Established in 1981, at the now-defunct Arlington Park in Arlington Heights, Illinois, the Arlington Million Stakes was, as the name suggests, the first horse race to offer $1,000,000 in prize money and, in its heyday, the most valuable race in the world. The first British-trained horse to win the Arlington Million Stakes, or the Budweiser Million Stakes, as the race was known, briefly, in the early eighties, was the three-year-old Tolomeo in 1983.
Bought, as a yearling, by retired Italian lawyer Carlo d’Alessio – a one-time astronomy student, who named him after Ptolemy, the Greco-Roman cosmologist – Tolomeo was put into training with Luca Cumani in Newmarket. The son of Lypheor, from the family of Northern Dancer, duly shed his maiden tag at his local course in October, 1982, on this third start of a juvenile but, prior to his journey Stateside, his three-year-old campaign consisted of a string of near-misses, albeit at the highest level. Tolomeo had finished second in the 2,000 Guineas, the St. James’s Palace Stakes and the Sussex Stakes and third in the Coral-Eclipse, leading to a difference of opinion on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
Priced up at 5/1 second-favourite by British bookmakers, Tolomeo was, nonetheless, dismissed locally, such that he was sent off at 38/1, in a field of 14, on his American debut. Ridden by the late Pat Eddery, he made his challenge, on the inside, halfway up the home straight, as the leader, Nijinksy’s Secret, weakened and rolled away from the rail. Tolomeo led by a length or so at the furlong marker, but was ultimately all out to hold the fast-finishing John Henry – who had won the inugural Arlington Million two seasons previously and, as an older horse, was conceding 8lb – by a neck. Hold on he did, though, thereby pocketing the $600,000 winning prize money for connections.