectly happy to discuss the memorable spring, now 40 years ago, when he rode Seattle Slew to thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown.
He is convinced, understandably, that Slew, the first colt and only colt to sweep the Derby, Preakness and Belmont while still unbeaten, might just be the greatest horse ever to look through a bridle. Yet historians mostly refuse to include him in the conversation that always includes Man o’ War, Citation and Secretariat.
I tend to agree with Cruguet. I think Slew came so soon after Secretariat’s 1973 tour de force in the Triple Crown that he suffers in comparison. Yet he far exceeded Secretariat as a breeding stallion, for whatever that’s worth, and he has a better record outside the Triple Crown.
In the interest of complete transparency, I also must tell you that because of trainer Billy Turner, a friend to this day, I was given a least a temporary membership in the “Slew Crew,” which is how the media came to describe Turner, Cruguet, and the colt’s charming young owners, lumberman Mickey Taylor and his wife Karen, a former airline attendant, and veterinarian Jim Hill and his wife Sally.
Owners Mickey and Karen Taylor with 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew (Paulick Report Photo)
It all began when Jim Bolus, my longtime friend and colleague, went to New York to cover Slew’s last Derby prep, the Wood Memorial. In the track dining room, we ran into a writer from The Daily Racing Form and asked him where we could find Turner.
“Try Esposito’s Tavern across from the back stable gate at Belmont Park,” said our friend. “Turner calls that his ‘office.’ You might find him there if you go now.”
And so I went. Sure enough, Turner was there holding court on a bar stool. A lanky guy with unruly red hair, he loved to swap racing yarns and had an infectious laugh. He also had a nervous habit of rubbing his hands together before making a quick exit.
It turned out that Billy was an ex-steeplechase rider who got tagged with the nickname “Turnpike Turner” because he spent hours hauling horses on the turnpikes of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. One thing led to another, and he was training a small stable of thoroughbreds when he hooked up with the Taylors and the Hills.
And soon enough, they made the purchase that changed their lives forever.
A son of Bold Reasoning out of the mare My Charmer, Slew was bred in Kentucky by Ben Castleman. The Taylors and Hills got him for “only” $17,500 due to perceived flaws in his pedigree and conformation. But there was something about him that Turner liked. Everybody else finally saw the same thing when Slew rolled unbeaten through his 2-year-old campaign.
He went into 1977 as the early Derby favorite and kept winning so effortlessly that after he won the Wood, he got the star’s treatment when he came to Churchill Downs for the Derby. Affable but nervous, Turner would charm the waves of interviewers, then begin rubbing his hands together and looking for an exit.
Slew almost lost the Derby when he stumbled virtually to his knees leaving the starting gate. However, Cruguet, who had never won a Triple Crown race, steadied him, then bulled his way between horses to claim his accustomed spot near the lead. Turning for home, he took the lead and then held off Run Dusty Run’s late bid for a 1 ½-length victory.
“It was Slew’s greatest performance,” Turner would later say. “He got left at the gate, he got blocked, he got shut off. But he ran like a wild horse. He ran over horses. Man o’ War couldn’t have done it. It will go down as one of the greatest horses races ever.”
The Preakness was a relative piece of cake, with Slew holding off Iron Constitution to win the second jewel by the same margin he won the Derby. Still, he hadn’t convinced trainers W.E. “Smiley” Adams and Thomas F. Root Jr., who trained Run Dusty Run and Iron Constitution, respectively.
Then came the 1 ½-mile Belmont Stakes, longest of the Triple Crown races, and a huge crowd wondering if Slew could replicate the historic feat achieved by Secretariat only four years previously.
In the hours leading up to the race, I hung around with Turner on the backstretch. We might have sneaked off to Esposito’s for a libation, but I won’t swear to that. At any rate, long after the call had gone out for the Belmont horses to be brought to the paddock for saddling, Slew was still in his barn and Turner was rubbing his hands.
“Billy,” I said, pointing at my watch, “don’t you think we ought to get over there?”
Turner laughed his trademark laugh.
“You don’t think they’re going to start without us, do you?”
Remembering how the huge Derby crowd had excited Slew, Turner had decided that he was going to get him to the paddock at the last moment, give Cruguet a leg up, and then get him on the track before he had a chance to get excited. It worked like a charm, even though Turner did get fine by the track stewards for being late to the paddock.
After Slew had left the paddock, Turner ducked into a grandstand bar to get a drink and watch the race on TV. He asked the bartender for a vodka tonic, but the fellow didn’t recognize the trainer of the Triple Crown favorite and told him to go to the back of the line. So I stood in line to get the drink while Turner staked out a position near a TV where we could watch the race with the $2 bettors.
Since fans kept jumping up and blocking Turner’s view, I had to call the race for him. As soon as he saw Slew’s black-and-colors on the lead in mid-stretch, Turner said, “We’ve got it if the Frenchman (Cruguet) doesn’t fall off.”
Then he dashed out of the bar, jumped a fence into the tunnel leading to the track, and had to convince a Pinkerton guard that he was, indeed, the trainer of the Triple Crown winner. Then, for the first time all year, he met the owners in the winner’s circle to get his photo taken.
The official winner’s party that night was held not in the ballroom of a fancy hotel. It was held at Esposito’s Tavern, where the crowd filled the joint and spilled outside. Turner and the owners were there, of course. I think Cruguet made a cameo appearance. The newspaper business was well represented.
It would be nice to say the story had a sweet ending, but that wouldn’t be true. Turner wanted to take off Slew’s shoes, turn him out to pasture, and give him a long rest before the Travers Stakes in August. However, the owners got greedy and decided to sent him to California to pick up some easy money in the Swaps Stakes.
Alas, Slew suffered his first loss, finishing a dull fourth to J.O. Tobin, which turned out to be his worst loss in a 17-race career that included 14 victories and two seconds. After that race, it was only a matter of time before Turner and the owners parted ways. I’ll always believe that Slew might have never lost if the owners had continued to let Turner call the shots.
Hollywood has never made a movie about the Slew story, which is just as well considering how it botched the job on Secretariat. They rewrote the Secretariat story to make it look as if he saved the farm for owner Penny Tweedy. In fact, that distinction belonged to her Riva Ridge, who won the Derby and Belmont a year before Secretariat, but is never mentioned in the movie.
As it was, the Secretariat story hardly needed embellishment. He was a beautiful copper-colored colt whose looks enchanted even those who wouldn’t know a horse from a goat. He gave racing its first Triple Crown winner since Citation in 1948. And before the Belmont, he made the cover not only of Sports Illustrated, but Time and Newsweek, as well.
He gave the nation a hero when it badly needed one, drawing attention away from such dreary topics as Vietnam and Watergate.
Even when Secretariat was upset at Saratoga by Onion and Prove Out, both trained by Allen Jerkens, his place in racing mythology was secure. He ran what is still the great Triple Crown series ever. His 31-length win in the Belmont Stakes is as good a symbol of perfection as the sports world can produce.
On all counts, Slew couldn’t measure up. No horse could. Although the public loved his rags-to-riches story and the “Slew Crew,” it became virtually heretical to suggest that he was as good, or even better than, Secretariat.
But he was, trust me. The breakup of the Slew Crew became complete during his 4-year-old year when Cruguet was fired after finishing second by a nose to Dr. Patches at Monmouth Park and replaced by Angel Cordero Jr. But Slew defeated 1978 Triple Crown winner Affirmed by three lengths in the Marlboro Cup and ran one of his best races ever while losing by a nose to Exceller in the Jockey Club Gold Cup.
On a sloppy track at Belmont, Slew set the pace until being overtaken by Exceller at the top of the stretch. The fact that he fought back to lose in a photo finished was a tribute to his speed, stamina, and fighting spirit.
“I think that’s when all the breeders were finally convinced,” Taylor said.
So far as anybody knows, the “Slew Crew” has never had a reunion. Apparently only Cruguet will be around for Derby 143. Turner will stay in New York and watch the Derby on TV. The Taylors and Hills have dropped out of sight.
And across from the back stable gate at Belmont, Esposito’s Tavern has been taken over by a religious group.
Billy Reed is a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame and the Transylvania University Hall of Fame. He has been named Kentucky Sports Writer of the Year eight times and has won the Eclipse Award twice. Reed has written about a multitude of sports events for over four decades, but he is perhaps one of media’s most knowledgeable writers on the Kentucky Derby
