Ruffian

Ruffian is perhaps the greatest racehorse of all-time. I have all of her races and have watched them repeatedly. It never gets any easier to watch the Great Match Race and this dramatization doesn't soften the blow AT ALL. The last thirty minutes of this film are incredibly difficult to watch. Horseracing is as dark as it is beautiful and Ruffian was the darkest and most beautiful of all.

This DVD includes some excellent bonus features including nearly all of her races in their entirety (including the Match Race), an interview with Nack, a documentary featuring Jane Schwartz, Frank Whiteley, Jacinto Vasquez and others, a tribute comparing Ruffian and Barbaro etc. Worth every penny and more.

When I heard they were making a film about Ruffian, my first reaction was that I didn't want to see it and relive the emotions I felt back in 1975 while watching the match race on TV.

But by the time the movie debuted on ABC, I decided to watch it and I'm glad I did. Seeing the movie helped put it back in perspective and made me remember the glory of Ruffian and not just the tragic ending.

If you are too young to remember 1975 or weren't born yet, please watch the movie to see the cultural significance of the "He vs. She" match race. It was an indelible part of the 1970s decade, coming on the heels of the 1973 Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Fisher tennis match, and the rise of Women's Lib.

There are a lot of other things about that tumultuous decade that we'd like to forget (such as polyester!), but in horse racing, it was the best decade of all. Three smashing Triple Crown winners in Secretariat, Seattle Slew, and Affirmed; the rise of jockey Steve Cauthen as a household name; women jockeys breaking down the doors of the men-only club; plus Ruffian and other horse racing greats such as Spectacular Bid, Forego, and Alydar.

There are always inaccuracies that plague horse racing movies, and the Ruffian movie is no exception. Workout scenes show Ruffian alone with no other horses on the racetrack. I worked as an exercise rider for 20 years at Thoroughbred racetracks, and believe me, horses don't train alone. There are hundreds of horses on the track galloping and breezing during training hours, which really changes the dynamic of the scene.

The horse they used as Ruffian on the racetrack was a fairly decent representation of the real Ruffian, but the horse they used for the barn scenes looked like a Quarter horse, and just stood there like a nag. I'm sure it was for practical reasons, they needed a quiet horse to put up with all the filming, but I wish the barn-scene horse was more true to Ruffian's looks and personality. Ruffian was an extremely high spirited horse, she kicked up a fuss on a regular basis, and part of her allure and fame was due to her high voltage personality.

Even though in reality Bill Nack's character wasn't there for Ruffian's every move, I don't have an objection to him constantly being in and around the Whiteley barn as Bill Nack helped explain and drive the story. If the story was told from Frank Whiteley's perspective alone, it would have been a near-silent movie as he was cranky and didn't say much in real life.

In the 30+ years since Ruffian died, she has stood the test of time as an all-time great. Sports Illustrated included Ruffian as the only non-human on their list of the top 100 female athletes of the 20th century. The Blood Horse Magazine ranks her #35 in their top 100 racehorses of the century.

Real footage of Ruffian racing is shown at the end of the movie, it's a great addition as she truly was a dynamo. The inaccuracies I stated above don't detract that much from the real story, so I am giving it my top rating.

Be warned. The historical Ruffian is not to be found in this movieland fluffery put together by people who didn't do their homework, who made up what they could not be bothered to portray accurately.

Movies hardly ever get horse racing right. Seabiscuit was the closest approach I have seen, but even that movie had problems. Ruffian is loaded with problems.

WHY WHY WHY do movies with racing invariably confabulate odd little human subplots that anyone with any knowledge of the sport knows are pure hokum? I do KNOW the sport, having raised, handled, and raced my own horses, and having written about the sport professionally. The actual history of Ruffian was compelling enough without the make-believe elements of this movie.

The horses used to portray the title character were some of the coarsest, plainest beasts imaginable. Ruffian--the real one--was a tall, nearly 17 hand filly, quite leggy and graceful. With all the cast-off TBs available for purchase on a per-pound meat price basis, couldn't at least one been found for close shots that did not look like a chunky pony???

I am sure that many people in racing would have cheerfully advised the movie's makers on details, gratis, just to be sure things were not gotten laughably wrong. The notion that Claiborne Farm, in the 1970s, shipped horses in a rusty beige trailer with "CF" on the side is silly. Claiborne was and is one of the last remaining family, multi-generational outfits, and has been involved not just with foaling and raising good horses, but in shaping and influencing the breed globally. It is not a marginal operation without presence or reputation. Go to the farm, and note that the gates, the (very large) water tower, the trim on the main stallion barn--are all painted Cadmium Yellow, the farm colors. Rusty beige trailers? Pulled by aged pickup trucks? I think not.

This was a FICTIONAL movie appropriating the name of a real filly, and beyond that, not much more. It was never really explained why Ruffian was extraordinary--the movie makers seemed confused between stakes record time and track record time--or that she had an average winning margin of 7 lengths after 10 races, or that there has never been anything like her since, and in what seems a glaring omission, there was no hint of all the advances in caring for catastrophic breakdowns since 1975. Foolish Pleasure's reputation was inflated beyond what it was at the time--he was a good 3-y-o, but not a great one, and he finished his days in obscurity, pasture-breeding mares somewhere out west.

Watch this howler as maudlin fiction, but be warned that it is fiction, and has not much to do with the real Ruffian or the real sport.

No wonder Frank Whiteley and Jacinto Vasquez sought to legally block the airing of this movie without adequate disclaimers.

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