Page 75 - August 2021

Three Bars won 12 races from 28 starts.
Soon after his first attempt to
buy Three Bars failed, Vail offered Snedigar and Haggard $10,000 (almost $150,000 today) for the stallion. Reluctantly, the two men agreed with the stipulation that they would retain the right to race Three Bars the next year.
After spending 16 months away from the racetrack, Three Bars made his first 1946 start in the Speedball Handicap at Sportsman’s Park. For the second time in his life, the stallion finished worse than third. Sent to the Arizona State Fairgrounds, Three Bars went on to capture two handicaps, including one in which he returned $40 for
a $2 win ticket. Two weeks later,
Three Bars was entered into a
5-furlong sprint, where he gave a transcendent performance. After hurtling to the front immediately, the tenacious stallion pulled away from his competitors to win by 6-lengths. Even more impressively, his final time – 57-3/5 seconds – shattered the track record and missed the world mark by 2/5 of a second.
The stallion was just warming up. Following the conclusion of the Arizona meet, Three Bars made the journey to Mexico’s Agua Caliente Racetrack where he competed in the $4,000 Speed Handicap. The sprinter won by 4-lengths, unofficially breaking the track record for five-eighths of a mile by almost two seconds midway through the 6-furlong race. Despite
his convincing victory, Three Bars ceded the headlines to a horse named Sonoita. “They say everything happens in horse racing,” one turf scribe reported, “but... Sonoita gave a new twist to the old bromide by dumping her rider and taking off before the start of the 10th race today, headed for Ensenada. Toward nightfall it was announced the horse had been retrieved in the back country.”
With an official stakes win under Three
Bars’ belt, Snedigar and Haggard eagerly tried
to capitalize on their charge’s success. They challenged “any horse on the West Coast” to a 5 1/2-furlong match race. Moreover, the horsemen were willing to back their belief with a hefty $10,000 bet. Unfortunately, they were unable
to arrange such an event and instead shipped Three Bars to California’s Hollywood Park where he came fifth in the prestigious Premiere Handicap. After failing to win two more races, Three Bars regained his prestige by capturing
an allowance race called “The Big Flash.” The stallion followed this victory by winning an allowance purse by 2 1/4-lengths. With renewed confidence in Three Bars, Snedigar and Haggard entered their charge into a rich handicap race. After breaking beautifully to seize the lead, the
sprinter was engaged by an aged stallion named Ended, whom he managed to repel, but Three Bars was overtaken in the homestretch and finished second.
Next, Three Bars was sent to Del Mar Racetrack where he lost two more races, including one that he missed first by a neck. Once the Del Mar meet finished, the stallion returned to New Mexico, where the track handicapper assigned him a leaden 132 pounds for his first race at the State Fair. When the 9,000 spectators installed Three Bars as the favorite despite this disadvantage, the stallion didn’t disappoint. Streaking to the front in one of the greatest efforts of his career, Three Bars won brilliantly, breaking the 5 1/2-furlong track record. Sadly, the stallion’s victory caused his already excessive weight assignments to increase. For his next race, Three Bars was handed a 137-pound impost. As his jockey weighed far less than the assigned impost, he was forced
to don a belt stuffed with lead. When Three Bars broke with his customary speed, the lead weights caused the jockey to lose his balance and topple backwards off his mount. Suddenly freed from his burden, Three Bars blazed through the sprint and finished first, although in accordance with the rules of racing, he was immediately disqualified. Thankfully, his rider was unharmed. Three Bars endured one more loss before concluding his season with another dramatic win. It was an appropriate end to the greatest racing year of the stallion’s life; over the course of 17 starts, Three Bars had triumphed eight times and won $16,940.
After Three Bars’ outstanding 1946 campaign, the stallion was unable to reach peak condition as a seven year old. During his 1947 debut in the Premiere Handicap, he surged to the front in the early stages of the race before fading to finish 16th. Two races later, the stallion eked out a good effort to finish third. It was the
last time he would ever finish in the money. After suffering two more losses, Three Bars made the final start of his career in a $10,000 allowance race. Going off as the longest shot in the field, the stallion made an admirable effort before falling hopelessly back. Sagging, he pattered under the wire
in last. With the stallion’s racing condition deteriorating, Snedigar and Haggard had no choice but to retire Three Bars for good.
After leaving the racetrack, Three Bars settled into an unparalleled stud career. While the stallion started by standing at various locations for a very modest stud fee, Sid Vail soon entrusted the stallion to an astute breeder named Walter Merrick. His decision payed immense dividends.
Over the course of five years, the stallion’s
stud fee rose exponentially from $300 in 1952 to $10,000 in 1957. Three Bars’ growing popularity, however, had one disastrous consequence. During the late 1950s, a “couple of bumblers” kidnapped the stallion with the intention of “getting free matings to their mares.” Unfortunately, the thieves “had some trouble” with Three Bars, clubbed the poor stallion across the face – breaking his nose – and released him. Alternate stories state that Three Bars was either “found wandering among old cars and appliances in a junk yard” or that Sid Vail discovered that the stallion had made his way home when he saw him “trying to fight another stud through a fence.” Thankfully, Three Bars soon recovered from his ordeal, although his nose remained “awful sensitive” for the rest of his life.
After a few more misadventures, including
a time when he escaped from his paddock and was caught up in a battle with another stallion who badly injured his already damaged nose, Three Bars’ life slowly wound down. During the last years of the stallion’s life, Vail decided to pair Three Bars with a blind mare named Fairy Adams. The two aging horses quickly developed an unbreakable emotional bond. They were
so attached to one another that, when Sid
Vail finally chose to sell Three Bars to Walter Merrick, he mandated that Fairy Adams be sent with him. “You couldn’t separate them,” Joe Merrick recalls, “or one of them would really fret and stress. The easiest thing for us to do was to just fix a stall where he [Three Bars] could be next to her and see her.
“When we’d take him out to graze, she’d have to go with him. Dad [Walter Merrick] would be holding him and letting him graze, and she’d just be loose, walking around in there. But as long as he knew where she was, and she knew where he was, they were happy.”
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