Nasrullah himself had become a champion stallion in America, representing the flourishing Nearco male line, and his dam, Mumtaz Begum, was among the most prized of mares in the Aga Khan’s magnificent stud. She herself was a daughter of Blenheim II, the stallion later imported to stand at Claiborne Farm, and Europe’s “flying filly” Mumtaz Mahal. By the time Bold Ruler was sent to Claiborne, Nasrullah had already led all American sires in 1955, when his performers won 69 races and $1,433,660, and in 1956, when they won 106 races and $1,462,413. Bold Ruler was only one of several champion runners by Nasrullah: he also sired the 1955 Horse of the Year, William Woodward’s Nashua, who retired in 1956 with earnings of $1,288,565, a world record until Round Table broke it three years later. Nasrullah had also sired the 1956 two-year-old filly champion, Charlton Clay’s Leallah; the 1957 two-year-old colt champion, Nadir, eventual winner of $434,316; and Captain Harry F. Guggenheim’s Bald Eagle, America’s champion handicap horse of 1960 and the winner of $676,442.
Miss Disco, among the fastest fillies of her generation, was no doubt a source of some of Bold Ruler’s quickness, and as a daughter of one of the greatest weight carriers of all time, she gave bone and bottom to the underside of Bold Ruler’s pedigree. He had everything a sire should have.
Bold Ruler also had the brilliant speed of the Nearco tribe—speed is an important characteristic for a stud horse to have—and he had it in greater abundance than any other of Nasrullah’s sons and daughters. Moreover, he carried that speed the classic distance of a mile and a quarter, and he did it carrying high weights against horses who were just as serious about their business as he—Clem, Gallant Man, Sharpsburg, and Round Table.
Yet no one, not even a breeder as experienced and astute as Bull Hancock, could have foreseen the extent to which Bold Ruler would dominate the American sire championships. He became a phenomenon at the stud, and some believe the greatest sire in the history of American bloodstock.
For seven successive years Bold Ruler was the leading American stallion. Only Lexington, a stallion from a different era, was America’s leading sire more often, for sixteen years between 1861 and 1878. But the two horses are hardly comparable. The “Blind Hero of Woodburn,” as Lexington was known, competed with only 215 sires of runners in the last year he was the champion, 1878. In 1969, Bold Ruler was competing with 5829 sires of runners. Only three other stallions—Star Shoot, Bull Lea, and Bold Ruler’s own sire, Nasrullah—led the list as many as five times.
His reign as America’s premier blooded stallion began in 1963, when his twenty-six performers from only two crops of racing age won fifty-six races and $917,531. And this was only a foreshadowing. His influence and power as a stallion grew steadily.
In 1964—44 performers, 88 wins, and $1,457,156.
In 1965—51 performers, 90 wins, and $1,091,924.
In 1966—51 performers, 107 wins, and $2,306,523, the first time in history a stallion’s progeny ever won more than $2 million in a single season.
In 1967—63 performers, 135 wins, and $2,249,272.
In 1968—51 performers, 99 wins, and $1,988,427.
In 1969—59 performers, 90 wins, and $1,357,144.
While his two-year-olds were often precocious and brilliant, and for five years he was America’s leading sire of juveniles, Bold Ruler’s ability to transmit stamina became suspect. His sons Bold Lad, Successor, and Vitriolic, as well as his daughters Queen of the Stage and Queen Empress, were all champion two-year-olds in their divisions. Yet each failed to return as a champion three-year-old, the year the distances stretch out. No son or daughter of Bold Ruler, in all the seven seasons he dominated the sire standings, had ever won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, or Belmont stakes.
As he added championship upon championship to his record at the stud, his value as a stallion climbed to an incalculable level. Gladys Phipps was the founder of a major racing dynasty, one supported largely by dozens of valuable broodmares at Claiborne Farm, and she and her heirs were interested in maintaining and building on it, not selling the fruits of it piecemeal.
Money could be made in many ways, but there was only one Bold Ruler, and he was the stuff to build and serve a racing dynasty. William Woodward, Sr., was fond of saying, “Upon the quality of the matron depends the success of the stud.” Bull Hancock later agreed with that, but he would add, “Remember, Mr. Woodward’s big success came when he got Sir Gallahad III as a stallion. As long as I have a Nasrullah and a Princequillo, an Ambiorix, Double Jay and Hill Prince, I’ll be on top.” (Ambiorix, another import from France, and Double Jay were leading stallions in America in the postwar resurgence of Claiborne as a thoroughbred nursery.)
Mrs. Phipps had the greatest stallion in the history of the American turf in this century, and his breeding services were not for sale. Owners of mares would have to enter into an unusual agreement with the Phippses to get a mare bred to Bold Ruler. In general, a breeder would offer the Phippses a prospective broodmare for Bold Ruler. If the mare was acceptable, she would be bred to Bold Ruler for two seasons, or until she had two foals. First choice of the foals was determined by the flip of a coin. Thus, Bold Ruler was the Phippses’ lever in acquiring foals out of some of the finest broodmares in the world, broodmares they did not own. And one of the breeders with high-class mares was Ogden Phipps’s friend, and a fellow member of the Jockey Club, Christopher T. Chenery.
Chenery had been sending mares regularly to Bold Ruler at Claiborne, where he had Hill Prince standing at the stud, since Bold Ruler stood his initial season there. The first mare Chenery sent him was Imperatrice, and in 1960 the twenty-two-year-old matron had a filly foal that Mrs. Chenery named Speedwell. The Meadow Stable’s Speedwell was Bold Ruler’s first of many stakes winners. Chenery sent his mare First Flush to Bold Ruler in 1961, and she had a filly foal named Bold Experience, who eventually won $91,477 at the races.
In 1965, Chenery ceased sending mares singly to Bold Ruler. Instead, in a coin-flip arrangement with the Phippses, he began sending two mares to Claiborne every year. The Phipps-Chenery deal, matching the greatest sire in America with some of Chenery’s choicest mares, was anything but a smash: the biggest winner, the stakes-winning Virginia Delegate who started fifty-five times and won $67,154, ended up a gelding.
Then events began unfolding in the spring of 1968 that set the stage for the most monumental coin toss in racing history, a curious flip in which the winner lost and the loser won—but neither knew it at the time.
For the breeding season of 1968, Chenery sent the mares Somethingroyal and Hasty Matelda across the Alleghenies to Claiborne Farm. Each was bred to Bold Ruler. Each conceived. Each had a foal the following year.
Hasty Matelda had a colt foal.
On March 19, 1969, Somethingroyal had a filly foal.
Just a month later at Claiborne Farm, Somethingroyal entered her heat cycle, and on April 20 she was separated from her suckling foal and taken to a stall at one end of the black creosote board breeding shed at Claiborne. In the adjoining stall, his head sticking into Somethingroyal’s stall over an open half door, was a “teasing” stallion named Charlie, a mongrel of Percheron and saddle horse ancestry. Somethingroyal was already believed to be in heat, but the breeding men wanted to be sure, so they walked her into that stall next to Charlie the teaser. Charlie nipped at Somethingroyal, sniffed at her, nuzzled her. She did not protest, backing up to Charlie, squatting, and exposing herself to him. “She was red hot,” said the keeper of the stallions, Lawrence Robinson. But Somethingroyal was not mounted by Charlie, as are some of the virgin mares. A few of the thoroughbred stallions at Claiborne come into the breeding shed screaming and whinnying. Such carryings-on can frighten a maiden mare, especially when the screamer mounts her for the first time. Docile Charlie, among his other jobs at the farm, was trotted out to mount such nervous mares—though he did not have intercourse with them—to get them used to it.
Somethingroyal was taken around the breeding shed, where the road runs past the huge sliding front doors, and walked inside the large 35-by-35-foot room. Robinson signaled Snow Fields, Bold Ruler’s groom. Fields went to the main cinder block stallion barn and unfastened the sliding bolt from Bold Ruler’s stall, with its fireproof ceiling and stained oak walls