'RUFFIAN' ANOTHER ROUGH WATCH.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH

MEDIA

Not to give away the ending to his new book, "Ruffian: A Racetrack Romance," but author William Nack writes about how he, as a New York Newsday sports columnist, was covering a Billie Jean King tennis match in July 1975, at the Nassau Coliseum in New York. As the National Anthem began and spotlights were flashing around inside the darkened arena, Nack started weeping.

A reporter nearby asked what was wrong.

"I'm fine," Nack said. "Just a bad time. I'll be all right."

The night before, Nack had watched as workers, guided by the spotlights of nearby trucks at Belmont Park, lowered the remains of the great filly Ruffian, wrapped in a white canvas shroud, into a freshly-dug grave on the track's infield. The delayed emotional reaction hit Nack hard.

Although the screenplay for the ESPN Original Entertainment movie, "Ruffian," which ABC airs Saturday at 9 p.m., is adapted from Nack's book, that crying scene wasn't included. But by the time the movie reaches its conclusion, viewers will already have a clear sense of the deep attachment that not only Nack, but many others across the world, felt for this large black beauty that broke down during a CBS nationally-televised match race against Foolish Pleasure.

With the nightmarish deja vu scenario still fresh in the minds of those who saw Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro break down in the 2006 Preakness, investing time on a movie version of the rise and demise of Ruffian after she shattered two bones in her ankle may almost be too agonizing for some to endure again.

That almost happened to Nack, whose book not only provides the framework for the retelling of Ruffian but gave him the role of consulting producer on the movie. The author of the acclaimed 1975 Secretariat biography admits he almost didn't have the nerve to finish writing the Ruffian book 30 years later because it was still too painful.

"It was not an easy place to go back to," said Nack, who won six Eclipse Awards for his horse racing writing during a subsequent 23-year career at Sports Illustrated. "It was much harder writing about that than being on the set and watching the movie being made.

"Having to go back there emotionally ... it was a lot more raw than I thought. There were days when I had to walk away from the manuscript. I actually was kind of was sorry at one point that I got involved in it.

"Ultimately, I finished it and it is what it is."

Actor Frank Whaley (Archie Graham in "Field of Dreams," "Swimming With Sharks") portrays Nack, complete with a '70s-style leisure suit and thick mustache. Sam Shepard, who plays Ruffian's trainer, the otherwise stoic horseman Frank Whiteley Jr., also carries the movie's story along.

Nack doesn't hide his distain for how the media-generated hype played out surrounding this female-vs.-male match race between Ruffian, who at 10-0 was the only undefeated 3-year-old and had led the field in every part of each race, and Foolish Pleasure, who won the Kentucky Derby but lost the Preakness and Belmont.

One scene in the movie shows Ruffian owner Stuart Janney (Nicholas Pryor) trying to convince Whiteley (Shepard) to let the horse run despite his protests because of the pressure built by the media: "Our backs are against the wall," says Janney. "The newspapers won't let go of it."

Another scene shows Nack (Whaley) upset in the Newsweek offices as someone watches a TV report playing up the event, which was originally a four-horse field until Avatar and Master Derby were scratched, leaving Ruffian to run alone against Foolish Pleasure.

Nack, who as a kid saw his favorite horse, Swaps, lose a match race to Nashua, hated how this event "seemed to grow more wretched every day: a phony, circus-like atmosphere created around the marketing gimmick," as he wrote in the book, spinning off the infamous "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match between King and Bobby Riggs just two years earlier.

Did Nack feel some guilt for contributing to the race taking place?

"I was one beating the drums for it early, but that was more for how it was first conceived," Nack said. "Frankly I was kind of against (the match race) at the time. Of course, I felt terrible for how it ended.

"I think ultimately this match race was a negative because it turned a lot of people off racing for a long time. It was one of the reasons among several that caused me to stop cover racing full-time anymore."

In the HBO documentary on Barbaro that debuted this week, actual footage of the Ruffian-Foolish Pleasure race is included -- giving Nack the opportunity to compare the two breakdowns. Nack is in the unenviable position of having seen both firsthand.

Nack, who just finished work for ESPN on a pilot for a proposed series called "Unsettled Scores" that will air later this year, actually starts his book on Ruffian recounting how he ran out on the Pimlico track last year when Barbaro broke down. He said he stood next to Barbaro owners Roy and Gretchen Jackson as the medical staff try to calm the horse while putting up the curtain.

Thirty one years earlier, Nack found himself evading guards and running out on the track -- nearly getting clipped by a still-running Foolish Pleasure, something that he said "made the hair stand up on the back of my neck" -- before he reached the fallen Ruffian some 700 yards from the grandstand.

"It was the same ritual playing out," said Nack of the Barbaro scene. "I thought, 'Boy, I've been here before."'

Viewers may be saying the same thing Saturday night after watching "Ruffian."

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Photo:

Frank Whaley, left, as Bill Nack, meets with Sam Sheppard, as trainer Frank Whiteley, in "Ruffian."

Richard Cartwright/ESPN