Citation

Citation (USA) 1945 Bay Colt   Bull Lea (USA) x Hydroplane II (GB), by Hyperion (GB)

The Webster Handy College Dictionary defines “citation” as “a commendatory mention.” But Citation, the racehorse, merited more than mere commendation. A superb runner whose brilliance as a three-year-old was somewhat obscured in later years by injury-plagued seasons at five and six, Citation was among the best horses ever seen in American racing.

A son of Calumet Farm’s great stallion Bull Lea, Citation was produced from *Hydroplane II, a daughter of the wonderful English sire Hyperion. Although *Hydroplane II was unable to win in seven starts, she came from a family that was one of the pillars of Lord Derby’s stud. A three-quarters sister to the Newmarket Stakes winner Bobsleigh (by Hyperion’s sire Gainsborough), *Hydroplane II was out of the 1928 Oaks Stakes winner Toboggan.

The third foal of his dam, Citation was born on April 11, 1945. From the beginning, he was marked as a colt with potential. He had excellent conformation other than a slightly long back, and he was alert, assertive, and willing after being broken to saddle. He was rated among Calumet Farm’s top two or three yearlings of 1946 by both the farm manager, Paul Ebelhardt, and the Calumet Farm trainers, Ben Jones and his son Jimmy Jones.

By this time, Calumet had established a pattern of sending its yearlings to Florida about November of each year to begin their serious education as racehorses. As Calumet usually had a good collection of three-year-olds and older horses to provide the racing action that owner Warren Wright enjoyed, the Jones boys could take their time in schooling the rising two-year-olds. As the Florida season drew to a close, the Joneses split the racing stable into two strings and headed separate ways.

In 1947, Ben Jones took his string up to Keeneland for that racetrack’s spring meeting, while Jimmy Jones went to Maryland. Among the younger Jones’ string was Citation, who made his first start in a four and one-half furlong maiden race at Havre de Grace on April 22, 1947. Under jockey Albert Snider, the colt won nicely over a track labeled “slow.” He wheeled back eleven days later in an allowance race for non-winners of two races other than maiden or claiming at Pimlico and won the five-furlong event by three and a half lengths.

By the time Citation tacked on his third win, this in another allowance race at Havre de Grace, Jimmy Jones thought he had a pretty nice sort of colt on his hands. He had to wait to test Citation further, however, as the colt went down with equine influenza and was out of action until July 24 at Arlington Park. This time, the colt had a new jockey, Doug Dodson, but it made no difference; he won his third straight race in allowance company, turning five furlongs in a brisk :58 flat and setting a new track record for the distance.

On July 30, Citation picked up his first stakes win in the six-furlong Elementary Stakes. His next start was the Washington Park Futurity, in which he joined forces with stablemates Free America and Bewitch. Neither Ben nor Jimmy Jones wanted still-developing two-year-olds pushed too hard, so the jockeys of all three Calumet runners were cautioned not to punish their horses to catch a stablemate; if the race came down to only Calumet runners, the youngsters were to be allowed to finish on their own steam. To sweeten the deal, all the jockeys were promised the same money regardless of which Calumet runner won.

Bewitch was an extremely quick filly and led gate to wire, beating Citation home by a length with Free America another head back in third. Both Steve Brooks on Citation and Jack Westrope on Free America later swore that their colts could have won with a little urging; on the other hand, Bewitch was conceding both her stablemates one pound in actual weight – four pounds by the scale – and had been pressured for much of the trip. At any event, the Washington Park Futurity was Citation’s only loss at two, and given that Bewitch was crowned the champion juvenile filly at year’s end, Citation was hardly disgraced.

Citation next headed to Belmont Park, where he barely made it in ahead of an embargo designed to keep an outbreak of equine infectious anemia from reaching the New York tracks. In an unusual move with a two-year-old, no matter how good, Jimmy Jones worked Citation in company with his champion older horse Armed. Jones’ reasons were practical; Armed was pointing to his match with 1946 Triple Crown winner Assault, and Jones was having no luck in finding a suitable prep race for him, so Citation was pressed into service to keep Armed in top condition. The works with Armed apparently did Citation no harm, for Citation duly won the Futurity Trial and then the Futurity Stakes. Bewitch ran third in the latter race but was found to have developed an osselet (calcium deposit) on one ankle and was out for the rest of the year.

The colt’s last race of the season was in the mile and one-sixteenth Pimlico Futurity. The track came up muddy, a condition that Citation had never faced before, but he won ridden out by a length and a half over Better Self, a proven mudder. That concluded a campaign during which the Calumet colt had won eight of nine starts, easily good enough for honors as American champion two-year-old male. He was rated at 126 pounds on the Experimental Free Handicap, three pounds ahead of Better Self and Relic. (Relic, the Hopeful Stakes winner, never met Citation and went unsound after winning his first two starts as a three-year-old.)

At three, Citation was nothing less than devastating. He opened the season on February 2, 1948, by defeating a good field of older males in a six-furlong allowance race. Nine days later, he defeated a similar field easily in the seven-furlong Seminole Handicap. In both races, he was giving weight by scale to most of his rivals. It was at this point that the famous trainer “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons made his often-quoted statement that “Up to this point, Citation has done more than any horse I ever saw. And I saw Man o’ War.” (Fitzsimmons’ judgment should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt, however. First, Citation’s feat of defeating good older males so early was not unprecedented; the top geldings Billy Kelly and Sarazen had both defeated older horses in stakes races during their two-year-old seasons. Second, Fitzsimmons had been a most unlucky man when it came to Man o’ War and his tribe. Man o’ War’s son Hard Tack had been a nasty and difficult sort who gave Fitzsimmons no end of trouble as a trainer, and Fitzsimmons must have often been rankled by Hard Tack’s son Seabiscuit, not only because the horse waited until after he was out of Fitzsimmons’ care to develop into a champion but because Fitzsimmons’ hard racing of the horse – Seabiscuit started 35 times as a two-year-old – was often blamed for the leg problems that Seabiscuit suffered later in his career. To crown all, Fitzsimmons, seldom much of a bettor, made one the few sizable wagers of his career on Man o’ War – in the Sanford Stakes, the one race the horse ever lost.)

Citation returned to his own division to win both of Hialeah’s big stakes for three-year-olds, the Everglades Handicap and the Flamingo Stakes. Then the unthinkable happened: Citation lost. This was in the Chesapeake Trial Stakes at Havre de Grace. Riding the colt for the first time, Eddie Arcaro took him back off the early pace set by Saggy (whom Citation had beaten by ten lengths in the Flamingo) and Hefty. Citation launched his bid at the head of the stretch and looked likely to inhale both the front-runners when Hefty bore out, carrying Citation extremely wide. Under a hand ride, Citation missed catching Saggy by a length. Arcaro later opined that while Citation could have caught Saggy if pressed, he did not want to make hard use of the colt with more important races coming up. The jockey’s judgment was vindicated five days later when Citation effortlessly took the Chesapeake Stakes by four and a half lengths from Bovard; Saggy was another eleven lengths astern in fourth and last place, though he had the excuse of having been injured during the running. (Saggy would make only one more start before being retired for good. In spite of his dreadful name, he was actually a pretty good colt, his eight wins from fourteen starts including six stakes events, but as the record shows, he was no match for Citation under normal conditions.)

Aside from proving that the fluke loss to Saggy was just that – a fluke – the only drama surrounding the Chesapeake Stakes was due to a last-second equipment change on Citation, who normally raced in a specially designed bit modeled after those used by carriage horses. The bit was designed to give the jockey a bit more leverage with Citation, who was both rather headstrong and inclined to gaze at the scenery if he was sufficiently bored by lack of competition during a race. Unfortunately, the special bit broke right after Citation was loaded in the gate for the Chesapeake, and a replacement was not available. A standard D-ring racing snaffle was substituted, and Arcaro found himself pretty much a passenger for the race. Afterwards, Jimmy Jones rounded up a mechanic to jury-rig a new bit similar to the broken one.

From there, Citation shipped to Churchill Downs, where he won the Derby Trial in businesslike fashion. In the meantime, his stablemate Coaltown had been racking up a sensational season of his own. In four lifetime starts, he had equaled a six-furlong track record in Florida, defeated good older sprinters in the Phoenix Hotel Handicap at Keeneland, and won the Blue Grass Stakes under a snug hold by four and one-half lengths, breaking the Keeneland track record for nine furlongs into the bargain.

Coaltown had shown such sensational speed that many horsemen felt he might be Citation’s superior. Ben Jones felt otherwise; while he knew that Coaltown had as much speed as any horse alive, he had also sensed that Coaltown was lacking in that elusive quality known as “heart.” Thus, when Eddie Arcaro asked which of the Calumet colts he should ride to win the Kentucky Derby, Jones told him unequivocally that Citation was the better horse. Jones was, as usual, right; Citation won the Derby handily by three and a half lengths from Coaltown. As the result of his victory, Citation earned a cover story in Time magazine, an honor that Secretariat would duplicate twenty-five years later.

Citation was the fourth Derby winner officially trained by Ben Jones, who had assumed the saddling chores from Jimmy Jones specifically for the Derby so that he could tie the Kentucky Derby training record of four wins set by H. J. “Derby Dick” Thompson. Jimmy took back over for the Preakness, in which Citation romped in by six lengths over Vulcan’s Forge.

Four weeks separated the Preakness and the Belmont in 1948, and Citation took advantage of the time gap to get in a paid workout in the Jersey Stakes, which he won by eleven lengths. Then came the Belmont. Seven other horses showed up in the hopes that Citation could not stay one and one-half miles, probably a frail hope indeed in light of his dam’s breeding. The only drama in the race turned out to be right at the start, as Citation stumbled at the break and nearly lost Arcaro. After that, the rest was easy; Citation cruised home eight lengths in front of his old rival Better Self and tied Count Fleet’s stakes record of 2:28-1/5.

Citation won the Stars and Stripes Handicap at Arlington Park three weeks after the Belmont but then pulled a hip muscle in a freak incident while being hand-walked along the shedrow and was away from the races until August. He got back on track with a win in a six-furlong allowance race at Washington Park on August 21. The American Derby on August 28 followed; Citation won by a length from stablemate Free America, but Arcaro said after the race that Citation had not been fully fit to go the mile and a quarter distance.

Citation was fully fit for the Jockey Club Gold Cup on October 2, having tuned up by winning the weight-for-age Sysonby Mile on September 29. Although the proven stayers Phalanx and *Miss Grillo were in the Gold Cup field, Citation had no trouble winning the race by seven lengths. Citation then defeated Phalanx by two lengths for the mile and five-eighths International Gold Cup on October 16. The colt’s New York performances scared off all potential competition for the Pimlico Special on October 29, so Citation walked over for a purse of $10,000.

Jimmy Jones had originally planned to retire Citation for the season after the Special, but he accepted the invitation of his good friend Gene Mori to enter the horse in the Tanforan Handicap. (Tanforan a track near San Francisco, is now defunct.) It proved a costly error. Although Citation had no difficulty in winning an allowance prep and the Tanforan itself – his nineteenth and twentieth starts of the season -- he came out of the latter race with a sore left foreleg. The problem turned out to be an osselet, the same injury that had ended Bewitch’s juvenile season. Jones blamed himself for racing the colt once too often, but he also felt that track conditions probably played a role in the injury as the Tanforan surface was hard and unyielding.

Calumet owner Warren Wright then took a fateful hand in Citation’s career. Wanting to see his champion (Citation, needless to say, was a unanimous choice as 1948's champion three-year-old male and Horse of the Year) back in action as soon as possible, Wright demanded that the ankle be fired. Jones resisted. He was no fan of firing (using a hot iron to burn small holes in the skin, on the theory that the resulting irritation would cause increased blood flow to the injured area and speed healing) and felt that Citation’s interests would be best served by turning him out in a paddock at Calumet and letting the injured ankle rest. He also knew that firing, if done at all, needed to wait until the initial inflammation of the injury went down so as not to cause increased swelling. But Wright was insistent, and Jones feared losing the colt to another trainer. The firing was done on December 29, 1948, eighteen days after the Tanforan Handicap.

Almost from the moment the firing was completed, Jones knew that it had been a bad mistake. Citation’s ankle promptly swelled up again. Further, Wright had insisted that Citation accompany the other Calumet runners to Hialeah instead of going to the farm, where he could have been turned out. Forced to stay idle in a racetrack stall, Citation began gaining weight, which put still more stress on his ankle. Repeated setbacks eventually ended up keeping Citation away from racing for all of 1949.

Citation finally returned to racing in a six-furlong allowance race on January 11, 1950, winning by a length and a half. He then embarked on a string of five frustrating seconds. *Miche beat him a neck in another allowance race; his younger stablemate Ponder caught him within the last sixteenth of a mile in the San Antonio Handicap; *Noor beat him a length and a quarter in the Santa Anita Handicap while in receipt of twenty-two pounds, and *Noor beat him again by a head bob in the San Juan Capistrano Handicap, this time while receiving thirteen pounds from the champion. Citation came out of the last-named race lame and was sidelined until May.

On returning to racing at Golden Gate on May 17, Citation was rudely greeted by Roman In, who threw a world-record-equaling 1:08-2/5 at “Big Cy” to beat him by three-quarters of a length in a six-furlong allowance race. Citation threw out a world record of his own in his next start, the Golden Gate Mile Handicap, defeating the speedy Bolero by three-quarters of a length in 1:33-3/5 for the mile and in the process setting a new earnings record of $924,630 for a Thoroughbred racehorse. But he ran into yet another world record on June 17, this one set by *Noor as he covered nine furlongs in 1:46-4/5 to defeat Citation by a neck in the Forty-Niners Handicap.

*Noor and Citation met for the last time in the Golden Gate Handicap on June 24. For the first time, *Noor, who had gotten five pounds from Citation in the Forty-Niners, had to concede Citation weight, carrying 127 pounds against 126 on the champion. Nonetheless, it was the easiest of *Noor’s four victories over Citation as he won by three lengths, albeit in world record time of 1:58-1/5 for the mile and a quarter.

Citation then went to Arlington Park with the rest of Jimmy Jones’ string but came up lame during a workout. Examination revealed a low bowed tendon on the left leg, possibly related to scar tissue left by the firing. The leg was fired again and Citation was sent home to Calumet. He might have stayed there for good except that Warren Wright was determined to see Citation become the first equine millionaire. The rest of Citation’s racing career would be spent in chasing that goal though Wright himself never lived to see it; he died on December 28, 1950.

For the first time in Citation’s career, Jones did not work the horse hard to get him fit on his return to training in December of 1950. Citation’s left foreleg would never be entirely sound again, and Jones adopted a strategy of working the horse as little as possible and allowing him to race himself fit, hoping that he would continue to progress towards the goal of a million dollars as he did so. Citation opened 1951 with two consecutive thirds in six-furlong allowance races at Bay Meadows – the first times in his career that he had not been either first or second – and then ran out of the money for the only time in his career while finishing fifth in the Hollywood Premiere Handicap. But Citation was gradually getting into better condition, and in the Argonaut Handicap on May 30, he had enough steam to run second behind Be Fleet. Sent out for the Century Handicap on June 14, Citation finally reached the winner’s circle for the first time in 1951 and avenged himself on Be Fleet into the bargain, winning by half a length. He took another half-length victory on July 4 in the American Handicap, this time defeating his stablemate Bewitch, who herself was chasing the title of the world’s leading money-winning mare.

Citation made the last start of his career in the Hollywood Gold Cup on July 14, and he looked like the Citation of old as he galloped home by four lengths. The win pushed his earnings record to $1,085,760, and Bewitch’s second-place finish in the same race made her the top money-winning female. (Bewitch retired at the end of the 1951 season with earnings of $462,405.) That was it for Citation, though one more honor would come his way in 1951 as he split the title of American champion handicap male with Hill Prince. The Calumet champion ended his career with thirty-two wins, ten seconds, and two thirds from forty-five starts, a record which earned him induction into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame in 1959. Over forty years later, a panel of experts assembled by The Blood-Horse ranked Citation third among the best American horses of the twentieth century, behind only Man o’ War and Secretariat.

Citation was paraded for the fans at Hollywood Park and Arlington Park before saying farewell to the racetrack forever. Sent home to Calumet, he got his stud career off to a smashing start by getting four stakes winners, including the 1956 Preakness Stakes winner Fabius, from a 1952 book of only twenty mares. The next crop, also from a book of twenty mares, included two stakes winners. But after that, Citation’s stud career tailed off. His get proved sound and durable enough – from 271 foals of racing age, the stallion sired a healthy 62% winners – but they for the most park lacked that extra spark that separates the good horse from the average. Citation got twelve stakes winners all told, and of them all only Silver Spoon was able to win a championship. Winner of the 1959 Santa Anita Derby against males and a respectable fifth in the Kentucky Derby, Silver Spoon was the co-champion three-year-old filly of 1959 and was herself inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1978.

Following Citation’s death on August 8, 1970, The Blood-Horse published an eulogy which contained the following statement: “Citation exemplified greatness in the Thoroughbred. His was the precision of a well-oiled machine, the power of a tidal wave. To be sure, he would have few equals in any generation.” The great horse was buried at his birthplace, in a section of the Calumet equine cemetery honoring the farm’s eight Kentucky Derby winners and its great stallion Bull Lea. He is also memorialized at Hialeah, where his bronze statue still looks over the saddling paddock at the now-idle track.

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.