Horse Racing

Tiznow, and Again
A career-threatening injury couldn't stop a repeat winner in the Breeders' Cup Classic

Those who saw Tiznow in the $4 million Breeders' Cup Gas-sic last Saturday will remember that the race alone was a punishing endeavor. Tiznow made a measured run down the back-stretch, just off the lead, followed by a modest move at the quarter pole that promised little. Then, in the cold autumn gloaming at Belmont Park, he pounded through a desperate stretch run that carried him to a nose win over gifted European champion Sakhee and made him the first horse in the 18-year history of the Breeders' Cup to win consecutive runnings of the Classic.

But as tough as it was to win the Classic, getting to the race in good health was even more problematic. On April 20 the 4-year-old Tiznow left trainer Jay Robbins's barn at Santa Anita for a routine morning workout. At the time, Tiznow was not only the reigning Horse of the Year but also a genuine threat to replicate that performance in 2001. On March 3 he had won the $1 million Santa Anita Handicap by five lengths, drawing clear in the lane with a burst unlike anything jockey Chris McCarron had felt. Still, the ride toward a Classic repeat was interrupted when Tiznow returned from that April workout scarcely able to walk.

At first Robbins thought Tiznow might have suffered a recurrence of the broken tibia in his left hind leg that had kept him from racing as a 2-year-old. But the veterinarian who examined Tiznow gave him a tranquilizer and a muscle relaxant and suggested that he might have injured his lumbar vertebrae (near his tail). It was a slippery diagnosis; horses' backs are as inscrutable as humans'.

Robbins rested his horse for 30 days, and in mid-May, Tiznow began exercising lightly, still apparently uncomfortable. "He could hardly move," Robbins says. "I put a poultice on his back every day and walked him around, but he wasn't right I was thinking, I don't know if I can put him through this. My peers were saying every day, Why don't you retire him?' Some days I was thinking the same tiling."

Robbins nursed his horse patiently. On July 13 Tiznow went three furlongs at Del Mar in 36[2/5] seconds, his first encouraging work in three months. He was short in third-place finishes in the Sept. 8 Woodward at Belmont and the Oct 7 Goodwood at Santa Anita, but in each race he gained fitness. Only after arriving in New York a week before the Classic did Robbins see the old Tiznow. Only in the last 200 yards of the Classic did McCarron feel the old Tiznow in his hands.

Robbins still isn't sure what ailed the horse, only that it healed sufficiently for Tiznow to make history. "Maybe a ruptured disk," he said late on Saturday, shrugging. If Tiznow stays sound, owner Michael Copper says he will race as a 5-year-old, and in the winter the war between health and speed will begin anew.

Foreign Affairs
Big Returns for Arabs and Euros

Tiznow's Classic victory on an afternoon dominated by foreigners was a face-saving one for horses bred, trained and raced solely in America. Of the eight Breeders' Cup races, five were won by horses with significant connections outside the U.S.

Tempera, winner of the Juvenile Fillies, and the sensational 5-year-old Turf winner Fantastic Light run for Godolphin Stable, owned by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum and two of his brothers, from the royal family of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Surprise Juvenile winner Johannesburg has British and Irish owners, is trained by Aidan O'Brien of Ireland and raced exclusively in Europe before the Breeders' Cup. Mile winner Val Royal is a French-bred horse who had run only twice in the U.S. before Saturday, and Filly and Mare Turf champion Banks Hill was bred in England, had raced only in Europe and is owned by Prince Khalid Abdullah of Saudi Arabia's Juddmonte Farms.