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Twilight Tear
The first filly or mare to be officially voted American Horse of the Year, Twilight Tear was foaled April 2, 1941, at Calumet Farm. Her sire, Bull Lea, was to become a legendary stallion with five sire championships to his credit, but when Twilight Tear was conceived, he was just another good but not top-class racehorse competing for mares as a young stallion, and Twilight Tear was one of only fifteen foals in his first crop. The future champion made her first start in June 25, 1944, in a maiden race at Arlington Park. She won going away with another Bull Lea filly, Durazna, third – the only meeting that year of the eventual division co-champions. Twilight Tear earned her share of the juvenile filly championship with an impressive win in the Arlington Lassie Stakes in her second start and a second place by a length to her stablemate Miss Keeneland in the Selima Stakes. In the latter race, Twlight Tear was conceding eight pounds to the winner while racing on a muddy track which Twilight Tear did not favor. Twilight Tear had previously finished ahead of Miss Keeneland while running third in a six-furlong allowance race in the slop at Pimlico and defeated her erstwhile conqueror easily in another overnight race ten days after the Selima, this one at a mile and 70 yds. Twilight Tear was never out of the money in six starts at two, but was ranked third on the Experimental Free Handicap below Durazna and Miss Keeneland. The latter filly had run second in the Arlington Lassie but had been taken in hand after it became apparent that Twilight Tear could win, and some experts thought that she might well have won had she been pushed. There was no question about which was the better filly at three, however. Calumet trainer Ben Jones never shied away from the unorthodox if it suited his purposes, and so Twilight Tear made her first start of 1944 in the six-furlong Leap Year Handicap on February 29 at Hialeah. She ran third but followed up with eleven straight wins. The first three were in overnights. Then she stepped up to stakes company in the Rennert Handicap, following that victory with the Pimlico Oaks at Pimlico and the Acorn Stakes at Belmont. The classic Coaching Club American Oaks was next, but although Twilight Tear won by four lengths from Dare Me, she appeared tired at the end of the eleven-furlong test. She was also beginning to show wear and tear on her legs and, after this race, began routinely appearing in bandages. The filly rested for a month before returning to take the Princess Doreen Handicap at Washington Park, successfully dropping down to six furlongs from eleven in her last start and beating two speedy fillies in Harriet Sue and Durazna. She next won the Skokie Handicap, also at Washington Park, against males while conceding seven and fifteen pounds actual weight to second-place Sirde and third-place Challenge Me. Her stablemate, the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Pensive, was among the also-rans, and Twilight Tear had spun the seven furlongs in track record time of 1:22-3/5 with something to spare. She defeated Pensive twice more in a mile overnight and in the Arlington Classic. In the latter race, she got seven pounds from Pensive but carried level weight on the scale with everything else and won handily by two lengths with Old Kentuck second and Pensive third. Twilight Tear seemed invincible when she lined up for the Alabama Stakes at Saratoga, but here she ran into classic “whipsaw” tactics used by a master, “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons. Fitzsimmons had two fillies in the race, Vienna and Thread of Gold, and he used Thread of Gold as a rabbit to prompt the pace. Twilight Tear turned back her impudent challenger but had nothing left to stand off Vienna, who won by three-quarters of a length while in receipt of twelve pounds. After the Alabama, “Suzie” (her stable name) got a rest until October 2, when she won a five and one-half furlong overnight handicap over the Widener Chute. She won the nine-furlong Queen Isabella Handicap ten days later, beating older females by five lengths against older females, and then ran out of the money October 21 in the Maryland Handicap. In that race, she was given 130 pounds and was conceding 21 pounds to winner Dare Me, 20 pounds to second-place Miss Keeneland, and 24 pounds to third-place Aera, a colt. The concessions were large, but so was the margin of defeat as Twilight Tear finished fifteen lengths up the track, probably hindered by the muddy going quite as much as by her hefty burden. Eleven days after the Maryland Handicap, Twilight Tear was one of only three horses to parade to the post for the winner-take-all Pimlico Special at weight for age over one and three-sixteenth miles. By Jimminy, the eventual champion three-year-old male, had already been retired after talk of a match between him and Twilight Tear had come to nothing, and the three-year-old colts were represented by Megogo, whose victories that season included the Potomac Handicap, the Pimlico Cup, and the Washington Handicap. The other contender was the formidable Devil Diver, leader of the handicap male division and Twilight Tear’s most likely challenger for Horse of the Year honors. The competition, though limited, was formidable; nonetheless, Twilight Tear made the race look easy. She went to the front right from the start and defeated Devil Diver by six lengths, emphatically setting a seal on her claim to be the best American horse in training regardless of age or gender. In the year-end polls, she was voted champion three-year-old filly and Horse of the Year. Twilight Tear was sent to Hialeah with the idea of resting her, then training up to engagements in the Black Helen Handicap against her own sex and the Widener Handicap against males. But the wartime racing blackout of 1945 intervened, eliminating all racing from January 2 until May 8. When Twilight Tear did get back into serious training, something had changed. She bled while in training at Churchill Downs and had to be rested until the Washington Park meeting, when she entered an overnight race on August 28. Respiratory bleeding forced her to be eased in the stretch, and she was immediately retired with eighteen wins, two seconds, and two thirds from 24 starts, earning $202,165. So good had she been when at her best that Ben Jones later named her as the best horse he had ever trained other than his 1948 Triple Crown winner and Horse of the Year Citation – high praise from a man who had trained three other Horse of the Year winners in Whirlaway, Armed, and Coaltown. Her feats earned her induction into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame in 1963. Twilight Tear’s first foal was by Whirlaway and proved only a modest winner, but her second was Coiner (also by Whirlaway), a minor stakes winners who racked up twenty wins while racing through age nine. Her third was the top-class filly A Gleam, second-ranked to stablemate Real Delight among the sophomore fillies of 1952, and Twilight Tear later produced the top-flight handicapper Bardstown, winner of $628,752. Unfortunately, Twilight Tear died from complications of foaling on March 8, 1954, passing away in the same barn in which she had been foaled thirteen years earlier. She was buried in the Calumet Farm horse cemetery. © 2005 by Avalyn Hunter |
