The American Dirt Horse That Beat Europe at Its Own Game

In July 1989 he beat Sunday Silence. In November he won the Breeders' Cup Turf on grass he had never raced on.

Prized was a dirt colt who caught the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner inside the last furlong of the Swaps Stakes, and then watched American racing file the result under the champion's off day. Six weeks later his connections passed on the Breeders' Cup Classic and sent him to the richest turf race in the country instead: a mile and a half, against Europe, on a surface he had never set foot on. He won it by a head. This is the story of what one trainer had seen that nobody else was looking at.