by Barbaraanne Helberg

Created on: January 11, 2007   Last Updated: August 28, 2011

Thoroughbred Citation wasn't as "pretty" as Seretariat - he of the golden chestnut coat and striking three white-stockinged legs - but the bay son of Bull Lea was fast, and he was accomplished. His record in his first two seasons of racing stood at tweny-nine posts, twenty-seven wins, and two seconds. In his career, Citation started forty-five races and finished off the board just once.

Citation's high water mark was the 1948 season, in which he defeated 1947 Horse of the Year Armed and swept through the Triple Crown series, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes, to become the nation's eighth TC victor and Horse of the Year.

The great Hall of Fame jockey Eddie Arcaro, who rode Citation to Triple Crown glory, thinks of "Big Cy" as the best that he ever guided to the finish wire. Arcaro was sought by the best trainers to ride the best Thoroughbreds in the country during his four-decade career. Winning rider on two of the eleven horses ever to win Triple Crown titles, Arcaro did it first on Calumet Farm's Whirlaway in 1941.

Some horsemen believe 1920 Man o' War was the greatest racer of all time; some vote for 1973 Secretariat; others think 1943 Count Fleet, ridden by legendary jockey Johnny Longden, was superior. Many will cast a vote for Citation. In "The Blood-Horse" magazine's publication "Thoroughbred Champions: Top 100 Racehorses of the 20th Century", Man o' War is ranked No. 1, with Secretariat and Citation in the next two slots, respectively. Count Fleet is assigned the fifth spot.

Part of this "best ever" debate is tempered by some horsemen by splitting the 20th century into halves. Man o' War ruled the first half, closely chased by Count Fleet and Citation; Secretariat, the ninth Triple Crown winner, claimed the second half, perhaps rivaled by 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew, or Cigar.

Citation's record still makes a strong statement. He was the first of an elite group of runners that were able to win sixteen consecutive races. Cigar emerged to equal that string in his 1996 season. In 2005, a colt named Silent Witness broke the record for consecutive triumphs as he raced in Hong Kong to a seventeenth straight victory. Then New Mexico filly Peppers Pride went eighteen straight in 2008.

"Big Cy" spent his third racing season, 1949, on the Calumet Farm bench. The TC champ suffered from an osselet, or bony protrusion, on his left front ankle. That, along with recurring tendon injuries, sidelined him until January 11, 1950.

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