Columnist Dean Juipe: Sordid tale nears legal conclusion

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2000 | 10:44 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@vegas.com or 259-4084.

He was a beautiful racehorse, a magnificent creature.

Strong, lean and graceful, Alydar seemingly had everything going for him when he rose to public consciousness as a 3-year-old in 1978. Aside from fabulous blood lines, he was raised and nurtured at what was then the world's finest stable, Calumet Farm of Lexington, Ky.

But for all his marvelous traits, Alydar was marginally unlucky and, later, cruelly victimized.

Competing in the Triple Crown races in '78, Alydar had three breathtaking runs at the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont stakes. Regretfully for the horse and his handlers -- although wonderfully stimulating for spectators -- in each case Alydar finished second to still another heroic horse, Affirmed.

Affirmed repetitively won and Alydar repetitively finished second. It was great theater, accented by the feelings of compassion that inevitably were directed Alydar's way for his spirited chases of a horse that miraculously was always one step ahead of him.

His heyday completed, Alydar was retired at Calumet and seemingly living a life of ease when the farm ran into financial difficulties. Due to what was later described as lavish spending and borrowing habits, it had fallen $100 million into debt.

The "solution" that was masterminded by Calumet executives was despicable even by Tonya Harding's standards.

With Alydar insured for $36.5 million, they did the unthinkable one night in 1990 and intentionally broke one of his legs. After a week of what was likely a halfhearted attempted to re-set the leg and soothe the abused animal, Alydar was put down and Calumet's owners trotted off to the bank.

Once there, they finagled a deal with the now-defunct First City Bancorporation of Houston to pay off the insurance policy in exchange for a $1.1 million bribe.

Fortunately, their scam surfaced within the following year and justice has slowly but surely been meted out. One Calumet employee and four former bank executives have already received prison terms, and Tuesday in Houston jury selection began for a trial in which Calumet's former president and its chief financial officer face seven counts of bribery and fraud.

It doesn't take an animal lover to hope these seemingly guilty men pay the proper emotional toll for putting their once-prized horse to death. No pain and suffering they and their counterparts could face would be too severe, given their heartless, spineless decision to kill a lovely possession whose only shortcoming is that he had become more valuable dead than alive.

In the wake of the stallion's death and Calumet's decline, a few years ago Sports Illustrated did an in-depth piece on the practice of insurance fraud within the horse-racing industry. Included in that stirring article were detailed, if cloaked in anonymity, accounts of numerous insured horses that were killed as if they were nothing more than pawns in organized crime.

More widespread than previously imagined, horses were ambushed by hit men who specialized in making the injuries appear accidental. It was a disturbing and sordid revelation, and quite contrary to the peaceful and serene image the sport typically provides.

As uneasy as Calumet's fallen leaders must be heading into trial, this much is in their favor: The jury won't be stocked with Alydar's peers.