What Price Now?

The grey colt was a son of the great Native Dancer, but he had chronically "mushy" (swollen) ankles, and it seemed he might never get to the races. So Owner Peter Fuller decided to get rid of him. He changed the horse's name from A.T.'s Image (after Fuller's father, former Massachusetts Governor A. T. Fuller) to Dancer's Image, and put him up for auction. The bidding reached $25,000, stopped--and, just as the gavel was about to fall, Fuller had a change of heart. After bidding $26,000 himself, he paid the auctioneer's 10% commission and took the animal back.

That was a year ago. Twice since then, Fuller has come close to selling Dancer's Image--for $500,000 and $1,000,000. Each time he held off. The colt's ankles were still so bad that he had to stand for hours in buckets of ice to reduce the swelling, but he was winning races anyway--the Governor's Gold Cup at Bowie, the Wood Memorial Stakes at Aqueduct. Fuller finally decided to take a big gamble, enter the horse in the Kentucky Derby, and pray that his ankles held up. Last week, with one of the most stirring stretch drives in Derby history, Owner Fuller's gimpy grey won the 94th running of the famed race, and the question was: what price Dancer's Image now?

Name it--considering the race he ran.

Ridden by Bobby Ussery, Dancer's Image broke tardily, was running dead last when the 14-horse field pounded into the backstretch. Rounding the final turn, he still trailed the pacesetting favorite (at 8-to-5 odds), Calumet Farm's Forward Pass, by eight lengths. Only then, when the horses straightened out in the stretch, did Dancer's Image really begin to run. With Jockey Ussery merely clucking to him, he rushed up along the rail, caught Forward Pass at the imi. pole and drew away to win by H lengths. The victory was worth $122,600 to Owner Fuller, 10% of which went to Ussery--who collected a similar prize last year aboard Proud Clarion and is the first jockey in 66 years to win the Derby twice in a row.

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