Here's the one I was looking for. I don't mean to hijack your thread but I wanted to post some info about what a great Champion Seatle Slew was.
A Champion Who Kept Going Till the End
By GEORGE VECSEY
IN the final days, his legs skewed out so badly that one of his loving owners, Mickey Taylor, had to prop up his flank with a bare upraised palm, just to keep him moving.
''He went 45 degrees to the right just to go straight ahead,'' Taylor recalled last night, through the tears.
This is no way for a champion to wind up. The Taylors, Mickey and Karen, were with him right up until his peaceful end yesterday morning, 25 years to the day after his winning the Kentucky Derby.
Yet even in these final weeks, Seattle Slew knew exactly where he wanted to go. The starting gate was perhaps not even a memory anymore, although if he had been placed in that steel contraption he would surely have had some vestigial impulse to barrel out of there as fast as he could.
No, even coming out of surgery a few weeks back, Slew's first instinct was to scramble up on all fours and make the walk to the breeding shed, where he excelled as surely as he once did on the track. He won 14 of his 17 races in his time, and his heirs are said to have won $75 million in purses, a quarter of a century after he won the Triple Crown.
He was recuperating from surgery on March 2 to fuse arthritic joints in his neck. He was 28 years old. If Slew had been human, he would have been hailed for reaching triple digits. Nevertheless, at that advanced age, he still had ideas.
''He's doing a tizzy right now,'' Mickey Taylor said in late March, talking on the telephone from Midway, Ky., to Laura Vecsey, my daughter, a sports columnist for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
''In the barn where his stall is, we're close to where the mares come in, and he wants them,'' Taylor continued. ''We're supposed to keep him quiet for four weeks, but it's been 25 days since his surgery. He's starting to feel so good in his stall. We've got the door closed and the radio on so he can't hear them, but any time a mare comes into the barn, he thinks it's his.''
They wound up moving him from Three Chimneys Farm in Midway to Hill 'n' Dale Farm, near Lexington, just to get him away from the temptation. Not all champions are good at this line of work, but Slew produced stakes winners right away, as impressively as he won the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont in five weeks in 1977.
Thoroughbred horses impress just about everybody, even those who have no interest in handing over $2 to a ticket vendor or a bookie. Just seeing films of Secretariat in 1973 or of Seattle Slew in 1977 or of Affirmed in 1978 takes your breath away.
''He was such a willing horse,'' Jean Cruguet, who rode the large, dark stallion in 1977, said yesterday. ''All he wanted was to run, but you had to caution him to run properly.''
Cruguet also recalled the bumpy start to the Derby, when Slew bumped into the horse to his right coming out of the gate.
''He came out sideways,'' Cruguet said in awed tones through his thick French accent. ''I had to keep my balance. I couldn't see much, but a jockey never sees much. I just pushed my way to the inside. If we don't, maybe he doesn't win. I didn't want to know.''
Seattle Slew overcame that rude start, and he never really slowed down. In the peak years of his stud duties, his fees reached the high six figures, James Hill, a former co-owner, said yesterday.
If anything, the money works at counter purposes to the Triple Crown. There is reason to think that intense breeding has produced rickety horses who cannot last the pounding, and it is also true that potential breeding fees bring about prudent decisions to retire horses young.
It is mostly about breeding fees, but the Taylors are throwbacks. They have been with Slew almost from the beginning, moving from Washington to Kentucky when Tom Wade, his faithful groom, called the Taylors during their skiing vacation 28 months ago.
''He needed me and Karen,'' Taylor said last night, driving west. ''Anybody else would have put him down.''
Instead, they nursed him through an operation, saw him successfully breed with 43 of 46 mares last year, then saw him deteriorate this spring.
''I knew he would not cry uncle,'' Taylor said.
The Taylors and Wade were in his stall overnight, when he no longer even tried to stand up. If they had chosen euthanasia for their failing champion, that would have been a loving decision, but they said he went peacefully and naturally.
''We have a black labrador, 8 months old, named Chet, after my father,'' Mickey Taylor said last night, sobbing into his cellphone. ''Chet went into his stall, and Slew licked Chet's face, and Chet licked Slew's face. Then Slew looked up at me and said: 'You get on with your life. I've got to go.' ''
''We told him to go to sleep,'' Karen Taylor had said earlier. ''He was very tired. We gave him permission, and he said his goodbyes.''
''He was the greatest,'' added Karen Taylor, who was crying. ''He gave us a lot of love. He was nice enough to let us love him, and we knew we were given a gift.
''He was a very special horse, and now we are going to live the rest of our lives in his name.''
The Taylors had already reached Kansas City. Mickey Taylor said: ''I'm going straight to the ocean and turn right'' -- back home to Washington. They had no reason to stay in the Bluegrass. The last Triple Crown champion is gone.
What did he go through to now require so much work?
