From the Aug. 31, 2024 edition of The Saratoga Special newspaper.
As a hustling young jockey, Vince Bracciale Jr. made the morning rounds. Some trainers gave him horses to breeze, some booked him for an afternoon mount, others sent him packing.
Fifty years ago, Frank Whiteley Jr. put him on a legend.
“Every morning when I got to the track, I was one of the early birds so I stopped by barns that were early birds and he was one of them,” Bracciale said Friday morning. “I had nothing to do for him most of the time, but every once in a while he’d have something for me. He knew my father, who used to ride, and I had ridden a few for him in Maryland so he knew me, and I guess he thought I did a good job.”
With regular jockey Jacinto Vasquez suspended, Whiteley needed a rider for star filly Ruffian. The early bird was ready. The first opportunity came July 10, 1974 at Aqueduct, when Ruffian and Bracciale won the Grade 3 Astoria Stakes by 9 lengths in a stakes-record 1:02 4/5 for 5 1/2 furlongs. Vasquez got back aboard the Locust Hill Farm homebred for the Grade 1 Sorority at Monmouth Park July 27. She won again and headed for Saratoga’s Grade 1 Spinaway. Laughing Bridge, second to Ruffian in the Astoria, won the Schuylerville and the Adirondack early to set up a rematch at the end of the meet.
Again, Vasquez was suspended and Whiteley called on Bracciale.
Even on grainy YouTube video, with the start obscured by a huge infield tree, the race is sheer brilliance. Ruffian breaks running from post two, leads by a length without really trying and opens up by 3 on the turn. Motionless until the quarter pole, Bracciale takes a look over his left shoulder as Ruffian straightens up for the stretch and puts another 10 lengths on the field. She’s so far in front at the eighth pole that the camera stays with the battle for the runner-up spot and finally pans back to Ruffian on the gallop out.
It wasn’t close, officially 12 3/4 lengths.
“She made the lead real easy and leaving the three-eighths pole I was slowing her down a little bit,” Bracciale said. “I asked her to run for one or two jumps and then never moved on her.”
Bracciale, then 20, had recently moved his tack to New York and was breezing horses for the powerful Greentree Stable in addition to riding races. He rode top-class horses Stop The Music, Hatchet Man and Knightly Sport and knew a good horse when he felt one.
“When I worked horses for them in the morning, it was always supposed to be at the same time,” he said, “so I got pretty good at working a horse a half in :49 or a mile in 1:40 or whatever they wanted.”
Bracciale pulled up Ruffian after the Spinaway win and the outrider asked a question.
“How fast do you think you ran, boy?”
“They’ve been running slow all meet, I don’t know, I never let her run a yard,” Bracciale replied. “Maybe 1:10 and change, 1:11?”
“You went in 1:08 and change.”
Ruffian handled 6 furlongs in 1:08 3/5 that day, still the fastest 6-furlong Spinaway (now 7 furlongs) ever run.
“It was hard to believe because she did it so easy,” Bracciale said. “I was young and I had a real good meet that year. I was shooting good. When you get that kind of opportunity it really makes it easy on you if you’re confident in yourself.”
Bracciale never rode her in the morning, but remembered breezing against her a few times.
“They had this real good older horse, Forage, and we worked before she ran,” Bracciale said. “I was on him and Jacinto was on the filly. She kicked my ass.”
“Who they hell is that?” Bracciale asked.
Vasquez laughed. “She’s just a 2-year-old.”
Ruffian won her debut by 15 lengths at Belmont May 22 (at 4-1), added the Grade 3 Fashion June 12. Then swept the Astoria with Bracciale and the Sorority with Vasquez. Riding her in the Astoria helped, but Bracciale felt some trepidation on the bigger stage at Saratoga.
“Some parts of it I was a little bit nervous and I never used to get nervous,” he said. “I was just thinking, ‘What if she stumbles leaving the gate or something?’ But she didn’t put a foot wrong. She was so smooth. I remember the crowd was standing and clapping when we came back. It was something else.”
He never sat on her again.
Ruffian earned the 2-year-old filly championship in 1974 and won her first five starts the next year including a sweep of the Acorn, Mother Goose and Coaching Club American Oaks (then known as the Filly Triple Crown). She died after being fatally injured in a match race with Foolish Pleasure in July 1975. Her story was ultimately told in books, a TV movie, an ESPN Classic documentary – a bright light for racing turned off way too soon. She, Whiteley and Vasquez wound up in racing’s Hall of Fame. Bracciale won 3,545 races as a jockey, teaming up with Broad Brush, Dave’s Friend, The Very One and other standouts before retiring in 1990.
He trained a small stable in Maryland, mostly for himself and friend Robert Vukelic, off and on since 1992 and recently sent two horses to Benny Feliciano Jr. One was second at Timonium last week. Another, a Win Win Win 2-year-old, is getting ready to run.
“I quit training a couple months ago,” he said. “I had three or four, raced the ones I raised and kept my head above water. Now I mow grass, play a little golf and I put a big garden in every year. I can and freeze a lot of stuff.”
And 50 years ago, he rode Ruffian.
