LEGENDARY HORSE JOHN HENRY DIES OLDEST CHAMPION EUTHANIZED AT 32.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Staff Writer

John Henry died at age 32 on Monday, but not before the legendary gelding put up a fight against illness that recalled his tenacity on the racetrack.

John Henry was euthanized in Lexington, Ky., at the Kentucky Horse Park, where his stall in the Hall of Champions had been a tourist destination for racing fans throughout a 22-year retirement. A park spokeswoman said the two-time Horse of the Year declined over the weekend, and his kidneys failed. Park officials said they were planning a public memorial service.

News of John Henry's death hit hardest in California, where the refugee from the New York claiming ranks made the rags-to-riches climb of a modern Seabiscuit, winning the national Horse of the Year title in 1981 and again in 1984 at age 9 to become the sport's oldest-ever champion.

"It was a great run," said Ron McAnally, John Henry's trainer during the years of dominance that propelled both the horse and the horseman to the racing Hall of Fame. "He was a great part of our lives, both when he was racing and in retirement.

He meant a lot to racing people across the country."

McAnally, who heard of John Henry's death in a phone call from the Horse Park to his Pasadena home on Monday, linked the horse's popularity to the length of his career.

"He stayed around longer than most (great thoroughbreds)," McAnally said. "What he did for racing at the age of 9 was incredible."

McAnally said he saw John Henry for the last time in September, when the trainer was in Kentucky for a horse auction.

"He wasn't doing well," McAnally said. "I knew it was just a matter of time."

As he fought dehydration in the heat of mid-September, reports made it sound as if John Henry could go anytime, and Horse Park staffers were said to have drawn an outline of his would-be grave on a patch of grass near his barn. When John Henry rallied, it surprised nobody who'd seen him race. Caretakers joked that their ornery patient wanted to defy predictions one last time.

Horse Park spokeswoman Lisa Jackson said Monday that keeping John Henry alive any longer "wouldn't have been fair to the horse."

"The next step would have been so hard on him," Jackson told the Associated Press. "It wouldn't have been comfortable."

John Henry's career is barely summed up in his huge career numbers: 83 starts from 1977-84; 39 victories, including 16 in Grade 1 stakes on both dirt and turf; and $6,591,860 in earnings, a record that since has been eclipsed but remains the all-time best if adjusted for inflation. His local wins included the 1981 and 1982 Santa Anita Handicaps, the latter after Perrault was disqualified for interference. Perhaps his most famous win came in the 1981 Arlington Million, where he caught The Bart in a finish so close that the network televising the race ended its broadcast having said The Bart held on.

It's the way John Henry went from the scrap heap to the top that made him an icon of the last decade before various forms of off-track betting loosened the emotional tie between horses and their fans.

A 1975 offspring of Old Bob Bowers and Once Double, John Henry wasn't well-bred and lacked a champion's physique and personality. His name, evoking the fabled "steel-drivin' man," came from an early talent for stomping feed buckets flat. He was gelded in an attempt to soften his disposition.

John Henry had lost 10 races in a row when Sam and Dorothy Rubin bought him for $25,000 in 1978. Asked why he spent so much on a sub-stakes-level horse who had no breeding value because he was a gelding, Sam Rubin, a bicycle importer with little racing knowledge, famously replied: "Why? What color is a gelding?"

Under the Rubins' ownership, John Henry often switched circuits and trainers before having his best success in Southern California with McAnally. Among the jockeys he carried to stakes victories were Hall of Famers Bill Shoemaker, Laffit Pincay, Chris McCarron and Angel Cordero.

John Henry's last race -- and last victory -- came with McCarron in the October 1984 Ballantine Handicap on the Meadowlands turf course in New Jersey. An ankle condition kept him out of the inaugural Breeders' Cup at Hollywood Park that fall and forced his retirement.

In a statement released through the Horse Park on Monday, McCarron said: "John meant the world to my family and me. Everywhere he raced, his presence doubled the size of a normal race track crowd. He did so much for racing, even after he retired, that he will be impossible to replace."

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John Henry (left), with jockey Bill Shoemaker, wins the Arlington in 1981. John Henry, two-time Horse of the Year, was euthanized Monday. He was 32.

Associated Press