|
Fair Play
Fair Play was certainly not named for his disposition. While not a killer like his sire Hastings, he was difficult and strong-willed. Nonetheless, on the racecourse his fiery temperament translated to great courage and determination -- traits which, along with his fire, have been passed to his descendants. Had he done no more than to sire the immortal Man o’ War, his fame would have been assured, but his story has much more to it. Foaled at August Belmont II’s Nursery Stud in 1905, Fair Play was the result of a classic “speed-on-stamina” cross. While his sire, Hastings, had won the Belmont Stakes (then at one and three-eighths miles, a furlong shorter than the modern distance of one and one-half miles), he was a much better horse at distances of a mile or less. The champion American sire of 1902 and 1908, Hastings’ reputation was that of a sire of speedy types rather than stayers. Fair Play drew his own undoubted stamina through his dam, *Fairy Gold. Winner of the Woodcote Stakes, an important juvenile event in her native England, she was by Bend Or, winner of the 1880 Derby Stakes and a great sire. Prior to her importation, she had produced two foals: St. Lucre, an important European foundation mare, and the good English stayer Golden Measure. Fair Play was her first American-bred foal, and she later produced 1916 champion three-year-old male Friar Rock and the lesser stakes winners Flittergold (a full brother to Fair Play) and Fair Gain. A smallish golden chestnut colt (he matured at about 15.3 hands) with exquisite conformation and physical balance, Fair Play was trained by A. J. Joyner, who had previously worked with the colt’s sire Hastings. Fair Play proved a good two-year-old, breaking his maiden in his second race and also capturing the Montauk Stakes (in which he led wire to wire) and the Flash Stakes. He placed in five more stakes races, including a second in the rich Hopeful Stakes. But he was clearly far inferior to unbeaten Colin, who finished his juvenile campaign at twelve for twelve, and Colin was to remain a thorn in Fair Play’s side for as long as his career lasted. The two colts met again in the Withers Stakes at three. While Fair Play showed that he had improved markedly from his juvenile form, so had Colin, and he beat Fair Play handily by two lengths. Colin’s legs were going bad, however, and they nearly betrayed him in the colts’ next meeting, the Belmont Stakes. The track came up a sea of mud, and later events would prove that there was no doubt as to Fair Play’s liking for distance. Further, the son of Hastings was continuing to improve with added maturity. Controversy still swirls around the finish of the 1908 Belmont, with many authorities accusing Joe Notter on Colin of mistaking the finish line and easing up on his mount too soon. Notter, of course, furiously denied the charges, maintaining that he had been instructed by trainer James Rowe, Sr., to go as easy on Colin as possible because of the colt’s bad underpinnings. Whatever the truth about Notter’s ride and Colin’s physical condition, the fact remains that the mud-loving Fair Play, relishing both the distance and the footing, was gaining on Colin with every stride in the final fifty yards and just missed catching him by a neck (or a head, depending on whose account of the race is read). Had he succeeded in defeating his great rival, he would have formed a link in a remarkable series of Belmont Stakes victories, for his grandsire Spendthrift, his sire Hastings, his son Man o’ War, and his grandson War Admiral all won the great race. Colin retired soon afterwards, taking a perfect record of fifteen wins from fifteen starts with him. Fair Play’s road was not yet clear, however, for in the Brooklyn Handicap, Colin’s stablemate Celt gave Fair Play seven pounds and a thorough beating (though in fairness to Fair Play, this was only two days after his taxing effort in the Belmont!). But Celt also was none too sound and retired soon afterwards, leaving Fair Play to dominate the three-year-old division for the remainder of the year. With Colin and Celt out of the way, Fair Play showed himself to be a first-class staying colt in his own right. He won the one and one-half miles Brooklyn Derby (now the Dwyer Stakes); the one and one-half miles Coney Island Jockey Club Stakes, equaling the track record; the one and five-eighths miles Lawrence Realization; and the Jerome Handicap, setting a new Belmont track record for one and five-sixteenths miles. His finest moment may have come in the First Special Stakes at Gravesend on September 19, 1908; in this race, he broke the ten-furlong track record by four-fifths of a second, setting a new mark of 2:03-2/5. Racing closed down in New York in late 1908 thanks to a wave of anti-gambling legislation, and Fair Play was sent to England to race at four. The venture was a disaster, for Fair Play went sour and began refusing to extend himself, finishing unplaced in all of his English starts. So greatly did Fair Play come to detest racing and training over the turf that in later years he could not even be persuaded to exercise over grass; he would eat it and he would walk over it in his paddock, but gallop over it with a rider aboard he would not. Many horsemen opined that Fair Play’s poor European showing was due to the emergence of the notorious “Hastings temperament,” but trainer Joyner had a different opinion. According to racing writer C. W. Anderson, Joyner described Fair Play as being highly strung but no more difficult than most other Thoroughbreds until he went to England and encountered the practice of “wisping” or “banging.” This is a grooming technique in which straw is twisted into a thin strand or “wisp” and the groom then repeatedly knocks the wisp against the horse – often putting quite a bit of weight on it – to knock dust from the horse’s coat. Some animals appear to enjoy this procedure, apparently finding it the equivalent of a good massage for a human, but Fair Play was a very thin-skinned horse and, according to Joyner, found wisping virtually intolerable – so much so that his temperament began deteriorating. It is also possibly that he simply encountered bad handling, a problem then as now. Be that as it may, Fair Play’s disastrous campaign in England was to have a profound impact on American breeding. Although Belmont was said to have expressed great confidence in Fair Play’s potential as a stallion, he already had Hastings, Henry of Navarre, Ethelbert, and 1903 English Triple Crown winner *Rock Sand standing at Nursery Stud, and he did not have a large band of mares. Accordingly, he had originally planned to stand the young stallion in France, hoping that the horse would get good patronage there. But Fair Play’s racing performance in England scuttled any marketability the horse might have had in Europe, so Belmont brought him home. Any thoughts of continuing the horse’s racing career in America were scotched by Fair Play’s increasingly uncooperative attitude, and Fair Play stood his first season at stud in 1910. Fair Play got only six foals in his first crop, but they included several stakes winners including the high-class Stromboli, a gelding who won good stakes from ages three to six. After that, his books began to fill out. He eventually sired 260 foals, and The Blood-Horse credits him with 47 stakes winners, a healthy 18.1% strike rate that might have been higher still had not many of his daughters been unraced or only very lightly campaigned. (In common with some other breeders of his time, Belmont felt that heavily raced mares did not make good broodmares and campaigned his fillies accordingly, so the failure of many Fair Play fillies to race or win cannot be attributed to unsoundness.) Although Fair Play sired good horses from a variety of mares, he gained his greatest fame through runners sired on daughters or granddaughters of *Rock Sand, Man o’ War not least among them. In fact, pedigree expert Rommy Faversham has found that Fair Play sired 24 stakes winners from 81 foals whose dams carried *Rock Sand blood – 29.6 percent! – while getting 23 stakes winners from 179 foals whose dams were free of *Rock Sand (12.8 percent). Considering that only 30 of the Fair Play foals carrying *Rock Sand blood were males while 51 were females and that nineteen of the 30 males won stakes races, it is easy to speculate that this cross might have shown even greater success had Belmont been more willing to race his fillies; as it was, the records indicate that most of the fillies bred on the Fair Play–*Rock Sand cross never saw a racetrack. Fair Play headed the list of all American sires in 1920, 1924, and 1927. Aside from Man o’ War, he sired Belmont Stakes winners Mad Play (1924) and Chance Shot (1927); 1926 Preakness Stakes winner Display, whose champion son Discovery became the maternal grandsire of Bold Ruler, Native Dancer, Intentionally, and Hasty Road; champion handicapper Mad Hatter; Dwyer Stakes winner Ladkin, whose grandson Bunty Lawless was a notable racer and sire in Canada; My Play, a good brother to Man o’ War who left 1933 Preakness winner Head Play and several important daughters before his early death; and leading sire Chatterton, whose son Faireno won the 1932 Belmont. Fair Play was equally eminent as a broodmare sire, leading that list in 1931, 1934, and 1938. Among his daughters were Etoile Filante, dam of 1926 champion juvenile filly Fair Star and 1934 Preakness winner High Quest and ancestress of Belmont Stakes winners Arts and Letters (1969) and Pass Catcher (1971); Man o’ War’s sister Masda, dam of three stakes winners and third dam of 1946 Triple Crown winner Assault; Beautiful Lady, dam of former world’s leading money winner Sun Beau; Mlle. Dazie, dam of the excellent juvenile Jamestown; Oval, dam of Spinaway Stakes winner Goose Egg and second dam of 1942 Kentucky Derby and Belmont winner Shut Out; and Fair Feint, dam of two stakes winners and third dam of 1949 Preakness and Belmont winner Capot. Following the death of August Belmont in 1924, Joseph E. Widener purchased the remaining Nursery Stud breeding stock as a group and later held a private auction at which all the horses were put up for sale individually. The eighteen horses he bought back included nineteen-year-old Fair Play, who accounted for $100,000 of the $423,400 Widener spent. (Widener also retained Man o’ War’s dam Mahubah, who unfortunately would never produce a foal for him.) Fair Play spent the closing years of his life at Widener’s Elmendorf Farm, where he died in his paddock in 1929. His burial site is now part of Normandy Farm, and a magnificent bronze statue in his likeness still marks his grave and that of his “wife” Mahubah (who was never bred to any other stallion). As a racehorse, Fair Play was above the ordinary. His overall record of ten wins and fourteen placings from 31 starts may not seem exceptional compared to other members of the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame, to which he was inducted in 1956. One must recall, however, that he was a member of a vintage crop that included Colin, Celt, and the hardy King James, who was the leading American older male of 1909 in Fair Play’s absence. Further, his record includes those six starts in England in which he clearly did not show his true ability. Nonetheless, it is as a sire rather than a racer that Fair Play is primarily remembered. His gifts to his breed were soundness, bone, stamina, and weight-carrying ability, a legacy that endured long after he was gone. The famous Hastings-Fair Play temperament endured as well, at its worst expressing itself as savagery or sulking, but at its best imparting a fiery courage that would stand any test. Today, virtually all Thoroughbreds in the Northern Hemisphere trace back to Fair Play in some part of their pedigrees, and every now and again, the high carriage of a head or the flash of a golden chestnut coat are there to remind us that Fair Play’s heritage still lives. Text © 2006 by Avalyn Hunter |
