Princess Rooney pulling away to win the 1984 Breeders' Cup Distaff by seven lengths over Life's Magic. (PHOTO: Breeders' Cup).
By: Walter Lazary /// 3,435 Words /// Includes: Charts, Slides, Video.
1984 Breeders' Cup Distaff
Fillies & Mares Three-Years-Old & Up - Ten Furlongs
In 1982, much like in 1984 when the two-year-old colt Chief’s Crown dominated in the east and Saratoga Six likewise in the west, there were two fillies that were many lengths better than all other two-year-old fillies that year. Landaluce was the darling of the West Coast faithful, making her career bow on July 3rd when she won a six-furlong Maiden Special Weight (MSW) by seven lengths in a rapid 1:08 1/5. It turns out that that was just a preview of what was to come from this filly who was blessed with extraordinary talent. She was back out again on July 10th in the six-furlong G2 Hollywood Lassie Stakes (now called the Landaluce Stakes), and she ripped the field apart, drawing off to win by an incredible 21 lengths in 1:08, believed to be the fastest time ever for a two-year-old filly around one turn. Before Landaluce was finished, she thrilled her growing legion of fans with three more awesome victories: the G2 Delmar Debutante, G3 Anoakia, and the G1 Oak Leaf, giving her a perfect five wins in five starts with a combined winning margin of 46 ½ lengths.
Landaluce
While Landaluce, a daughter of the great Seattle Slew, was captivating racing fans in California, there was another filly who was more than making her presence felt in Florida. And by the time the year was over, this gray daughter of Verbatim would show everyone that she wasn’t just a flash in the pan. That was when she moved up to what many call the mecca of thoroughbred horse racing, the ultra-tough New York and New Jersey circuit, and dominated important races on her way to a perfect season.
Princess Rooney, who was out of the Drone mare Parrish Princess, was bred by Dr. Ben Roach and Tom Roach III at their Parrish Hill Farm in Kentucky and was purchased for $38,000 by Jim and Paula Tucker at the Fasig-Tipton sale in Kentucky in 1981. She was expected to be one of the best of her sex that year and was a big favorite in every one of her six starts, all of which she won handily, including three stakes: the Melaleuca, the G1 Frizette, and the G2 Gardenia with her combined winning margin of 56 lengths even greater than Landaluce’s. Even though her record would have been more than enough to be voted an Eclipse Award in most other years, it was impossible for Princess Rooney to gain the award over Landaluce, who would receive it posthumously and also finish third to Conquistador Cielo and Lemhi Gold in the voting for the prestigious honor of being named Horse of the Year.
Some might call Princess Rooney unlucky. Others might say that she had been born in the wrong year. In 1983, the now three-year-old won her first four races, beginning with a seven-furlong allowance at Gulfstream Park on March 5th. She then traveled to Keeneland and won a seven-furlong allowance by ten lengths on April 13th and remained at the storied track to run in the G2 Ashland Stakes ten days later. Still undefeated, Princess Rooney put forth a magnificent effort that saw her run head and head with Shamivor through to the half-mile pole, then pull away and defeat that one by a widening 9 ½ lengths.
Next up, trainer Frank Gomez and the Tuckers were faced with a dilemma……should their still undefeated star, who was now a perfect nine for nine with an accumulated winning margin of 76 lengths, run in the Kentucky Oaks on Friday, May 6th, or should she take on the boys the following day in the Kentucky Derby? Gomez, an Irish-born former Steeplechase rider, when asked if she would take on the boys, said, “Absolutely not. She’s got the filly division at her mercy. Winning the Derby wouldn’t increase her value any. And running in a large Derby field, she could get hurt. I’m looking forward to her tenth win in the Oaks,” he added politely but with a tone of finality.
Princes Rooney’s winning margin in the Ashland Stakes was the second greatest ever, behind only Myrtlewood’s twelve-length victory in the inaugural running of the stake in 1936. When Princess Rooney began her career at Calder Race Track, she was ridden in her first four races by Frank Pennisi. When she was shipped north to run in the Frizette, Canadian Jeffery Fell handled her, but he was unavailable for the Gardenia, so Gomez managed to get the popular Jacinto Vasquez, who would be her regular jockey through her three-year-old season.
Jacinto had ridden Genuine Risk in her historic Kentucky Derby victory in 1980, and he had also been the regular rider of Ruffian. When he was asked to compare Ruffian, Genuine Risk, and Princess Rooney, he smiled, “How can you? Joe Louis and Mohammed Allie never fought each other, so how could you compare them? It’s the same with these three fillies.”
Trainer Gomez’s decision to pass the Derby in favor of the Kentucky Oaks was well-founded as Princess Rooney won it by a length and one-half as the 1-5 favorite, the fifth consecutive time that she was at 3-10 odds or less. This time, however, she had to work hard to get the victory. Taking the lead at the top of the backstretch, she led the field the rest of the way but was spooked in the stretch by a photographer, causing her to bear out. This opened the door for the eventual second-place finisher Bright Crocus, ridden by Sandy Hawley, but try as they did, they only managed to get within a length and a quarter of pulling off a monumental upset.
alo won the Derby with SLew o’ Gold finisHaloSporting a perfect record after ten races, it looked like Princess Rooney was on her way to an Eclipse Award season. Then came the Acorn Stakes at Belmont Park and her first career loss as Zenya Yoshida’s Ski Goggle rolled to a 7 ½ length victory over the Princess, one of her three stakes wins that year. A week later, trainer Frank Gomez announced that Princess Rooney would not race anymore that year. “She will go to a farm in Ocala for a complete freshening and then be put back in training late in the year to prepare for Gulfstream Park.” When asked to explain the sudden decision, he said. “Something is wrong with her, but we don’t know what it is. I’m not saying that she would have beaten Ski Goggle, but she didn’t run her race at all in the Acorn.”
Later that year, when owner Paula Tucker said that she wanted Princess Rooney to travel north for a race in New Jersey and possibly one in New York, trainer Gomez said that he didn’t want to leave Calder. He was extremely successful at the Florida track, where he had been the leading trainer the past three seasons, and was on his way to a fourth consecutive title. Princess Rooney was then transferred to trainer Joe Pierce Jr. who was tied for the lead in the Meadowlands training standings.
Pierce entered Princess Rooney in a six-furlong allowance race at the Meadowlands on December 19. It was an easy spot and she was sent off as the 3-10 favorite. However, the race proved to be a trying one as Jacinto Vasquez lost his whip and she finished second to Prim De La Prim in a shocking defeat. She was later awarded the victory, however, when Prim De La Prim was disqualified after a prohibited substance was found in her urine.
Princess Rooney finished the year having won eleven of her twelve career starts, and she finished 1983 with five wins and a second in six starts and earned $223,815. She was definitely an Eclipse Award candidate for leading three-year-old filly even though her last meaningful race was in early May, but once again she was beaten out for the award, this time finishing third behind Burt Bacharach’s Heartlight No. One and Ski Goggle, both those fillies having been retired after just one season on the racetrack.
1984 began on a negative note for Princess Rooney. Pierce took her back to Florida and entered her in the mile and one-sixteenth Bal Harbor Stakes at Hialeah, which would be the first and only time she would compete on turf, a surface that she was not bred to run on. She ran well for most of the first mile and actually was leading at the top of the stretch, but then she tired and was passed by three fillies, finishing fourth three lengths back, the first and the only time she would finish out of the money in her career. Jockey Craig Perret, who rode her that day, was disappointed in her loss but was impressed with her demeanor. “She ran a good race for a mile and then got tired in the last sixteenth,” he said. “It was a good effort for her first time on grass.”
With the Breeders’ Cup, which would be held at Hollywood Park, now the main goal, the Tuckers announced that Princess Rooney would continue her four-year-old campaign on the West Coast. With Pierce electing to remain on the East Coast, this meant that there would be another trainer change and Neil Drysdale was chosen. On March 30, in her first race for Drysdale, Princess Rooney won the one-mile Susan’s Girl by a nose with Eddie Delahoussaye up. It was a tough race, one in which she battled throughout and managed to grab the lead at the wire. Many felt that she was finally back and that the old Princess Rooney, who always dominated, was ready to dominate yet again. However, from there the waters got deeper and in her next race, the G2 Hawthorne Handicap at Hollywood Park, with Delahoussaye riding, she was soundly defeated by Adored, a Seattle Slew four-year-old who was in receipt of six pounds. There was no betting, and the race was classified as an exhibition because only four fillies went postward.
In Princess Rooney’s next start, the G2 Milady Handicap on June 16, Sandy Hawley was a last-second replacement for Eddie Delahoussaye. For the first time in her career, she wasn’t the betting favorite as the crowd bet Adored down to even money while the Princess was at 4-1. In the end, the crowd was right as Adored beat her by 2 ½ lengths, though she did gain five lengths in the stretch in the mile and one-sixteenth race.
With her connections smarting after her two defeats, many wondered if Princess Rooney was still bothered by the mystery ailment that kept her out of racing for much of the previous year. For a filly that had won her first ten starts, virtually all of them with ease, suddenly her career turned, and she managed to finish first in only one of her last six. Many were beginning to doubt her, believing that she was no longer the dominating force that at one time had experts comparing her to Landaluce and Genuine Risk. However, the Milady Handicap, in which Princess Rooney carried 122 pounds to Adored’s 119, would prove to be a turning point in this magnificent filly’s career. With Eddie Delahoussaye, who would ride her throughout the balance of her career, back in the irons, she then turned the table on Adored and won the G1 Vanity Invitation on July 15. Off as the third favorite at 5-1, the longest odds in her career, she tracked the even-money favorite Adored throughout, then outdueled her in a slugfest to the wire to get the victory by a neck with the 2-1 second favorite Heatherten finishing last by 27 lengths. Her time for the nine-furlongs was 1:46 1/5, which is still the fastest time ever recorded in this race.
Princess Rooney then traveled to Del Mar, where she won the G3 Chula Vista on August 26 by two and one-half lengths, after which she won an allowance race at Keeneland on Oct 9, the race a prep for the Spinster on October 27, which would be her last race before the Breeders’ Cup.
Princess Rooney’s dominating performance in the G1 Spinster proved to the racing world that she was back. Off as the 4-5 favorite, the Princess was in third place for most of the race until Eddie Delahoussaye said go. That was midway in the far turn in the nine-furlong race, and she took off and rambled to a six length victory over Lucky Lucky Lucky with Heatherten, who was coming into the race off an emphatic win in the Ruffian over Miss Oceana and Adored, another half-length further back in third place. This was the rejuvenated Princess Rooney’s fourth consecutive win and her sixteenth victory in twenty starts. It was the third race in a row that she carried 123 pounds, which was the same weight she would carry in the Distaff, and Drysdale pronounced that she was fit and ready to go. His only concern was the distance. This would be the first time she would be asked to go ten furlongs though her sire, Verbatim, the 1969 Whitney winner, had won the 10-furlong Haskell in 2:02 1/5 and had sired the 1981 Belmont Stakes winner, Summing.
The Breeders’ Cup Distaff would be missing two of America’s top fillies in 1984. Heatherten, a daughter of Forceten, had won seven stakes that year, including three grade ones: the Apple Blossom over Try Something New, which won the Spinster in 1983; the Hempstead Handicap and the Ruffian over Miss Oceana and Adored. Her connections opted to skip the Distaff and keep her on the East Coast, deciding to point her to the G1 Ladies Handicap at Aqueduct in late November, which she won emphatically by seven lengths.
Also missing from the Distaff was My Darling One, a three-year-old daughter of Exclusive Native who had defeated the eventual Kentucky Derby Favorite, Althea, in the G1 Fantasy Stakes, then finished a close third to Lucky Lucky Lucky and Miss Oceana in the Kentucky Oaks, her final race that year as she had been laid up with an injury.
Even with Heatherten and My Darling One missing, many would say that of the seven Breeders’ Cup races, the Distaff was the toughest race on the card, with several of the starters, including Princess Rooney, more than capable of winning it.
Lining up against the Princess was an impressive array of talent. Adored, the four-year-old daughter of Seattle Slew and out of the Raise A Native mare, Desiree, had already won a ten furlong race when she captured the G1 Delaware Handicap at Saratoga. Trained by Laz Barrera and ridden by Eddie Delahoussaye, she had won seven of her twelve starts that year including victories over Princess Rooney in back-to-back grade two handicaps, the Hawthorne and Milady, at the spring-summer meet at Hollywood Park, both those races at a mile and a sixteenth. Owned outright by Ethel Jacobs and bred in partnership by her and her daughter, Mrs. Louis Wolfson, Adored was coming into the Distaff on a low as she could only manage a third-place finish in the G1 Ruffian Handicap at Belmont Park on September 30, fading to finish third, two and one-half lengths behind Heatherton.
Not to be ignored were two of the year’s leading three-year-olds who took turns beating each other. Life’s Magic, by Cox’s Ridge out of the Tom Rolfe mare Fire Water, was owned by the partnership of Mel Hatley and Eugene Klein and was trained by D. Wayne Lukas. Listed as the 3-1 second morning-line favorite, the filly, who would win the 1985 Distaff over Lady’s Secret, had an outstanding season that would see her garner the Eclipse Award as the top three-year-old filly after winning the G1 Mother Goose, G2 Monmouth Oaks, G1 Alabama, and the G1 Beldame, the latter two races both at ten furlongs. Back in the spring, her connections thought so highly of her that they pitted her against the boys in the Santa Anita Derby. Coupled with a colt named Double Cash and sent off at 9-1, she trailed early on and never really fired while finishing fifth to 32-1 shot Mighty Adversary. She followed that with an eighth-place finish out of twenty starters in the Kentucky Derby, going off as the 5-2 favorite with her entry mate Althea. Her regular rider, Jorge Velasquez, who earlier in the program gave Tank’s Prospect a rousing ride in the Juvenile, would ride her in the Distaff.
Another that was dangerous was the three-year-old Miss Oceana, a daughter of Alydar and out of Kittiwake, making her a half-sister to Kitwood, a colt that would win the group one Prix Jean Prat in 1992. Miss Oceana, who won the G1 Arlington-Washington Lassie over Life’s Magic, finished her two-year-old season on a high note with victories in the G1 Frizette Stakes over Life’s Magic and the G1 Selima over Buzz My Bell, a filly who won the G1 Spinaway and would eventually foal the 1996 Kentucky Derby winner Grindstone.
As a three-year-old, Mis Oceana’s jockey, the likable Eddie Maple, had ridden her to three grade one victories at Belmont Park: the Maskette, the Gazelle Handicap (Life’s Magic was third), and the Acorn, with Life’s Magic finishing second. However, Miss Oceana was somewhat suspect going ten furlongs after fading behind Life’s Magic in the Beldame on October 21, and this prompted the track handicapper to set her odds at 4-1 in the morning line while the bettors would send her off at 11-1 in the race.
Lucky Lucky Lucky, a three-year-old Chieftain filly who was trained by D. Wayne Lukas, was consistently in the money and was hot earlier in the year, winning the G1 Kentucky Oaks and the G2 Black Eyed Susan. After consecutive third-place finishes in the G3 Railbird Stakes, the G1 Hollywood Oaks, and the G2 Test Stakes, Lucky Lucky Lucky then finished second to Life’s Magic in the Alabama and followed that with a victory in the Arlington Oaks. She then prepared for the Distaff by finishing second in the G2 Del Mar Oaks on turf, losing by a head to Fashionable Lady, and was a distant second to Princess Rooney in the Spinster.
The balance of the field appeared to be reaching. Five-year-old Salt Spring, with Willie Shoemaker up, and Comedy Act, with Sandy Hawley on board, were both considered turf horses. Comedy Act was the most successful of the two, having won the G1 Santa Barber Handicap the previous April at Santa Anita, one of her two stake victories on turf.
The Distaff
As impressive as the Distaff field was, the race itself proved to be no contest. Lucky Lucky Lucky broke sharply and took a short early lead over Princess Rooney with Adored settling in to be third and Comedy Act fourth on the inside. The first quarter was swift for a ten-furlong race, 23 3/5, but they slowed it down considerably in the second quarter with Lucky Lucky Lucky still inches ahead of Princess Rooney as they reached the half in a reasonable 47 1/5 seconds. It wasn’t until they approached the top of the stretch, after running the first mile in 1:37, that Princess Rooney finally shook free. With the field closing in, jockey Eddie Delahoussaye got into her, and the handsome gray found another gear. From there, she turned it on and romped home to win by seven widening lengths over Life’s Magic, with Adored rallying to finish third. The time of 2:02 2/5 was especially impressive because it would prove to be a full second faster than the Classic run later on the card.
The Breeders’ Cup Distaff would prove to be Princess Rooney’s final race in what was a remarkable career. In three years of racing, she made 21 starts and won 17 times with two seconds and a third and earned $1,343,339. She was voted the champion older filly or mare, and in 1991, she became the first-ever winner of a Breeders’ Cup race to be inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.
It’s also interesting to note that Adored, who was retired after the Distaff, was sold in the 1985 Newstead Farm Dispersal Sale while in foal to Northern Dancer for $7,000,000 to Carl Icahan. At the time, the price was a world record for a broodmare. Sadly, Miss Oceana died in 1988 from foaling complications. The foal, named Oceanic Dancer, was winless in four starts and earned $170.
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