Useless stud made his exit as an entree

America At Large: The heart-warming tale of an under-sized, bargain-basement priced colt which captured the fancy of the nation during the times of the Great Depression has apparently struck a chord, writes George Kimball.

Americans, many of whom have never been near a race track, have spent the past summer reading Laura Hillenbrand's best-selling Seabiscuit: An American Legend, and since its release earlier this month they've been queuing up at theatres to watch Seabiscuit, a feel-good film chronicling the same subject.

In the midst of all this evocative nostalgia we might spare the time to shed a tear for Ferdinand. So far as we know, there are no plans afoot to make a movie about the 1986 Kentucky Derby winner's life and unfortunate end, and if they did make one they'd probably have to clean it up for family audiences.

Since the unseemly events concluded sometime last year, this mystery may never be completely unravelled, but the question today is, apparently, Who Ate Ferdinand?

The unsettling development came to light a few days ago when The Blood-Horse, a glossy high-end publication devoted to the thoroughbred industry, published the results of an investigation by reporter Barbara Bayer, who had unsuccessfully tried to track down Ferdinand in Japan, where he had supposedly been standing at stud.

Bayer, it turns out, was about a year too late. Ferdinand had evidently run out of ammunition, rendering him somewhat less than studly, and his decidedly unsentimental Japanese owners opted to cut their losses by having him, uh, recycled. Now the only question seems to be whether he wound up as dog food or, since horse-sashimi is considered a delicacy in The Land of the Rising Sun, as the entrée on some unsuspecting diner's dinner plate.

Now, you might suppose Ferdinand would have been entitled to expire with dignity, but while we sentimental creatures think of euthanasia, the Japanese are usually more pragmatic about these matters. No-longer-useful horses there are routinely put to death by being clubbed in the head, or (presumably if they're not headed for somebody's dinner table) injected with disinfectant.

We'd always had a warm spot in our heart for Ferdinand, who had won just two of nine career starts when he arrived at Churchill Downs that May. Thanks to a tip from trainer Charlie Whittingham, we'd been all over the 17 to 1 winner in the 1986 Run for the Roses, when he was steered home by Bill Shoemaker, and departed Louisville that spring with pockets brimming with cash. It was the fourth and last Derby win for Shoe, who would be paralysed in an automobile crash a few years later.

Since Shoemaker's win on Ferdinand came just weeks after 46 year-old Jack Nicklaus had won his last Masters, there were a lot of "vintage wine" stories written that spring, but Ferdinand himself did not survive to enjoy his own dotage.

Ferdinand was the son of English Triple-Crown winner Nijinsky II, and, a year after his Derby upset, was voted horse of the year when he defeated Alysheba in the Breeders Cup Classic. As a sire, he was by all accounts no Nijinksy. Retired to stud at his birthplace, Claiborne Farms in Kentucky, he performed without great distinction and was eventually purchased by Japanese interests five years later.

At the time Japanese breeders were aggressive in their pursuit of American and European bloodstock. Bayer learned in her investigation that Ferdinand spent six breeding seasons at Arrow Stud on the island of Hokkaido. He was bred to 77 mares in his first year in Japan, but that number fell to just 10 in 2000. At that point he was sold to a Japanese horse dealer named Yoshikazu Watanabe, but covered just six mares in 2001 and two more in 2002 before his involuntary demise.

For reasons which are probably understandable, Watanabe was not particularly forthcoming in revealing the details of Ferdinand's fate. He first told Bayer that the horse had been "given to a friend," a story later amended to claim that the 19-year-old champion had been gelded and donated to a riding club. Finally, Watanabe 'fessed up to the truth.

"Actually, he isn't around any more," he told the Blood-Horse reporter. "He was disposed of late last year."

"In Japan, the term 'disposed of' is used to mean slaughtered," wrote Bayer. "No one can say for sure when and where Ferdinand met his end, but it would seem clear that he met it in a slaughterhouse."

Among those encountered by Bayer in Japan was a Japanese groom named Toshiharu Kaibazawa, who had attended Ferdinand during his years at arrow stud.

Kaibazawa described the late Ferdinand as "the gentlest horse you could imagine. He'd come over when I called to him in the pasture. And anyone could have led him with just a halter on him. He'd come over to me and press his head up against me. He was so sweet.

"I want to get angry about what happened to him," Kaibazawa told the Blood-Horse. "It's just heartless, too heartless."

By the way, not only was Shoemaker 54 years of age when he won the Kentucky Derby on Ferdinand, Whittingham, the Hall of Fame trainer, was 73 years of age.

Ferdinand was 19 at the time he was killed, because, explained Watanabe, "he was getting old".