Female horses of all ages, like humans, usually run several seconds slower than their male counterparts over the course of a race. Winning Colors was proving to be the exception. As a 2-year-old filly, she was now cruising at a blistering 22-and-one-fifth second first quarter-mile pace—a fast pace for a seasoned older horse, and incredibly fast for a 2-year-old female.
During the race, Romero was trying to reserve her speed and save energy for the long home stretch, known as the Graveyard of Champions. The Saratoga racetrack stretch leading to the finish line is long and tiring to horses, and many a well bet, well regarded, previous champion horse had tired and lost their good lead in the stretch run for home. Winning Colors was flying out on the lead, bounding away from the other fillies with each of her huge strides. She was going full out and entered the left-hand stretch turn one-and-one-half lengths in front, as the other fillies made their charging moves, but she was now hitting her full speed. She’d decisively opened by four lengths over her closest pursuer, exited the turn, and took dead aim for the wire. She darted a bit to her left in the stretch run, nearly scraping the white paint off the inner rail with her gray body. The pursuing jockeys were whipping and yelling encouragement to their fillies, trying to catch the flying Winning Colors, but they were doing so in vain.
She wasn’t just beating the field; she was embarrassing them. At the finish line 1,000 feet away, Luis was red-faced, jumping up and down, shouting at the top of his lungs, “Go Mamacita! Go Mamacita!”
Jockey Romero took hold of her near the wire, tucked his unused whip away, having never asked her to fully extend herself. Winning Colors coasted home in front of the second-place horse by nearly three lengths at the wire, with the rest of the field strewn back nearly 20 lengths behind. Luis was running around the track holding his tickets high to the sky and yelling, “Si!...Si!...Si!...Si! Esa es mi chica!”
Soon there would be $2,700 in the box in the closet of Luis and Mariana Palos.
August 17, 1987, Rancho Santa Fe, California
Later in the week after the race, D. Wayne Lukas and Eugene Klein met in San Diego to discuss race plans for Winning Colors as they now knew they had something very special in the tall and feisty filly. They flew her back by private jet and bedded her down back at her home Santa Anita racetrack, 17 miles east of Los Angeles.
Lukas was not known for patience with horses and was often criticized for running his young horses too often. However, he was being especially patient with his new promising starlet. He chose to wait from August to the end of December to run her again at Santa Anita.
Top horses can occasionally capture the imagination of the American public the way Seabiscuit, Seattle Slew, or Secretariat did, but the problem is that a horse’s racing career is short. Most top ranked horses today race two to four times at age two, five to eight races at age three, and another five to eight races at age four. Typically, top stakes horses are retired after age four when their breeding value is high, compared to the limited purse income they can win while racing. By the time the horse is a recognized star at age three after winning a Derby or other top high-profile stakes race, the horse probably has less than another 18 months to race before a life of retirement. The horse’s fame is so short-lived that a true fan base cannot be easily developed. A comparative top human athlete such as an NFL quarterback, or Major League Baseball pitcher or hitter, will typically have a 10- to 15-year career playing their sport, but the careers of the four-legged stars are short lived. The animals themselves typically live into their 20s but race only a few years of their lives.
At the age of 25, jockey Gary Stevens was just three years removed from a coma that left him unconscious for 16 hours after slamming into the Santa Anita rail. It was a frightening training accident that was caught on video in all its gruesome detail. For many months, his speech pattern was impacted. Upon regaining consciousness, he learned that his right knee was nearly destroyed, and his promising career likely was over. Stevens was quoted as saying he did not fear being on a horse’s back and resumed riding in six months. In many ways, the biggest stars in horseracing are the jockeys. Stevens, Idaho born, with boyish good looks and a smile to charm the ladies, was becoming a Southern California favorite among the race fans.
Jockeys who avoid career-ending injuries can race for many decades. This career longevity is made far more difficult because the jockeys, including their saddle, clothing, and whip, must weigh less than 114 pounds on race day. As the jockeys mature, like most humans, they usually thicken and gain weight. Stories of jockeys eating, then purging, are typical for the vocation.
Bill Shoemaker was still racing strong at 57 years of age, and still an elite rider 45 years into his career. Most of the US top jockeys come from the same Latin American countries as the backstretch workers and are a tough-as-leather, fearless group of mostly men. Stevens was unique among top riders as he was American born. As American as apple pie, Stevens was handsome and easy for US fans to relate to. He began his riding career at age 12 by convincing his dad to put him on quarter-mile sprint racehorses. His older
