History

By Patricia Nell Warren
Special to Outsports.com

Forget Queer Eye – many gay folk I know are rushing to see Seabiscuit. The film opened in the top 10, grossing $20.9 milliom the first week. On top of Seabiscuit, War Emblem's owners are worried -- the 2002 Derby winner shows less interest in mares that he should. With so much racetrack buzz in the air, I figure it’s time for some stories about gay stallions and tomboy mares. And stories about gay people who threaded themselves into racehorse history.  

In the sports world, horse and human converge in interesting ways. Along with 97 humans, Secretariat, Man O’ War and Citation made ESPN’s list of “100 Greatest North American Athletes of the Century.” Ditto Sports Illustrated's 100 greatest female athletes list, which has Ruffian in 53rd place between a tennis player and a basketball player. How does a four-legged athlete win such a special place among the two-leggeds? Maybe it’s the horse’s luminous spirit and searing courage -- what horse people call “heart.” Maybe it’s the animal’s willingness to try most any feat that human fools ask him to do. Like human athletes, horse athletes have the power to inspire us, and sometimes break our hearts. 

There may be another reason why we give the horse a place at our sports table. Unlike other domestic animals, we saddle the horse with some significant baggage about sexuality and gender.  

Horses were first domesticated around 6,000 years ago. For a long time, the horse gave us everything we needed: food, shelter, tools, clothing, fuel, transportation, recreation, gambling, weapon of war, commodity, status symbol, image of beauty … and, in death, the faithful friend who carries our spirit into the next world. All in one amazing package. The dog can’t touch that record. Many horse breeds have been refined to a type for thousands of years, and gay people have surely been part of that painstaking process. Even in the closet, we contributed our own understanding of sexuality and gender to the process. Indeed, many of the pagan civilizations that created fine horses were also tolerant of homosexuality.  

It’s no accident that our language abounds in horse/human crossover. Stallions are “sires,” an old word for king or feudal lord. Breeding mares are "dams" (dames). The female side of Thoroughbreds is the "distaff side." Track slang refers to stallions and mares as “the boys” and “the girls.” When human males brag about their sexual powers, they don't compare themselves to randy cats or dogs! Straight men and gay men alike want to be thought of as "stallions.” The meaning of “hung like a horse” is obvious when you study a stallion’s impressive equipment. Riding a galloping horse, with those hip movements, became a symbol of human sex.  

A Gorgeous Basket Case 

I'll start with the story of my own problematical Thoroughbred stallion.  

It was the late 1970s. I had just come out, working as an editor and writing gay novels on the side. Between, I managed to squeeze ownership of a few show horses, in partnership with professional rider Jay Shuttleworth. His stable was located at South Salem, N. Y., where he specialized in starting jumper prospects. Jay and I would buy a green horse in the $2,000-$3,000 range, and hopefully sell for a nice profit after a year or so. I found I was one of quite a few “out” people on the Northeast A show circuit. There were lesbian horse-owners and pro riders, as well as wealthy “gentlemen amateurs" who were tres gay -- even the occasional Olympic team rider about whom there were rumors.  

One winter day, we went to a little indoor show down the road. Waiting our turn in the preliminary class, we saw some friends in the warm-up area with their own prospect, a Thoroughbred stallion. He was seal brown with a white star on his forehead, and an electrifying presence -- one of the best-looking horses I'd ever seen. We noticed his tendons were slightly bowed on both front legs. 

Our friends gave us a quickie history. Arogante was 6, Chilean-bred, with a pedigree that was strong on Irish and French steeplechasers, meaning stamina and jumping ability. He’d come to the U.S. to race for a big stable, but had trouble adjusting to the harder U.S. tracks and his tendons bowed. It was a year before he was sound again, so the owner decided to unload him as a jumper prospect. My friends had fallen for him, and paid $20,000. 

Jay and I watched goggle-eyed as the brown stud swept the preliminary class. He jumped big and bold and clean, folding his legs tight, using every inch of his body, with an eager look in his fiery eyes. This horse loved to jump. We fell for him. Unfortunately, after being pinned with his first ribbon, Arogante jumped a notch in price. 

A few weeks later, we heard Arogante was injured again. We visited our friends' stable. The stallion was standing glumly in his stall, with both front legs in casts. Our friends confessed that they’d pushed him too hard and fast. Unwilling to wait out the convalescence, they were ready to unload him. I paid $2,000 for the gorgeous basket case, and he hobbled into our trailer. 

Under Jay’s and our vet’s guidance, I did six months of therapy – bandages, hand-walking, rubbing his tendons with DMSO. Next I worked him gently on a lunge line, getting him muscled up again. Arogante was maturing, his neck filling out, and looked every inch the Big Stud. His name didn’t fit him – there wasn’t an arrogant bone in his body, and he was gentle as a kitten. In the fall, we started riding him again. It was my job to work him on the flat, getting him super-fit before we asked him to jump. Finally Jay had him going nicely over little fences, then bigger fences. The tendons held up. 

Jay and I were bursting with plans. "If we're careful with him,” Jay said, “and we show him to a big reputation in both the hunter and jumper division, he might go as a sport-horse sire. With his breeding, and the right mares, we might get some terrific sport horses out of this big guy." Crossbred performance horses, for sports like eventing and dressage and others that aren’t limited to a single breed, were the coming thing.  

But Arogante wasn't the least bit interested in females. We had two mares in the barn. When they came in season, Arogante should be climbing his stall walls to get at them. But he ignored them. We tried putting the mares in stalls on either side of him, to see if we could spark the appropriate response. Arogante yawned. What DID interest him was male horses. He liked greys the way some men like blonds. He was head over heels for my grey Quarter Horse gelding, Put 'Em Up. When Arogante was nearby, Putter wore the wary expression of a straight guy walking past a gay bar. At horse shows, we learned to keep our distance from grey horses, even grey ponies in the children’s classes. 

Jay said to me drily, "You of all people ... winding up with a gay horse." 

To make a long story short, I was spending too much time at the barn, not enough time at my typewriter. Regretfully I decided to get out of horses. We found suitable new owners for Arogante. I cried a little, and wished them luck. 

Macho Horse, Femme Horse 

Stories like Arogante's and War Emblem's are not uncommon. Horse sexuality can be as varied as human sexuality.

Even for "normally sexed" colts, the move from racetrack to breeding shed is a challenging one. Stresses of training, competing and travel mean that even the most macho young stallions aren't fertile till they've been off the track a year or more. Stress affects the neurotransmitters that help produce sperm. Use of steroids and anti-inflammatory drugs like "bute" also hinders fertility. People pay millions for syndicated shares in a top colt, and they know there's always a risk, but they bite their nails till those first sperm finally show up. In Cigar’s case, sperm never showed up at all. The great horse was sterile. 

Likewise, a race mare may not get pregnant till she’s rested. Stress and strenuous exercise use up a lot of nitric oxide in a horse's body -- and mares need nitric oxide to get pregnant. A similar thing happens with human female athletes – they often stop menstruating while under peak athletic stress, a condition called amenorrhea.  

Now and then, though, there are cases of “alternative equine sexuality.” Since War Emblem did cover a few mares, we don’t know if he’s gay like my Arogante – or if he’s the four-legged version of bi. A mare in oestrus will “horse,” meaning she’ll mount another horse and go through the motions of sex, even with another mare. But mares will also mount a cow or a tree if they’re hot enough, so “horsing” doesn’t necessarily mean “homosexual.” But some males and females do get passionately attached to members of their own gender. Now and then, there’s a horse with intersex characteristics. For instance, you can have a "masculine acting" horse with male gonads hidden inside the body, but with an XX sex-chromosome configuration (female) instead of XY (male). I discussed sex-chromosome variations in my recent article "The Rise and Fall of Gender Testing."  

How do we really know if a horse is queer as a $3 bill? Left to their own devices, equines can be remarkably choosy about their mates, so we have no trouble spotting the lusty heterosexuals among them. Wild stallions pick the mares for their manada, often showing a preference for a certain color. Mares who dislike a particular stallion, or who hate male horses, period, will kick and bite and otherwise refuse to submit, even when they’re in oestrus.  

This is why some horse breeders, with their grand plans and their millions of dollars on the line, don’t let the mare choose her mate. The Thoroughbred business bans artificial insemination, insisting that foals be conceived in a “natural manner.” However, it does customarily allow the mare to be strapped into immobility so she can’t kick, forcing her to let the stud cover her. This is anything but “natural!” Unwilling stallions, too, can be manipulated into breeding. So we don’t know for sure how “gay” a horse is, unless we let the animal freely follow a natural bent. 

Gay people try to make political points off "queer animal behavior". Some of us cherish the hope that religious righters will convert to our viewpoint if only they hear enough scientific data about gay animals. Meanwhile, traditionalist cultures have even forced their gender and orientation stereotypes onto the purebred animals they fancy. 

The horse fancy has a staunch tradition about “masculine looking” and “feminine looking” horses. Many breed standards actually specify that a stallion look "masculine", and a mare look “feminine”. Horse “masculinity" translates into a bigger, more muscular and powerful frame, and a head whose features and expression are “male”. Since a big powerful horse can also look coarse, breeders want a refined look too. The trouble is, too much refinement in a male can produce what many breeders consider a “feminine” look. The Hanoverian horse standard says: "Stallions must have a distinctly masculine bearing and mares a distinctly feminine expression." For Percherons: "Stallions should have a bold masculine head while mares have a more refined, feminine head." Recently a racing columnist described the ideal sire prospect: "[He] would be an above-average 2-year-old, demonstrate ability to stay the American classic distance of 1 1/4 miles, and be sound and masculine in appearance. He would also have the right kind of pedigree."  

Indeed, old-school racehorse breeding, which dates back to around 1900, was based on a balancing of "feminine" and "masculine" characteristics in different bloodlines.  

But there's a paradox here. Horse people may want that "feminine" mare in the show ring, but when it comes to actual performance, they don’t object to a masculine-looking mare. Why? Because these masculine characteristics will enhance a mare's athletic performance -- give her an edge when she competes against other females, even against males. More muscle means more speed, more athleticism in jumping, etc. Our civilization may teach us to deride the “masculine” in human females, like the great Soviet athletes Tamara and Irina Press, who were hounded out of competition because of their physical appearance. But when it comes to horses, the dyke rules! 

Even in ancient times, that masculine edge was recognized. For hard daily use, the iron mare was often preferred to a stallion. Especially for war. Not just because of performance, but because she was quieter. Stallions can be unruly and noisy. In guerrilla warfare, where stealth is vital, one whinny from your stallion and your cover is blown. As a result, the studs were often left home, siring to their hearts’ content, while mares went trooping off to conquer the world. This trend continued even after people learned to make male horses more manageable by gelding them. People noticed that masculine mares didn’t always breed well. But some did breed, and these masculine mares were important for improving the breed. Why? Only through hard use in a harsh environment could you finger the best horses. Masculine mares could meet the test. Indeed, the kill-or-be-killed circumstances in which many ancient peoples selected their best horses couldn’t be duplicated today by American breeders without risking arrest for animal cruelty.  

Today’s millions of Thoroughbreds trace their lineage back into 1600-1700 England, to crosses of imported “orientals” with native bloodstock. According to Thoroughbred Heritage online, there were around 200 stallion imports, though just a handful – including the Byerley Turk, Godolphin Arabian, Darley Arabian and Darcy’s White Turk – had major influence over time. History also knows of 113 foundation mares. A stallion can sire hundreds of foals in a lifetime, while a mare might have only a few offspring. Yet outstanding mares have a huge impact over time. Their influence is magnified by inbreeding -- a single horse can show up several times in a single pedigree. Thoroughbreds are intensely inbred, to better the odds that a desired trait will pop up again. Inbreeding is risky, of course. Even in the 1700s, titled families knew the pros and cons of inbreeding. After all, they’d been doing it with humans for centuries! -- cousins marrying cousins to keep the title or throne. This led to some shocking cases of inherited disease and psychiatric problems in these families. Today, breeders study pedigrees in the tiniest scientific detail, hoping that doubling-up on glorious ancestors will have positive, not negative, results.  

Fueled by notions of male supremacy, breeders used to give most of their attention to the sire. His input, especially if he was a big winner, was supposed to ensure winning offspring. But male ideology took a big hit when mitochrondrial DNA was discovered. MtDNA travels only in the female line. Breeders realized that these extra strings of DNA, each a unique “genetic signature” of the long-ago matriarch it came from, could also carry important traits. Horse breeders got another shock when genetic research showed how important the mare’s input is. The X (female) sex chromosome is much larger than the Y (male) sex chromosome, so it carries more genetic information. The stallion does determine his foal’s gender, because he’s XY and can contribute either X or Y. But the mare also determines many important factors.  

For example, a masculine mare with devastating speed might also have an extra-large heart, weighing 14 pounds or more. It helps her pump more oxygen to those extra muscles of hers, giving her an edge over horses with normal 7-8 lb. hearts -- especially towards the end of the race, when oxygen debt kicks in. The recently discovered large-heart gene explains why some outstanding Thoroughbreds can literally sprint from start to finish. When racing people say a horse has “heart,” they’re not just talking in metaphors! This gene is evidently transmitted as a sex-linked characteristic on the X chromosomes. The big-heart super-mare can transmit the X-factor to both sons and daughters. But her sons can only transmit the gene to their daughters, since they transmit an X to their daughers, but a Y to their sons. This solves a long-pondered mystery – stallions like Secretariat who are phenomenal winners on the track, but fail to sire winning sons. Yet they sire mares who win, and whose sons and daughters win. Secretariat’s heart weighed an amazing 22 pounds, so he clearly carried the X factor. 

In her groundbreaking book The X Factor, geneticist/historian Marianna Haun suggests that the known large-heart bloodlines go back to Eclipse. Born in 1754, Eclipse was one of the breed’s most influential sires – 80% of registered Thoroughbreds trace back to him. When Eclipse died, it was discovered that he had an extra-large heart. His daughter Everlasting and his great-granddaughter Pocahantas have viewed by many as a route by which the X-factor reached Secretariat and other super-horses today. 

Down through history, this is possibly why some horse cultures had a strong intuition that mares transmitted something “extra.” Their traditions celebrated horse descent through the dam, not the sire!   

Historic Mares  

The Thoroughbred has its most ancient genetic roots in a vast region stretching from North Africa to Persia. The roots include ancestors of the Arabian and other related eastern breeds, all of which became attractive to Western breeders. These were lean, refined horses famed for toughness and speed over distance. We can note in passing that many cultures in this part of the world were tolerant of male same-sex love (at least till more recent times, when those areas were overrun by Christian and Islamic fundamentalism). Indeed, this vast region gives us some colorful traditions of “masculine mares.”  

In ancient Greece, there’s the story of the Four Mares. The god of war, Ares, gave them to Diomedes, king of Thrace. The mares were so fierce and wild that they ate human flesh and had to be kept in chains. Their male names – Deinos, Lampon Podargos, Xanthos – suggest they had that “masculine” look. The king may have used them as a quadriga, or four-horse chariot team, making them a futuristic war machine that struck terror into the hearts of slogging foot soldiers.  

The hero Hercules was sent to capture the Four Mares. In one version of the story, he took his lover and weapons-bearer Abderus with him. First he killed the king by feeding him to his own mares. Then he left Abderus to hold the mares’ reins while he fought off the king’s army. When he came back, the mares had dragged his lover to death. Grieving, Hercules built the city of Abdera as a memorial (its ruins survive today.) Then he marched the mares home to Mycenae in southern Greece. There the goddess Hera made them gentle. According to historian Diodoros, the Four Mares’ descendants spread across Greece, north into Thessaly, and beyond to Macedonia. These were the impressive animals that Greek artists painted on ancient vases and sculpted into marble friezes on the Parthenon. They were small, probably the size of an Arabian, with powerfully muscled frames and big chiseled heads.  

In early times, the Greeks used these wonderful horses to pioneer chariot-racing. They absolutely adored this sport. In the 600s B.C. they introduced chariot races into the Olympic Games, where only men drove the four-horse teams. Ancient poet Virgil gives us an exciting close-up look at the sport: 

You’ve seen it, how the chariots flood out

Onto the track from the starting-place, you’ve seen them,

Headlong in frenzied competition, all

The young drivers’ hearts pounding with the frantic

Hope of being the first, and chilled with the fear

Of being the last. On and on they go,

Lap after lap, the fiery wheels revolve,

The drivers flail their whips, now bending low,

Stooping over the reins, now rising up —

It looks like they’re carried flying up and out

Into the empty air — no stopping them, no rest,

Clouds of yellow sand blown back in the eyes

Of those who follow after, the foaming breath

Of the gasping panting horses wetting the backs

Of the chariot drivers ahead, so great their love

Of glory, so great their love of victory.

(translation by David Ferry) 

Ancient Greek sources say little of women and their part in the Four Mares story. But archeologists are learning that real-life Amazons did exist, because they’re finding their tombs. Horses were often sacrificed at Greek funerals, so the spirits of those horses would carry the human spirit into the afterlife. At Salamis, one 8^th century tomb revealed the bones of a woman and two horses, plus parts of a chariot. Perhaps she was a warrioress, or an outlaw charioteer who wasn’t allowed to drive in the Games! Imagine her alive, in that chariot, driving her “gasping, panting horses” towards the finish of some bush-league chariot meet!  

In 336 B.C., Alexander the Great’s cavalry threw their saddles on descendants of the Four Mares, and thundered out of Macedonia to conquer half the known world. Alexander himself, that greatest of gay military men, rode clear to Pakistan on a Thessalian stallion named Bucephalus (the name means Ox-Head!)  

Another colorful tradition of "masculine" and "feminine" comes from the Islamic world – the Five Mares. In the 6^th century A.D., as the Prophet Mohammed was trying to capture the hostile pagan city of Mecca, he decided that existing strains of horse should be carried to higher perfection by rigorous testing. When Mecca fell to his army, he sent 360 riders racing with the news to his home city of Medina, 280 miles away. Only five horses got there. They were mares bred in the Nejd Desert, all said to be offspring of a single famous stallion. Their names were Seglavi, Koheil, Manaki, Gilfi and Misenech (some traditions differ on the fifth mare’s name.)  

Mohammed then gathered all the Nejd’s stallions for an obedience test. For two days, the horses were given no food and water. Then they were fed – and the war trumpets were sounded. Only seven of the hungry, thirsty stallions stopped eating, to raise their heads and prick their ears at the signal for battle. Mohammed ordered these seven to be mated with the Five Mares. Several distinctive strains emerged, each based on the individual characteristics of the original matriarch. As the centuries passed, tribal tradition collected stories of these early horses – the ones who were gifted at finding water, who could find their way home in a sandstorm, who could help their owners outsmart the enemy.  

Today these strains are still kept going by dedicated breeders around the world, including many non-Muslim fanciers, and they still have their distinctive characteristics. Arabian horse scholar Carl Raswan describes two of them: "The Kuhhaylan are deep chested and wide in front and behind. They are compact and extremely masculine in appearance. They do not have the feminine beauty and elegance of the Saqlawi … but they combine a beauty of their own with extreme muscular strength… Even the mares have a masculine appearance and are very muscular."  

In other words, Kuhhaylan stallions and mares are both described as “masculine,” while Saqlawi stallions and mares are both thought of as “feminine.” The Arabian ideal is a real exercise in gender-bending! 

A Gay Man’s Story 

During the Crusades, the oriental horse became a deadly challenge for Western Europeans. Historian Barbara Tuchman, in A Distant Mirror, tells the story. In 1396, during the battle at Nicopolis near Constantinople, the Christian heavy cavalry, sweltering in their steel armor and mounted on big cumbersome horses, were slaughtered by the Ottoman Turkish light cavalry. Wearing light leather armor and mounted on lean enduring little desert horses, the Turks swarmed over the Christians like killer bees. Nicopolis effectively ended Christian efforts to take back the Middle East from Islam. After that, European kings were anxiously importing oriental horses, trying to develop their own light cavalry.  

In England, during the Renaissance, people also wanted a more refined horse for sport. Informal races became popular with the people, on the open fields at Newmarket and other spots across the country. The racer of choice was the chunky Galloway, fast over short distances, something like our modern Quarter Horse. But longer races were wanted. For that, a horse needed a leaner build and more stamina. In the 1500s, the Earl of Rutland and others were already crossbreeding a few orientals with native stock. 

In the early 1600s, when King James Stuart I took the throne amid growing Catholic-Protestant conflict, an openly gay young man named George Villiers appeared on the scene. Villiers was a key figure in creating the early Thoroughbred.  

James I, being Catholic, was trying to placate the country’s Protestants, so he published the Bible in English for the first time. But Protestants frowned -- James was a homosexual. The king felt so secure in his absolute power that he made no secret of his passionate love for George Villiers. George was 20-something, handsome, ambitious, wild, but he also knew horses. The king too was an expert horseman. James helped his lover climb the social ladder, creating him Duke of Buckingham and giving him several plush jobs, including Master of the Horse. Though the two men were married – the king to a Spanish princess, Villiers to the Earl of Rutland’s daughter -- they carried on openly. Outraged Protestants stood up in Parliament to denounce Villiers’ influence on the king. James’ subjects derisively called him “Queen James.” 

Meanwhile James entrusted Villiers with the job of refining and improving the horses at the royal stud. Says Thoroughbred Heritage online: “Villiers was responsible for importing a number of horses from Morocco, Spain and Italy for the royal studs, and, it is believed, for himself and other nobles as well.” Possibly Villiers had married the Earl’s daughter, Lady Katherine, as much for her family’s horse business as for any tolerance she might have felt about his sex life! At any rate, her family made it possible for Villiers to acquire his own estate at Helmsley in Yorkshire. There he built up his own stud, with fine imported mares and stallions. Emerging as something of a soldier and statesman, Villiers served as Lord High Admiral for several years. Till he died in 1625, the king called Villiers his “sweet child and wife.”  

When the next Stuart, Charles I, took the throne, George Villiers continued to support royal horse breeding … and to enrich himself at public expense. Protestant leaders attacked him ever more fiercely. But the royal family admired Villiers, and every effort to get him dismissed fell on the king’s deaf ears. Then one day in 1628, the 36-year-old Duke was assassinated by one of his own officers, John Felton. Protestants jumped for joy. The man said he’d done it because Villiers denied him a promotion. But it’s possible that Villiers’ enemies put Felton up to it. The king had Felton hanged for murder.  

After the Duke’s death, Charles I took in Villiers’ infant son and raised him with his own son, Prince Charles. Young George inherited Helmsley and his father’s horses. As the country slid into civil war, with Protestant forces led by Oliver Cromwell, young George served Charles I on the battlefield. When the king was executed in 1649, and England became a Puritan republic under Cromwell’s rule, young George fled England, abandoning Helmsley and the horses. He joined his friend Prince Charles II in exile in France.  

The civil war not only devastated England, it also devastated the English horse. Royal studs, and horse farms belonging to titled Catholic families, were plundered by both sides. Rideable horses were put into military service, and many blown to shreds on the battlefield. Some of the best were appropriated by Cromwell and given to his friends. In 1651 Cromwell grabbed Helmsley and its gilt-edge horse herd, and gave it to his commander-in-chief, Sir Thomas Fairfax. Lord Fairfax was surely glad to get it – he too was interested in the new type of horse. 

In 1660, after Cromwell died and Prince Charles returned to restore the throne, England settled into an uneasy peacetime, with a sparkly façade of frivolity. Charles II was sexually passionate for both women and men, and equally passionate about horseracing. The royal studs were restocked. Charles made himself popular by attending the races at Newmarket. The sport was taking its now familiar-form, with marked courses, formal meets, a set of rules, and scintillating edgy social life. 

Back at Helmsley, Lord Fairfax was picking up the pre-war threads of breeding. Horse historians speculate that a few horses of old George’s breeding were still around. Fairfax mated an Arab stallion to a Barb mare and got a crossbred filly destined to be one of the earliest foundation mares. We know little of her, except that she had a “bald” (white) face. She became known as Old Bald Peg. In 1657, Fairfax gave George his daughter Mary in marriage, and as a wedding gift he returned Helmsley to his son-in-law. Now young Villiers and the Fairfaxes apparently combined their work with horses. Old Bald Peg was bred to a Morocco Barb owned by Fairfax, and produced a filly later called the Old Morocco Mare. Young George bred this next-generation mare to the Yellow Turk owned by Lord Darcy, new Master of the Royal Stud. The result was Spanker, who was "said to have been the best horse at Newmarket in Charles II's reign." Spanker was later sold, and retired to stud. His most influential descendant was Eclipse. 

The story doesn’t end happily. Young George was even wilder than his father, fell out favor with his king, lost his fortune and estates. When he died in 1687, all that remained of his handsome but much-hated gay father’s work was a single shining thread: a few horses’ lives.  

Queen Anne, last of the Stuarts, who reigned in 1702-14, laid out the racecourse at Ascot, and ran her own horses there. The Villiers/Helmsley bloodline survived among the lines of newer foundation stallions. A horse with a new look was emerging. It didn’t resemble the old British breeds, or the oriental horses either, but combined the best of both – tall, lean, long-legged, with powerful haunches, small waist, and sloping shoulders that allowed for a long stride. The fine-boned head and eyes wore an expression that came to be called “the look of eagles.” These horses loved to run – heaven help you if you tried to get ahead of them. They were faster than Arabians over distances of a few miles – just what racing was looking for.  

Black Lightning 

From our own time comes the heartbreaker story of Ruffian, that masculine black filly who became such a celebrity in the 1970s. Some experts call her the greatest female racehorse ever. Writing in Pedlines, breeding commentator Ellen Parker said, “Was there ever anyone who saw the streak of black lightning known as Ruffian who did not love her?   We think not.” 

Exactly how "masculine" was Ruffian? According to Walter Farley, author of The Black Stallion, Ruffian was the horse that most resembled the fictional stallion in his book. According to another source, "Ruffian was a tomboy, more colt than filly. She wasn't violent, but she was tough, independent and self possessed. She was also very big for a filly. At 3 she was 16.2hh, had a 75 ½ inch girth and weighed 1125 lbs. …Her long stride seemed to carry her farther than it should."  

Ruffian was bred by Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Janney, at Claiborne Farm in Kentucky. She had large-heart bloodlines – but she also was inbred to a line with a reputation for brittle bones. Says Parker in her Pedlines: “There was most definitely some hint of what was to come when one considers that her sire Reviewer broke down three different times. If the legs cannot hold up the heart, it ends badly.” 

Through her 2-year-old and 3-year-old campaigns, Ruffian raced only against fillies. She was not only undefeated, but outclassed the other girls by winning easily. Promoters cooked up a "battle of the sexes," with Ruffian going head-to-head against top colts. Result: the 1 ¼-mile match race with Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure, to be held at Belmont Park on July 5, 1975. Public expectation was enormous – as it was for the Billy Jean King-Bobby Riggs tennis duel in 1973. Fifty thousand spectators packed the track that day. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who ordinarily didn’t follow racing were also watching on TV, hoping to see “the girl” hammer Foolish Pleasure into the dirt.  

When the two horses burst from the starting gate, Ruffian bulled to the lead, as she always did, and held it till the mile mark. Her fans were screaming in delight, sure she was going to win. Suddenly her right front leg snapped, making a sound "like a board breaking," according to one of the jockeys. In a shocking display of heart, Ruffian refused to be pulled up. Determined to finish, she galloped for 30 more giant strides, before lurching to a halt. Looking over his shoulder, Foolish Pleasure's jockey saw what happened; horrified, he slowed his horse to a canter for the rest of the race. Belmont Park went gone dead silent. Everybody’s eyes were fixed on that tragic scene on the track -- a horse on three legs and the ambulance speeding out.  

So great was the emotional impact of this event, that the TV footage of her leg exploding was actually censored, and not re-run. Surgery failed, and Ruffian was put down. The horse world honored her as no other racehorse in American history – the Belmont flags were flown at half mast, and she was buried right in the infield, with her nose pointing at the finish line. That footage of Ruffian's leg breaking was not shown again for 15 years, till 2000, when ESPN aired her SportsCentury segment on the 25th anniversary of her death. ESPN had evidently decided it was time for everybody to deal with it.  

Many people had been haunted by Ruffian's death, and blamed the sport. Inbreeding came under scrutiny, along with America’s habit of pushing very young horses for speed on dirt tracks. Traditionally, racing had favored the mature horse that could campaign for years, like Seabiscuit. The grass tracks popular in Europe and South America make a softer, more humane surface for horses to run on. As a result, casualties like Ruffian’s are more frequent today. They prompt animal-welfare organizations and some racing figures to insist that the sport should be put back on a more humane basis.  

Happily for the fillies, some owners have learned the hard lesson of Ruffian. Last year, Azeri became the first super-filly since 1989 to make Horse of the Year. But her owner declined to run her against colts.  

In closing, I’ll mention Seabiscuit. On his distaff side, The Biscuit goes back to Eclipse and the Villiers horses. As we enjoy the film, we can remind ourselves that an openly gay man of the 17^th century had a hand in creating this wonderful breed of horse.  

Yes, the horse fancy is as big as ever -- a multibillion-dollar business that spreads across much of the developed world. Gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people are right in the thick of things, the way we’ve been ever since Hercules and his partner went after the Four Mares. And, like everyone else, we’re not very surprised when the gay stallions and tomboy mares show up.  

Further resources: 

Horse programs on RFD-TV (Dish Network) 

Channel TVG for ongoing race coverage 

A little more Thoroughbred history:
http://www.georgianindex.net/Sport/Horse/racers.html 

Notable English foundation breeders (I wonder if any of the great lady breeders were lesbians):
http://www.tbheritage.com/Breeders/FoundBreeders/EarlyNotes.html 

Homosexual love themes in Islamic and Arabic literature:
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/mid_e_lit_arabic.html 

Patricia Nell Warren wrote the 1974 bestselling novel The Front Runner about an Olympic athlete.  She also writes articles and commentary for many magazines.  Her webpage is at patricianellwarren@aol.com.  Email her at patriciawarren@aol.com.

Copyright (c) 2003 by Patricia Nell Warren.  All rights reserved.

Patricia's complete Gays in Sports History archive

Aug. 18, 2003