Story of Seattle Slew lives on

When Karen Taylor walks Chet, the family dog, down to the end of their street in Sun Valley, Idaho, she always pauses to look up at the night sky and "thank God for Slew's great gift."

That would be Seattle Slew, the Thoroughbred that won the Kentucky Derby 30 years ago this weekend, the first of his three victories in the 1977 Triple Crown, an accomplishment only 10 other horses have achieved in 132 years.

For Karen and Mickey Taylor, buying Seattle Slew for $17,500 in 1975 has been a life-changing event.

"He'll always be special in our hearts, foremost in our thoughts every day," said Karen Taylor, 62.

Reminders of Slew, who died in 2002 on the 25th anniversary of his 1977 Derby victory, are all around them. Starting with Chet, a pedigreed English black Labrador retriever.

"He was a favorite of Slew's," said Mickey Taylor, 61, "and he's named Chet Taylor Seattle Slew's Gift, after my father and Seattle Slew. But we just call him Chet."

Another reminder is Great Hunter, a 3-year-old colt running in the 133rd Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs Saturday. The Taylors will be at home rooting for this great grandson of Seattle Slew.

After his racing career ended in 1978 with $1,208,726 in earnings and a record of 14 wins and two seconds in 17 starts, Seattle Slew became a prodigious sire, producing more than 100 stakes winners as well as champion broodmares. The Taylors call Seattle Slew "the most complete Thoroughbred the industry has ever seen."

It's hard to argue with that. His descendants continue to produce winners. For example, Great Hunter is by Aptitude, son of A.P. Indy, one of Seattle Slew's most successful stallion sons.

Seattle Slew is the only undefeated winner of the Triple Crown. The three races he did not win came after he had won the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, the other two races in the Triple Crown.

He twice finished ahead of Affirmed, the horse that won the Triple Crown in 1978 and the last Thoroughbred to accomplish the feat. Seattle Slew beat Affirmed by three lengths in the Marlboro Cup at Belmont in September 1978, the first meeting in history of two Triple Crown winners. Five weeks later at Belmont, Slew finished ahead of Affirmed but lost to Exceller in the J.C. Gold Cup "by two inches," said Mickey Taylor.

"That was the race that made Slew," Taylor said. "He came back after losing the lead and almost won the race. Farm owners saw that he had more than speed, and they approached us about sending their mares to Slew."

Taylor, a third-generation logger in Central Washington when he and Karen bought Slew, knew after the colt's first Grade I stakes victory as a 2-year-old that this horse could make a big difference in their lives.

"I said that if we can keep this horse together, I won't ever have to cut down another tree," said Taylor.

From Slew's first win as a 3-year-old at Hialeah Park in Florida, Mickey Taylor's father and mother, Leola, and a Doberman Pinscher named Lance acted as bodyguards for Slew, sleeping in a camper parked right outside his stall.

"I would go and visit, and I always found the night watchman asleep," Taylor said.

Taylor said he got good advice from E.P. Taylor, the owner and breeder of Northern Dancer, the 1964 Kentucky Derby winner.

"He told me, 'Never lose control of your horse,' and we didn't," said Taylor. "I became the first non-Kentuckian to manage a horse syndicate."

And it all started because Karen Taylor wanted a horse.

"As a girl, I named my dog Pony," Karen said. "My aunt reminded me after Slew won the Derby that I had gone on a trip as a girl with my grandfather and her through Kentucky and told her — apparently to the point of being annoying — that I 'was going to come back and have great horses.' "

In 1973, when Karen told her husband of three years that she would like to have a horse, Mickey advised her to "get a racehorse so someone else can take care of it."

By 1975, the Taylors were the second-leading owners at Del Mar racetrack in California, and Slew, bred in Kentucky by Bold Reasoning out of My Charmer, was among 13 yearlings they bought that year.

They didn't have enough stable space in California for all the horses, so four of them were sent to Maryland, including Seattle Slew.

The Taylors were helped in their purchase by veterinarian Jim Hill, who came from Florida. The name Seattle Slew is a geographical combination of the Taylors' and Hill's home states: Seattle for Washington state and Slew for the swamps of Florida.

In 1977, Seattle Slew came to the Longacres track in Renton for an appreciation gallop. The $100,000 appearance fee was donated half to Washington State University and half to the clinic there of veterinarian Barrie Grant, who was doing research on spinal-compression syndrome in horses.

Slew was made an honorary member of the WSU Alumni Association, and the Taylors made a key connection in their commitment to "keeping this horse together."

In 2000, Slew's longtime groom, Tom Wade, called the Taylors and said something was wrong with Slew. The Taylors rushed to Kentucky and on their 30th wedding anniversary, Slew had the first of two surgeries to relieve spinal compression. The head of the surgical team in both operations was Grant.

"We were with Slew daily when he was racing as a 3- and 4-year-old and for the last three years of his life," said Karen.

The Taylors still own about 10 horses, but Slew was different.

"A very special horse, the love of our lives from the beginning," said Karen. "We were lucky to be his caretakers here on earth."