“History repeats itself, that’s just how it goes…”
- J. Cole
J. Cole wasn’t yet born forty years ago Stone Farm and Leone Peters’ Gato Del Sol was the 21-1 upset winner of the 1982 running of the Kentucky Derby. His trainer, Eddie Gregson, was a relatively young man whose name was on the rise in Southern California racing circles. Gregson had been pointing the son of Cougar II to the Derby since they had captured the previous years Del Mar Futurity, thinking the gray colt out of the Jacinto mare was a true distance type. After his unexpected visit to the winners circle on the first Saturday in May, Gregson dropped a bombshell that wasn’t nearly as big of a deal back in the Ronald Reagan era as it is now; they’d skip the Preakness and traditional Derby winners path and aim solely for the Belmont.
''I've pointed this colt for the Kentucky Derby ever since he won the Del Mar Futurity as a 2-year-old,'' Gregson said. ''He's a longrunning horse, and win, lose or draw I wasn't planning on the Preakness.''
Now you have to remember that racing was vastly different in 1982 in terms how horses were campaigned and how the Triple Crown races themselves were viewed. There had been a bevy of successful Triple Crown bids in the 70’s starting with Secretariat in 1973 and followed up by Seattle Slew and Affirmed plus the near miss by Spectacular Bid in 79. Perhaps the allure of being crowned a Triple Crown winning owner or trainer had dimmed a touch since before the run on crowns the previous decade but Gregson was a man with a plan and nobody seemed particularly peeved by it.
Alas the plan didn’t work as Gato Del Sol, despite the extra time to prepare for the mile and a half test over the sandy surface in Elmont, caught a sloppy one and finished a distant second in the Belmont behind the buzz saw that was Conquistador Cielo. No one cared that he had skipped the Preakness and a shot at the Triple Crown, all eyes had been on Woody Stephens’ Mr. Prospector colt who had kicked off Belmont week by destroying a full field of older horses in the Met Mile on the traditional Memorial Day Monday card.
Conquistador Cielo went on to win the Dwyer and Jim Dandy before flaming out in the Travers, losing to an unheralded Runaway Groom as Gato Del Sol ended his season with non-threatening 5th place finish. The mercurial star colt was soon retired after that defeat with rumored soundness issues and syndicated for a record $36 million dollars as a stallion. This represented the height of an insane stallion market boom as the bloodstock tail began wagging the racing dog as soon as the ink dried on that stud deal, a dichotomy of interests that still lingers all these years later. In 2022 when we hear “He got his grade one” it doesn’t sound like an achievement as much as a warning sign that the individual in question is now living on borrowed racing time.
Gato Del Sol never broke through as an older horse, winning only a couple of minor stakes over the next three campaigns. He eventually wound up in the shed row of the legendary Charlie Whittingham but even the Bald Eagle himself couldn’t muster another graded win from the gray colt though he was a solid West coast stakes competitor on both surfaces.
How this ties into today is the similarities that exist after the first two legs of the Triple Crown compared to 40 years ago. In 1982 the longshot Kentucky Derby winner skipped the Preakness stating a previously developed plan of attack which pointed directly to the Belmont which sounds eerily like the Rich Strike story. Adding more irony to the 40 year parallels is that both years Preakness winners skipped the Derby and arrived at Pimlico with but a single graded stakes victory in Aqueduct’s Withers Stakes. Aloma’s Ruler win was achieved a week prior, the Withers was held the Saturday between the Kentucky Derby and Preakness in those days while Early Voting’s came in February.
Alas the Triple Crown race similarities might wane in the next leg as I can assure you the 2022 Belmont winner won’t have exited the Met Mile. However if a late bloomer like We the People were to go wire to wire three weekends from now, it wouldn’t be that much different than Conquistador Cielo as we aren’t ever getting a week like his again.
1982 was an odd year in racing especially for the three year olds who were deemed to be not quite up to par that season. 2022 has been unusual for many reasons, the Baffert chronicles notwithstanding, but it would be very easy to label this three year old crop as…uh…thin perhaps? 1982’s three year old prep season was a bit strange too. Linkage won the Lecomte, the Risen Star, was second in the Louisiana Derby and won the Bluegrass Stakes by two lengths before his connections decided to skip the Kentucky Derby and point for the Preakness which didn’t work as he finished second to Aloma’s Ruler. So the Risen Star/Bluegrass winner skipped the Derby, the Derby winner skipped the Preakness and the Belmont winner never even ran in a three year old stakes prior to the Belmont! In 2022 so far the road to the Triple Crown has gone through winter refugee tracks Turfway Park and Aqueduct. Rich Strike had never even won a stakes race (or even threatened in one) prior to upsetting the Kentucky Derby. The track was so slow for Early Voting’s Withers, he actually ran faster in the Preakness (1:54.54 vs. 1:55.90) despite it being a 1/16th of a mile longer!
The eventual three year old and horse of the year in 1982 hadn’t even competed in a stakes race that year on the post-Preakness Sunday 40 years ago. Could something similar be in the cards for 2022? Early Voting and Epicenter have to be the tepid leaders among the three year old colts with Zandon and perhaps Jack Christopher lurking behind those two at this time. Will the Belmont winner emerge as the new leader in the clubhouse? It sure looks like a division that is ripe for the taking if someone can step up in the second half of the year and maybe stop making it feel so much like 1982.
So much has changed in racing and the Triple Crown has been the one enduring event that has not only resisted modernization but has thrived without it. So few truly understand the complexity that exists where the sport of racing and business of racing intersect which is apparent on social media, on the airwaves and likely in executive office conversations as well. There are so many dominoes that will fall with anything but the slightest tweak and many of those can’t be put back in place once they are down. Those who wish to mess with the most successful segment of racing should heed the warning that you can’t engineer mystique and you can’t make people care more but if you kill the spirit of the series, apathy will surely follow.
📰 Read the great Steve Crist’s 1982 Derby Story 82 Derby
Great job Chuck!