Assault

Assault (USA) 1943 Chestnut Colt   Bold Venture (USA) x Igual (USA), by Equipoise (USA)

Assault had no business being a racehorse. In fact, he had no real business being alive. Critically injured when only a youngster, he should have died. Instead, he not only lived and raced but became American racing’s seventh Triple Crown winner.

Assault’s lifelong struggle against adversity actually began with his dam, Igual. Born small and sickly, she was so weak that King Ranch owner Robert Kleberg, Jr., considered ordering her humane destruction. The daughter of Equipoise was reprieved by Kleberg’s cousin, Caesar Kleberg, who asked that the filly be given more time. When time alone failed to solve the problem, Caesar Kleberg had the ranch veterinarian, Dr. J. K. Northway, give the filly a close examination. She turned out to have an abscess hidden under her stifle, and the infection was duly lanced and cleaned.

Once the abscess was finally treated, Igual began gaining strength, but she always remained somewhat stunted. Nonetheless, she had an attractive enough pedigree to warrant her retention in the King Ranch broodmare band. Not only was her sire, Equipoise, one of the best horses of the 1930s, but her dam, Incandescent, was a stakes-winning daughter of Man o’ War’s full sister, Masda, herself a minor stakes winner. Bred to Chicaro as a two-year-old, Igual produced the 1940 filly Equal Chance, a winner of seven of 63 starts.

Kleberg frequently experimented with inbreeding in his horses as well as his cattle, and Igual’s 1941 foal, Masomenos, was by Equestrian, a son of Equipoise and, in human terms, a paternal half brother to Igual. (In horsemen’s terminology, Equestrian and Igual were not half siblings despite sharing the same sire; among horses, half siblings are by different sires out of the same mare. The reason sons and daughters of the same stallion out of different mares are not termed half siblings is numbers: where a mare seldom produces above twenty foals in her lifetime, a stallion may well produce hundreds if not thousands, and it simply gets too difficult to keep track of all the relationships on the paternal side.) While good results have sometimes been produced by such close inbreeding, Masomenos was not one of them; he failed to win in eight starts and was gelded.

Igual was either not bred or did not conceive in 1941. But in 1942, her mate was the best racehorse she had yet seen. This was Bold Venture, the 1936 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, whom Kleberg had bought for $40,000 in December 1939. The young stallion had stood three seasons in Kentucky but had not proved particularly popular. Kleberg liked his blocky, Quarter Horse-like conformation, however, and he thought the horse might just be the foundation sire King Ranch needed for its Thoroughbred operations. So he stood the horse one more year in Kentucky, then brought him back to South Texas to stand the 1941 season at King Ranch.

The colt from the 1942 Bold Venture–Igual mating was born on March 26, 1943. Like both sire and dam, he was on the small side but was solidly made. Turned out with his dam, he roamed a huge pasture which bore little resemblance to manicured Kentucky bluegrass; his world included plenty of good prairie grass but also natural hazards such as armadillo holes and rattlesnakes. It was a man-made hazard, however, that nearly did the young Assault in; surveyors had been working in the pasture, and one of them managed to leave a surveyor’s stake behind. Assault, roaming the tall grass, found it the hard way, ramming the stake through the frog of his right forefoot and out again at the coronary band.

Kleberg; on learning of the injury, ordered the colt destroyed; he did not want the little fellow to suffer. But Dr. Northway thought the colt might be saved, and he took advantage of the fact that his boss was busy with the cattle operations at the time to work with the injury. After the foot became badly infected, Dr. Northway took the drastic step of cutting away most of the frog and horn within the hoof. Then he packed the foot with medicated gauze.

Assault required weeks of care before his life was out of immediate danger. Then the problem of trying to protect the weakened foot began. Because of the injury, the right hoof was deformed and extremely thin in front. Eventually, Northway managed to get the colt fitted with a temporary shoe so that he could be turned out in a small paddock. Assault never entirely lost the awkward way of going he had developed to protect his bad foot at the walk and trot, but he forgot all about the injury when he ran. And he loved to run.

During the winter of 1944-1945, Assault was sent to Max Hirsch for training. Hirsch, then in his mid-sixties, was one of the deans of American trainers, his past charges having included such luminaries as Sarazen and Grey Lag. Now he was faced with perhaps his greatest challenge as a trainer.

Hirsch’s ace in the hole in dealing with Assault was blacksmith John Dern, whose skill in dealing with bad feet was all but without peer. After examining Assault’s deformed foot, Dern devised a shoe for him that turned up in front, helping to anchor the shoe to the hoof. Hirsch never replaced that shoe except when he absolutely had to and, fearing that one botched shoeing job might cost Assault his career or even his life, he never allowed anyone but Dern to shoe the colt.

Assault made his first start on June 4, 1945, in a four and one-half furlong race for maiden two-year-olds at Belmont. He finished well out of the money, but for a colt who was running on about half a normal foot, it was quite an accomplishment that he had made it to race at all. He was again out of the money in a similar race on June 12 but finished closer up; he was learning.

Hirsch put blinkers on Assault for the colt’s third start and was rewarded with a second-place finish in a field of twenty-three; the winner, Mist o’ Gold proved to be one of the season’s better juveniles. That set Assault up nicely for his next start, a five and one-half furlong race at Aqueduct on July 12, and he came back after losing the early lead to win by one and a quarter lengths over Merry King.

Assault next tried stakes company in the East View Stakes at New York’s old Jamaica racetrack, finishing fifth behind Mist o’ Gold. He then caught a sloppy track for the Flash Stakes at Belmont on August 5. Hirsch must have worried about how Assault would respond to the off going with his bad foot but need not have fretted; in a four-horse blanket finish, Assault won the Flash by a nose.

That was Assault’s last win of the season, though he did finish third in the Babylon Handicap on September 5. He ended his juvenile season with two wins from nine starts and had shown enough form to be rated at 116 pounds on the Experimental Free Handicap.

Robert Kleberg thought enough of Assault to see to it that he was nominated to the Triple Crown events. In preparation for the big races, Assault kicked off the season in the Experimental Free Handicap #1 on April 9, taking the lead after half a mile and winning under a hand ride by four and one-half lengths. The Wood Memorial at Jamaica followed; Assault had no difficulty handling the mile and one-sixteenth distance, the longest he had yet tackled, and defeated his fellow Kentucky Derby hopeful Hampden by two and a quarter lengths.

Assault might have started as one of the Derby favorites had he not run an unimpressive fourth in the Derby Trial just five days before the big race. Max Hirsch later blamed himself for the defeat. Because Assault had a tendency to strike himself as he ran, he typically raced with adhesive bandages on the insides of both hind legs and his left foreleg. In the Derby Trial, Hirsch had taken a belt-plus-suspenders approach and added Oregon boots – wrappings of canvas and leather – to the colt’s hind feet. The track was extremely muddy on Trial day, and Hirsch found that the boots were completely saturated with mud and water when Assault came back, adding pounds of extra weight to each foot. Small wonder the colt had not shown much speed!

The King Ranch colt went off at odds of 8-1, fourth choice in the betting, but ran like an odds-on favorite. After stalking the early pace, Assault assumed the lead coming off the far turn and opened up with every stride thereafter to win by eight lengths. He had equaled the largest winning Derby margin in history, jointly held by Old Rosebud (1914), Johnstown (1939), and Whirlaway (1941) before him.

The final time of 2:06-3/5 was unimpressive, however, though in fairness to Assault, the track condition was listed as slow. Many people felt that Assault would be vulnerable at Pimlico where the Preakness Stakes was contested just a week after the Derby. And so it nearly proved. The colt got slammed around in the early going, then moved too soon on the backstretch. He was four lengths in front as the field rounded the turn into the homestretch, but Lord Boswell came running and cut the margin to a neck at the wire.

Jockey Warren Mehrtens blamed himself for the unimpressive showing after the race, both because of the premature move and because he had not anticipated that Assault would duck away from the whip when he was hit in the stretch. Just in case the problem was one of fitness, however, Hirsch worked the colt twice at the full mile and a half distance of the Belmont Stakes prior to the race itself, using relays of stablemates to ensure that Assault had no chance to loaf.

Assault was dead fit for the Belmont but nearly took himself out of the race by stumbling at the start. Mehrtens barely managed to stay aboard but regrouped and had the colt in fourth place by the first turn. After that, it was just a matter of waiting for the right time to move. Assault powered down the stretch and won by three widening lengths over Natchez.

Although the “Club-Footed Comet” had a growing number of fans following his Triple Crown sweep, the colt still had his detractors. None of his race times had been impressive, and many observers scoffed at him as being the best of a bad lot. Champion jockey Eddie Arcaro thought otherwise, though, and was quite public in his opinion. Texans thought otherwise also, going to the point of requesting that the state’s governor, Coke Stevenson, declare a holiday in Assault’s honor. As for Assault, neither adulation nor criticism meant half as much to him as the white-frosted chocolate cake he had gotten following his Belmont win. He loved it; from then on, he got a cake after every race he won.

Assault followed up his Triple Crown conquest with an easy win in the Dwyer Stakes (then at a mile and a quarter) two weeks later. The win took him past Gallant Fox’s single season earnings record of $308,275. But just as fans were beginning to conclude that Assault might be a pretty good horse after all, he ran last of six in the Arlington Classic. He proved to be suffering from a kidney infection or possibly a kidney stone after the race, but by that time, the sportswriters had already broadcast their opinions that he was nothing special compared to the heroes of other years. It would take some six weeks before Assault could get back to the track with a chance to disprove them.

When Assault did get back to racing, he ran third in the Discovery Handicap on September 7 and second in the Jersey Handicap on September 14. He then went up against older horses in the Manhattan Handicap on September 25. This was his first meeting with the 1945 champion handicap horse, Stymie, and it was not a success for Assault; he ran a dead heat with Flareback for third, while Stymie outdueled the 1945 Belmont Stakes winner Pavot to win. (The Manhattan was at a mile and a half, and while Hirsch insisted that Assault was a better horse than Stymie at any distance, the facts say otherwise: Stymie finished ahead of Assault in every one of the pair’s encounters at more than ten furlongs, while Assault outfinished Stymie in all their meetings at ten furlongs or less.)

Hirsch was by this time becoming convinced that much of Assault’s problem was Mehrtens, who appeared to have lost confidence in the horse. After Assault ran second behind champion filly Bridal Flower in the Roamer Handicap and third behind Stymie and *Rico Monte in the Gallant Fox Handicap, Hirsch took Mehrtens off the colt in favor of Eddie Arcaro. Under Arcaro’s handling, the colt promptly defeated both Stymie and Bridal Flower in the Pimlico Special, winning by six lengths and missing the track record for a mile and three-sixteenths by only three-fifths of a second. Assault then finished his season by defeating the good handicapper Lucky Draw and the formidable mare Gallorette in the Westchester Handicap.

The one top horse that Assault had not faced during the season was Calumet Farm’s formidable gelding Armed, who had won eleven of eighteen starts in 1946. Nonetheless, Assault’s Triple Crown heroics as well as his late-season victories against his elders were enough to carry him to the title of American Horse of the Year as well as that of champion three-year-old male. He had won eight of his fifteen starts in 1946 and was only out of the money twice, with reasonable excuses for both those performances.

Assault was probably a better horse at four than at three, but he would win no titles for his efforts. The colt remained small (he was officially measured at 15.1 hands in August 1957) but muscled out nicely and developed a strongly dominant attitude. He also developed the habit of dumping his exercise rider whenever possible, giving Max Hirsch headaches as he watched his star careering around the shedrow or the backstretch minus rider. Assault was never a mean horse, but he had discovered his own strength and he meant to have his own way when he could.

The bad foot had also improved between the colt’s three and four-year-old seasons. Hirsch had had the hoof pared down and allowed to regrow over the winter; he then worked Assault barefoot until the beginning of March. The treatments strengthened the weak hoof wall, though the foot was still far from normal.

Warren Mehrtens was back aboard Assault for the colt’s first start of the season, this in the Grey Lag Handicap on May 3. This time, Mehrtens showed all the confidence with the colt that Hirsch could have desired, timing his move well to run down Lets Dance by a neck. Assault was officially timed in 1:49-4/5, one-fifth of a second over the Jamaica track record for nine furlongs, but a clocker for the Daily Racing Form caught the colt in 1:49-1/5.

Assault carried 129 pounds in his next start, the May 9 Dixie Handicap at Pimlico. Giving *Rico Monte nine pounds, Assault beat him by a measured half length with Eddie Arcaro up. His next conquest was the Suburban Handicap on May 30, in which he carried 130 pounds and won by two lengths over Natchez (120); Stymie, under 126 pounds, was a non-threatening fourth.

The King Ranch colorbearer continued his roll in the Brooklyn Handicap, conceding Stymie nine pounds (133 to 124) and beating him by three lengths. The $38,100 winner’s purse made Assault the world’s leading money winner, a title he lost to Stymie the following week while he himself rested.

Assault needed the rest to be ready for the Butler Handicap on July 12, in which he was asked to carry 135 pounds against 126 on Stymie and 117 on Gallorette. On the far turn, Gallorette, Stymie, and Assault all made their moves, and Assault found himself sandwiched between his two rivals with nowhere to go. But Gallorette finally cracked with less than a sixteenth of a mile to go, and Assault bulled his way through the resulting hole to beat Stymie by a head. The winner’s purse of $36,700 made Assault the first horse ever to top $600,000 in earnings but, more importantly, the Butler marked Assault as a racehorse of the highest class and courage. Never again would anyone doubt that Assault’s name belonged with those of the best horses in American racing history.

But all good things must come to an end, and so it was with Assault’s win streak. A week after the Butler, he faced Stymie again at weight for age in the International Gold Cup. The race was at a mile and five-eighths, a distance Stymie relished, and Stymie turned in one of his most dramatic stretch drives to win by a neck over Natchez, with Assault four lengths away in third. The win put Stymie back in front in the earnings race as well.

Hirsch then began preparing Assault for a match race against Armed, scheduled for August 30 at Arlington Park. Armed had yet to face Assault, but he had defeated everything else that had come against him at least once. Coming into the Arlington Park race, he had won nine of his fourteen starts and had been second in four. He had set three track records that season and was in the best form of his career. It looked like a dream race; then, during the week before the match, Assault injured himself in training and had to be withdrawn. The injury was not a serious one, however, and the contestants agreed to move the match to Belmont Park on September 27. The distance would remain a mile and a quarter, and each contestant would carry 126 pounds.

Unfortunately, the match was a sad anticlimax. Assault developed splint trouble coming into the race and was not in anything close to his best form. Hirsch, in fact, wanted to withdraw him, but Robert Kleberg felt obligated to continue, having already been forced to disappoint the fans once. Nonetheless, Belmont Park called off wagering for the match, and both Calumet Farm and Kleberg agreed that the purse would be donated to charity regardless of which horse won. Armed came home first by eight lengths and sealed Horse of the Year honors with the victory; Assault remained on the sidelines for the rest of the year.

Assault emerged from his winter’s rest in a seven-furlong allowance race at Hialeah on February 8, 1948. Under 128 pounds, he defeated Rampart by a head while conceding him nineteen pounds. It was an excellent effort for his first outing of the season. But in the Widener Handicap a week later, Assault weakened in the stretch and ran fifth. Post-race examination revealed that Assault had not only developed another splint in his right foreleg but had developed an osselet (calcium deposit) on his left ankle.

The horse was promptly retired to stud at King Ranch’s Kentucky division and was quickly booked full at $2,500 a mare. Assault behaved like a normal stallion in covering his first couple of mares, but lab analysis of his semen following those early covers was anything but normal. Assault turned out to have an extremely low live sperm count, and all bookings to him were promptly canceled. The horse was shipped to Texas, where he underwent fertility treatments and was otherwise allowed to run out in a pasture.

Assault’s sperm counts improved only modestly, but his lameness improved considerably, enough so that Kleberg and Hirsch decided to put him back into training. The champion made his first start of 1949 in a seven-furlong allowance race at Aqueduct on June 24 and was just beaten a nose by *Michigan III, one of the wave of Argentine imports brought to the United States during the 1940s. Assault was then sent for the Brooklyn Handicap eight days later and won the race by three-quarters of a length over Vulcan’s Forge, a good son of *Mahmoud.

According to author Eva Jolene Boyd, Kleberg made tentative plans to enter Assault in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe after the Brooklyn. First up, however, was the Massachusetts Handicap on August 13 at Suffolk Downs. Over a heavy track, Assault got a good stalking trip but faltered in the late going to finish fourth. After the horse returned to the barn, Hirsch found that he had bled slightly from the nostrils. Assault fared little better in the Edgemere Handicap at Aqueduct on September 10, finishing third, and plans for the Arc were canceled after Assault ran last of seven in the Manhattan Handicap on September 24. Following an eighth-place finish in the Grey Lag Handicap on October 15, Assault was sent back to Texas, ostensibly retired again.

Kleberg gave Assault another chance at becoming a sire, but although the horse was reported to have sired a few foals when allowed to run at pasture with a band of Quarter Horse mares, his fertility did not improve enough to make it worth trying him as a stallion with the ranch’s Thoroughbred mares. Still, the time off improved the horse’s health and vigor, and once again he was put back into training with Max Hirsch’s son, Buddy Hirsch. By late November of 1949, he was ready to run and proved his readiness by demolishing an allowance field at Hollywood Park.

Plans were then made to run Assault for the Hollywood Gold Cup on December 9, but a third-place finish in another allowance, this one at nine furlongs on December 1, cast a shadow over the enterprise. Post-race examination showed that Assault had bled again, and it was decided that, win or lose, the Gold Cup would be Assault’s last race. Unfortunately, the old champion was not able to go out on a winning note, finishing seventh of eight runners. He left racing having won eighteen of forty-two starts with earnings of $675,470.

Assault retired to King Ranch as an honored pensioner and for many years remained a popular Texas tourist attraction, often receiving fan mail addressed simply to “Assault, Texas.” He also remained alive in the memories of racing experts, who voted him into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame in 1964. The old horse was removed from public visitation at age 25 due to the increasing weight of old age. Three years later, on September 1, 1971, Assault was humanely destroyed after breaking a leg in a paddock accident. The little horse with the Texas-sized heart was buried at King Ranch in a place of honor near the graves of several of the ranch’s champion Quarter Horses.

Text © 2005 by Avalyn Hunter

Artwork © 2006 by Pat DeLong. Used by permission and may not be copied or distributed without the express consent of Pat Delong. For information regarding purchases, reproductions, or licensing, please contact Pat DeLong at patdelongart@aol.com..