After watching some of the Seattle Slew footage, I continued down memory lane and watched some others - including Secretariat and Kelso. As I looked at their times for 1 1/2 miles, I noticed that Secretariat ran in 2:24 in that magnificent Belmont on dirt. Kelso ran in 2:23.4 on turf at 7 years old in the old International race. (So Secretariat’s record was a dirt record, not an overall American record as I had thought) But a faster time than both of them was turned in by a horse named Hawkster at Santa Anita on turf. Anybody know any more about this effort and this horse?
Racing surfaces and tracks are not created equal. You can’t look at times at one track and directly compare them to times at another track. This is why handicappers have created things like Beyer Speed Figures, which factor in considerations like race conditions and racing surface to help rate a performance.
The Santa Anita turf course is unique because it is downhill-- the gate is positioned on a dog leg outside and slightly uphill from the actual racing oval. This often leads to faster times. Not to mention that turf can be even more variable than dirt, as it can be soft and yielding in wet conditions or hard, slick, and fast in dry conditions.
As far as Hawkster goes, here’s his past performances:
https://www.equibase.com/profiles/Results.cfm?type=Horse&refno=1085272®istry=T
He still currently holds the track (and world) record for 1 1/2 miles on the turf at Santa Anita. After a mediocre career as a stallion in the US, he was sold to Japan and died in 2003. He seems to have a little bit of a lasting legacy as a broodmare sire. And an interesting side note, Curlin’s first foal was out of a Hawkster mare.
He’s the broodmare sire of the plucky Afleet Alex. 
Hawkster was a really neat horse. Would come from out of the clouds. He was an also-ran in Sunday Silence-Easy Goer’s Triple Crown. (Just looked it up and he was 5th in all 3 races.) Dave Johnson’s call in one of the races (I THINK Preakness but not sure) “…and Hawkster hasn’t started to run!” He was way way back.
Hawkster no longer owns the world record for 12f. It was bested last March by Bright Thought in the San Luis Rey in a time of 2:22.72 (appropriately enough also run on Santa Anita’s downhill turf course). The fastest 10f ever run is also on the downhill course at SA, Red Giant in 1:57.16.
However, calling American records “World” records is a bit deceptive, given that TB races in the US are timed from a “Run up” (a spot anywhere from 50-150ft after the gate) so horses are in full flight when the clock starts. Races in the rest of the world are timed as soon as the gate springs open. The latter adds a couple of seconds to the race time. Pretty much all American records are also ‘world’ records and were set on US tracks.
