Spectacular Bid

A safety pin was all that kept Spectacular Bid from racing immortality. On the morning of the Belmont Stakes, the third jewel in horse racing’s prestigious Triple Crown, Spectacular Bid stepped on a safety pin in his stall, injuring his foot. He had won the first two races in impressive fashion but finished third that day, losing his chance for a Triple Crown. But that did not stop him from becoming one of horse racing’s greatest competitors—in fact, in the words of his trainer, Grover “Bud” Delp, he was “the greatest horse ever to look through a bridle.” The battleship-gray colt won twenty-six of thirty races during his career, with two second-place finishes and one third. He was voted the tenth greatest Thoroughbred of the twentieth century by Blood-Horse magazine, and the book A Century of Champions placed him ninth in the world and third among North American horses—ahead of the immortal Man o’ War. Spectacular Bid: The Last Superhorse of the Twentieth Century is the story of a horse that was owned, trained, and ridden by people who weren’t part of the Kentucky establishment. Harry Meyerhoff paid only $37,000 for Bid, but inspite of his less than stellar pedigree, he became one of racing’s immortals.