Originally published in The Snitch, 2003.

By Billy Reed
Snitch Contributing Writer

Part 3.
The other side of Dr. Fix-it, Part III

The good, the bad, the ugly

In the mid-1880s, when Harthill’s grandfather and namesake was treating Derby horses at Churchill Downs, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It, of course, became a classic story of a man’s conflict between his good and evil sides. If a sequel were made today, it could based on Harthill’s career.

The Harthill files include many heart-warming stories about how Harthill has worked tirelessly to save horses. On Derby Day, 1948, the day Citation and stablemate Coaltown finished 1-2 at Churchill Downs, Harthill saved the life of a 2-year-old colt who had been gored with a pitchfork by a frightened groom. Since there were no antibiotics in those days, Harthill’s quick work was credited with keeping the colt from becoming infected. That colt, Ponder, won the 1949 Derby for Calumet.

In the spring of ‘49, Harthill came to his friend Warner Jones’ Hermitage Farm in Goshen, Ky., to perform emergency surgery of Isolde, who was having trouble delivering a foal. To save the mare, Harthill had to take a saw and dismember the foal, piece by piece. Isolde survived quickly enough to be bred that same spring to the imported stallion Royal Gem II.

The colt she delivered in the spring of 1950, Dark Star, won the 1953 Derby, handing the immortal Native Dancer the only defeat of his 22-race career.

Harthill managed to get C.V. Whitney’s Mameluke, whom the doc characterized as a "born cripple," to the 1951 Derby, where he and stablemate Counterpoint, another Whitney horse that was known to have bad ankles, were sent off as the second choice to the favored Battle Morn, ridden by Arcaro. Counterpoint finished 11th and Mameluke last to the victorious longshot Count Turf in the 20-horse field. But Counterpoint went on to become the 1951 Horse of the Year.

Not even his detractors argue with the belief that Harthill is a veterinary genius, one of the most gifted ever to work in the racing industry. But then there’s the other side. At various times, mostly in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, he was charged with illegally injecting horses with ampehtamines, bribing a public official and conspiring with trainers to fix races. He lost his licenses in Illinois and Louisiana (they were eventually reinstated), was kicked out of stable areas in Kentucky and California, and withdrew license applications in New Jersey and Michigan when racing authorities began asking too many questions.

He was investigated by the FBI in Texas, the IRS in Kentucky and the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau, the sport’s investigative arm, everywhere. He was arrested in New Orleans in a case that eventually crossed the desk of District Attorney Jim Garrison, who later became infamous for his theories about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.

Asked in a 1968 interview to explain why Harthill wasn’t a member of the American Equine Practitioners Association, Dr. Arthur Davidson, a respected veterinarian based in Louisville, said, "His record is questionable, let’s face it. He’s gotten out of several scrapes by the skin of his teeth … He’s always got to be fixing something up."

Indeed, it was nothing less than amazing that Harthill always managed to wiggle his way out of tough spots.

Perhaps the best story of Harthill as Jekyll/Hyde involves the immortal filly Ruffian, who broke down in her 1975 match race with Foolish Pleasure, the Kentucky Derby winner. Harthill, who just happened to be in the stands at Belmont Park that day, joined the surgical team that tried vainly to save her life in Dr. William O. Reed’s clinic near the track. The industry applauded him for his valiant efforts.

But the irony is that, at that time, Harthill didn’t have a license to practice on the backstretch of the New York tracks. As state steward Francis P. Dunne told Sports Illustrated’s Lynn Simross in a 1969 interview, "He is a very difficult person. I don’t want to have my phone taken out. I could have, for saying what I really think about him. They don’t like those words on the phone."

Round two with the Doc

Interestingly, considering his high profile and that his fingerprints may be found somewhere on every Kentucky Derby since 1948, the only time a newspaper has ever launched a full-scale investigation of him came in 1972. In April of that year, I had left Sports Illustrated to return to The Courier-Journal as a special projects reporter. My first assignment was to go underground, pose as an out-of-work degenerate gambler, and see what I could discover about Louisville’s underworld, which had been the topic of a recent expose by WHAS television.

But my assignment was changed by a dinner conversation with a bookmaker who then was handling a lot of action at Churchill. (By betting through a bookmaker instead of the pari-mutuel machines, gamblers can avoid paying taxes on winnings when they make a big score). At one point, the bookmaker said he knew of two races that would be fixed on the Derby Day card. He even gave me the horses’ names - Scotch Thorn and Postal Milagro. And, remember, this was a month BEFORE the Derby.

On Derby Day, Scotch Thorn ran in the second race and Postal Milagro in the 10th, the race following the Derby, which was won by Riva Ridge.

The past performances of both horses weren’t impressive enough to justify the way they were hammered down at the pari-mutel windows. Both had last-minute jockey changes because jockey Bruce Pronesti, scheduled to ride both, reported that he was sick. Forrest Kaelin, trainer of Scotch Thorn, immediately retained John Rotz, who was in town to ride Sensitive Music in the Derby, and E.K. "Boobie" Gray hired Jimmy Combest, who didn’t have any mounts on the Derby Day card but just happened to be hanging around the jocks’ room with his tack.

When both horses won, just as I had been told they would, George Gill, then the C-J’s managing editor, assigned Jim Bolus to help me with the investigation. One of the first names we stumbled across was Dr. Alex Harthill. Not only had he treated both Scotch Thorn and Postal Milagro, he also claimed Postal Milagro on behalf of absentee owner Al Levinson, a California steel magnate who was one of Harthill’s friends.

A claiming race is one in which any horse may be purchased for a designated price. If a trainer wants to "claim" a certain horse, he notifies the racing secretary’s office. If more than one trainer wants to claim the same horse, the racing secretary conducts a draw to see who gets the horse. After the race, no matter what the horse does, ownership transfers to the trainer who claimed him.

Even if a horse breaks down in the race and has to be destroyed, the trainer who won the right to claim him must pay the designated fee to the racing secretary, who then gives the money to the previous owner. Claiming races, although generally run for far smaller purses than allowance and stakes races, are the sport’s lifeblood because the large percentage of thoroughbreds are mediocre, at best.

If, say, a California owner wants to claim horses at Churchill Downs, he must work out a deal with a local horseman, who then will obtain an authorized agent’s license from the State Racing Commission. In the case of Postal Milagro, Harthill neglected to obtain that license on Levinson’s behalf.

After a commission hearing that proved to be mainly a farce, Harthill was fined $500 and told his licenses as an owner and authorized agent would be revoked for the rest of the year. In addition, Churchill Downs finally ordered Harthill to move his office and laboratory out of Barn 24. It was strictly cosmetics. The penalties could have been - should have been - far, far worse.

So about all that came of it was that Bolus and I won a couple of national journalism awards for our reporting, and William H. May, the racing commission chairman, brought in the respected Keene Daingerfield to be the state steward and ordered him to clean up the sport.

Typically, many in the industry defended Harthill by attacking Bolus and me. We were accused of trying to hurt racing, a sport we both loved. The only reaction that I received from Harthill came one day when I received a call at home from his longtime pal, John "Trader" Clark, who informed me that Harthill was with him at his home in Lexington and they had been talking about me.

"If you don’t lay off of Doc," Clark said, "we’re going to let everybody know that you’ve been screwing Mary Bacon."

I had just done a big feature story on Bacon, a jockey attractive enough to be featured in Playboy.

"Go ahead, Johnny," I said. "I don’t know what you and Harthill are worth, but I guarantee you that me and my lawyer will own you both if you try to pull that crap."

And that was the last I heard about that.

The road to perdition

It’s tempting to say that Harthill has been "the Derby’s dirty little secret" for almost 55 years, but that wouldn’t be true. He’s never been a secret.

As he has grown older and many of his most loyal patrons have died and been replaced by newcomers who aren’t members of the conspiracy of silence, Harthill’s influence on the Derby has waned somewhat. There are also plenty of talented younger veterinarians who don’t have his "mystique." Still, as long as Harthill is active, many horsemen and racing insiders will try to keep close tabs on his activities.

But the national media have pretty much washed their hands of horseracing. It’s no longer considered a major sport, so pumping money into an investigation that might reveal a history of corruption is a waste of resources. Plus, it would be like looking into heavyweight boxing. Everybody already knows it’s tainted, so why bother?

In my last tenure at Sports Illustrated, from 1988-98, the editors got excited about the Derby only once. That came in 1995, when it appeared that jockey Gary Stevens, aboard the victorious Thunder Gulch, passed something to rival jockey Pat Day just after the finish line. A battery! It had to be a battery! Stevens was using Day, who rode Thunder Gulch’s stablemate Timber Country to a third-place finish, to get rid of a battery!

Of course, that was patently ridiculous, as I patiently explained, much to the editors’ disappointment. I couldn’t help but be amused that they would get so excited over such a silly story, but showed no interest in pursuing what I considered a far bigger one: Dr. Harthill and his relationship to the Derby.

Go figure.

A couple of days before the 1989 Derby I was working with my friend Shug McGaughey, the trainer of Easy Goer, on a daily Derby diary for The Lexington Herald-Leader. One chilly and rainy morning, we were standing together in McGaughey’s tack room, looking out at the gloomy scene.

"What worries you the most about the Derby?" I asked.

"That right there," said McGaughey, nodding his head toward the barn next door.
I looked out to see Harthill and trainer Charlie Whittingham laughing as they walked together into Sunday Silence’s barn.

I don’t know if Shug would verify that or not, because most horsemen are reluctant to discuss Harthill publicly. They might complain bitterly about him in private, but they don’t want to hurt the game - or what’s left of it - or anger Harthill’s powerful and influential friends by criticizing him in the media.

And down the stretch they come

So that’s pretty much the story of my history with the Doc. I don’t have any grudges about him sucker-punching me in 1968 because that changed my vision. That display of temper and that reference to a gambling coup south of the border opened my eyes.

What I do resent is the likelihood that he used his "mystique," his bag of tricks to destroy the hopes and dreams of a lot of good, honest people over all these years, and undermine the integrity of thoroughbred racing.

When thinking about Harthill, another story comes to mind besides Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s Damn Yankees, the story about a Washington Senators baseball player, Joe Hardy, who wants to win the World Series so badly that he cuts a Faustian deal with the devil. That’s sort of what I’ve felt about a lot of racing people who want to win the Derby so desperately that they’ll go out of their way to ignore Harthill’s dark side.

But at this stage of my life, I’m also willing to cut a deal of my own with Harthill. I’d like to hook him up to a polygraph, with witnesses present, and spend a few hours asking him the questions that I’ve raised in this piece. If he passes, I’ll make a public apology for my suspicions. But if he doesn’t, well, perhaps that might finally convince some of my colleagues in journalism that maybe they’ve overlooked one of the most sensational stories in the history of American sports.

Heck, I’d even agree to put the tapes of our interview into a safe-deposit box, not to be opened until Harthill dies. I’ll appoint a couple of trustees to take charge of the contents in case I die before Harthill. That’s the only way I can figure to cut through the Harthill mystique and get to the truth.

But I realize that’s not going to happen.

If Harthill ever decided to talk, the reputations of a lot of wealthy and influential people would be stained. The integrity of horse racing in general, and the Derby in particular, would be tarnished at a time when the sport already is struggling to maintain its share of the entertainment dollar against the burgeoning popularity of lotteries and casinos.

Future historians, the spiritual descendants of Jim Bolus and me, will have to determine whether we were conspiracy-theory fools or prophets without honor in our time.

Till then, the Doc and I are destined to continue our pas de deux, smiling and nodding superficially whenever we see each other at the track, each thinking his own private thoughts as we traipse inexorably toward the finish line.