If Wild Again hadn't landed with a trainer like Vincent Timphony,
Timphony would have landed with Wild Again. They were a match made in
Utopia, this well-bred but wrong-side-of-the-tracks colt and a trainer
who had spent a lifetime looking for the Big Horse. Together with their
jockey, Pat Day, they pulled off one of racing's biggest upsets, one of
racing's biggest betting coups, one fall afternoon at Hollywood Park 26
years ago. Wild Again, given no more than a fat chance of winning, won
the first running of the Breeders' Cup Classic by an eyelash, sending
Timphony, his trainer, and his other owners to a men's-room stall where
they nervously divvied up what were reportedly hundreds of thousands of
dollars in payoffs. A little later, this band of opportunists, who
called themselves the Black Chip Stable, would be in Las Vegas,
splitting up the rest of the windfall. With both hands, they had bet
their horse on-track and off, the better to keep the price high and to
make sure the ribbon clerks didn't turn into wiseguys overnight...
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