HIALEAH, Fl–Behind the rolled and faded elegance of the old Mediterranean clubhouse, shaded in the late afternoon by the long shadows of wispy Australian pines, at the edge of Hialeah Park`s tropical paddock stands a statue of Citation.
The great horse is a sentry guarding yesterday, a bronzed memory maybe even too distant for the wrinkled citizens who sit on webbed chairs and watch the odds dance on the auxiliary tote board.
On the second day of a new calendar, on the earliest Flamingo Day ever, Citation waits to review, as he has now for nearly four decades, the next generation of thoroughbreds.
They must pass him to enter the tunnel that will take them to the same track that launched Citation in 1948.
Others, too. They’ve nearly all been by, all the great ones. Seabiscuit. Nashua. Bold Ruler. Tim Tam. Carry Back. Buckpasser. Seattle Slew. Alydar. Spectacular Bid.
That is when there was order in the world. The Flamingo was the first grand prize of spring, run in April, and the road to Kentucky passed under royal palms.
Citation won the Triple Crown from here, his jockey Eddie Arcaro getting the ride after Flamingo winner Eddie Snyder drowned off the Keys on a fishing trip.
The future rushes at Hialeah in cluttered urgency. Sunshine real estate is too valuable to indulge an age that knew not air conditioning.
Hialeah has been dumped to the bottom of Florida racetracks, with the worst racing dates, because it is better business that way. It will survive or it will die, either way with none of the grace that made it a legend.
Hialeah’s private treasures are hidden from the shabby warehouses and garages of unzoned commerce by the elegantly swaying pines.
Little has changed since the trees, the track and the patrons were young except now you can buy one ticket on all 10 races for a million dollar payoff. Dreams never go out of fashion, the gimmicks just get wilder.
The 59th Flamingo is a blind guess. It is so wide open that three horses must be excluded. There is room only for 14, and the only credential necessary seems to be age. Every horse in the race has turned three years old the day before.
This is a discount Flamingo, cheaper and sooner and less conclusive than any before it.
The best of the crop, a horse named Forty Niner, trained by the antique treasure, Woody Stephens, will not run. “It’s just too early in the season to be running your good 3-year-old,” said Stephens. “You can’t tighten a horse up on New Year’s.”
Stephens enters one not needing tightening, one with his own middle name—Cefis—that will finish third.
- Wayne Lukas, winner of the last two Flamingoes, supplements a horse named Couragized and finishes fifth.
John Campo, the round, loud trainer from New York, races a vaguely familiar name, Cherokee Colony, son of Campo’s 1981 Kentucky Derby winner, Pleasant Colony.
Cherokee Colony breaks 12th and wins with a rush down the stretch by a length over the aptly named Sorry About That.
“I rode his father, too,” says jockey Jorge Velasquez. “I think he’s better. He’s more willing. He’s stronger and better looking, too.”
“Who knows if he’ll stay together?” asks Campo, who knows he is still four months from what is important.
Only once in the last 20 years has the Flamingo been run in a slower time than the winner’s 1:49 4/5, which figures to be 18 lengths off the record. The time can be extended to barely two seconds faster than Forty Niner’s last controlled workout.
There is no sense of anything ending among the principals, no group picture is taken, no program saved or tucked under the saddle blanket.
This may be the last Flamingo, certainly the last as a major stakes race. A million dollars less is bet than the year before. Attendance is more than halved. And everyone says it could have been worse.
Hialeah owner John Brunetti issues a statement that says he hopes no one is fooled into thinking Hialeah can go on like this.
The famed flamingoes, stocked a half century ago by early owner Joseph Widener, are fed shrimp to remain pink, which, at the price of appetizers today, is not a cheap indulgence.
They still fly up from their rookery on the infield lake before the feature race , circle and return, their duty done for the tourists and for dinner.
Though the birds do not insist on cocktail sauce or mesquite barbeque, their diet is only one expense that burdens the dowager queen of horse racing, still the loveliest place in the world ot go broke.
This is the place where once slim women in wide hats and long gloves walked on the arms of men in white suits. They came by train from Palm Beach to see the horses run, most of which they owned.
The train from Palm Beach does not stop here any more, but the Metrorail does and unloads trios of old men whose socks are too high.
The winning horse’s chest heaves as if he just pulled the train down from Palm Beach as he is led down shed row under the live oaks that once dappled his father and Secretariat and Swale.
That may be a tear below Citation’s eye.
Or something left by a pigeon.
Sentiment, at the race track, is a live ticket.