The Star That Fell To Earth

The Travers Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 21 had been a stirring speed duel. Two colts, Conquistador Cielo and Aloma's Ruler, had battled head and head almost every step of the way; they had set sail together into the first turn and had stayed together down the backside, around the far turn and into the homestretch. Neither had yielded a beat, though the pace and pressure of the duel had brought them both to the cracking point.

Now, after racing nine furlongs, deep into the stretch, with Conquistador Cielo on the inside and Aloma's Ruler lapped on him on the outside, Cielo shoved his head in front for an instant. Then, suddenly, Cielo began to give way. Aloma's Ruler was back at him, nose to nose. The second largest crowd in the history of Saratoga, 41,839, had sent Conquistador Cielo off as the 2-5 favorite, and a roar went up when Aloma's Ruler appeared to have him on the ropes.

There was more riding on Cielo, to be sure, than Jockey Eddie Maple. Over the previous 10 days, Seth Hancock, the 33-year-old president of Claiborne Farm, had sold shares in a Conquistador Cielo syndicate for $36.4 million, making him the most expensive horse in history. In fact, just five hours before the start of the race, Hancock had handed the colt's owner, Henryk de Kwiatkowski, a cashier's check for $6 million to cover the down payment.

Sitting near Hancock in the box-seat section of the clubhouse, watching grimly as the Travers reached its climax, were a number of Cielo's syndicate members, most of them longtime Claiborne clients who, on Hancock's advice and at his urging, had agreed to pay $910,000 apiece, including interest, for shares in the horse, whose value would plummet if he lost this race. Saratoga is known as "the graveyard of favorites," and Hancock had been getting ominous vibes all day. Beyond that, he had good reason to believe that Cielo might not be physically at his best. Still, nothing he felt or knew could have prepared him for what was happening.

Inside the eighth pole, Conquistador Cielo was a beaten horse. As he faded, Aloma's Ruler tired, too, and long shot Runaway Groom came bounding down the middle of the track, passed them both and won. Cielo came in third, beaten a length and a quarter.

Not wanting to face the syndicate members and their questions, a stunned and shaken Hancock left his seat as Cielo hit the wire. He hurried down the clubhouse staircase. Then he turned right and headed through the grandstand, the home of the $2 player. He heard bettors laughing, jeering, crowing the way bettors do. Hancock remembers: "They were saying things like, 'How do you think those stupid sonofabitches that paid $36 million for that horse feel about him now?' I just ducked my head and kept walking. I felt stupid. I felt horrible, about as bad as you can feel, what with all these people who bought a share in the horse, clients of the farm. It was the worst moment in my life."

For Hancock the running of the Travers Stakes brought to a painful end the most difficult and vexing ordeal of his professional career, one in which he ultimately agreed to syndicate a horse for more money than he thought the animal was worth. Conquistador Cielo—the name means "Conqueror of the Sky" in Spanish—was retired the day after the Travers, so the race also concluded one of the strangest and most dramatic careers in the recent history of the American turf.

Six months before, in February, Cielo had been so dead lame that he could barely walk; on May 31 he had run the fastest mile ever in New York; five days after that he had astounded veteran race-trackers by winning the Belmont Stakes by 14 lengths; and two months later he had been syndicated for $36.4 million. Now, on this afternoon, having almost won the Travers five days after his swollen left front ankle had been tapped and injected with cortisone, his racing career was over.

It was fitting that the last scenes of the drama were played out at Saratoga, because that's where it had begun two years before, when de Kwiatkowski paid $150,000 for an attractive, neatly balanced yearling by Mr. Prospector out of K D Princess, a daughter of Bold Commander. Mr. Prospector was a racehorse of boundless speed, a gust of wind in the sprints. At the stud he had, not surprisingly, proven himself to be a sire of horses who preferred sprinting to stretching out. K D Princess was the weaker half of the yearling's pedigree. She had run for several $25,000 claiming tags, not much of a recommendation as a broodmare prospect; when Cielo was foaled, she was unproven as a dam.

In fact, the yearling's pedigree was marginal for the select Saratoga sale. "But he was graded high physically," says John Finney, the head of Fasig-Tipton, the auction house that conducts the Saratoga sales. "A grand-looking horse. He sold on his looks." Lee Eaton, the bloodstock agent who sold the colt for the late Breeder Lewis Iandoli, said that he gave the colt a grade of "B plus" as a yearling and thought he could get $125,000 for him, tops. At the sale on Aug. 8, 1980 de Kwiatkowski took him for $25,000 more than that. "We were tickled to death," said Eaton.