Jack Gilden’s new book The Fast Ride: Spectacular Bid and the Undoing of a Sure Thing , published by the University of Nebraska Press, recounts not only the great racing career of one of the most talented racehorses in modern times, but also the turmoil that bubbled behind the scenes.
Spectacular Bid, owned by Harry Meyerhoff and trained by Grover ‘Buddy’ Delp’, burst onto the American racing scene in 1978. That year, the American Triple crown was won by the brilliant Affirmed with his ‘boy wonder’ jockey, Steve Cauthen. Affirmed’s incredibly stirring rivalry with Alydar and the rise of his young jockey was a magical story.
That same year, teenage Ronnie Franklin was plucked from a poor neighbourhood in Baltimore to try a career as a jockey. A neighbour of his family saw the potential in the small-statured young man: “What Hank Tiburzi saw in that tough, little, troubled kid was the raw, unfired ore of a winning jockey,” writes Gilden.
Franklin’s rise in horse racing was meteoric even before he met Spectacular Bid. It was at the old Bowie racetrack that he was taken under the wing of trainer Delp and his family. At first, the partnership was seemingly the start of a strong friendship, a story of a wholesome American family.
When Franklin was given a leg up on Delp’s fancy grey colt, Spectacular Bid, in 1978, the young rider had already won hundreds of races, initiating some comparisons with Cauthen.
As the Bid and Franklin sped through victories when the colt was just a 2-year-old, the racing scribes wondered aloud when trainer Delp would replace the 18-year-old with a veteran rider as the Kentucky Derby (G1) of 1979 drew closer. And following Franklin’s absurd ride on Spectacular Bid in the Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park, a race the colt somehow still managed to win, the bottom fell out of the team.
But an erratic Delp, who, according to Gilden, introduced Franklin to drugs and an off-hours party life, stuck with Franklin and Spectacular Bid and the kid won the first two legs of the Triple Crown. It was the colt’s stunning loss in the Belmont Stakes, chalked up to a safety pin in a foot or a poor ride or both, that essentially ended the fairytale.
Gilden’s book came about from hours of interviews with those close to Delp and Franklin. He uncovers Franklin’s fast rise to the top that came with heavy drug use, riches and excess, which came to him in part through Delp and his son Gerald. In the mid70s, horse racing was all about excess with side stories of racism, corruption and fame. It was all too much for Franklin.
Gilden’s conclusion that Spectacular Bid’s story, in particular the story of his human team, was “ugly and hidden” came about through the number of people who refused to talk to the author. But those who did painted a tough story of desire, hard work and riches, bad decisions and failures. The book is a fast ride and a shocking ride, indeed.
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