Steve’s Travel Diary – PART THREE
Steve didn’t quite manage to get to the races in Uruguay but looks at some of the country’s most interesting racing stories
The mighty Invasor (Candy Stripes) is the horse which immediately springs to mind when talking Uruguayan racing. He was, of course, Argentine-bred but originally owned by Uruguayans and began his racing career in that country.
The Uruguayans, like the Argentinians, have a well established tradition with horses and the spirit of the ‘gaucho’ lives on.
Invasor was some horse. Good enough to have the football-mad Uruguayans following his every move, with World Cup-like passion, around the world after he was sold for about US$1,400,000 to Sheik Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum after he’d won the Uruguayan Triple Crown. He went on to win a Breeders’ Cup Classic (Gr 1, 10f) and a Dubai World Cup (Gr 1, 2000m).
The focus, this week in Uruguay, was on Thursday night’s football clash between the most popular local club Nacional who played Brazil’s Botafogo in a round of the Copa Libertadores but the locals immediately spoke of Invasor when I mentioned horse racing.
The Haras Cuatro Piedras stud, in Uruguay, is home to Invasor who stands at a fee of US$1,900 while the property has also been home to Kentucky Derby (Gr 1, 10f) winner Smarty Jones (Elusive Quality).
Invasor was bought as a two-year-old by Pablo Hernandez and brothers Juan Luis and Luis Alberto Vio Bado. They secured him for US$20,000, after a little negotiating in Buenos Aires, and then sent him to their home country.
Pablo Hernandez later said he well remembered the day he and the two brothers first saw Invasor. “It was as if we had been hit with Cupid’s arrow,” said Hernandez. “We just fell in love with him.”
The other well-known story associated with Uruguayan racing is not so heart-warming. It’s the tale of two Uruguayan horses Cinzano and Lebon.
They were the horses at the hub of one of the most notorious racetrack frauds perpetrated by Mark Gerard – a US veterinarian who’d looked after the likes of Secretariat (Bold Ruler) and Kelso (Your Host).
The fraud eventually unravelled after the modestly performed Lebon won at Belmont Park in September 1977, at odds of 57/1.
Lebon was not Lebon. He was in fact the multiple stakes-winner Cinzano and top three-year-old in Uruguay in 1976. The real Lebon, the sports columnist Red Smith later wrote in The New York Times, “couldn’t beat a fat man from Gimbels to Macy’s.”
In May 1977, Gerard purchased Cinzano for around US$80,000. He also bought Lebon, a horse who’d won one race in two years, for US$1,600. The two horses were strikingly similar in appearance.
Gerard claimed Cinzano had died in an accident on his farm in Long Island, receiving US$150,000 in insurance. He then made the race-day switch at Belmont Park with Cinzano racing as Lebon and collected about US$80,000 in bets but the ‘gig’ was up when a Uruguayan journalist reportedly spotted the difference in the horses, and Gerard was later convicted and imprisoned.
Travel tip: The excursion from Buenos Aires to Uruguay is certainly worthwhile. Don’t bother with flying. Take the Buquebus service (ferry and/or bus). You can go via Colonia or directly from Buenos Aires to Montevideo on the ferry alone which takes about two hours. Don’t bother paying for more than economy class and remember your passport when both travelling and booking your tickets.
If the weather is good, I’d also recommend the two-hour bus trip to Punte Del Este which is Uruguay’s premier beach resort and also the most popular beach destination for Argentinians. Hire a car and drive the 30-odd kilometres north to Jose Ignacio. If you’ve never driven a left hand drive car (on the ‘wrong’ side of the road), this is the place to practice as it’s virtually a straight line all the way. Very easy drive.
Wine of the Week: The Uruguayans can produce a drop every bit as good, it seems, as their neighbours in Argentina and Chile. The Don Pascual label is the default option. The Don Pascual 2016 Reserve Pinot Noir is a sound ‘cheapie’ while the Don Pascual 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon is very good. I’ll get back to you on their Tannat which is the most popular grape/wine here.