In Pulpit, Seth Hancock Has Reason to Exclaim

Seth Hancock has spent his life around champion racehorses. He grew up as his father was building Claiborne Farm into a great breeding operation, with stallions such as Nasrullah and Bold Ruler shaping the development of the American thoroughbred. Under the son’s management, Claiborne bred and raced a Kentucky Derby winner, Swale, and it has been the home of great stallions from Secretariat to Mr. Prospector.

In short, Hancock is a man who ought to be blase about watching one of his horses win a mere maiden race. Yet after the fourth race at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, Fla., last Saturday, the low-key Kentuckian said, “You wait years for something like this to happen. This couldn’t be any more exciting.”

Indeed, even neutral observers were agog over the performance of Hancock’s colt, Pulpit. Rarely has any thoroughbred started his career in such spectacular fashion.

When the gate opened for the seven-furlong race, Pulpit broke sharply, dueled with one rival and secured a clear lead after running the first half-mile in 45 seconds. He had the race won when he reached the six-furlong mark in 1:09 4/5. But even though jockey Shane Sellers barely was moving a muscle, Pulpit accelerated the last furlong in an extraordinary 12 seconds flat, winning by 7 1/2 lengths in the dazzling time of 1:21 4/5.

The significance of this time was put into perspective later in the day, when the high-class 4-year-old sprinter Frisco View also scored a front-running victory in a seven-furlong race. His time was 1:22 2/5.

In my system of speed handicapping, Pulpit earned a figure of 106--better than any of the current early favorites for the Kentucky Derby ever has run. It was the fastest racing debut by any horse in the 1990s.

This was the result that Hancock might have dreamed of when he planned the mating of the mare Preach to the stallion A.P. Indy. Preach is a beautifully bred daughter of Mr. Prospector, who had won a Grade I stakes for Claiborne before being retired. Because many of Claiborne’s stallions have related pedigrees, Hancock needed to find what breeders call an “outcross”--a different family tree that would mesh well with Preach’s. Hancock chose to breed her to A.P. Indy, the son of Seattle Slew who was horse of the year in 1992 and is now a highly fashionable young stallion prospect.

Thoroughbred breeding is, of course, a very inexact science and a chancy business--as Pulpit proceeded to demonstrate. He was a good-looking yearling, and the people at Claiborne had high hopes for him from the start. He started learning the basics of the sport in February 1996, but as he was galloping for the second time he fractured his hind leg. That cost him any chance for glory as a 2 year old and postponed the start of his career until he turned 3.

With all of Pulpit’s physical problems behind him, trainer Frank Brothers was optimistic when he saddled the colt Saturday. “He looks the part and he trained very well and, of course, he’s very well bred,” Brothers said. “But no trainer can truthfully tell you that he knows a horse is going to run the way Pulpit did.”

After Pulpit ran so spectacularly, Brothers suddenly was faced with an unexpected challenge. The Kentucky Derby is the natural objective for a 3 year old with such talent--especially for one owned by a Kentucky breeder for whom the Derby trophy is equivalent to the Holy Grail. Even though the first Saturday in May is 3 1/2 months away, history indicates that Pulpit will be playing a difficult game of catch-up. Every winner of the Churchill Downs Classic since 1882 raced at the age of 2, laying the essential groundwork of fitness and experience.

“I’d love to have the textbook preparation--some starts at two followed by a little break,” Brothers said. “But you have to play the hand that’s dealt you.”

Brothers said Pulpit probably would make his next start in a 1 1/16-mile allowance race, where the colt might give some indication about his distance capabilities. The trainer said he has few doubts here: Pulpit has the stride of a distance runner, and, besides, he has a sire who achieved his greatest glory at 1 1/4 miles.

In almost any other case, it would be preposterous to start thinking about the classics for a youngster who has won only a seven-furlong maiden race. But Pulpit is an exceptional case--one of the sport’s most exciting prospects in years.