Stevens was trying his best to ration her energy. He explained later, “I didn’t know she was going so insanely fast. She was doing it easily, not running off with me.”
Winning Colors was able to run at a pace not seen by young fillies, and she was doing it effortlessly. She lengthened her body and led the field of six horses down the long Santa Anita backstretch with her long strides and gray mane flying in the wind while the other jockeys were desperate in urging their mounts to make a charge and cut into her lead. Winning Colors must have sensed she had no competition from the other young fillies.
As Stevens was trying to get her to slow her pace down and reserve energy for the stretch challenges, she did relax without pouring on her full energy and slowed to a still quick, but more sensible pace. She cruised into the sweeping left-hand turn leading by three-and-a-half lengths.
When they straightened for home, Stevens let the reins out a notch, chirped to her, and she responded by digging into the ground with her front hooves and pulling forward in long strides. The other fillies were way behind. The finish line approached, and she drifted to her left, nearly touching the inner rail. Stevens looked back and could see no closing threat. As she cruised to the wire, Stevens grabbed the reins 100 yards out to slow her down and save more energy.
Winning Colors won by four lengths. Easy.
Her groom Luis was again standing at the rail, hands held high with a thick stack of winning mutual tickets yelling, “Si!...Si!...Si!...Si! Esa es mi chica!”
Trainers, grooms, and backstretch workers will tell you horses know when they win a race. They carry themselves differently after a win, or a loss. Winning Colors was fully in her element as she cantered down the backstretch while being cooled out. She refused to be pulled up for her jockey. She was in such a state of joy after being allowed to release her stored energy that she did not want to stop running. Stevens later told Lukas, “She could’ve run another race that day. She was not even breathing hard after the race and could not blow out a candle if placed under her nose.”
The Kleins’s preferred turf club table was located above the finish line, and they erupted in screams of joy as their expensive filly charged to victory. All six of them marched triumphantly down the three flights of stairs to the winner’s circle, to get their pictures taken with the happy, shining, tall gray filly.
After dismounting, Stevens told his fellow jockey Jacinto Vasquez, “That horse has attitude. I’m going to win the Kentucky Derby on that filly.”
Vasquez raised an eyebrow. Stevens had never spoken like that about any horse to him. He told Stevens, “You don’t know what it takes to win a Derby.”
Stevens loved her fiery, precocious attitude, and her amazing athleticism, even if she was high-strung and difficult to control. The two were a good match together, fearless, with a will to win and take chances. They didn’t run for second money, but gunned to the front, defying any equine or human athlete to keep pace with them.
Eugene and Joyce Klein and a boisterous group of champagne-drinking friends celebrated Winning Colors’ win at an elegant candlelit French dinner. Joyce smiled, noticing her husband was as happy as she had seen him in years.
He was telling one of his favorite stories: “After the games, Howard Cosell bugged me all the damn time to ride in my jet. That’s the last thing I needed is Cosell in my plane for five damn hours. Joyce was always scolding me for the way I talked to the media, telling me, ‘Honey, you need to think more before you talk to the press.’ But one week later he asks me again...and I tell Howard that it’s only a small plane and we’ve got a limited supply of oxygen to get us all the way back to California. It worked…he didn’t ask again!”
His companions asked him why he sold the football team.
Klein’s eyes met his wife’s, and they both looked away. Then Klein explained: “Did I tell you about my Chargers’ players after the ‘82 Miami playoff game? I gave the players my goddamn beautiful airplane to fly home from the game. How did they repay my generosity? One of them brought a kilo of cocaine back on my plane to sell. My plane! After that, the FBI was investigating me for drug trafficking. They could have confiscated and kept my jet! The players didn’t even try to hide the drugs. No, the stupid asses started to cut it up and began putting the coke up their noses on the plane, in front of the stewardesses! I said, ‘To hell with football players! Let’s go buy some horses. Horses don’t deal coke!’”
Joyce Klein knew her 65-year-old husband was not the retiring type, and after selling the San Diego Chargers, she encouraged him to relax at the racetrack. In typical Eugene Klein fashion, he immediately told her to find him the best horse trainer in the world. D. Wayne Lukas had come to Klein’s house the same week Joyce called, and maneuvered his new Rolls Royce up the long impressive estate
