Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame: Formal Gold Needs To Be In

Some things just make you scratch your head. In revisiting the fantastic career of Formal Gold recently, I was dumbfounded to learn that the 24-year-old stallion is not in the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame.

My first thought is there must be some sort of technicality, such as the fact that the Ontario-bred son of Black Tie Affair never won a race in Canada. That's not it, though, as at least one horse in the Hall of Fame never even raced in Canada. Then I considered perhaps since the Canadian Hall has not been around all that long, there might be a backlog of deserving recent horses. I quickly found that not to be true either, though, as horses younger than Formal Gold have been inducted. Horses like Jambalaya and Sealy Hill are deserving members, but better than Formal Gold? I certainly don't believe that to be true.

A multiple Grade 1 winner of better than $1.5 million, Formal Gold compiled a record of 16-8-4-1 in only two seasons of racing in 1996 and 1997. As often is the case, the numbers fall a far cry short of telling the whole story.

Formal Gold was one of the most talented horses that ran in the decade of the 1990's. In fact, I truly believe that he was the most talented horse bred in Canada that I ever saw run. High praise, but that is how good the John Murphy owned and Bill Perry trained colt was in his racing career. Unfortunately, it was a racing career cut short by injury. 

Destined to be the favorite in the 1997 Breeders' Cup Classic, Formal Gold suffered a fractured cannon bone in his right hind leg while training for the big race. In his absence, Skip Away won the Classic by six lengths as the 9-5 favorite. While that future U.S. Hall of Famer had longevity on his side, he had nothing on Formal Gold on the racetrack that year.

In one of the better one-season rivalries that you will ever see, Formal Gold finished ahead of Skip Away in four of six meetings in 1997. More than that, it was in their final two meetings in which the Canadian-bred really displayed just how good he had become. Just ask the speed figure boys.

He recorded an Equibase fig of 136, and consecutive Beyers of 126, 124, and 125. All came in big races, and all while finishing ahead of Skip Away. Those Beyer numbers came in his final three races before the injury. They are quite simply numbers that you just don't see on a consistent basis any more. 

Getting back to those final two meetings against Skip Away, Formal Gold beat his rival by 5 1/4-lengths in the Iselin Handicap. If the ease in which he beat the champion was not enough, consider how fast he ran. His final time of 1:40.20 for the 1 1/16-miles broke the track record at Monmouth. 20 years later, it is a record that still stands.

His next race was probably even better. A match-up of the three top horses on the East Coast turned into a one-horse show, as Formal Gold treated both Skip Away and Will's Way badly in the Grade 1 Woodward at Belmont Park, again winning by more than five lengths. He left no doubt as to who was best in what turned out to be his final career race.

Formal Gold may have finished out of the money in his only start in Canada, when he checked in fifth of 13 in the Breeders' Cup Classic at Woodbine after a slow start, but that one came as a three-year-old, and only 4 1/2-months after his career debut. A very talented three-year-old, he became a monster at four. A monster who should be in the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame as soon as possible.