“I owed a lot of money back then,” Hancock said. She questioned why fans and players couldn't see the greatness within each horse (a point I agree with) but also thought that the combative nature of the two sides was unprecedented in racing history. ''I thought I had him, but I never got in front,'' Valenzuela said. 2021 Kentucky Derby Post Positions by the Numbers, Get to Know All 13 U.S. “His head was not in the game.”. U sumrak dana Breeders' Cup Classic dobio je Sunday Silence i ukupan skor popravio na 3:1, ali ga je u cilju umalo uhvatio Easy kome je nedostajao samo dužina vrata do potpunog revanša. You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that Beyer was an Easy Goer man as he lamented the rides of the man he called Pat "Wait All" Day. I remember the reaction from the crowd and that really meant a lot to me. “It was the most disappointed I’ve been about anything in my life. Easy Goer horse page with past performances, results, pedigree, photos and videos. With that turn of events fresh in his mind, Whittingham didn’t flinch when Hancock asked for $25,000 for a 50% share of Sunday Silence and the trainer then handed part of his share over to a friend, Dr. Ernest Gaillard. On the day that Pat Day retired as a jockey, a local sports radio station here in Seattle had Andrew Beyer on as a guest to discuss Day's legacy within the sport. They only faced each other four times, but the matchups came in the year’s biggest races: the Triple Crown of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes and the richest of them all, the $3 million Breeders’ Cup Classic. “When Pat hit him and he veered left and right, I was scared to death,” Hancock said. It was about 11 a.m. the morning of the race and he said, ‘Oh, Arthur, those SOB’s don’t know what color he is.’ That made me feel better. Sunday Silence prevailed in the Derby and the Preakness, with Easy Goer denying his rival the precious Triple Crown with a monster performance in the Belmont Stakes. It wasn’t until 1989 that a truly frenzied, passionate and utterly partisan East vs. West clash dominated the sport, courtesy of California’s Sunday Silence and New York’s Easy Goer. Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use, which became effective December 20, 2019. There was clearly a huge divide between the East and West Coast fans,” said Richard Migliore, one of New York’s top jockeys at that time and now an analyst for the New York Racing Association. Even from the Easy Goer camp, there’s nothing but smiles when questions about the great rivalry are posed. With 3 furlongs remaining, Sunday Silence was 4 lengths behind the leader and half a length ahead of Easy Goer. “But then, inside the sixteenth pole, he just ran out of gas. He lost all of them. “As great of a rivalry as it was and how great it was for the sport, it would have been nice to see Mr. Phipps win a Triple Crown and us, too.”. “Those fans identified with Easy Goer like he was their son,” Hancock said. To this day, 21 years since his death, he remains California’s most celebrated trainer. Sunday Silence did not like getting hit and the Hall of Famer merely showed the whip to his horse, even as Easy Goer quickly cut into the margin. If American Pharoah had to run against an Easy Goer, he might not have won all three races. And in terms of effort, few could match Sunday Silence or Easy Goer. The Eastern press was very powerful and they didn’t give Sunday Silence much respect. With Horse of the Year and another Eclipse Award for top 3-year-old Male at stake, Sunday Silence and Easy Goer squared off for their fourth and final meeting in the 1989 Breeders' Cup Classic. With a little over a couple of weeks until the 2012 Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita, it's time to start pulling out some of the replays of great Breeders' Cup races from the past. Sunday Silence would have jumped away from me on the turn but Easy Goer would have come out of the turn running and would have had three and a half furlongs to catch him. Sunday Silence and Easy Goer was arguably the greatest thoroughbred rivalry since Affirmed and Alydar staged their epic duels during the 1977 Triple Crown. “On the backside, I wanted him to settle so I eased out behind Sunday Silence to give him a light rein, hoping he would stretch his legs, get comfortable and relax. Young Arthur left Claiborne to start Stone Farm in the years after his father’s death in 1972, and won the 1982 Kentucky Derby with his homebred Gato Del Sol. “Nothing could shake that.”. “It was testimony to his talent that Easy Goer could just gallop around there and still finish second in the Kentucky Derby,” Day said. The 114th Preakness proved to be the most exciting and controversial of the four races in the heated rivalry. Sunday Silence, voted the Horse of the Year and champion 3-year-old male in 1989, retired with nine wins and five seconds in 14 starts and earnings of $4,968,554. In 1987, Hancock was eager to sell a 2-year-old he had bred in partnership and bought back as a yearling for $210,000 at the Keeneland July sale. As intense as the Easy Goer - Sunday Silence debate was (and still is) both on and off the track, it was undoubtedly good for racing. Day, well known for his patience aboard his mounts, became deeply religious in the early 1980s and was most one of the most accomplished and respected riders of his generation, winning nine Triple Crown races and 12 Breeders’ Cup races. An epic, indeed. I owed the bank a heckuva lot of money. Sunday Silence's rivalry with Easy Goer was featured as the 17 th chapter of Horse Racing's Greatest Rivalries (2008, Eclipse Press), a compilation produced by the staff of The Blood-Horse. Phipps’ champions, aside from Personal Ensign, included Buckpasser, Numbered Account, Relaxing and Queen of the Stage, but it was Easy Goer who was being viewed as the horse destined to produce his first victory in a Triple Crown race. 8 x 10 Breeder's Cup Classic photograph of Sunday Silence defeating Easy Goer in 1989. “It was very reassuring race, a very satisfying one, and a lot of fun. Capitalizing on his prowess on turns, Sunday Silence drew alongside Easy Goer at the top of the stretch, setting the stage for one of the Triple Crown’s greatest stretch duels. “Everything was on the line,” McCarron said. He reeled off easy Grade 1 victories in the Whitney Handicap, Travers Stakes, Woodward Handicap and Jockey Club Gold Cup, making him the only horse to win those four, plus the Belmont. There was one more showdown to be had, later that fall in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Races like the ones between those two horses are what makes horse racing the great sport it is.”. Note: This story was originally published in June 2016 and has been updated. I couldn't find data on TV ratings from the time but I would imagine that they were also new highs for the Breeders' Cup. “As I re-run that race in my mind, I chastise myself pretty good because I feel I didn’t ride the best race of my career and I could have done things different,” Day said. Advancements in airline travel had an amazingly profound impact on everyday life in this country. In 1988, he entered a drug rehabilitation program after a series of absences at Santa Anita, and he lost the mount on Sunday Silence in the 1989 Breeders’ Cup Classic when he was suspended in late October for testing positive for cocaine. Or better yet, get two fans together in the same room - one a passionate fan of Easy Goer and the other an unreformed follower of Sunday Silence - and simply say "Pat Day" or "Belmont Stakes". He wasn’t responsive. At the same point, Easy Goer was struggling in sixth, 11 lengths off the lead. He was later named Risen Star, and he went on to win the 1988 Preakness and Belmont Stakes. But it was a mile and a quarter and we got beat by a very game, a very well-prepared, and very well-ridden individual.”, Final score: Sunday Silence 3, Easy Goer 1. Sunday Silence was laying all over me,” Day said. The better horse won. Consequently that move was a moot point and Sunday Silence got his nose down on the wire.”. See who is a fan of Easy Goer. Sunday Silence won three of them, with Easy Goer second each time in races that fans from that era will never forget. At no time was he taking me into race, and that wasn’t Easy Goer.”. He loved this big track. He wasn’t the same enthusiastic fellow,” Day said of Easy Goer. We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. Despite what happened six months earlier in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, Easy Goer was sent off as a 4-5 favorite in an entry with stablemate Awe Inspiring, winner of the Flamingo Stakes. And that's the way much of the debate has gone from 1989 until today - Easy Goer fans curse Day's rides and the fact that he moved either to late or too early, while Sunday Silence fans celebrate his 3-for-4 record against the giant from New York. When Sunday Silence splashed home 2 1/2 lengths ahead of Easy Goer in the mud at Churchill Downs under rider Pat Valenzuela, a rivalry was born. But on the backstretch, Easy Goer kicked into gear. Live odds, betting, horse bios, travel info, tickets, news, and updates from Churchill Downs Race Track. I saw Easy Goer pass us and I thought we were cooked. Sunday Silence was more tractable and could handle turns better than Easy Goer, which played a key role in deciding the Preakness and Breeders’ Cup Classic. “I had my binoculars on, strapped around my neck, and I dropped them. Though two of the races were decided in dramatic fashion, the final results tilted decidedly in Sunday Silence’s favor. Sunday Silence beats Easy Goer under the wire to win the 1989 Breeders' Cup Classic at Gulfstream Park. You’re not going to take me to the outside fence.’. Easy Goer, outside, and Sunday Silence, middle, approach the stretch in the 1989 Belmont Stakes. I certainly could have done things differently and it could, would have, should have been a different outcome. “Sunday Silence was a tough SOB. Whatever the reasons, when McCarron put his hands forward and Sunday Silence dashed away from Easy Goer into the turn, there was no denying Whittingham's point that Easy Goer's chances in the Breeders' Cup Classic—and hence his bid to be voted Horse of the Year—may have been compromised by his efforts in the Gold Cup. “Around the first turn, we’re right on Sunday Silence’s heels,” Day said. That might have been true, but fans still flocked to Easy Goer, making him a heavy 1-2 favorite in a showdown that Hancock likened to the Gunfight at the O.K. He beat us badly.”. Once again, the betting public got it wrong. “He jumped into his right lead and I thought, ‘wonderful,’ ” Day said. Once Easy Goer surged past Sunday Silence approaching the final turn and darted to the inside, it put Sunday Silence and Valenzuela in a tight spot and they dropped back a few lengths to third. “There was that little bit of toughness in Sunday Silence and that made the difference.”. Phipps was a good friend of “Bull,” and one of his best clients, giving Hancock no great joy over beating one of the best horse to carry Phipps’ black and cherry colors. In fact, I love the audio from this race so much more than almost all of the recent Triple Crown and Breeders' Cup races. “But that’s just an opinion and everyone has one. Horse racing had its share of regional rivalries, including the battles between the East’s Nashua and the West’s Swaps in 1955. I was just 38 years old [in 1989] and I found it all very interesting because of the publicity it was gathering. At least we had a valid excuse. He started to float me toward the outside and I’m like, ‘You’re not going to do that, Patrick. The source of Day’s angst stems from what happened on the backstretch, when he pushed Easy Goer to the lead instead of cruising alongside Sunday Silence and waiting to pounce on the front-running Houston. “I was at [the 2016] Preakness and at least a half-dozen people told me the Sunday Silence-Easy Goer Preakness was the best Preakness they ever saw. It was like this was my turn.”. There was a picture from the final yards in the Preakness where he had his ears flat on his head and Easy Goer is looking at him as if he’s saying, ‘What are you doing to me?’ It was telling, if you know animals and horses,” Hancock said. The film features interviews with Arthur Hancock, the owner of Sunday Silence, host Al Michaels, race caller Tom Durkin, jockey Pat Valenzuela, who rode Sunday Silence during the Triple Crown races, Easy Goer’s jockey Pat Day, jockey Chris McCarron, who rode Sunday Silence at the 1989 Breeders’ Cup, and Shug McGaughey, Easy Goer’s trainer. The paths of the two horses actually crossed before either one made its first start. It brought the eastern and western shores closer together, and created business opportunities that would have seemed ridiculous a century ago. “I wish Easy Goer had come around in another year. “He never called me that early and I asked what was going on and his first words were, ‘This big, black SOB you got out here can run a little.’ Charlie was the master of the understatement, so I knew he really liked what he was seeing in Sunday Silence. The sun was not shining on anyone’s Kentucky home, be it old or new, on the day of the 115th Kentucky Derby. A serious virus as a weanling nearly killed him. Among the trainers, foremost there was Whittingham, the then (at the time of the 1989 Kentucky Derby) 76-year-old “Bald Eagle” and a revered Hall of Famer since 1974. Five times in his career Easy Goer was involved in a race won by less than two lengths. Chris McCarron took over riding duties aboard Sunday Silence after regular rider Pat Valenzuela was suspended just weeks before the Breeders’ Cup for testing positive for cocaine. Day and his counterpart on Sunday Silence, Pat Valenzuela, were as different as night and day and they played a central part in the contrasting personalities of the key people involved in the rivalry. (Blood-Horse/Skip Dickstein), Sunday Silence winning the 1989 Kentucky Derby. En route the driver of the truck suffered a fatal heart attack and the van overturned. He shipped back up here great. In response, the New York Racing Association sealed the racetrack and closed it for training on the morning of the race so maintenance crews could work on it. The Breeders’ Cup Classic proved to be a worthy finale for the intense rivalry as both horses returned for a 4-year-old campaign, but their careers came to end by July 4. That was that. “I wanted a price matching what I felt the colt was worth and I guess Charlie didn’t want to go through another Risen Star scenario,” Hancock said about the expanded ownership group. One of the things that makes this such a great race is the call by Tom Durkin and the intensity of the crowd in the stands. 1989 Breeders' Cup Classic Winner. “I went into the Derby with a lot of confidence,” McGaughey said. By 1997, both horses were enshrined in the Hall of Fame and both were fondly remembered for giving the sport such a huge boost from a rivalry that stirred up so much emotion from an overwhelming number of fans – in both victory and defeat. There was a big market crash in 1988 and what was worth $1 became worth 30 cents. Twenty-one years later, the four-race match-up between the Pride of the West Coast and the Beast of the East invokes strong emotions from die hard fans on both sides. Sunday Silence, and that’s where I made my mistake. It was a freakishly cold, rainy day with temperatures in the high 30’s and a muddy track for the run for the roses. … He opened 1989 with an 8 ¾-length score in the Swale Stakes at Gulfstream Park, then registered his breath-taking 13-length romp in the Grade 2 Gotham and followed it up with an easy three-length victory as a 1-10 choice in the Grade 1 Wood Memorial Stakes to become the odds-on favorite for the Kentucky Derby. I had nothing. Throwback Thursday to the classic rivalry between Sunday Silence and Easy Goer. Financial aspect of the race, I was disappointed when we got beat in the stretch Sunday! It wrong favorite entering the Derby because it was East Coast jockey, ” said! Moot point and Sunday Silence and Easy Goer added the Suburban H. his! The leader and half a length ahead of Easy Goer left the gate from! 30 cents brought the eastern and western shores closer together, and Whittingham doubt. The body of the two horses were as different as could be Goer took the was. 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