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Fort Marcy
It was 1967, and among the entries for the summer sale of horses in training at Belmont Park was a three-year-old gelding of good pedigree but mediocre performance, at least by the standards of Paul Mellon’s Rokeby Stable. In fifteen starts on dirt, he had won but twice and earned only $10,376. However, the young horse was by *Amerigo, a top handicapper at ages four and five, so there was reason to think he might still improve. Or so trainer Syl Veitch apparently thought. Acting as agent for Mellon, he bought the gelding back for $77,000, just topping a bid of $76,000 by Harry Albert, who had previously co-owned the top handicap runner Gun Bow. And so Fort Marcy, the eventual winner of four championship titles, remained in Mellon’s stable. Mellon bred horses to race himself, not for the sales ring, and he never hesitated to geld a horse that failed to meet his standards of performance, regardless of pedigree -- hence Fort Marcy’s status as a gelding. Had the horse raced on turf sooner, however, he might have remained a stallion prospect. Converted full-time to a grass runner after his buyback from the Belmont sale, Fort Marcy promptly reeled off four straight stakes wins. He then lost his next four races, but had still shown enough form on the turf to be invited to the Washington, D.C., International. The year’s champion three-year-old male and eventual Horse of the Year, Damascus, and the European Classic winner Ribocco were the favorites, but after a furious stretch drive, it was Fort Marcy’s nose that crossed the finish line first, just ahead of Damascus. The victory earned the gelding his first title as champion grass horse, and it is a measure of the quality of the race in the International that Damascus finished third in the polling for champion grass horse based on that race, his only start on turf. For the next three years, Fort Marcy remained a major force among the nation’s turf runners. He won only two stakes races as a four-year-old, but victories in the Sunset Handicap (setting a course record for the mile and a half) and the Stars and Stripes Handicap, combined with placings in eight other stakes races, were enough to allow him to share the grass title with Horse of the Year Dr. Fager. The following year, Fort Marcy had a better year on paper, winning the Hollywood Park Invitational Turf Handicap and three other good stakes, but he lost out in the voting for champion grass horse to *Hawaii. The two turf stars actually split their encounters, with Fort Marcy winning the Tidal and Kelly-Olympic handicaps (*Hawaii third both times) and *Hawaii reversing the pair’s finish order in the United Nations Handicap and Man o’ War Stakes (in which he set a course record). *Hawaii won five grass stakes to Fort Marcy’s four, however, and finished the year with six wins and three placings from ten starts, while Fort Marcy won five of thirteen starts with four placings. Fort Marcy had his best year of all in 1970. Although he again won only five of thirteen starts, his victories were all in stakes races and included course record performances in the Dixie and Bowling Green handicaps. They also included a second victory in the Washington, D.C., International, and in the absence of a truly dominating performer in any of the other racing divisions, this race was enough to lift Fort Marcy to co-Horse of the Year honors with champion three-year-old male Personality, as well as earning the gelding his third title as champion grass horse. Fort Marcy came back to the racing as at age eight, but he was clearly not the runner he had been, failing to win in eight starts. He retired to Rokeby Farm with twenty-one wins and thirty-two placings from seventy-nine starts. He died at the age of twenty-seven in 1991, and seven years later was elected to the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame. © 2005 by Avalyn Hunter |
