25 years
A nose, and valid excuses
The news from New Jersey is loud and clear. Darby Dan Farm's Little Current is 
alive, healthy, and full of run though the fact remains he was beaten a nose by 
Holding Pattern in the $100,000 Monmouth Invitational Handicap on August 3.
Despite his loss, the Preakness and Belmont Stakes winner, generally regarded as 
the best three-year-old colt in America, scarcely discolored his reputation. In 
fact, there were several good reasons that, added up, could explain Little 
Current's defeat. He had been absent from competition for two months; he carried 
top weight of 127 pounds (highest ever in the Invitational) and was conceding 
ten to the winner; the Monmouth track seems unfavorable to stretch runners; and, 
not least, he came up against a fit horse, Holding Pattern.
Whatever, Little Current's great charge from nearly 20 lengths back will long be 
remembered by the crowd of 28,677, Monmouth Park's largest in two years, who 
backed him down to even money. Somewhat overlooked at more than 7-to-l, Holding 
Pattern was rated behind Sigmund Sommer's Rube the Great, winner of the Santa 
Catalina and divisions of both the Gotham and Wood Memorial Stakes.
At the five-sixteenths pole, Holding Pattern took over the lead.... Little 
Current was making up gobs of ground, and was only five lengths from Holding 
Pattern at the top of the stretch. ... It was a hard drive. Little Current 
seemed to lug in a bit, so (Miguel) Rivera switched his whip to the left hand, 
and in the last 50 yards Little Current seemed to hang a trifle. But all credit 
to Holding Pattern, whose rider admitted he had nothing left at the wire but the 
long nose that separated the two horses.
First money of $65,000 increased Holding Pattern's total earnings to $205,797, 
and the middle-sized gelding could have been claimed for $10,000 twice last 
summer at Arlington Park. Later in 1973, however,
he went on to win the World's Play ground Stakes and a division of th< Champagne 
Stakes.
Bred in Kentucky at Rober Schleicher's War Horse Place nea: Lexington, Holding 
Pattern is th< first stakes winner sired by Old Bag and the first foal of his 
dam (Mis: Caesar, by All Blue). As a gelding he will probably be with us for 
some years. Ashbel Green
(Holding Pattern was indeed around for years. He won 16-of-71 careerstart and 
placed in 26 others for earnings of $457,730. The gelding's most no table 
victory came in his next start the Travers Stakes [Gl] at Saratoga Race Course. 
He retired from racing at age eight.)
The Thoroughbred Record, August 10, 1974