Tabasco Cat By Susie Raisher
© 2001 Susie Raisher Tabasco
Cat
Tabasco Cat Was More Then
Just Another Champion
“And Go For Gin is tested by the Preakness winner Tabasco Cat and
the battle is joined at the top of the stretch! Tabasco Cat has forged
past Go For Gin! Strodes Creek is third! Pat Day and Tabasco Cat are in
front with 100 yards to come! Go For Gin and Strodes Creek! And here’s
the wire! And TABASCO CAT will prevail to win the 126th Belmont!”
Tom Durkin screamed as the chestnut son of Storm Cat cruised under the
wire to win the 1994 Belmont Stakes by a comfortable length and three-quarters.
It was the highlight of his career, though his second consecutive Grade
1 win, and he had established himself as one of, if not the, top three-year-old
in the country. Unfortunately, he will forever be in the shadow of another:
the gray Holy Bull who defeated him in the Travers Stakes later in the
year.
Out of the stakes-placed Sauce Boat mare Barbicue Sauce, the Overbrook
Farm homebred also won the Grade 2 San Rafael Stakes, the Grade 3 El Camino
Real Derby, and the ungraded Kentucky Cup Classic Stakes and Fort Spring
Stakes in his two-year career. He placed in the Grade 1 Breeders’
Cup Classic, the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby, and the Grade 2 Jim Dandy
Stakes, and ran third in the Grade 1 Travers Stakes and Grade 1 Breeders‚
Cup Juvenile in route to amassing $2,347,671 in earnings and a record
of eight wins, three places, and two shows in eighteen starts. You wouldn’t
think that just seven months before the Belmont Stakes, he was the subject
of a near fatal accident involving his trainer’s own son.
On December 15th in Arcadia, California, trainer D. Wayne Lukas stepped
out of his office to survey the scene around him: Thoroughbred horses,
hot and steaming, coming off the track from heavy workouts with fresh
ones heading to the track, prancing and bucking along the way. It was
a scene he saw every morning, and never once did he regret his line of
work, even if he was in the biggest slump of his career having won only
one major stakes in the past seven months. Suddenly, Lukas noticed a commotion
at the far end of the barn. Tabasco Cat, a very promising two-year-old
with the speed and the bloodlines to win a classic race, had gotten loose
and was running at break-neck pace; and was heading straight for his son
Jeff.
Jeff, having worked with Thoroughbreds for twenty years, thought he knew
what to do. He stood in the colt’s path and waved his arms, attempting
to slow him down by making himself look as big as possible. Tabasco Cat
didn’t slow his pace or veer off; instead, he slammed into Jeff,
throwing him to the ground and fracturing his skull.
Jeff Lukas was rushed to Pasadena’s Huntington Memorial Hospital
where Dr. William Caton treated him for severe and life-threatening head
injuries which included drilling a hole in the side of his head and inserting
a drain to remove the increasing fluid in his brain. If the fluids continued
to swell, Jeff‚s intracranial pressure could cut the blood flow,
resulting in instant brain death.
While Jeff remained in a coma and battled a bout of pneumonia, Lukas and
the rest of his staff had labeled the colt as a rogue, an outcast. No
one wanted to get near him and he began to get more and more unpredictable
as the days went on. One day, as Lukas sat on one of his ponies at the
far end of the training track, he caught sight of a chestnut with a striking
white marking on his face pounding down the track. As he got closer, he
realized it was Tabasco Cat. Lukas knew what he needed to do, and he knew
he could not hate the horse for what happened. He and everyone else needed
to forgive the horse or they’d never be able to survive.
Lukas started giving the horse individual attention, letting him graze
for longer periods of time, turning him out and encouraging him to roll
in the dirt for as long as he wanted, letting him release whatever anger
possessed him. It didn’t take long for the young colt to unwind
and begin to focus that anger on the track, and as he started winning,
Jeff began to recover. Slowly, he came out of his coma and was weaned
off the medications as he was transferred to a rehabilitation clinic close
to his home. In late February he was able to return home to visit for
the first time for his daughter’s first birthday, by mid-March he
was visiting home more often, and in April he returned to the track for
the first time since the accident to watch the colt who nearly killed
him finish a close second in the Santa Anita Derby.
While Jeff was recovering more and more every day, though he will always
be legally blind in his right eye and will never recover the memory of
the accident, Tabasco Cat continued to live up to the expectations of
those around him. Despite finishing a disappointing sixth in a sloppy
Kentucky Derby behind Go For Gin, Tabasco Cat came back to win the Preakness
and Belmont Stakes in style. Then continued his successful career and
finished it by placing a very close second to Concern in the 1994 Breeders‚
Cup Classic. Unfortunately, Tabasco Cat’s career was cut short after
he strained a tendon and was retired to stand stud at Overbrook Farm.
Tabasco Cat never was able to sire a racer like himself before his death
in March of 2004 at the Shizunai Stallion Station in Japan. He did, however,
sire some very nice runners in Snow Ridge, Cat’s At Home, Freefourinternet,
Habibti, Perfect Cat, Raylene, Red N Gold, Spice Island, Kazoo, Monsieur
Cat, A‚fire, Bluegrass Sara, Catlike Move, One By The Knows, Saucy
Cat, Spicy Stuff, Sun Cat, Tee Cat, and Woostershear with the possibility
of four more crops to come. Although at the time, Tabasco Cat was overshadowed
by the crowned three-year-old champion Holy Bull, he was and always will
be the people’s horse, a true Cinderella Story, and will never be
forgotten.
Tabasco Cat
April 15, 1991 - March 6, 2004
