TITANS OF TURF : Episode 7 – Susan’s Girl
Posted by co-admin on 9/20/07 • Categorized as Horse
Speak! To change this standard text, you have to enter some information about your self in the
Dashboard ->
Users ->
Your Profile box.
No filly or mare in the top 100 racehorses of the 20th century, compiled by The Blood-Horse, won more stakes or more races than Susan’s Girl. But it was not merely the number of races that she won that made her sixth-best filly of the last 100 years; it was just as much the quality of the races that she won. She won Eclipse Awards in 1972, 1973 and 1976 and was runner up to Numbered Account as a 2-year-old in 1971. I had the great pleasure of training her for all but two of her juvenile races, all races of her 3-year-old year in 1972, and all but one of her stakes victories as a 4-year-old in 1973. In total she won 18 stakes for me alone. She subsequently won 9 more stakes divided between trainers James Picou, Charles R. Parke and Ross Fenstermaker.
Bred in
Florida by Fred Hooper Jr., Susan’s Girl was to race her entire career for his venerable father, Fred Senior. Her sire, Quadrangle, won the Belmont Stakes and was voted best 3-year-old of 1964. Her dam, Quaze, was by Hooper’s Argentine import, Quibu*. With tremendous depth and powerful gaskins, standing 16 hands, one and a half inches, and weighing 1150 pounds as a 3-year-old, Susan’s Girl had the disposition of a lamb. She was a rich bay with a beautiful, intelligent head, and despite a large white blaze and four white socks, she defied the conventional wisdom that with so much white she would be fragile. On the contrary, she started 65 times over five seasons, on both coasts and at virtually every track in between, logging almost as many air miles as Amelia Earhart.
If it were not for Numbered Account, Susan’s Girl would have won an Eclipse Award at 2, since she won four stakes and finished second to the champion on three other occasions. The following year, Susan’s Girl won her first six races on the trot, including the
Pasadena, the Santa Ynez, and the Santa Susana, all at Santa Anita, while setting new stakes records. She then moved to
Kentucky, where she won the La Troillene and the Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs. Her next stop was
New York, where she set a new stakes record in the Acorn Stakes at Aqueduct. Then with a second and third in Belmont’s Mother Goose and the Coaching Club American Oaks, respectively, she flew back to the West Coast where she was second and then third in the Princess Stakes and the Hollywood Oaks. Her midsummer losses, although respectable, indicated that she was justifiably tailing off, having been in continuous training for 18 months. Rested for the remainder of the summer, she returned in the fall to win the Gazelle Handicap, and then the defining weight for age Beldame Stakes at
Belmont.
The Beldame, the pivotal race in winning her first championship, was arguably against the best group of fillies and mares ever assembled for a single event. Numbered Account had won the juvenile filly championship the previous year at Susan’s Girl’s expense, but the Beldame field also included two other Eclipse Award winners — Chou Croute and Typecast — in addition to Canada’s 1971 Horse of the Year, Laurie’s Dancer. Regional leaders that were also in the race were, Blessing Angelica, winner of two successive Delaware Handicaps, and the outstanding mare, Manta, from
California. Paul Mellon’s Summer Guest was another 3-year-old filly contender for the crown, having won the Black Eyed Susan, Coaching Club American Oaks, and the Alabama Stakes.
The outcome was all Susan’s Girl; in setting another stakes record, she beat Summer Guest by a length, Chou Croute by two, and Manta by five and a quarter. Numbered Account was fifth. Summer Guest furthered her claim to the championship by later finishing second in the Woodward to champion handicap horse Key To The Mint, but Susan’s Girl not only denied her the Eclipse Award, she ended the year as the nation’s leading money winner of either sex.
Susan’s Girl’s 1973 4-year-old season continued on a high note when she won the
Santa Maria, Santa Margarita and Santa Susana Stakes at Santa Anita with consummate ease. But there was a penalty to be paid for her dominance, as she was to carry punitive weights at
Hollywood
Park. Though never off the board, she lost her next four starts, carrying as much as 130 lbs. and conceding as much as 28 lbs. to her rivals. However, after once again taking a badly needed midsummer break, she went east and won the Susquehanna Handicap, and then beat Summer Guest once again in the
Delaware Handicap under 127 lbs. This victory was not only another crucial point in winning another championship, but it was also a turning point in my career; with considerable reluctance I, resigned as her trainer to accept that position for the powerful Phipps stable. Susan’s Girl, again as a result of punitive weights, suffered two defeats after this, but finished the year by winning the Spinster Stakes and her second Eclipse Award.
She started her 5-year-old season, again at Santa Anita, with only two wins from six starts, but more misfortune was to come. By spring, it was discovered that she had suffered her only major injury, a fractured sesamoid. After surgery performed by Dr. Robert Copelan and a frighteningly long convalescence during which she almost died, she proved that she was as durable as her remarkable owner, who died in 2000, almost 25 years later, at 102. But in 1975, Susan’s Girl had only a few more dollars to earn to become the first American-raced distaff millionaire, so, at the age of 6, she returned to the races.
Starting at Santa Anita in January, she was to finish her career at Aqueduct the following November, and as a tribute to the skill of Dr. Copelan, she never missed a dance in between. She ran 17 times that season, winning seven, including the Beldame, the Delaware Handicap and the Spinster Stakes, each for the second time; the Long Beach and Apple Blossom handicaps; and the Matchmaker Stakes, where the purse included a breeding right to Secretariat.
Hooper elected to hedge some risk and used the Secretariat season on another mare, producing a useful stakes winner from the mating. Hooper’s homebred Tri Jet, a multiple Grade I stakes winner that I also had the good fortune to train, and who also had benefited from surgery by Dr. Copelan, was the surrogate for Secretariat and covered Susan’s Girl. The resultant foal was a top class 2-year-old that won the Hopeful Stakes, the Belmont Futurity and the
Champaign. Named for the good doctor, Copelan, it seemed ironic that he should prematurely end his career due to injury.
Susan’s Girl won stakes from six furlongs (1:08:3/5) to a mile and a quarter (2:00:3/5), on dirt and on turf. She was the first filly ever to win $1 million exclusively in
America, the first horse to win Eclipse Awards in three separate years, and was inducted into the National Museum of Racing’s Hall of Fame in 1976 on the first ballot. She died in 1988 at Hooper’s Farm, the place of her birth.
someone on 
Prio on 
Artikel yg bagus
[Reply]