By Grit, Out of Nowhere

Noble blood is an accident of fortune; noble actions characterize the great.

--18th century Italian aphorism

Turfmen knowingly call it class. Sportswriters fondly call it heart. Whatever it is, it is the indefinable quality that is the hallmark of a great competitor. This year it has spurred a little, long-tailed brown colt named Carry Back into outrunning the limited promise of his unimpressive pedigree. With victories in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness behind him and capable Jockey Johnny Sellers in his saddle, Carry Back will parade to the post for the $125,000 Belmont Stakes this week, an odds-on favorite to become the first thoroughbred in 13 years to win U.S. racing's elusive Triple Crown.

A playful, 950-lb. colt that cost Trainer-Owner (with his wife) Jack Price only $400 in stud fees, Carry Back already has earned $739,068--more than any other horse his age in racing history. He has won at nearly every distance from three furlongs to a mile and three-sixteenths, on every kind of track, under every conceivable condition except snow. He took the Florida Derby in the mud, the Garden State Stakes in slop, the Kentucky Derby on an offtrack, and the Preakness on a fast, cuppy (i.e., crumbly) surface. Although he holds the five-furlong track record at Florida's Gulfstream Park, Carry Back still has not shown how fast he can really run. Says Owner Price: "He has a tremendous amount of speed if he wants to use it. But he runs his own race--and I don't care how he wins, as long as he wins."

Anxious Moments. Price frankly admits that Carry Back's stubborn insistence on running his own race--a nerve-jangling, come-from-behind performance--has caused many an anxious moment. In the Wood Memorial at New York's Aqueduct race track.,Carry Back dawdled well off the pace as the pack pounded into the stretch--and anxious Jockey Sellers desperately whaled him with his whip. Angered, the colt pinned back his ears, curled his lips in a defiant snarl, and refused to run. He finished a bad second to Globemaster, whom he later beat decisively in both the Derby and the Preakness. Jockey Sellers has never whipped Carry Back since.

In the Derby, with only mild urging from Sellers ("I just shook the stick at him"), Carry Back made up 20 lengths to come home three-quarters of a length in front of Crozier. In the Preakness, (see cuts), Carry Back was bumped by a couple of horses as he broke from the gate, fell back to last place, 14 lengths behind Globemaster. "I was plenty worried," says Jockey Sellers. "He scared the willies out of me because the track has sharp turns, and it's hard to make up lost ground. But I think he disliked all that dirt flying in his face. Other horses might have quit to get away from it, but it only made Carry Back mad. When I asked him to move, he really went." In the final few furlongs, Carry Back overhauled the front-running Globemaster, hung alongside for a tantalizing moment, then eased in front and won going away.

No Blueblood. Carry Back's remarkable staying power might be expected from a Kentucky blueblood like Globemaster. But Florida-bred Carry Back comes from the other side of the track. Sired by an undistinguished racer named Saggy, out of a Price-owned mare named Joppy (who never won a race at all), Carry Back seems to defy long-accepted breeding theory. Unless the remarkable colt is a "throwback" to some illustrious early ancestor,* admits the authoritative Morning Telegraph, "every major breeding farm is doing things wrong, every breeder who spends big money for stud fees to proven stallions is wasting his money, and every breeder who purchases expensive brood mares is throwing good money after bad."

A 30-year race-track veteran, Owner Price is amused by the attempts of Kentucky horsemen to explain away Carry Back's unfavorable blood line. "Kentucky breeders have spent a lot of money," says Price, "promoting their 'accepted' breeding practices. But breeding is like women's fashions: what's hot today is gone tomorrow." Price can bolster his argument with strong evidence: in the wake of Carry Back's impressive Derby and Preakness victories, Saggy's stud fees should soar to $2,500. And when Carry Back retires, he will stand at stud for a minimum of $5,000.

In the meantime, Price is concerned only with winning this week's Belmont Stakes. He vigorously denies rumors, widely circulated last week, that Carry Back was injured during his trip north from Pimlico. "That horse has never had a sick day in his life," insists Price, "and he has never felt better than he does right now." Other owners are convinced: such onetime rivals as Globemaster and Crozier apparently have had enough of Carry Back and may not race in the Belmont. The remaining field will be small and mostly mediocre. Still, Owner Price is placing no bets on his champion. "I've been in this business too long," he explains. "I wouldn't bet ten dollars that it'll get dark tonight."

*Among the possibilities: Carry Back's maternal great-grandfather, Blenheim II (winner of the 1930 Epsom Derby); his paternal great-grandparents Equipoise (winner of 26 stakes races between 1930 and 1934) and Hyperion (1933 Epsom Derby winner).

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