By Dick Jerardi
The Smarty Jones resume, carved out on the track over seven months and nine races from November 2003 until June 2004 lacked only one element: a proper ending. On August 1 at the Fasig-Tipton Sales Pavilion, a few furlongs down East Avenue from the main entrance to Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, New York, Smarty will get a forever ending. One of the best horses of the 21st Century, the 2004 3-year-old champion, will be inducted as a member of the National Museum of Racing’s 2025 Hall of Fame Class.
For the rest of time, Smarty Jones will be immortalized in the museum on Union Ave., across from America’s oldest race track. The horse that began his career at what was then called Philadelphia Park (now Parx Racing) will have a place of honor alongside Man o’ War, Secretariat, Kelso and all the legends of the sport.
After getting enough votes from the Hall of Fame nominating committee to get on the final ballot for the first time, Smarty Jones got the necessary 50 percent plus one vote from all the returned ballots. There were eight horses, seven trainers and one jockey on the final ballot. Smarty Jones was the only one of the 16 finalists to get the necessary support for induction.
Two races at his home base, one at Aqueduct, three at Oaklawn Park, one each at Churchill Downs, Pimlico and Belmont Park. Nine races at nine different distances in barely 200 days, a schedule that the top horses don’t even attempt in this era. One stakes win at home, one in New York, three in Arkansas, the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness by the biggest margin in the history of a race that will be run for the 150th time next month.
That Smarty Jones was able to sustain top form through all those races in that amount of time is a testament to the raw talent of the brilliant Pennsylvania bred. Smarty will become the fourth horse from the Commonwealth in the Hall of Fame, preceded by Parole (a long distance specialist and foal of 1873), Flatterer (Eclipse Award as the top steeplechase for four consecutive years, 1983-1986) and the filly Go For Wand, 2-year-old champion filly in 1989 and 3-year-old filly champion in 1990.
In recent years, Pat Chapman had just one wish for the horse she bred and owned with her late husband Roy: that Smarty Jones be considered for the Hall of Fame. Well, the horse, who turned 24 this year and is still breeding at Rodney Eckenrode’s Equistar Farm in Annville, Pa, was considered and deemed worthy.
“I don’t know when it’s going to hit me,” Pat Chapman said from her home in Florida after hearing the news.
After a few moments, she said: “It’s starting to sink in a little bit.”
Nobody on earth could have done a better training job than John Servis and his team did with Smarty Jones. No detail was overlooked. The horse just kept getting better and better until, finally, he had nothing left to give.
Servis even anticipated what actually happened in the Belmont Stakes when he expressed concern that Smarty would be “targeted.” Two riders in the race essentially sacrificed their horses’ chances by making Smarty run too fast, too soon. Some combination of the in-race tactics, the grueling campaign and leg issues that would more clearly manifest themselves in succeeding months and cause Smarty to be retired later in the summer of 2004, caught up with the horse in the final yards of the race when he had to settle for second.
Anybody who understands racing knows the best horse did not win that June day when a record 120,139 crammed old Belmont Park to see the colt who had transcended the sport go for the Triple Crown. Circumstance often determines results in the game, but no result can change the essence of what Smarty Jones was and remains to this day – a horse with speed, acceleration on command and an unquestioned will to win.
Like Servis (2,073 career wins), who trains on at Parx, Smarty’s jockey Stewart Elliott rides on in the southwest, still winning (5,837 wins) and making split second decisions like the one he made when the field was heading into the first turn of the Derby. There were five horses across the track just behind the leader. Smarty was in the middle of the five.
Elliott could have been timid and backed Smarty out of the pack. Instead, he was aggressive and sent Smarty away from the group into a perfect position as the field emerged from the turn. Given a chance to prove he was good enough, Smarty Jones proved it emphatically, running away from the field in the stretch.
Servis and Elliott believed in the horse and each other. The Chapmans put their trust in the trainer and jockey.
Smarty Jones the horse will be going into the Hall of Fame and the team – Pat Chapman, John Servis and Stewart Elliott – behind the horse will get to celebrate horse racing’s highest honor for the rest of their lives.
