He looked 1 paced on turf ,
tho unfortunately this jock did him no favours at all !!!,pulled the stick on the turn went about 200 mtrs too soon:confused:
Also had to beat a bad barrier


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68CrD...eature=related

Ramon Perez came pretty close to riding him in his first dirt start for Mott... gotta wonder what might have been...

I'll never forget that Arlington race of his, it was so manufacturered, yet not a sole in the area gave a ****. I was a junior in high school and my friends and I were the 2nd people in line, behind some nut job that drove their RV all the way from Minnesota to see Cigar that day. Sat on Euclid Ave until about 8:30am where I couldn't take it anymore, so I opened the gate myself and we all poured in and sprinted up the Clubhouse hill to get in line. I got a finish line seat and didn't move the whole f'n day, first and last time in history that will happen.

It did make for some boring competetion.
Obviously a great horse. But its fun
to watch races when the outcome is in doubt.

There just was not any doubt with him as I remember.
I can remember people saying, this is all set up.
Who cares about racing its all a big set up. They all
take a fall for him. My friends at that time said it
was a big bore... It was hard to convince them that
the horse was really just too good.

And Bailey. They hated Bailey. Said the horse made Bailey.
All kind of silly. I can remember people saying they should
give him a jockey made of lead to make it fair also.

It may be in the extreme, but with all the talk this spring about synthetic to dirt, Cigar's career is a clear example of how the surface can mean everything in determining the success of a racer. Couldn't win on turf, then doesn't lose for two years on dirt. Wonder what would have happended to him on the rubber?

Yes would be very interesting was wondering that myself about a few horses recently street cry for ex produced a great dirt horse his produce suck on turf with synthetic tracks popping up everywhere :confused:
Will we see will we see a new breed just for rubber ?

Listening to Denman do the call, it sounded more like Cigar was already midway through the long winning streak than the maiden he was. Actually gave me chills.

Take away the turf, and Cigar won 18 of 22 starts, with two 2nds and one 3rd (the close 3rd in the '96 BC Classic). His lone out-of-the-money finish on dirt was his first race.

I drove 200 miles to NY to see he next-to-last race. A good racing-fan start for my 3-yr-old son, too: getting to see Skip Away and Cigar battle it out in the stretch.

--Dunbar

I was in seventh grade when that happened!

My mom took me and my brother out to see the race, I wasn't that into it then but had been watching him on TV so I was okay with going.

I've always wanted to find a video of that race, but never have.

I've got it on VHS..Taped the entire Channel 2 coverage that day

In Bailey's book, he mentioned how he always thought Cigar had talent but couldn't figure out why that didn't translate that into wins.

One night he had to leave for the Meadowlands to ride a horse that night missing Cigar's win on dirt, when he came in the next day he asked Mike any good one's you ride after I left? Smith said yeah Cigar won...that's as close to paraphrasing that paragraph as my memory will allow...

Obcourse Bailey got on him right after that when Smith decided to ride Devil is Due in the now Cigar Mile. The rest as they say is history.

It's a little interesting that they added lasix for the first time when he made his turf debut just two weeks after that big dirt win.

Perhaps he even bled a tiny bit in the dirt win.

That dirt MSW win was just a HUGE performance though! In a 6f sprint, he gets left, is rushed up into a speed duel through sharp middle fractions, fractures his sharp breaking pace rival into total defeat, and stays on to win with a big figure while a next out winner who sucked up for 2nd couldn't close the final margin to any less than 2.25 lengths.

That was just his 2nd lifetime start, and it was off of a 2.5 month layoff. And it's not like he had to be a sprinter - his sire's sire won the Epsom Derby at 12f's and his dam sire swept the American Triple Crown series.

Performances like that are very rare among lightly raced horses.

I wonder if it's on tape somewhere in my house. I have no clue. I do know, though, that Polar Expedition was in the race and he was the very first horse I remember really really liking.

Well Tiznow broke his maiden routing, so it wasn't as big a leap for him to go in a light Grade 3 on dirt as it would have been for Cigar.

Wasn't Lure supposed to be a Derby horse until they found out his best surface was the turf. Even hall of famers can get it wrong at times.

Lure was a stakes winner on dirt, dead-heating with Devil His Due in the Gotham. I think he was also favorite in the Champagne as a 2yo after an impressive maiden win.

It's interesting to note that Cigar was run above his condition in his first few turf races for Bill Mott (thanks to Kiris for the PPs). And whereas DrugS uses his mid-80s Beyers in those races to validate his distaste for grass, note that he was running turf Beyers in the high 90s as a 3yo in CA. Maybe he should have stayed at Arlington for the Million to secure the win streak record instead of shipping to San Diego to get his ass kicked.

He would have ran last in Million...of that I have little doubt.

If Cigar and Holy Bull had faced each other more, who do you think would have came out on top most of the time? I would go with Holy Bull, but maybe that's just me.

Cigar gave away ground late in 10 of his 11 turf races all at distances much shorter than 10 furlongs.

Horses like Awad, Mecke, and Sandpit would have beaten him by the length of a football field on turf.