Beyond Greatness

When He opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come and see.” Another horse, fiery red, went out. And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another; and there was given to him a great sword. -- Rev. 6: 3-4 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 3 Man o’ War (1917 – 1947) World War I, the ‘Great War,’ was busy taking lives in Europe and in making heroes of those piloting the new airborne killing machines that dotted the skies of France – men like Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron) and his brother, Lothar, Oswald Boelcke, Ernst Udet and numerous other German ‘aces.’ Incongruous as it seems, while some Americans were giving their lives to this cause, others were enjoying the ‘Sport of Kings’ back home. By early spring of 1917 Colin was twelve years old and living peacefully ensconced at Belray Farm in Middleburg, Virginia, justly reaping the rewards of his stellar career. Less than four hundred miles away, at a place called Nursery Stud near Lexington, Kentucky, financier August Belmont had arranged for his stallion Fair Play to meet and woo a mare who was an undistinguished runner but, so he presciently guessed, would prove a great dam of runners, Mahubah. Her name was Arabian for “May good things be with you”. And, issuing from Fair Play’s and Mahubah’s cooperation, more good things soon came to Mr. Belmont, increasing his already appreciable wealth. For Mahubah’s second foal, arriving just before midnight on Thursday, March 29, 1917, was a chestnut colt, sturdily built and resembling Fair Play - having a white star on his forehead and a white streak that took a slight angle rightward as it ran down the ridge of his nose. The sire of this foal had lost four times to Colin, but came within a head of winning in Colin’s probably ill-advised, final career race – the rain-soaked, fog-enshrouded Belmont of 1908. Colin, by then, had simply suffered too much bodily wear and tear, and would have been done a favor by having not run. He left the country for England, the intent being to run him more. But he simply gave too many signs of being ill fit for further racing and was retired to stud. Not long after the foaling, Mr. Belmont’s wife, Eleanor Robson Belmont, named this chestnut colt to symbolize her husband’s recent commission as major in the Quartermaster Corps, a position he assumed since America was gearing up for war and would declare so against Germany scarcely more than a year hence. She christened him ‘Man o’ War.’ With hindsight always easy, it seems that the name was, at best, a misnomer. Perhaps it was a result of Mrs. Belmont’s decidedly genteel concept of the ‘war’ her husband would face. After all, being assigned as major in a distinctly non-combat unit would not qualify in any generally accepted interpretation of the term soldier. Nonetheless, the colt would grow strong and hungry to run – to have, it would seem, a disdain for allowing other horses to get or remain ahead of him. This chestnut foal with the foreboding moniker was destined to bring everlasting fame to himself, his breeder, owner, trainer, jockey - to everybody remotely associated with his racing career. Indeed, even the gentle, self-deprecating and yet uncommon man who cared for him personally for twenty-seven years after he retired, Will Harbut his groom, is undoubtedly – and sadly – remembered only through his association with Man o’ War. As do all wars, the Great War finally subsided. Victories and defeats were tallied. Wounds and egos were somehow assuaged. Debts and promises were collected, or neglected – in other words, the spoils were apportioned. Life returned to its new version of normalcy, except for the lucky or the famous but unlucky. The great German fighter, Baron Manfred von Richthofen, was mortally wounded, perhaps through an instance of rare personal misjudgment, on April 21, 1918. As he flew over Morlancourt Ridge near the Somme River, a single .303 caliber bullet severely damaged both his heart and lungs. He managed to land his Fokker FI safely, and to die in the cockpit, just north of the village of Vaux-sur-Somme. “Kaputt” (It’s over) is said to have been his final earthly utterance. It was eleven days before his twenty-sixth birthday and just seven months before the conflict ended. But his immortality was now assured, although it remains uncertain how much the dead appreciate the posthumous immortality bequeathed them by the living. And so events moved on as they always must -- amid all the myriad human affairs that would render minds numb - were a mere mortal able, from space, to comprehend in a single glance history’s complete tapestry being threaded by the Fates. A Maiden Special Weights Race at Belmont Twenty score and eleven days beyond the Red Baron’s demise in the fields of France, Friday, June 6, 1919 arrived at a place in New York State named Belmont Park. Samuel D. and Elizabeth Dobson Riddle, owners of a colt facing his maiden outing, sat attentively in the Belmont stands that afternoon, awaiting the 5:10 pm starting time of the day’s sixth race – a five-furlong sprint along the fast-rated, straight track. Thus were the general circumstances under which their often recalcitrant young colt called Man o’ War would launch a running career perhaps yet unequalled in racing’s chronicles of notoriety and fame. Fifty-nine seconds later, the five furlongs was history. So relatively easy was the win, that jockey John Loftus was standing straight up in the stirrups as his red horse crossed the finish line. His closest competitor, Retrieve, was six lengths back. It was the second-fastest five furlongs run that spring at Belmont, just two-fifths of a second behind Dominique’s 0:58.60. The starter, Marshall (Mars) Cassidy later told jockey Loftus that the other colts were either bums or he had the fastest horse that ever lived. Cassidy added that Man o’ War had broken so fast from the barrier - a spring-loaded net then used for aligning horses before the start of races - that he nearly recalled them. Cassidy, for whatever instinct, did not recall the horses, and Man o’ War’s nascent legend began.