Man o’ War, Andy Schuttinger Up

This photograph of Man o' War and jockey Andy Schuttinger was taken at Saratoga's Travers Stakes on August 21, 1920. The Travers was the only race in which Schuttinger rode Man o’ War.

The statements below from Man o’ War’s trainer, Louis Feustel, were collected by Turf writer B. K. Beckwith years after Man o’ War retired from racing.  

 

Cook 431 - 1920-08-21 Andrew Andy Schuttinger Jockey on Man o' War at the Travers Stakes at Saratoga.jpg

“We’d always blow him out the day before a race – usually three-eighths or better - and the day of the race itself we’d have him on the track for a good gallop, maybe even open him up for an eighth of a mile. We never ‘drew’ him much. He didn’t need it.”

“I knew he was good from the beginning and I wasn’t fool enough not to know that he was making me look good. Mr. Belmont and Mr. Riddle and the rest of them used to have long talks about what we would do with him, but they all came back to me to find out what the horse wanted to do himself.”

“I guess like every other trainer in the world, I had sense enough to know I had hold of the tail of a tiger, and, while I could steer him some, I had to do a lot of swinging with him, I had to grow with him and try to out-guess him… figure things out with him and let him believe he’d done it for himself. You can’t handle a temperamental horse or human being any other way.”

“I’ve never bragged too much about this horse. I’ve always felt the facts could speak for themselves. I loved him, big and mean and bull-headed as he was. He had a heart the size of all outdoors, and he had the physical power to go with it.”

- Louis Feustel1

 

1. B. K. Beckwith (1967). Step and Go Together. South Brunswick, New Jersey: A.S. Barnes, p. 52-59