The Great Match Race of 1975 was designed to increase interest in thoroughbred racing. But perhaps the sport lost as many fans as it attracted that day 25 years ago, when millions tuned in to watch the undefeated filly Ruffian take on Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure at Belmont Park.

Why? The question still haunts trainer Frank Whiteley. Now 85, Whiteley still cannot understand why he ever agreed to run his champion filly in a head-to-head duel with the colt.

"Not just why did we run her in a match race, but why did she take that bad step?" Whiteley wants to know. He clears his throat several times. "I was never in favor of it, but the owners wanted it."

Jacinto Vasquez, Ruffian's jockey, is also still searching for answers. "With all they can do today for horses with broken legs," he reasons, "why couldn't they have saved her?"

The grainy image of the Match Race remains indelibly imprinted in the memories of those who watched it. Ruffian, on the inside, holding a slight lead over Foolish Pleasure for a quarter mile. A flock of pigeons darting across the track. The sudden bob of Ruffian's head, and her lurching, painful stop. Vasquez, his face strained, trying to hold Ruffian upright. A veterinarian kneeling to place a transparent cast on her mutilated right front leg. The same vet standing and walking away from the television camera, his hands and jacket covered with blood.

Two years before, Secretariat had captivated the American public with a Triple Crown victory that he sealed with a 31-length triumph in the Belmont Stakes. But even Secretariat had been defeated in his two years on the track. Ruffian was a perfect 10 for 10 when she stepped into the starting gate on July 6, 1975, for what would be her last race.

Not only was the tall, nearly black filly undefeated -- she had never been passed by another horse. A high-strung daughter of Reviewer out of the Native Dancer mare Shenanigans, Ruffian won nine stakes at distances ranging from 5 ½ furlongs to 1 ½ miles and either set or equaled records in eight of them. Her 3-year-old filly contemporaries had never come close to challenging her, so it seemed logical for her to take on the leading colt in the nation.

Ironically, the idea for the Great Match Race was hatched when a proposed three-horse race between the Triple Crown race winners -- Foolish Pleasure, Preakness winner Master Derby, and Belmont winner Avatar -- fell apart. Indeed, there were many who believed none of those colts would be worthy of claiming 3-year-old championship honors until they could be measured against Ruffian.

On June 13, the New York Racing Association announced the Great Match Race, pitting John Greer's Foolish Pleasure against Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Janney's Ruffian, would be run on July 6. Ruffian had just completed a sweep of the New York filly Triple Crown -- the Acorn Stakes, the Mother Goose and the Coaching Club American Oaks -- and won all three races by a combined 25 lengths. Foolish Pleasure had won all seven of his starts as a 2-year-old and was the reigning Kentucky Derby champion. The $400,000 purse for the Match Race was, at the time, the largest ever for a single racing event. The two horses would race at the classic distance of 1 ¼ miles, with Foolish Pleasure carrying 126 pounds to Ruffian's 121.

Ruffian came along just as the women's movement was reaching an apex, and she became a kind of role model for girls and women everywhere. The Great Match Race became, for mainstream America, an easy answer to the Man vs. Woman debate, as though two young horses running neck and neck for two minutes could resolve the argument over which was the stronger sex.

The race did, however, assure that anyone who saw it would never view thoroughbred racing in quite the same way.

"I really didn't have a choice as far as the Match Race went," Whiteley says. Retired from racing in 1982, Whiteley still breaks 2-year-olds in Camden, S.C., at the same barn where Ruffian learned to be a racehorse.

"Her owners (Stuart and Barbara Janney, both deceased) wanted to do it," Whiteley says. "And I had to agree with Mrs. Janney when she said, `Frank, if we're going to do something like this we should do it here in New York.' "

Whiteley, who also trained the great gelding Forego, said he knew Ruffian was special the moment he saw her in a pasture at Claiborne Farm in Kentucky. "She was only a yearling, but she had that quality you only see once in a lifetime," Whiteley said. "I hadn't seen it until I saw her."

Vasquez, now a trainer in Florida, saw the same quality in Ruffian. "When I was riding her, I knew there was no way I was going to lose the race," he said.

Vasquez rode Ruffian in her career debut on May 22, 1974. The filly won by 15 lengths and tied the track record at Belmont of 1:03 for 5 ½ furlongs. "For a 2-year-old filly to do that," Vasquez said, "I knew it was only going to get better. And it did. She did."

Ruffian proceeded to rack up stakes win after stakes win. The Fashion by 6 ¾ lengths. The Astoria by nine. The Spinaway by 12 ¾ lengths. The Comely by 7 ¾ lengths. The filly Triple Crown, three rigorous races in five weeks, in which she barely broke a sweat.

Vasquez says he, too, was opposed to the idea of a match race. "I don't know why we had to go out there and burn up two nice young horses," he says. "At least that's what I was thinking before the race."

As the regular rider of Foolish Pleasure, Vasquez also had a decision to make: Which horse would he ride?

"There was no question," he says instantly. "Ruffian was the better horse."

With Braulio Baeza aboard Foolish Pleasure and a crowd of 50,764 packed into Belmont Park, the two horses broke together. Ruffian immediately took the lead, but Baeza kept Foolish Pleasure just off her right flank. Ruffian blazed along, and was timed at :22 for the quarter mile. No longer neck and neck, Ruffian was beginning to inch away from the colt down the backstretch and was a half-length in front when it happened.

"Ruffian has broken down!" track announcer Dave Johnson cried in disbelief. "Ruffian has broken down!"

When he heard the sound -- "like a baseball bat snapping in two" -- Vasquez knew what had happened. "I tried to pull her up and stop her," Vasquez recalls. "She wouldn't let me. She wanted to keep running."

By the time Vasquez had gathered Ruffian and hopped off, her right front ankle was mangled and bloody. Dr. Manuel Gilman, chief examining vet for the New York Racing Association, was the first to reach them. "I could see that it was an open fracture, that she had shattered her sesamoids, and that dirt had gotten into it," Gilman said. "She was thrashing around. I don't know how Jacinto held her up."

A plastic cast was placed on the filly's leg, and she was vanned to Whiteley's barn. Foolish Pleasure, meanwhile, had finished the race in 2:02.4 and was posing for photos in the somber winner's circle ceremony.

Dr. Alex Harthill, a leading veterinarian who was at Belmont that day merely as a spectator, went to Whiteley's barn to assess the injury. "I gave her about a 10 percent chance of surviving any surgery," he said. "I told the Janneys I thought it was hopeless, but they said, `We have to try.' "

Ruffian was sedated and taken to Dr. William O. Reed's equine clinic across the street from Belmont. Four veterinarians worked on the filly, trying to clean out and repair the dislocated ankle. "There were so many chips and bone pieces," Harthill says. "It seemed to take forever. More than once she had to be resuscitated."

America went to sleep that Saturday night with an update that Ruffian had made it through surgery. Now, it was up to the filly whether she would tolerate a large plaster cast that had been placed on her right front leg.

Just after 1 a.m., Ruffian began to wake up from the anesthesia. To Harthill's horror, she began moving her front legs as though she were still running. Several men threw themselves on top of her, but Ruffian shook them off and continued paddling. The cast began to slip off, and Harthill could see that she had broken her elbow. Blood was dripping from the ankle the team had so carefully repaired.

Harthill called the Janneys. "Mrs. Janney answered the phone," he said. "And she knew right away it was bad news. She said, "Don't let her suffer anymore.' "

Ruffian was given a lethal injection at 2:20 a.m. "Looking back," said Dr. Jim Prendergast, the vet who cared for Whiteley's racehorses, "we may have been foolish to even try to save her."

With a handful of onlookers, Ruffian was buried early the next morning in the Belmont infield. "Sometimes I think another type of horse could have survived that injury," Whiteley says. "And she made it through the surgery. But she had to keep running.

"In her mind, the colt was getting away from her. And damned if she was going to let that happen."