In a sport that loves an underdog saga, Smarty Jones fit that bill, but he was so much more than the classic overachiever. The plucky Pennsylvania native captured the hearts of a national audience in his bid to become the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978, and in Philadelphia he was the wunderkind they’d been waiting for. Smarty Jones was a winner.
“It was a huge deal. People who didn’t follow the sport followed Smarty Jones,” said longtime senior Dick Jerardi Philadelphia Daily News horse racing and college hoops writer who in 2004 was weekend host at 610 WIP, then the only sports station in town.
“Horse racing became a topic, not just with me, but with the morning show and other shows that were on WIP at the time.”
Philadelphia had not won a major championship since the Moses Malone-led 76ers defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals. The beloved Eagles had just lost in the NFC championship game for the third straight year, the Eric Lindros-era Flyers and Allen Iverson’s Sixers never got over the hump, and the Phillies hadn’t tasted the postseason since 1993. Philadelphia sports fans were starving, and Smarty’s blue-collar story had all the ingredients.
Smarty was the local horse, not a Kentucky blue blood. Its owners, Roy and Pat Chapman, were known around town for their Chapman Ford dealerships. Trainer John Servis and jockey Stewart Elliott were regional stars who had never sniffed the Kentucky Derby.
“I think at one point I wrote, ‘It was so far on the other side of the tracks you couldn’t see the station,’” Jerardi said. “That’s how people looked at Smarty Jones. I don’t want to say he was ‘Rocky,’ but he looked like that because the city loves underdogs.”
Smarty was bred by the Chapmans’ Someday Farm in Pennsylvania from a mare named I’ll Get along, who was selected for the couple by their trainer Bob Camac.
Camac also opted for coverage with Elusive Quality. The resulting foal was born on February 28, 2001, coincidentally the birthday of Pat Chapman’s mother, Milly “Smarty Jones” McNair.
Roy “Chappy” Chapman was in poor health and suffering from emphysema, and affairs surrounding the couple collapsed when Camac and his wife, Maryann, were murdered by their stepson over money in December 2001.
It seemed the time had come for the Chapmans to retire from the sport.
On the advice of a farm manager, the couple kept the promising chestnut stallion born on their mother’s birthday. Of course, the Chapmans needed a trainer. Mark Reid, who had previously trained for the Chapmans, recommended one of his former assistants who was at the top of his game, John Servis.
Servis’s first horse for the Chapmans almost never made it to the races. After about three weeks at Servis, Smarty Jones almost lost an eye, suffering multiple skull fractures and a broken left eye socket in a school accident in the starting gate.
Veterinarian Patricia Hogan, who cared for Smarty at the New Jersey Equine Clinic in Clarksburg, N.J., said he looked so bad that the staff nicknamed him “Quasimodo.” Smarty Jones nursed back to health over twelve days in the clinic and then six weeks on a farm, and finally made it to the races. Once he did that, there was no stopping him.
He won his first three starts, two at Philadelphia Park and one at Aqueduct in New York, by a total of 27 ¾ lengths under Elliott. To celebrate his 100e To mark the anniversary, Oaklawn Park offered a $5 million bonus, the largest ever at any track in America, to any horse that could win the Rebel Stakes, Arkansas Derby and Kentucky Derby in 2004. Servis had pre-mapped the path from Hot Springs, Ark., to the Kentucky Derby for Smarty Jones and, after winning the Southwest Stakes, Rebel and Arkansas Derby, Smarty Jones headed to Louisville to become the first undefeated Kentucky Derby winner since Seattle. Killed in 1977 with a huge bonus on the line.
“Smarty Jones gave 110% every time. He gave everything he had. He didn’t want to lose,” Elliott said. “The more he won, the better he got and the more he wanted it. He had that determination. John helped a lot with that by keeping him undefeated.”
“It’s like a boxer who keeps winning, I mean, he thinks he’s unbeatable.”
Rain or shine, no one beat Smarty Jones on Kentucky Derby day. After a monsoon-like storm drenched Churchill Downs, Smarty Jones skipped the sloppy route to a $5 million bonus, a 2¾ win over Lion Heart and newfound fame beyond imagination.
“We drove to Kentucky for the Derby,” said Servis, who celebrated the Derby win with his wife and another couple with pizza in the hotel lobby after forgetting to make a dinner reservation. “When we left [Monday] In the morning we were just outside of Lexington on the highway, and someone was laying on the horn – I thought I cut someone off. I look over and there are two couples in the car, and a girl was hanging out of the car yelling, ‘Smarty Jones! Clever Jones!’ … That was pretty crazy.”
When the Servis family returned to Pennsylvania, the Servis family found their home in the Chapman’s blue and white colors, with ribbons and balloons all over the yard and much of their entire block. There was a billboard in Philadelphia congratulating Smarty Jones, and a huge media circus followed the connections back to Philadelphia Park. Heck, reportedly 5,000 fans watched 10 deep from the rail as Smarty Jones went out with John Servis, dressed in a Flyers jersey, for morning practice.
Media requests had increased so dramatically that Servis’ wife, Sherry, stepped in and coordinated interviews and requests. Jerardi had advised Servis after the Arkansas Derby to just be himself, and he was.
“He was incredibly available, very articulate and was a very good ambassador for the horse, as were the Chapmans, John’s wife, Sherry and Stewart Elliott,” Jerardi said. “For the entire crew it was as if they had experienced this before, but of course they had never experienced it at all.”
A record 112,668 fans attended the Preakness Stakes as Smarty mania swept the Mid-Atlantic region, and after an emphatic, 11 1/2-length win in Baltimore, Smarty Jones fever rose beyond what anyone could have expected.
For three weeks, between the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes, Smarty Jones graced the covers of newspapers and magazines across the country. He was the talk of the town in Philadelphia, as the champion-starved city was fully prepared to parade the undefeated colt down Broad Street after a victory in the Belmont Stakes – which, of course, was not sanctioned by John Servis or the Chapmans. The Flyers were in the middle of an Eastern Conference finals, but Smarty Jones was the topic of the day on sports talk radio.
“I don’t think they had a choice,” Servis said, laughing. “People were interested and wanted to talk about him. If WIP wanted people to call, I don’t think they had much choice to be honest with you.”
Sadly, there was no storybook ending for Smarty Jones. He faced a lot of early pressure in the early stages of the Belmont Stakes. Despite looking like a winner entering the stretch of the 1.5km Test of the Champion in front of a record crowd of 120,139 people, Marylou whittled past Whitney’s Birdstone in the final strides to spoil the Triple Crown bid by a length. Smarty Jones never raced again, retiring in August 2004 with what were described as “chronic lower cannon bone contusions” in his ball and socket joints.
The Smarty Party was a thrilling ride in the spring of 2004, both in Philadelphia and nationally, despite the lack of a storybook ending. Twenty years later, it is still difficult to explain how deeply connected people were to Smarty Jones, the Chapmans, John Servis and his team, and jockey Stewart Elliott.
“How often do you see a horse from Philadelphia Park go to the Kentucky Derby or the Triple Crown, let alone win those races?” Elliott thought. “It was incredible, it really was, the following and the interest that he had. It’s horse racing. I mean, a lot of people are horse racing fans, but he attracted people who didn’t know anything about horse racing or never watched horse racing.”
The people surrounding Smarty Jones welcomed fans into their lives for a few months that spring. That undoubtedly played a major role in its popularity.
“Chappy wasn’t healthy and people saw that,” Servis said of Roy Chapman, who died in February 2006. “My wife and I did our very best to tell the story and let everyone in. I felt like no matter how good the case had been for me, we wanted to give back and we just made the decision that we would be open to interviews and tell the story, and hope they would enjoy it.”
“They handled everything down to the Belmont Stakes,” Jerardi said. “I mean, there couldn’t be a more disappointing defeat and John went to the winners circle to congratulate him [Birdstone’s trainer] Nick Zito. Not many people would have done that, but he did it and he never changed.”
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