Posted on 08/06/2003 9:35:35 AM PDT by carlo3b
By Bill Christine
Times Staff Writer
July 23, 2003
DEL MAR — Perhaps no one in U.S. horse racing was more saddened to hear about Ferdinand's ignoble death than Bill Shoemaker.
"It's terrible," said Shoemaker, who was 54 when he won the Kentucky Derby with Ferdinand in 1986. "It's hard to believe that the horse couldn't have been brought here to live out the rest of his life."
Ferdinand, who was 20, died last year at a slaughterhouse in Japan after an unsuccessful stud career.
"He was getting old and in some discomfort," said Yoshikazu Watanabe, a horse dealer in Japan, according to an Associated Press story.
Until this week, there had been no announcement of Ferdinand's death. The Japan Race Horse Registry, which tracks stallions in that country, had been notified in September by Goshima Farm, near Niikappu, that Ferdinand should be removed from the list.
"When I heard about it, it made me sick to my stomach," said Grace Belcore, director of the California Equine Retirement Foundation, which currently cares for about 80 retired racehorses at a ranch in Temecula. "What happened to Ferdinand is totally inhumane. We sure could have made room here for him."
Besides his Derby win, Ferdinand also beat Alysheba, the 1987 Derby winner, in that year's Breeders' Cup Classic at Hollywood Park and was voted horse of the year. Ferdinand was retired from the track in 1988. His stud career sputtered in Kentucky, and in 1994 he was sold to the JS Co. in Japan. He spent six years at Arrow Stud on the island of Hokkaido, but by 2000 he was virtually forgotten. Blood-Horse magazine, which said that no U.S. farms were contacted before Ferdinand died, reported that he had been bred to only 13 mares in the last three years.
Ferdinand is the second major horse trained by the late Charlie Whittingham to have ended up in a slaughterhouse. Exceller, who beat the Triple Crown champions Seattle Slew and Affirmed in the 1978 Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park, died in Sweden in 1997.
Assuming that Ferdinand's death came late last year, he is the seventh Kentucky Derby winner to die in a recent 13-month period. Seattle Slew died on May 7 last year, and since him have gone Sunday Silence, Spend A Buck, Pleasant Colony, Sunny's Halo and Spectacular Bid.
Ferdinand revived the career of Shoemaker, who had won three Derbies but none in 21 years before 1986. Both Shoemaker and Whittingham were in the Racing Hall of Fame, but Whittingham had never won the Derby and before Ferdinand had started only two horses in the race, none since 1960. Whittingham, 73 when Ferdinand claimed the roses, was the oldest trainer to ever saddle a Derby winner. Three years later, with Sunday Silence, Whittingham broke his own record, winning the Derby at 76.
Ferdinand loved peppermints, and Whittingham always carried some in his pocket for him. It was a marvel to watch Ferdinand, waiting patiently while Whittingham removed the cellophane from the candies. The horse never lunged for the peppermints until they were unwrapped.
"If it hadn't been for Ferdinand," Shoemaker said, "I would never have won another Derby. I was way to the end of my career, and at that stage nobody was going to be putting me on a contender anymore."
In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Shoemaker remembered the first time he saw Ferdinand. It was at Del Mar in 1985, before the colt had run a race.
"This is Ferdinand," Whittingham said as he introduced Shoemaker to the colt at his barn. "We're going to have some fun with this horse. We'll probably win the Derby with him."
The Kentucky-bred Ferdinand was a son of Nijinsky II, who in 1970 became the 15th — and last — horse to sweep the English Triple Crown. Ferdinand, whose dam was Banja Luka, was bred by the late Howard Keck and raced for his wife, Elizabeth.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Dog biscuitOn the heels of the Seabiscuit craze, Rep. Martin Frost has teamed up with the Humane Society of the United States to shut down horse slaughterhouses in this country. (There are two of them in the Texas Dem's home state). The bill now has 63 cosponsors, spurred on by news that the 1986 Kentucky Derby champ ferdinand recently became horse meat in Japan.
Too much information.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, ....Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors,...the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed...No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
Nope didn't find it. Oh well, the NJ Supreme Court said that "Literalism must be avoided because there is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally."
Was he sterile? Impotent? Infected? What? Sired by Nijinsky and worthless as a stud? I don't think so. What did he actually sire, and out of what dam?
Newspapers wonder why they are disappearing. This is why, You can't learn a damn thing from this article except that some oriental folks may be nippon on old Dobbin, said beast being now deceased.
Talk about "pressure to perform"!
WOW, just like a well behaved young boy or girl, how anthropomorphic. I hope he got a mahogany casket and a good funeral mass just as any good person would deserve.
My sentiments also. The horse deserved better than this.
[and from the article]: "... he had been bred to only 13 mares in the last three years."
Its all relative. My stud career is in worse shape than his was.
Here lies Ferdinand.
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