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Recently in Daily Racing Form I com ¬ mented upon a list of the socalled best horses seen on the American turf from Luke Blackburns day 1880 to the present racist that had been made out by a New York turf writer on the basis of opinions solicited from a number of turfmen that he had consulted on the subject and that was presented as a sort of consensus of opinion of the expert variety varietyRegarding Regarding it I ventured the opinion that it didnt sit very deep in the water that it was interesting for just what it was and no more That in so far as any finality was of the lists of best horses that from time concerned it meant no more than any other to time are parade d in print either by in ¬ dividual selectors of champions or in the manner described above aboveIn In the connection I passed the opinion that any list of that kind which omitted various steeds that I mentioned seemed to me a good deal of a joke it was good pub ¬ licity for the animals included and for the scribe that got it up but otherwise not to be taken seriously seriouslyNow Now comes a letter from a reader of Daily Racing Form Mr F P Robie of Brooklyn N Y in which he mentions several horses that were not only not in that list of best ones but that I also failed to mention as rightfully belonging in it Among them he dwells particularly upon Morello of him he writes writesPerhaps Perhaps you did not witness many of his achievements that I did One race in par ¬ ticular was the Wheeler Handicap run at old Washington Park Chicago back in the nineties Morello carried if my memory serves the big weight of 127 pounds going a mile and a quarter George Miller rode him with spurs and a gamer exhibition was never seen on the turf Chris Smith the western plunger owned Yo Tambien and Maid Marian two wonderful mares of that decade and with Maid Marian leading by ten lengths at 138 for the first mile and Miller trying to keep his horse within striking distance cruelly spurred him one might have caught a cup of blood after he dismounted from Morellos bleeding sides He steadily wore Maid Marian down and won in 204 or 205 I think I have seen many game racers during the past forty years but nothing that ever approached that day at Washington Park when Morello won the Wheeler Handicap So I wish to ask Mr Salvator if he did not win enough stakes and handicaps to make his record as attrac ¬ tive as those of some of the twenty horses published today in the Form as the best In my humble opinion Morello could that day have run a race no other horse I have ever seen could have equalled let alone surpassed I would like to see you say some ¬ thing about that wonderful horse horseWell Well Nothing will give me greater pleas ¬ ure ureFor For to me Morellos figure is one of the brightest as well as greatest in all the thickhung gallery of the past And if I did not happen to mention him in my former article it was not for that reason I hur ¬ riedly named just a few animals by no means a resume of all those that I would have liked to toAnd And yes Mr Robie I saw that very race about which you write so enthusiastically though with a bit of incorrectness about some of its details It was to me also a su ¬ preme exhibition of class in a thoroughbred and I have repeatedly cited it as such have indeed done so in DAILY RACING FORM I sat that afternoon in a box in the very center of the row that ran along the upper deck of the old Victorian Washington Park grandstand projecting out so far that it almost overhung the judges stand and im ¬ mediately over the wire From there an un ¬ surpassed view of a race could be obtained one allowing unobstructed sight and an opportunity to catch every incident of a con ¬ test from post to finish It was one of two boxes which were set aside daily for the Chicago Tribunes reportorial staff I was asked to view the race from it that day by the late Frank H Brunell the founder and long the sole owner of DAILY RACING FORM and its interest was doubled by his comments as he sat next me and was closely watching its every incident with a running fire of observations such as only he could deliver Another occupant of that box was Joseph A Murphy then his first assistant editor since so prominent in the turf world as an official and promoter while another was the well known animal artist and car ¬ toonist Robert L Dickey In the box next to us sat Mrs Brunell now also dead who did so much to make DAILY RACING FORM a success in its early days and beside her was their daughter Miss Marion now Mrs Wilson at that time a radiant young girl who had one or two of her girl friends with her At that date Brunell was sporting editor of the Tribute and had not yet started DAILY RACING FORM He him ¬ self wrote the report of the big race and speaking from memory it was in every way worthy of such a titanic contest The event in question was the Wheeler Handicap of 1893 which was the last big all aged event of the great meeting given that summer at Washington Park It was the year of the memorable Columbian Exposi ¬ tion in Chicago and the one nevertobe forgotten because it began with the Worlds Fair Derby for the thenunprecedented purse of 5000 which Snapper Garrison won in such sensational style with Boundless BoundlessThe The field that came out for the Wheeler that day it was July 22 1893 included nine good horses of which Yo Tambien then four was carrying the top weight 118 pounds Morello had up 117 not 127 pounds which for a threeyearold was a steadier Diablo one of the most famous handicap horses of that day had up 113 pounds and Maid Marian another threeyearold 102 pounds Nothing else was given even a re ¬ mote chance except the fouryearold Ray S with 113 pounds up and he was at 10 to 1 Maid Marian and Yo Tambien coupled were at even money and Morello at 2 to 1 1A A short time before the Columbian Han ¬ dicap had been run at the same meeting It was for 25000 and brought out one of the greatest fields of horses ever assembled in America before or since Yo Tambien was the center of attraction that season on the western turf and the general public wanted her to win but Morello was the favorite After a recordbreaking race Rudolph whose greatness was then still tmrevealed and was in at 107 pounds beat Yo Tambien a neck she carrying 118 Jordan rode her poorly and her backers were much dissat ¬ isfied Morello fell to his knees at the post and faded away in the race after being prominently placed early Maid Marian had made the pace for nearly a mile and then retired retiredThis This time Thorpe was on Yo Tambien and he had always ridden her better than any ¬ body else but again the mare got poor handling as he laid back so far with her that no horse could have come from where she was when she started her run and won unless equipped with wings Maid Marian was the real sensation of the day for after setting a dizzy pace I think the mile was not quite so fast as Mr Robie says but it was faster than one had ever before been run at that date in a big handicap instead of folding up she kept right on and it was the fact that she didnt quit and come back that made Miller spur Morello so unmerci ¬ fully in order to catch her coming home This he never managed to do until very near the finish when he finally nailed and passed her The time was 205 it being the first race between a field of horses in which the record established three years before by Salvator in the historic match with Tenny was equaled over a circular course As that at Washington Park was only one mile in size and Salvator had carried just weight for age 4 years 122 pounds while Morello a threeyearold under the scale should have carried but 107 so had a tenpound penalty it was hailed as a phenomenal performance as indeed it was For it was not yet the era of lightning tracks such as are found so plentifully today todayMorello Morello I have always considered without question one of the greatest horses ever seen As a twoyearold he started in seven ¬ teen races and won fourteen including the Futurity and carried 130 pounds on one occasion successfully and 128 on another He was a sick colt the day of the Futurity and went to the post coughing and running at the nose but simply played with the field making the speedy filly Lady Violet and such colts as St Leonard and Ramapo look common As a threeyearold he won ten out of fifteen races and carried up to 129 pounds successfully successfullyHe He was one of those few horses of which it may be said with almost unquestioned cor ¬ rectness that he ought never to have been beaten Several of his defeats were due to illluck the others to bad management or worse worseHe He was sold for just 100 as a yearling and later passed into the joint possession of W M Singerly a Philadelphia newspaper magnate and the extrotting horse trainer Frank Van Ness a man who had been ex ¬ pelled from the harness turf and whose reputation was most unsavory All told he started in thirtyone races won twentyfour was second in three third in two and un ¬ placed in two As a threeyearold he did not race in a single one of the great clas ¬ sics for that age not having been engaged in them so was forced to go out and do battle in the allaged handicaps His total winnings were 80545 80545It It is a curious thing that all three of the horses that made the race in the Wheeler Handicap that he won so sensationally were of the doomed class Morello broke down before another season was placed in the stud in California was mated to a few mares and then died of a fall in which his back was broken It is believed that he would have been a remarkable sire had he lived as several horses by him raced excellently notably Eddie Jones As for Maid Marian and Yo Tambien both of them were killed while out at pasture in Kentucky after being sent to be bred and before either had pro ¬ duced a foal
