For many, they defined racing. Their meetings lifted racing to a place rarely seen anymore, to an arena of idealized and rarified competition. They confronted each other time and again on the sport’s largest stage, and their confrontations brought out a throng of fans, a multitude of television viewers and, of course, a host of clichés: They were as good as it gets, they were what it was all about, and, yes, they represented racing at its best.
Clichés, however, work inadequately to describe those meetings of Sunday Silence and Easy Goer. For most of 1989, they were the two best horses in the country, and perhaps the world. But by any measure they were also two of the best horses of the era, both destined for the Hall of Fame. If not for the other, either would have swept the Triple Crown.
But their four meetings represented more than the inevitable clashing of superlative talents, more than televised spectacle, more even than championships. Their confrontations sparkled with metaphorical implications, for these two champions, a sleek black colt from the West and a powerful chestnut from the East, were in many ways opposites, compellingly drawn together by the Triple Crown, the Breeders’ Cup and, most of all, the unifying pursuit of greatness.
Easy Goer
From the start, expectations soared. Easy Goer had the pedigree and the looks that inevitably encourage lofty hopes and roseate dreams. And as his trainer, Claude “Shug” McGaughey, explains, the colt suggested with all his training in the mornings, with each spin around the track, with every gallop and workout, that he possessed uncommon ability.
Absolutely everything about Easy Goer was regal, from his provenance to his potential. By Alydar, the co-star in Affirmed’s Triple Crown, and out of the mare Relaxing, Easy Goer was bred and owned by Ogden Phipps, a founding member of the New York Racing Association and chairman of The Jockey Club. The colt was born and raised at the famed Claiborne Farm in Paris, Ky.
Phipps had raced such champions as Buckpasser, Numbered Account, Queen of the Stage, Vitriolic and, of course, Relaxing. The patriarch of New York racing owned the great sire Bold Ruler. And if, as part of a foal-sharing agreement, a coin had flipped a little differently, Phipps would have owned the glorious result of that 1969 mating of Bold Ruler and Somethingroyal. In other words, because of a coin flip, he owned The Bride instead of her full-brother, Secretariat.
But for a while in 1988 and 1989, it looked as if fate had flipped the coin again, and to Phipps’ favor this time. Easy Goer was so conspicuously talented, so flashy and dominant, that he not only invited comparisons to the 1973 Triple Crown winner, but seemed to insist upon them.
Like Secretariat, Easy Goer had a troubled trip and lost his debut, rallying to finish second by a nose. And like Secretariat, after his initial setback, Easy Goer for a time seemed invincible. An easy maiden win at Saratoga led to an even easier allowance victory at Belmont Park, where he then won the Cowdin Stakes by three lengths and the Champagne Stakes by four, and he did it all with aplomb, leaving onlookers stunned and handicappers dazzled.
Easy Goer already was performing on a level that only the best older horses ever reached. In the Champagne, for example, he moved through an opening along the rail at the top of the Belmont stretch and ran the last quarter-mile, while hand-ridden to the wire, in about 24 3-5 seconds, completing the mile in 1:34 4-5. Moments after the race, his jockey, Pat Day, pronounced Easy Goer to be the most impressive 2-year-old he had ever ridden. In truth, Easy Goer was probably the most impressive 2-yearr-old anybody had ridden since, well, Secretariat.
With his reputation growing and the comparisons swirling, Easy Goer went to the Breeders’ Cup championships at Churchill Downs. This was a heady time for the sport, a time of ripened anticipation. The day itself was wet and dreary and cold, but that couldn’t dampen the expectations or diminish the significance of the racing. With a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff over Kentucky Derby winner Winning Colors, Personal Ensign could retire undefeated; with a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, Alysheba could retire as the sport’s all-time leading money winner. On the grandstand apron, picking up the year’s political theme, a banner urged, “Alysheba For President.”
While many that day at Churchill wanted, however jokingly, Alysheba for their next president, many more wanted Easy Goer for their next superhorse. Or, at least, they expected such an outcome: He was the 3-10 favorite in the Juvenile.
But Easy Goer didn’t run as he had in his previous four outings. Bumped around at the start of the Juvenile, he dropped back to seventh, raced wide and never seemed to find his stride until the stretch, and even there, having never raced around two turns before, he jumped over the tracks left by the starting gate. He finished second, more than a length behind Is It True, whom he had soundly defeated in the Champagne.
“He just didn’t have any confidence in his footing,” Day explains, attributing the loss to the muddy track condition and comparing Easy Goer’s tentative running to a person’s walking gingerly on ice. “He got bumped, and he was climbing down the backstretch,” Days says. “He finished second without ever getting out of second gear.”
From racetrack to racetrack, surfaces differ, of course, even saturated surfaces, and no two muddy tracks are exactly alike. The mud at Churchill, Day says, can be like peanut butter. And Easy Goer didn’t like peanut butter.
Still, the big chestnut was named the year’s champion juvenile. The Breeders’ Cup loss, because of the track condition, did little damage to his reputation. And if there had been any doubt about him, even a soupcon of suspicion about his talent, he quickly dispelled it the following season with his performances in the Swale and the Gotham.
Easy Goer began his 1989 campaign in Florida, rallying outside from fifth to win the Swale Stakes by nearly nine lengths. But that was just prelude. He then won the Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct by 13, breaking Secretariat’s stakes record by a full second, setting a track record and nearly equaling the world record. And Day didn’t use his whip in either race. It was all Easy Goer and his massive talent, all about a big red train rolling towards Kentucky.
That Gotham still stands out in Day’s mind as perhaps the greatest performance by the greatest horse he ever rode. “He made a couple of different moves in the race,” Day says, referring to Easy Goer’s sudden advance down the backstretch and then to the colt’s knockout punch in the lane. “He was certainly on his game that day. He was running, but he wasn’t all out. He wasn’t straining significantly underneath me.”
Easy Goer completed the mile in 1:32 2-5, just a tick, a mere length, off Dr. Fager’s world record set in 1968. And Easy Goer wasn’t even straining; he was just rolling.
The Wood Memorial produced more of the same, but the fireworks weren’t quite as bright or as thunderous as they had been in the Gotham. Easy Goer stalked the pace, effortlessly took control and won, with little encouragement, by three lengths, and then, just to add the necessary punctuation, he galloped out strongly, leaving the others – they were hardly “rivals” -- far behind. By Easy Goer standards and expectations, the performance wasn’t spectacular, but it seemed to be the perfect preparatory tune-up for a train about to roll into Kentucky.
An interlude
Maybe it was in October, or it could have been November, of 1988, but the date hardly matters. The memory remains forever vivid for Arthur Hancock III, even if the date isn’t.
One day at Louie’s Restaurant in Paris, Ky., as he recalls it, he bumped into his brother, Seth. They chatted awhile, and talk turned, as it eventually must in Kentucky, to horses.
“It looks like we got a real nice colt out in California,” Hancock said.
“That’s too bad,” Seth Hancock told his older brother, “because I hear Mr. Phipps has the best horse he’s ever bred.”
Sunday Silence
Nobody wanted Sunday Silence except Arthur Hancock III. That’s the simple truth of it. Bred by Oak Cliff Thoroughbreds, Sunday Silence was born at Hancock’s Stone Farm in Paris, Ky., and nearly died from a viral infection before his first birthday.
When he was offered at auction as a yearling, specifically at the Keeneland Summer Sale of 1987, he attracted no buyers, and so for $17,000 Hancock brought him back to Stone Farm. The following year, Hancock tried to sell the colt again, sending him to California, but with a similar result. Hancock bought him back, this time for $32,000.
Sunday Silence had an attractive pedigree, by Halo out of Wishing Well. The winner of the United Nations Handicap, Halo already had established himself as a successful stallion, with such horses as Devil’s Bag and Sunny’s Halo. And Wishing Well was a multiple stakes winner of $381,625.
But apparently Sunday Silence himself wasn’t very attractive. The colt was tall and “gangly,” Hancock says, and cow-hocked. On one bloodstock agent’s personal graded scale of assessment, the colt was a triple-zero, which must have been a tripod intended to support heavy disapproval.
And then there was the accident. As a 2-year-old, Sunday Silence was in a van that overturned when the driver had a heart attack. Everything, in other words, about the young colt was either discouraging or disappointing.
But then he ran, and by running he defined himself in ways that had nothing to do with being unattractive or unwanted. He defined himself as a racehorse.
“This big black sonofabitch can run a little bit,” Charlie Whittingham told Hancock one morning by telephone, referring to the 2-year-old that had been left behind with the Hall of Fame trainer after not selling at auction.
That, Hancock says, was the first thing Whittingham ever told him about the horse. And in typical Whittingham fashion, the comment was an understatement: The black colt could run a little indeed.
How much he could run wouldn’t be clear for a while. Like Easy Goer, Sunday Silence finished second in his first outing, but probably should have won. Losing by a neck, he raced greenly, and in doing so he revealed a reluctance to keep a straight course in the stretch. It was a reluctance that would resurface.
But this was a time for education, and in his next outing, Sunday Silence won by 10 lengths. He then completed his juvenile campaign by finishing second in an allowance affair, a head behind the highly regarded Houston. But once again, Sunday Silence ran somewhat erratically in the stretch.
He began his 3-year-old season in March with a facile victory over a sloppy Santa Anita surface, and 17 days later, in the San Felipe, he made his stakes debut. He had run four times, and although he twice had lost in a photo, he probably should have been unbeaten.
Nevertheless, he never had raced around two turns or in stakes company, nor did he bring a huge reputation into the race, and so he wasn’t the bettors’ favorite in the San Felipe. That role went to Music Merci, who had just won the San Rafael Stakes by nine lengths.
But Music Merci couldn’t match Sunday Silence, who in the San Felipe implied that he, too, might be rolling towards Kentucky. After an awkward start, Sunday Silence quickly put himself in a prominent stalking position. He dragged jockey Pat Valenzuela to the lead in the second turn and then powered through the stretch to win by nearly two lengths over Flying Continental. And then, in the Santa Anita Derby, Sunday Silence issued a loud and reverberating challenge.
Ever since he sold for $2.9 million as a yearling, Houston was marked for stardom. He won his debut by 12 1/2 lengths, ran down Sunday Silence to win his second outing and then went to New York to win the Bay Shore Stakes by 10 1/2. He returned to the West Coast as a headliner and the unbeaten favorite for the 1989 Santa Anita Derby.
But, of course, Sunday Silence stole the show. Houston and Sunday Silence, who were side-by-side in the starting gate, came together and bumped at the start. Houston recovered quickly enough, however, to assume the lead as the field entered the first turn, with Sunday Silence stalking, a couple lengths back in third.
Sunday Silence had a remarkable talent for running the turn. His extraordinary athleticism enabled him to alter his stride in a blink, changing leads and leaning aggressively into the turn with his left foreleg. Unlike other horses, he didn’t have to slow down to get around a turn, explains jockey Chris McCarron, who would ride him later that year. To some it seemed as if Sunday Silence could actually accelerate through the turn, and maybe he could, for he certainly enjoyed his greatest advantage there. In the turn, he won many of his races.
And it was in the second turn that he took control of the Santa Anita Derby. With Valenzuela sitting motionless, Sunday Silence swirled around the second turn, running to and quickly by Music Merci and Houston. They capitulated without argument. In the stretch, Sunday Silence ducked in when Valenzuela hit him right handed; but then the black colt straightened and drew away powerfully and dominantly, winning by 11 lengths and completing the 1 1/8 miles in 1:47 3-5, or three lengths off the stakes record.
In the very next moment, on the nationally televised broadcast of the race, a camera focused on Whittingham, looking not so much celebratory as intensely earnest while making his way to the winner’s circle, and Dave Johnson commented that the “Bald Eagle,” as the venerable trainer was called, had one eye on Kentucky and the other on Easy Goer.
The Derby
The public was much more sanguine than most of the participants. The bettors made Easy Goer, along with his stablemate, Awe Inspiring, their 4-5 favorite in the 115th Kentucky Derby. Sunday Silence they respected, at 3-1. A victory by anybody else was beyond the reach of even the wildest imagination.
McGaughey had seen Sunday Silence’s romp at Santa Anita, and so he wasn’t nearly as confident as the bettors. Sunday Silence, he knew, would be tough to beat. And Day was concerned because of the weather. Rain fell on Louisville, and the temperature dipped into the 40s, a record low for Derby Day. Although the rain had stopped its onslaught by post time, the track for the Derby was officially muddy, with puddles of water for emphasis. Yes, it was very much like that day six months earlier, when Easy Goer finished second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.
Although Sunday Silence had won a race on a sloppy track, Hancock wasn’t confident either. He had confidence in his horse, but he didn’t expect to win the Derby, not really, not in any anticipatory way, because he had come to expect disappointment, regarding it as inevitable, when confronted with such forces as these.
In 1972, when A.B. “Bull” Hancock died, the advisors to his estate recommended to the Board of Directors that leadership of the famed Claiborne Farm be turned over to Seth Hancock rather than to his older brother. And the most influential of those advisors was Ogden Phipps.
The following year, Arthur Hancock left Claiborne to establish Stone Farm. And so the confrontation and the rivalry, along with the inevitability of disappointment, all reached back into the histories of the families, their farms and their horses, reached down deeply, too, into a turbulence of hopes, dreams and aspirations, with all of that converging in a sort of mythic confluence on this day and with this Derby, as, the fanciful might say, fate surely intended.
Only Whittingham was confident. He had become a partner in Sunday Silence, along with Ernest Gaillard, a California physician and Louisville native. Forever astute and seldom given to pronouncements, Whittingham said flatly and unequivocally that Sunday Silence would win.
And, of course, he was right.
Bumped at the start and then steadied, Sunday Silence nevertheless found a perfect position in fourth as the field of 15 straightened for the run down the backstretch. Houston led through lively fractions, followed by Clever Trevor and Northern Wolf. Sunday Silence seemed to be moving easily, and to his outside in fifth ran Easy Goer.
Down the backstretch, it became apparent that Easy Goer wasn’t himself. Day nudged him along, but got little response. In the second turn, without much urging, Sunday Silence advanced. He struck the front as the field turned into the stretch. Valenzuela encouraged him with a right-handed stick, and Sunday Silence ducked in, brushing with Northern Wolf; the jockey switched the stick to his left hand, and the black colt ducked out.
Sunday Silence came down the Churchill stretch like a well oiled reveler on New Year’s Eve, ducking in and then out and then in again. Somehow, though, he avoided disaster, largely because nobody else was running much at the time. Sunday Silence won by 2 1/2 lengths, completing the 1 1/4 miles in a modest 2:05; Easy Goer rallied to finish second without threatening, a head in front of his stablemate.
The Kentucky Derby, as it turned out, reiterated the known and confirmed the suspected: Sunday Silence and Easy Goer were the best 3-year-olds in the country, and one of them didn’t especially care for the mud at Churchill Downs. Beyond that, though, questions remained. They waited for a race that many still regard as one of the best of the era.
The Preakness
On the morning of the race, Hancock read that 97 of 100 turf writers covering the Preakness were picking Easy Goer to win. This worried Hancock, for he knew the mud had played a part in Sunday Silence’s victory in Kentucky. Most of all, though, it worried him that his horse wasn’t receiving the proper respect due a Derby winner. And so Hancock took the information to Whittingham, just down the hall in the same Baltimore hotel.
“Those sports writers,” Whittingham said, as Hancock recalls it, “don’t even know what color your horse is.”
And just as Whittingham finished his assessment of sports writers in general and 97 of them in particular, one of them appeared on the nearby television screen to say, “Few of the experts give the chestnut son of Halo a chance in today’s Preakness.”
Chestnut son of Halo?
“That’s when I knew we were going to win,” Hancock says.
Despite the Derby, Easy Goer was the 3-5 favorite. After all, the track was fast, and many still expected him to become the next superhorse, even if he wouldn’t have a Triple Crown to brandish. As flaws went, a disdain for mud was so minor that it could be excused, especially in a superstar.
The record crowd at Pimlico – 90,145 – made Sunday Silence 2-1, but remained, like at least 97 sports writers, somewhat skeptical. After all, Sunday Silence had missed a couple days of training with a minor foot problem, and he had shown a propensity for imitating at times a drunken reveler. Valenzuela had explained the colt’s weaving through the stretch at Churchill Downs by saying it was a reaction to the Derby throng. But that explanation didn’t play well in Baltimore, or anywhere else; Sunday Silence had seen some erratic moments even before Kentucky.
But all the expectations and concerns and skepticism faded into the background once the 114th Preakness began. Sunday Silence ran in fourth as the field of eight entered the first turn, with Easy Goer just behind him. They had perfect positions, and as they advanced down the backstretch, gaining on the leaders, they became the race, clearly and entirely.
Concerned that he would get floated wide, Day loosened his hold on Easy Goer, who shot forward, first passing Sunday Silence and then Houston, the early leader. Easy Goer took a narrow lead into the second turn. And there, Day recalls, he “let him down a little bit,” giving the colt a momentary breather.
“But just that quick, Sunday Silence was back on us,” Day says, as if still surprised and eternally impressed with the suddenness of it all. Sunday Silence again used the turn to his advantage.
He grabbed the lead with a quarter-mile remaining, and Easy Goer, who didn’t get a breather after all, tried to fight back on the inside. And together, eyeball-to-eyeball with matched determination, they ran the length of the Pimlico stretch.
Easy Goer had won the Swale, the Gotham and the Wood by rallying outside of horses, and now he suddenly and unexpectedly found himself pinned down on the rail. It was, Day remembers, an uncomfortable position for the red colt.
Still, Easy Goer gamely came back, putting his head in front in deep stretch, and then Sunday Silence returned the fight: A puncher and a boxer, they fought determinedly to the wire, the puncher landing some big blows but then missing some others, and the boxer countering and jabbing, all the while the two of them circling and looking for an opening, for a knockout, which, of course, never came because, well, they were just too good.
“Sunday Silence had been leaning on me,” Day says, recalling the final strides of the Preakness, where he tried to resist the outside pressure. But Easy Goer could turn only his head; his body was too spent to follow.
Nine times with a right-handed whip, Valenzuela entreated Sunday Silence for more effort, and the black colt responded, bearing in and bearing down and finally winning by a nose in the closest Preakness ever run.
They completed the 1 3/16 miles in 1:53 4-5, the third-fastest clocking in the history of the race. Day objected, claiming foul and alleging interference in the stretch. But after several minutes, the stewards made it official: Sunday Silence had won two-thirds of the Triple Crown.
The Belmont
After the Preakness, McGaughey said he expected to hear all the Affirmed-Alydar comparisons. And they would be endless, with Easy Goer eternally locked into the role of runner-up, if in the Belmont Stakes he again finished second and if Sunday Silence became the sport’s 12th Triple Crown winner. But, of course, McGaughey had three weeks to make sure that didn’t happen.
In many ways, the Preakness was more disappointing for him than the Derby had been. The muddy surface explained the loss in Kentucky. Easy Goer had no such excuse in Maryland.
On the other hand, McGaughey says, the Preakness convinced him that Easy Goer could indeed beat his rival. Only a nose, after all, separated them. Inches really. And both trainer and jockey believed then, as they believe now, that Easy Goer would have won the Preakness if he had been outside of Sunday Silence rather than pinned on the rail.
So maybe a different strategy would produce a different outcome. Or maybe the distance would, the famous 1 1/2 miles that, some say fondly, tests champions. And if not the distance, then surely the track itself would alter the dynamic and tip the scales, for Belmont Park’s vast oval and sweeping turns would minimize any advantage in athleticism that Sunday Silence might have had.
And then, the night before the 121st Belmont Stakes, torrential rains fell on Long Island. Belmont Park closed its track to training the next morning, and it seemed Easy Goer would surely face another muddy surface.
But the sun, which had been so bashful all week, suddenly burst through to make a bright appearance early in the day. And the surface dried so quickly that it was pronounced “fast” long before post time. Could it be that circumstances so abruptly shifted allegiance?
Or was Easy Goer just unbeatable that day? Oddly enough, for the first time in the Triple Crown, he wasn’t the betting favorite. Easy Goer’s odds were 8-5.
Sunday Silence’s were 4-5. In a field with little early speed, he could control the pace to his advantage, or at least that was the most probable scenario, but even that changed suddenly and unexpectedly when Le Voyageur, an unlikely invader from France, went the for lead out of the gate. With Sunday Silence stalking, Le Voyageur took the field of 10 through an opening half-mile in 47 seconds and six furlongs in 1:11 1-5, lively splits for such a distance.
In the second turn, Sunday Silence made his move and briefly put his head in front. But on the outside, Easy Goer moved, too. And he moved irresistibly.
Easy Goer went by so quickly, he looked like a train Sunday Silence had just missed. And Sunday Silence had no response, not this time. Easy Goer pushed his advantage to four lengths, six lengths, eight lengths at the finish, stopping the teletimer at 2:26, which was the second-fastest clocking in Belmont in history.
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Rivalry redux
Although second in New York, Sunday Silence won a million-dollar bonus for the best performance in the Triple Crown series. That was $2.5 million shy of what it might have been with a Belmont victory. Still, he had two gems, which would suffice most seasons to win the golden Eclipse Award symbolic of the Horse of the Year.
Strangely enough, though, by November, Sunday Silence was again in the position of having to prove himself. In his post-Belmont return, he finished second in the Swaps Stakes at Hollywood Park, surrendering a four-length lead to Prized in deep stretch. And although Sunday Silence won the Super Derby at Louisiana Downs by six lengths, the victory hardly matched the accomplishments piling high for Easy Goer.
The loss in the Preakness, McGaughey said, had made Easy Goer a better horse, and he seemed to prove it with each outing. After the Belmont, he defeated older horses in the Whitney Handicap at Saratoga, where two weeks later he won the Travers Stakes. He even won in the mud, beating older horses in the Woodward Handicap at Belmont before handily winning the Jockey Club Gold Cup.
Easy Goer and Sunday Silence had proven themselves, and they had proven themselves against each other. But there could be only one Horse of the Year, and that would be the winner of the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Gulfstream Park.
Easy Goer was again the bettors’ favorite, at 1-2, with Sunday Silence at 2-1. But the situation had changed since their Triple Crown confrontations. Valenzuela had been suspended. And so Chris McCarron, who never had ridden the horse in the afternoon, had the mount on Sunday Silence for the Breeders’ Cup.
“I was confident that I was on a horse that could beat Easy Goer,” McCarron says, putting some topspin on “could,” as if to suggest he was also aware of a horse that could beat Sunday Silence. But he also knew Sunday Silence was training “as well as a horse could possibly train.”
Before the Breeders’ Cup, he had strung together several impressive workouts, including a mile at Del Mar in 1:33 2-5, which McCarron still remembers as “unbelievable.” And after the Super Derby victory, Whittingham had pronounced the colt to be “ready for Easy Goer.”
But the Bald Eagle made no predictions, as he had at Churchill Downs. The rivalry had gone beyond that. Everything had been said, the compliments paid, the respect given. Only their final confrontation remained, and, in the end, it would only confirm that they both were superlative.
From the inside post position, Easy Goer came away from the gate awkwardly, and then he ducked inward as he left the chute, at that point where it and the stretch and the turn all intersected.
“His mind was a million miles away,” Day says, recalling the start of the Classic.
And so after a half-mile in 46 1-5 seconds, Easy Goer was six lengths behind Sunday Silence, who was third, and 11 lengths behind the leader, Slew City Slew. Down the backstretch, Sunday Silence settled into his long-striding rhythm and advanced to within four lengths of the lead. Easy Goer advanced, too, moving strongly to get within a length of Sunday Silence as the field approached the second turn. And for an instant, the Classic looked like the Preakness, but the supporting cast at Gulfstream still had some meaningful lines.
Blushing John, who would be named the year’s champion older horse, became the new leader in the second turn. As always, Sunday Silence did some of best work there, and when they straightened for the run down the lane, he was at Blushing John’s hip. And he kept coming. In mid-stretch, with McCarron prudently shunning the whip, Sunday Silence drew alongside the leader, clearly on his way to grabbing the advantage for his own.
Easy Goer, however, had dropped back in the turn, leaving himself with a deficit of 4 1/2 lengths in the stretch. But then, switching to his right lead, he charged again, bursting towards the wire, dropping his belly and reaching for real estate. Just as Sunday Silence seemed certain to win, Easy Goer seemed determined to prevent his rival’s victory.
Sunday Silence won by a neck, completing the 1 1/4 miles in 2:00 1-5. Most of all, though, they finished together.
Epilogue
Sunday Silence and Easy Goer were expected to face each other again the following year, in a million-dollar extravaganza at Arlington, a race created especially to accommodate their rivalry. Injuries, however, forced both into retirement before they could meet again.
Sunday Silence won nine of his 14 races, with five seconds, and he earned $4,968,554 in his career. Easy Goer won 14 of 20, with five seconds and a third, and he earned $4,873,770.
Sunday Silence, of course, won three of their four meetings. Easy Goer’s single victory over Sunday Silence, however, was dominant. And so their fans and supporters still argue.
But perhaps McGaughey has the correct perspective: Quite simply, Easy Goer and Sunday Silence were each capable of beating the other. “To be able to get through the Triple Crown,” he says, “and accomplish what they accomplished throughout the year, they were both great horses.”
And they had a great rivalry.
This originally appeared as a chapter in Horse Racing's Greatest Rivalries and is reprinted here with permission of Blood-Horse Publications (copyright 2008).
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