HORSE RACING Spectacular Bid dies at 27, was a Triple Crown threat

A safety pin created an infection that hurt the horse's bid.
UNADILLA, N.Y. (AP) -- Spectacular Bid's trainer called him "the greatest horse that ever looked through a bridle," and fans remembered what might have been had a safety pin not wrecked the colt's Triple Crown chances.
Affectionately called "Bid," the steel-gray thoroughbred died Monday at 27 of a heart attack, said Jonathan H.F. Davis, the owner of Milfer Farm in upstate New York, where Spectacular Bid lived since 1991. The champion who came up one win short of a Triple Crown died two days after Funny Cide failed in his bid to win horse racing's most coveted title. "It seemed almost prophetic, I suppose, that he was showing maybe not quite himself Saturday and Sunday, which was the weekend of the Belmont," Davis said.
Spectacular Bid and Funny Cide both watched their title hopes evaporate at Belmont Park. Both finished third in the third leg of the Triple Crown. On the track, Spectacular Bid was dominant, racking up 26 wins in 30 starts.
"The only two horses that I believe would have given him a run were Citation and Secretariat," trainer Grover "Buddy" Delp once said.
Both were Triple Crown winners, just like Affirmed and Seattle Slew in the two years before Spectacular Bid. Affirmed, the last to win the Crown, died in 2001; Seattle Slew died in 2002.
The oldest living Kentucky Derby winner now is Genuine Risk, who won in 1980. Sunny's Halo, who won the Derby in 1983, died last week at the age of 23.
Spectacular Bid won his last 10 races and in 1980, his final season of racing, won every one of his nine starts. In his last race -- the Woodward -- he won by a walkover when no other trainer wanted to challenge the Horse of the Year.
Hall of Fame jockey Bill Shoemaker was aboard during that race.
"I told the outrider, 'Now if he stumbles and loses me, you catch him and bring him back to me so we can do it over again,"' Shoemaker said Tuesday.
On Spectacular Bid's resume are 13 Grade I stakes wins and eight track records, including a world record of 1:57.80 over the Derby distance of 11/4 miles at Santa Anita in 1980.
"I never rode a better horse than him," said Shoemaker, who won 8,833 races in his career. "He just had a lot of ability. He could run on any sort of surface: fast, muddy, sloppy, whatever, carrying a lot of weight -- and win."