Timphony and Wild Again: Made for Each Other

If Wild Again hadn't landed with a trainer like Vincent Timphony, Timphony would have landed with Wild Again. They were a match made in Utopia, this well-bred but wrong-side-of-the-tracks colt and a trainer who had spent a lifetime looking for the Big Horse. Together with their jockey, Pat Day, they pulled off one of racing's biggest upsets, one of racing's biggest betting coups, one fall afternoon at Hollywood Park 26 years ago. Wild Again, given no more than a fat chance of winning, won the first running of the Breeders' Cup Classic by an eyelash, sending Timphony, his trainer, and his other owners to a men's-room stall where they nervously divvied up what were reportedly hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs. A little later, this band of opportunists, who called themselves the Black Chip Stable, would be in Las Vegas, splitting up the rest of the windfall. With both hands, they had bet their horse on-track and off, the better to keep the price high and to make sure the ribbon clerks didn't turn into wiseguys overnight...