Monday, April 20, 2009

The Overlooked Man Behind Tiznow

Los Angeles, April 21, 2009--Almost as an aside, it was mentioned that Tiznow, one of the newest inductees into the Racing Hall Fame, was trained by Jay Robbins. Not long after Tiznow's epic years in 2000-01, Robbins retreated to the shadows of his small stable at Santa Anita, but it would have been nice this week if somebody had hit him in the puss with a klieg light. Robbins' work with the hard-to-handle, problem-plagued Tiznow over those two campaigns is a textbook in training.

It says bags about Robbins the consummate horseman that he skipped the trip to New Orleans, for the Eclipse dinner that honored Tiznow as the 2000 Horse of the Year. Tiznow had been troubled by a quarter crack, and had an important race to run, the Strub Stakes, in a few days. Robbins, not far from the barn, learned of Tiznow's coronation via his wife Sandy's cell phone, all the way from Louisiana.

There would be another dinner, this time in Miami Beach, where Tiznow would have to settle for champion older male instead of a second Horse of the Year title. Ironically, Point Given, who beat out Tiznow for the 2001 championship, was left at the altar this week when the Hall of Fame votes were counted. Point Given's time will come. Bill Belichick, coach of the champion New England Patriots, made Tiznow's Eclipse presentation in Florida. A month before, Belichick had sent Jay Robbins a Christmas card that read, "Thanks for the inspiration." Early in the Patriots' 2001 season, when the club was floundering, Belichick showed his players a video of the stretch run of the Breeders' Cup Classic, the one in which Tiznow and Sheik Mohammed's Sakhee slugged it out. At the time, it was the best Technicolor example of true grit that the coach could put his hands on.

Tiznow, a California-bred from the wrong side of the tracks, was the first--and still only--back-to-back winner of the Classic, and the only 3-year-old male to ever win Horse of the Year without running in a Triple Crown race, but there was still idle, wishful talk about running him in 2002 as a 5-year-old. After all, he had never run at two, because of a fractured tibia, and his entire career had been only 15 races.

Tiznow's breeding appeal was too much for his owners to resist. His breeder and majority owner, the lovely Cecilia "Cee" Straub-Rubens, probably would have kept him on the track, but she had died, after a battle with cancer, three days after the first Breeders' Cup win. Tiznow was now squarely in the hands of Mike Cooper, who was managing the stable for Straub-Rubens' heirs. Cooper and Robbins had been on different pages for some time, arguing bitterly about the best way to get Tiznow to his second Breeders' Cup. The end came in March of 2002, when Cooper took away Tizbud, Tiznow's full brother, and sent him to trainer John Sadler. Robbins, not exactly swimming in horses despite the notoriety Tiznow brought him, told Cooper to reassign his other horses as well.

It would be a mistake to paint Robbins as a one-hit wonder. At one time, in Tiznow, Jockey Club Gold Cup winner Flying Continental and Nostalgia's Star, he could say that he trained three of the 10 richest Cal-breds of all-time. But his stable, launched in 1971, didn't reach the million-dollar purse mark until 18 years later. Since Tiznow earned $6.4 million in 2000-01, Robbins has averaged six wins a year. Now 63, he had only 14 starters at the recently completed Santa Anita meet, his lone win with Johnny Eves, another Cal-bred, in the Grade 2 Palos Verdes Handicap.

Johnny Eves gave Robbins a Grade 1 win in the 2007 Malibu at Santa Anita. Even with a smattering of stock, Robbins still knows how to care for and place a horse. In 1999, after a workout at Del Mar by the unraced Tiznow, Robbins suspected he had something special in tow. Tiznow, so difficult that they considered gelding him, didn't make his debut until the following spring. It took him three races to leave the maiden ranks, but by summer Robbins didn't flinch, running him against older horses after only five starts. "I've got the best 3-year-old in the country, and nobody knows it," he whispered to a few intimates.

That first Breeders' Cup, as a $360,000 supplemental, Tiznow beat Fusaichi Pegasus, Lemon Drop Kid and the star from overseas, Giant's Causeway. Frankie Dettori, who rode Sakhee the next year, said that it was Tiznow's enormous head that made the difference at the wire in those two close finishes. "He's got a head like a dinosaur," Dettori said. "You've got to be a length and a half ahead of him to make sure you've got him beaten." A head and a heart and trainer Jay Robbins. It won't happen, but that isn't a bad lead-in for that plaque at Saratoga Springs.

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