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 Aging gracefully Triple Crown winner Affirmed in the breeding business
Posted: Wednesday June 09, 1999 02:29 PM
LEXINGTON, Ky. (CNN/SI) -- He stands at attention, waiting. And listening. Is it 9 o'clock yet? Is it time? His ears twitch, the noise of an approaching truck giving him pause. Is it time to go to work? It probably seems a lifetime ago when his work was to circle the infield faster than his comrades. And how he loved that flying -- dirt everywhere, the little man on his back nipping at his flanks with the whip, begging him for a little bit extra. And very few in history ever reached deeper or gave more. It was 21 years ago. Children have been born and earned the right to vote in the time since Affirmed stunned the racing world by winning the Triple Crown. The kid Steve Cauthen on his back, dueling so electrically with Alydar. Like Ali and Frazier, except Ali never lost in this war. And now, two decades later, he stands and waits for the truck with the mare to arrive. It is a business, the breeding of horses. It's expensive and very scientific. It is what they do at Jonabell Farms in Lexington, Kentucky. What they've always done. Jimmy Bell was born on this land and is the general manager now. "It's like being a college coach," Bell says. "You're always recruiting, always looking at high-school prospects. We spend a lotta time looking at horses running across the country and you're always trying to attract or see what horse you can bring into your stallion roster." Bell's roster right now is heavy with history: Gold Legend, Cherokee Run, Major Impact and Virginia Rapids. The stable even has eight by 10 glossies. But the glossiest of them all is Affirmed, the 11th and last Triple-Crown winner. And he knows it. "He walks around and knows who he is," says Steve Cauthen, the man who whispered and whipped Affirmed to the Triple Crown in 1978. "He's a champion and he knows he's a champion. He knows he is one of the best." Bell couldn't agree more. "He has a tremendous presence about him. He's a horse that is a true, true athlete." But one whose job these last 20 years has been to sire. To make the right turn out of his 14-by-16 stable and head to the breeding barn once a week. It's a turn he still approaches with great zest. "As soon as he starts out of this barn and going to the breeding shed, he's as calm and docile as he is right now," says stallion manager Phillip Hampton. "When he goes over there, he's all man." "Now he's being judged purely on what his progeny can do," said Bell. "He's been very successful. He's had 11 champions, a daughter Flawlessly that's won $2.5 million. He had a horse that won the Triple Crown in Canada. He's had success in Europe. So he's done well even though we hold him to a higher standard because he was such a great race horse. You always wanna see if his offspring can emulate what dad did." Cauthen is a breeder himself these days and has a foal by Affirmed. He's hoping that the little one has inherited his father's heart. "He had speed, he had courage," Cauthen says. "I mean he was an all-around horse. He could do it all. As far as his heart, again, like Michael Jordan, like the guy when he won the finals a couple years ago, almost unconscious on his feet, this is the kinda horse Affirmed was. He never gave up. He just always battled back." But at age 24, Affirmed is beginning to show very subtle signs of age. But even with the passing of time, Hamilton says Affirmed has treated age almost as easily as a major race -- with style and grace. "Most horses his age would've dropped off considerably in the back and shown a little more wear-and-tear than he has. He's still as clean-legged as any horse in training. He's maintained his shape pretty well." So is there a point where this horse stops breeding and just goes out to pasture? "There will be and we'll monitor that," Bell said. "We're able to take semen analysis and make some observations. But right now, last year he got 90 percent of his mares in foal so I wouldn't wanna tell him he's getting close to the end." And so he roams his own pasture like a kid, aware of his place in history. If a finish line is around the bend, he's content finishing in the back of the pack this time. Affirmed gets $30,000 a session and normally goes about 50 times a year. Not bad for the equivalent of a 72-year old human being.
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