Q & A: Shug McGaughey & Randy Romero

[Wandering Eyes]

Over 34 years and hundreds of races, the Breeders’ Cup has provided many a thrill and many a great race. But virtually everyone agrees that one race stands alone–the 1988 Distaff won by Personal Ensign. It may have been the greatest Breeders’ Cup race ever run. This year marks the 30th anniversary of that race. In the latest Thoroughbred Daily News podcast, brought to you by Taylor Made, we looked back at this great race with trainer Shug McGaughey and jockey Randy Romero. Excerpts from that podcast are below:

TDN: Shug, not only had you already beaten Winning Colors in the Maskette, but Winning Colors’ prep in the Spinster was not very good. It looked at the time that perhaps she was not coming into the race in her best form. What did you think of her as a competitor coming into the race?

SM: I agree with you. We’d beat her pretty fair and square going a mile here doing what she wanted to do and then she went to the Spinster and threw a real dud in. [D.] Wayne [Lukas]’s always had a way of having horses bouncing back and, obviously, she liked the sloppy track at Churchill. She was pretty much at home there. She ran an outstanding race, but I don’t think going into it that I was really that … I mean I was concerned, but I wasn’t overly concerned really because we beat her and then she had run such a bad race in the Spinster. I think there were some others that maybe had my eye a little bit more than her, including Goodbye Halo.

TDN: So let’s get into the race itself. They’re about half way down the back stretch. Winning Colors is going easily on the lead and Personal Ensign? Well, she seemed to be spinning her wheels. At that point, were you worried? Were you worried before then? What did you think as Winning Colors was three, four lengths in front and seemingly going comfortably down the backstretch?

SM: I was never really comfortable because she got back farther than she usually does even though she came from back. Then we got to the half-mile pole and nothing was happening. She used to start picking up her horses then. And then at the 3/8-pole I was standing with a friend of mine and he kind of looked at me and I kind of looked at him and I said ‘it doesn’t look like it today.’ Then all of a sudden she started making that run, but Winning Colors was still comfortably in front. I didn’t think she was going to be able to catch her, I just wanted to make a good account of herself. Then BAM! She did catch her, but Randy told me it was never in doubt.

TDN: Randy, of the millions of people watching the race you may have been the only person who believed she was going to win, even when it looked impossible. What did you know?

RR: Because I rode Winning Colors when she broke her maiden. I always knew she came up late. The way the track was, Gary [Stevens] had opened up a lot of lengths on the field. The field was spreading so I knew I was going pretty fast. The timing wasn’t fast, but the track was muddy, but it was still going fast. I had rode her in that race and she’d get late at the end, so I just never gave up on my filly. I could see when I switched my stick to my left hand at the 3/8-pole or the 5/16-pole that she got on a hard surface and she started picking up horses. The last sixteenth of a mile, I could feel her accelerating to get to that filly. I passed by Goodbye Halo and she thought it was over. But when she looked over to the other side, she saw Winning Colors. She was brilliant this filly, this mare. She looked over and saw her. She dug in again. I used to ride Quarter Horses. In those races you win by inches and feet. So when you ride Quarter Horses you know when you can win and not. It’s something you sense.

TDN: As you mentioned earlier, at about the 3/8-pole or so, maybe a little closer to the quarter-pole, you were down on the inside. Then you shifted out to about the five or six path. That really seemed to be the pivotal moment in that race. What was going through your mind? Why did you make that decision to get off the rail and go to the middle of the track?

RR: Some instinct made me do it. I don’t know why I did it. It’s just an instinct that I had to do something because I wasn’t getting anywhere where I was. So something in my mind just made me switch sticks and hit her left handed and then when I did, she adjusted out. It was just like an act of God that it happened. I don’t know why I did it. People ask me that all the time. It’s just an instinct that I had to do something and there was nothing I was doing that was correct. So it just came to my mind to do it. I wasn’t gaining any ground and I needed to get after her and get ground picked up. That was a pivotal move. And that’s what made her win the race.

TDN: So you believe if you stayed on the inside she would not have won.

RR: No, no. Absolutely not

TDN: Shug, after the race was over and to no one’s surprise, you told the NBC commentators that you thought she was ‘hopelessly beaten.’ Did you underestimate her determination? Did she have an even bigger heart and an even bigger will to win than even her trainer knew?

SM: I think so. When you see something like that, for her to run down the [GI Kentucky] Derby winner and the [GI Kentucky] Oaks winner to win…I mean, I don’t know that you ever know that they’ve got that much determination because really, in most all of her other races, she was kind of winning fairly easy. So it’s hard to measure that kind of heart unless they showed it to you and she obviously showed it that day.

TDN: Shug, you’ve won plenty of big races. Many Breeders’ Cups, you won a Kentucky Derby, you won the Belmont S. The overall career of Personal Ensign and how you guided her through a surgery, 13 races, undefeated, pulling off the impossible in the Breeders’ Cup, something nobody thought could be done at the 1/8-pole, at the 3/16-pole. Where do you rank this whole story so far as your top achievements as a trainer?

SM: At the top. Like you said, she was the first champion to be retired undefeated in 80 some-odd years. I don’t think there has been one since. It would have been a shame if she would have gotten beat that day after all she’d done. But to be able to have a filly and be able to participate in those types of races and have her win as many of them as she did, in all of them, was something that’s a career maker. I think that a lot of the awards that I’ve gotten have been because of her career. It’s very satisfying to me to look back on it and think that we all went through that together. Joe Hirsch, years ago, gave me a poster that I’ve got framed in my office of all the 13 races. I will sometimes walk up there and look at it and just kind of look at the charts and see who she ran against. It’s still exciting for me. I never have watched the replay that much. The next summer we were at Saratoga and every time you turned the TV on they’d show the finish of the race. But as for me sitting down watching the rerun that much, I haven’t because it’s still kind of scary to relive.

 

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