Howard fondly remembers Summer Squall’s 1990 Preakness victory
BALTIMORE – Neil Howard, here at Pimlico for Friday’s Black-Eyed Susan Stakes with a filly named Ahh Chocolate, needs no reminder that it has been 25 years since he saddled Summer Squall to win the Preakness.
“I don’t like thinking how long it’s been,” Howard said with a grin.
Owned by Dogwood Stable and ridden by Pat Day, Summer Squall ($6.80) defeated Unbridled by 2 1/4 lengths in the 1990 Preakness after having finished second to that rival in the Kentucky Derby. Mister Frisky was another nine lengths back in third in a field of nine.
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Speculation leading into the Preakness was dominated by an incident that occurred the day before the race: Summer Squall trickled a bit of blood out of a nostril while being grazed outside the Preakness barn.
“I was on pins and needles about it,” Howard recalled. “I was really up front about it with everybody and figured it wasn’t that big a deal, that we could get it under control. With the way things are today, I don’t think there’s any chance he would have been permitted to run nowadays – no way.”
Treated with the race-day bleeder medication Lasix, Summer Squall validated Howard’s instincts that the colt would be fine. “He was small, but, man, he had the constitution of Man o’ War,” said Howard.
Summer Squall did not race in the Belmont Stakes three weeks later because Lasix was banned at the time in New York.
50-year anniversary for Turcotte
Even before Secretariat, yes, Ron Turcotte, actually had a nice career as a jockey.
In fact, it was 50 years ago Friday – on May 15, 1965 – that Turcotte recorded his first of six victories in Triple Crown events when he rode Tom Rolfe to a neck victory over Dapper Dan in the Preakness. Besides his 1973 Triple Crown with Secretariat, Turcotte won the 1972 Kentucky Derby and Belmont with Riva Ridge.
Turcotte, 73, currently is undergoing physical therapy at his home in New Brunswick, Canada, after breaking both legs in an automobile accident in March. Turcotte has been paralyzed from the waist down since a 1978 spill at Belmont Park.