Horse Fence Panels

Triple Bend provides blast from the past

The most exciting encounter between Bill Shoemaker and Triple Bend took place in the 1972 Santa Anita Handicap, a race so cool you still can find it on YouTube (although it still trails All-Time Skateboarding Bailouts by about half a million views).

A pretty good gray horse named Buzkashi – owned by Hollywood Park’s new CEO, Marjorie Everett – spooked shortly after the start from his inside post that day, veered left and hurdled the temporary guide rail leading out of the stretch chute.

Eddie Belmonte hit the deck, leaving Buzkashi to attack the permanent inside rail on his own, but his negotiation of this second barrier was not quite as successful. Airborne, he tumbled onto the turf course and became briefly entangled with a couple of movable fence panels, then scrambled up in a flash, wearing what best could be described as an expression of, “What? Who put that there?”

Meanwhile, Triple Bend and Don Pierce were on the engine, heading past the stands and into the first turn lapped alongside Unconscious and Angel Cordero, while Cougar II and Bill Shoemaker were tucked inside running fourth, biding their time.

This was deep water. Unconscious, the 127-pound topweight and winner already that year of the Strub and San Antonio, had been the post-time favorite in the 1971 Kentucky Derby. Cougar, California‘s most popular racehorse, would become grass champion of 1972. As for Triple Bend, his star was on the rise, having finished in a dead heat with Autobiography earlier in the season in the San Fernando Stakes.

By the time Triple Bend and Unconscious hit the top of the stretch together, Buzkashi and Belmonte had escaped to safety and the high-stepping Cougar was uncorking his run. As Unconscious weakened, Triple Bend and Pierce braced for Cougar’s final plunge. Shoemaker came at Triple Bend, sticking left-handed then right, while Pierce, as he’d planned all along, never touched Triple Bend. At the wire it was Triple Bend by a head in two minutes flat. Only Round Table and Quicken Tree had run the mile and a quarter of the Big Cap faster.

Good races named for Shoemaker and Triple Bend adorn the Hollywood Park program on Saturday as the holiday weekend commences, giving fans a chance to both pay homage and play some of the better animals on the circuit.

As far as that goes, just about any old race would have worked as a Shoemaker, since Shoe won all the big ones, and most of them more than once. At one lap of the grass course, the $300,000 Shoemaker Mile pays tribute to Shoemaker’s 1,000th win in a stakes race, the 1989 Premiere Handicap, which was run over the same ground and distance. After Shoemaker’s retirement in January of 1990, the Premiere was rechristened in his honor.

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