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In his maturity, the hefty, muscular look that horsemen associate with sprinters had taken on some of the longer, stringier look associated with stayers. The result, remarked the Morning Telegraph's Evan Shipman, is a sort of "intermediate conformation" that may some day become fixed as "the American horse," a kind versatile enough to win the big ones at both short and long distances. "The Dancer," said Bill Winfrey, "has grown from boy into man."
One weekday afternoon recently, Vanderbilt and Winfrey sent the Dancer out for his 1954 debut—a six-furlong sprint.
He won it handily and, to the surprise of no one, was assigned the highest weight for his first handicap race—the Metropolitan. A pleasantly unswervable gentleman named John Blanks Campbell, veteran of 49 years at the tracks, enjoys the "dictatorial power to estimate the talents of horses at most of the big eastern race tracks and thereupon to garland each with an amount of weight theoretically calculated to make all the horses in a handicap race cross the finish line simultaneously. The idea for the Metropolitan was that Native Dancer should carry 130** and the next closest horse—Straight Face—should carry 117.
For Native Dancer, the idea was to win at that disadvantage. Whereupon the idea for Handicapper Campbell would be to put on more weight next time; and so on until the Dancer is beaten or retires.
A Day at the Races. On the day of the race, dawn broke with the usual damp wind off Jamaica Bay. But nothing dampened the air of brisk efficiency at the track. The long green barns disgorged a morning-long stream of highbred, high-headed horses. From the barns of the small-time owners and trainers they came in ones and twos. From the wealthier barns they came in "sets," each horse mounted by an exercise boy tricked up in a sweater dyed bright with the owner's colors.
The gaping stands were empty, except for a handful of dockers who sit every morning like a band of peering overweight crows to collect data which may or may not tell something about how a given horse will do in a race. Hugging the rail, the horses that were really "working" (i.e., going all-out) drummed by, and the dockers shouted out cryptic fractions.
Exercise boys hunched over the withers or, if they trusted the animals beneath them, stood high in the stirrups. A Cuban jockey sped by, crooning to his horse in Spanish. A steeplechase jock eased past on a chestnut jumper. A skittish, short-backed filly began to act up, slogging at the bit and trying to turn back up the track. Her jockey cursed: "You crummy pig. You're going back to the bull rings."
In Barn 20, two sets of Vanderbilt horses had already returned from workouts. They were led up a neat row of peppermint-striped water pails. At each pail, a groom swabbed down a horse with a sponge of warm water, then covered him with a bright "cooler" (blanket). Then the "hot walkers" took over, for the lowly but necessary job of walking the work-hot horses for 30 minutes or an hour, until they have been gradually watered and cooled. For the Dancer, the day was just beginning: