Hovdey: Like his predecessors, Wise Dan took it to the limit

“Moby-Dick,” the story of obsession and a great white whale, has been in print since 1851. American literature would be considerably less without it.

Sherlock Holmes, the invention of a writer’s mind, first appeared in 1887. The character is as alive today as he was 128 years ago.

“The Phantom of the Opera” opened on Broadway in 1988. More than 11,000 performances later, its story of tragic romance is still going strong.

The good stuff sticks around, reassuring in its presence. At the end of the day, despite modern disappointments, baseball can cling to Koufax, Aaron, DiMaggio, and Mays, just as the arts rely on Mozart, Copland, Bach, and Dylan for the everlasting music of the night.

The necessary retirement of Wise Dan this week brought to a close the competitive life of one of the finest racing Thoroughbreds of the past half-century. Now his legend will live on alongside Kelso, Forego, and John Henry as the great geldings of the age, athletes of excellence with no purpose beyond the demands of pure competition.

If they all have one thing in common, besides an ability to withstand the ravages of age, it’s that they never go quietly. Their people must convince themselves that the party is over. The great geldings stick around late, entertain the last of the guests, then offer to help clean up.

After injuring an eye in a race in September 1965, Kelso came back the following spring at age 9 to finish fourth in an allowance race, his 63rd start. Not long after that, the five-time Horse of the Year rapped himself in a workout and fractured a sesamoid.

Forego’s dicey ankles carried him to a fourth straight championship season in 1977, three of them as Horse of the Year. He emerged again at the age of 8 in June 1978 and won a little allowance race. But his subsequent effort in the Suburban Handicap, his 57th start, went unmistakably wrong, and that was that.

Halfway through the 1984 Ballantine Classic at the Meadowlands, Chris McCarron thought John Henry was having an off night. He was 9, and it was his 83rd start, so he had a right. Then Ol’ John lit up the last quarter-mile to win by daylight, which capped his second Horse of the Year campaign. He would have gone favored in the first Breeders’ Cup Turf if he hadn’t injured a ligament the week before the race.

John Henry tried to make a comeback the following summer and was only a work or two away from a race when a tendon filled. Ron McAnally, who had worked a series of health miracles with the champ, pulled the plug and sent John Henry off to the Kentucky Horse Park, where he lived for another 23 years.

There are echoes of John Henry in the way Wise Dan’s career has come to an end. His fractured cannon bone from last October had healed beautifully, and the two-time Horse of the Year was only days away from a trip to Canada for his comeback in the Woodbine Mile this Sunday. Then a tendon filled after a work, and a lesion was detected. End of story. End of the line.

“I was sick to my stomach,” said Charlie LoPresti, the man who trained Wise Dan through his 23 victories in 31 starts. “It’s just now when I can talk about it a little bit. I know he’s in good shape and going to be all right. He won’t be gimping around the paddock or anything like that.

“But I almost felt bad for the old fellow,” LoPresti said. “This morning, when I went to the barn, he was looking out of the stall at me, like to say, ‘Well, why ain’t I going to the racetrack? Everybody else’s going. What’s wrong with me?’ ”

It was Tuesday afternoon, and LoPresti was back at his Forest Lane Farm east of Lexington after checking on Wise Dan at his Keeneland barn.

“I think the whole racetrack was down this morning, all my fellow trainers there,” LoPresti said. “It was like he got so close, and they were pulling for him to make it back.”

Wise Dan’s final race turned out to be right there at Keeneland in the 2014 Shadwell Turf Mile. After that, he was poised to attempt a third straight win in the Breeders’ Cup Mile when the fracture to the base of his right fore cannon bone was detected.

This was on top of the colic surgery Wise Dan underwent in the spring of 2014. At that point, all bets were hedged when it came to a successful comeback. But come back he did to win the Bernard Baruch Handicap at Saratoga and then the Shadwell.

“You know, I’m almost relieved in a way,” LoPresti added. “I didn’t think he’d get hurt. I mean, you never know when a horse is going to take a bad step, but I knew him well enough to know when to stop. My biggest fear was that he trained so great and he looked like the same horse, but who’s to know at 8 years old if he’d lost a step? The only way to find out was to run him.”

Wise Dan will decompress at Keeneland and then retire to the LoPresti farm, where he has spent each winter.

“Now I’ve got to close the book,” the trainer said. “It’s been a great run with him, and I know how lucky I’ve been. There’s trainers with a lot more horses and better-bred horses than me who have never had the opportunity to be around one like him.

“There’s only a handful of horses who breathe that different kind of air,” LoPresti added. “He was one of them.”