Point Given and the Preakness Stakes

Every year, on the heels of the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and Belmont Stakes roll around and we marvel once again about the tremendous career of Point Given. As one of the winningest racehorses foaled and raised at Mill Ridge Farm, Point Given would go on to win both the Preakness and Belmont and was named 2001 Horse of the Year. He was also the first thoroughbred ever to win four consecutive $1 million races in same year.

Point Given and Pepe Aragon, Saratoga, 2001. Photo by Barbara Livingston.

Saudi Arabian Prince Ahmad bin Salman and Richard Mulhall formed the storied Thoroughbred Corporation in 1994 and two years later purchased stakes-winning mare Turko’s Turn at Keeneland. It proved a wise investment. Turko’s Turn was bred to Kentucky Derby and Belmont winner Thunder Gulch and in 1998 she foaled at Mill Ridge an energetic and stubborn chestnut colt.

Weanlings at Mill Ridge are allowed the freedom to run around and learn to be real horses, and it was no difference for Point Given. The hilly terrain helped build his strength, and rambunctious play cultivated his competitive spirit. 

He grew to 17.1 hands and developed a reputation as a mighty terror (hence “T-Rex,” one of the nicknames he earned) and nearly unstoppable (his other nickname being “The Big Red Train”). But it was clear he was meant to race, and Point Given was soon transferred to the care of Hall of Fame trainer and two-time Triple Crown winner Bob Baffert.

Two-Year-Old Season 

In 2000, Point Given finished second in his first race race on August 12 at Del Mar, then broke his maiden just two weeks later on the 26th. 

Still emotionally immature when he entered his first graded stakes race less than a month later, Point Given reared up out of the gate. Yet despite a lagging start, he ended up winning by three-and-a-half lengths.

He then suffered two narrow defeats in a row—first at the G1 Champagne Stakes at Belmont, when he was edged out in the stretch by A P Valentine, and then at the G1 Breeders Cup Juvenile, when in the final turn he closed another slow start only to lose in a photo finish to Macho Uno. 

He more than made up for these second-place finishes however with a massive victory at the G1 Hollywood Futurity that December. “He wasn't running at all,” jockey Gary Stevens (also a Hall of Famer) mused. “He was gearing himself down and just absolutely playing with ‘em.” 

Three-Year-Old Season

Point Given. Photo: Barbara Livingston

At this point in his career, it was clear that Point Given was on the Triple Crown trail. Most competitors will start early that third year, but Baffert gave him a few months to rest. If it was a nerve-wracking time for trainer and jockey, the horse seemed not to get the memo. Under no pressure at all, Point Given took the G2 San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita in 2001 by a good two-and-a-quarter lengths.

He immediately scored another win at the G1 Santa Anita Derby, where the Big Red Train proved he could handle mud. It was a five-and-a-half lengths win for him—Stevens’s eighth at Santa Anita Derby—and it set him up as a 2-1 favorite by post time for the G1 Kentucky Derby. 

They say horses can’t read the boards, and that cuts both ways. Point Given was more T-Rex than train the morning of the 2001 Kentucky Derby. He made news when he wheeled and repeatedly reared during a workout that morning. Baffert noted to the press that the rider “looked like a gerbil hanging on to a piece of PVC pipe.” And while the T-Rex kept up with the leaders initially, he fell behind in the stretch, finishing a disappointing fifth as the 8–5 favorite. There was still plenty of Big Red Train left to chug, however. 

On May 19, Point Given won the 2001 G1 Preakness Stakes. In the final turn, he swept three wide and battled past Congaree and then A P Valentine to pull away by two-and-a-quarter lengths at the finish. Redemption was in all the headlines, but Point Given wasn’t finished. That June, he won the G1 Belmont Stakes by twelve-and-a-quarter lengths in the fourth-fastest finish in race history. And that was despite getting into further antics at his stable, leading to stitches over his eye, which led to medications that led to him acting out and trying to escape, which led to a gash in his side. 

Point Given was a special horse, indeed. “The best horse never to win the Triple Crown,” Stevens would later say of him. 

The G1 Haskell Invitational was next; officials at Monmouth had raised the purse to $1.5 million just to draw Baffert and Point Given. It was a tight race. Despite nine pounds given to his competitors, as well as an abscess troubling a hindfoot, and a tense miscommunication between trainer and jockey before the start, Point Given was all heart, and took the race by half a length.

Point Given notched his fourth consecutive Grade 1 win three weeks later at the Travers Stakes at Saratoga. His only serious competition was E Dubai, who had just come off a win at the G2 Dwyer Stakes and who maintained a strong lead through the final turn but was no match for the Big Red Train.

Retirement

Shortly after Travers, a tendon strain was detected in Point Given’s right foreleg. The injury would keep him out of racing for six months. And despite his incredible conformation and powerful legs, he’d long been known to have thin-soled feet, a source of ongoing trouble. A painful decision had to be made. He was forced into early retirement, but already had a prodigious list of achievements:

• Total record: 13 starts: 9-3-0

• Won 2 stakes as a two-year-old

• Won 6 stakes as a three-year-old

• Won the Belmont Stakes by more than 12 lengths, with the fifth-fastest time (2:26.56)

• Started as the favorite in all three Triple Crown races

• Became the first horse to win four $1 million races in a row

• First horse since 1967 to win the Preakness, Belmont, and Travers

• Worst placing was 5th in the Kentucky Derby

• Earned 9 triple-digit Beyer Speed Figures

• Unanimously won Champion three-year-old

• Won Horse of the Year over two-time Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Tiznow

• Earned lifetime $3,968,500

Point Given was syndicated to stud for $50 million (at $1 million a share). His progeny includes Coil (USA), Go Between (USA), Point Ashley (USA), Points of Grace (USA), and Sealy Hill (CAN).

In 2010 Point Given was inducted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame. He is retired locally at the Kentucky Horse Park. 

It was a great honor to raise Point Given and watch his career. Alice Chandler knew what she was doing when she created Mill Ridge, and the story of Point Given is a testament to her legacy.