I’ve been fortunate to have been at Saratoga Race Course for several extraordinary editions
of the Travers Stakes. Holy Bull’s gutsy victory in 1994…Point Given rolling like a chestnut freight train in 2001…the historic Alpha/Golden Ticket dead heat in 2012…Keen Ice stunning American Pharoah in 2015 (another one for the Graveyard of Favorites)…Arrogate running a hole in the wind in his record-setting 2016 Midsummer Derby. The list goes on and on.
But for me, there is one renewal of the Travers that stands alone. Has it really been 20 years since Saratoga icon Marylou Whitney won the Spa’s greatest race with her homebred colt Birdstone, trained by Hall of Famer Nick Zito and ridden by Hall of Famer Edgar Prado? The procession of time says it is so.
What made the day and the story of Birdstone so special? Twelve weeks prior to the 2004 Travers, Birdstone was anything but racing’s darling. In front of 120,000 fans at Belmont Park, the son of Grindstone deflated the record crowd when he denied the popular champion Smarty Jones the Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes at odds of 36-1. The gracious Whitney, realizing what a Triple Crown would have meant to the sport, even apologized for her horse’s victory.
Three months later, spooky clouds blackened the late-summer afternoon sky as the 135th running of the Travers unfolded. The moment Birdstone crossed the finish line for a 2½-length victory in near darkness, a wild thunderstorm roared through the track. Birdstone and his connections were drenched during the winner’s circle presentation, but the triumph was a sweet one for Whitney. Birdstone’s Belmont win could no longer be considered a fluke, as some had suggested.
“This is a dream come true,” Whitney said. “I think the gods came out and did this to sort of congratulate him.”
The moment was surreal and special. As one of the 48,894 in attendance that day, I can attest to both, but it was Prado who best put the 2004 Travers result into words.
“There was thunder in the sky,” he said, “and thunder in my horse.”
