International Travel

Traveling equines currently enjoy safer, more comfortable travels whether being hauled by truck or flying the friendly skies. However, due to unavoidable circumstances and worldwide government regulations, shipping companies, trainers and owners are road-weary and jet-lagged.

by Annie Lambert

Since terrorists attacked New York City on September 11, 2001, security measures on all forms of transportation have been stringent, especially for aircraft. The COVID-19 pandemic breaking out in late 2019 raised anxiety and stirred fears, adding even more government regulations to human and animal transport.

Whether you are shipping horses domestically across the United States, internationally to Europe and other far away destinations or between the European Union and Great Britain, nothing is easy. In fact, it has become a paper-heavy, logistical nightmare. 

Four-Footed Freight

H.E. “Tex” Sutton worked around the racetrack at an assortment of jobs from a very young age. He began booking horses to ship on railcars in 1954, continuing until prohibitive costs caused him to venture into equine air transport. Tex died long ago, but Tex Sutton Equine Air Transportation is still operating.

In May 2021, the company was unable to renew the lease on their Boeing 727 (cleverly dubbed Air Horse One). After searching unsuccessfully for another aircraft for their equine charters, the strictly domestic company was obliged to book their clients with Federal Express. FedEx bought out one of the original equine freight haulers, Flying Tiger, in 1988.

Airlines all gave the company’s current owner, Rob Clark, the same excuse: They simply didn’t have any extra planes. Any and all aircraft were needed to ship freight. The pandemic had caused a backup in supply chains by truck, sea and air.

“We are still flying as busy as ever,” pointed out Greg Otteson, Sutton sales manager. “We are in between [charter] airplanes right now, so we’re operating using the FedEx system.”

Supply chain woes have scrambled equine transport around the world. Throughout the pandemic, fewer passenger flights caused the freight cargo, normally in the belly of those planes, to be routed to freight-only carriers. The demand for cargo space remains very high.

Kevin Needham

Kevin Needham, managing director of BBA Shipping & Transport Ltd in Newmarket, England, has not noticed any waning demand in shipping horses worldwide. He has experienced many challenges in getting horses from Point A to Point B.

“It’s a definite pandemic consequence,” Needham explained. “Before COVID, people flew around the world really quite regularly and freely in wide-bodied passenger jets. When you’re on an airplane, you sit on the top part of a massive cigar tube; the area below is for freight—full of cargo.”

“When people couldn’t travel, the passenger flights couldn’t travel, [and] the cargo that went in the bellies of those passenger flights got over to the freighter network,” he added. “Flying horses relies on the freighter network because we need the headroom that’s on the main deck. With the complete shutdown in the passenger network, all that freight is going to the freight network.

“Plus, a lot of freight was pulled out of circulation by ridiculous government contracts being paid millions of dollars to fly 50 tons of rubber gloves from China to San Diego, [for example]. They are not in the marketplace, so all the freight rates went up. So, while the numbers of horses stayed relatively stable, the routes they were traveling and the costs to the owners became considerably more expensive.” 

Bus Route

Scarlette Gotwals, Brook Ledge

Brook Ledge Horse Transportation has been hauling equines around the United States for more than 55 years. Scarlette Gotwals, DVM, their operations manager, now oversees domestic and international air flights in addition to ground trucking via their wholly owned subsidiary, Horse America.

Brook Ledge Horse Transportation has been hauling Equines around the USA for 55 years

Brook Ledge began using FedEx in 2016. They ship an elite clientele, including many horses on the Kentucky Derby trail, often one or two horses at a time. Unless there are enough horses to charter an entire plane, the equines go where the plane goes, not the other way around. There are few, if any, direct flights.

“FedEx has a published route list,” Gotwals explained. “It is like a bus schedule; you can’t pick your time or route. You have to go when their schedule goes. For example, Tex Sutton [charters] could fly into Ocala Airfield, right next to Ocala Breeders’ Sale, but the closest FedEx [destination] is Orlando [80 miles away].”

 These rigid schedules force equine transporters to be creative when planning travel. Finding trips with minimal highway trucking, pre- and post-flight, can be a challenge.

“If you want to go from Gulfstream [Florida] to Oaklawn Park [Arkansas] to run, you basically fly to Memphis, then truck the three hours down to Oaklawn,” Gotwals said. “If you want to go to Belmont [New York], the plane lands in Newark, New Jersey, [over 40 miles away].”

Canada has not reopened to U.S. flights post-pandemic as yet, so Gotwals pointed out horses first fly into airports near the border, then have an initial three-day quarantine, get Canadian papers and finish the trip by truck.

Otteson qualified that Tex Sutton horses going to Vancouver fly into Seattle; those heading to Calgary fly into Great Falls, Montana; and horses traveling to Toronto usually fly into Detroit or Buffalo.

The good news, according to Dr. Gotwals, is how improved ground-trucking horses has become. A lot more is known in keeping horses comfortable and healthy over long hauls. Brook Ledge has transported horses in box stalls from Ocala to California for a number of years. 

“When air flights started,” the veterinarian remarked, “we were not as advanced as to how we handled horses on the trucks.” “We’ve learned a lot and there have been published studies. For example, horses do much better when they are loose in a box and able to put their heads down.”

Paperwork Chaos 

James Luck

James Luck, the brother of NBC racing analyst Nick Luck, is a co-founder of LG Bloodstock along with partner Lucy Greayer in Berkshire, England. Luck identified a shortage of aircraft and fewer straight-through flights to the United States, but cited his biggest problems presently stem from inter-European travel. Great Britain’s break from the European Union created massive regulation and paperwork.

“With the UK no longer part of the EU, you can’t get anything done over here; it’s ten times as hard as it used to be,” Luck stated. “We have literally ten times as much paperwork as we used to have.

“At the moment, if we want to schedule horses on a flight to New York, we have to truck them from the UK to Liege, Belgium, for a flight to JFK. In the old days, that was a[n] EU paper, one piece of paper to get us to Belgium, and U.S. papers. We stable overnight in Belgium, and off we go. It is now a total of 64 pieces of paper to get that horse to Belgium.”

There are also border control posts and an extensive number of tariffs, taxes and fees when moving goods, including livestock, in and out of the UK. Some of these fees, depending on the owner’s status, would be refunded upon return—not to mention veterinary inspections. As Luck said, “The bureaucracy of the paperwork is unbelievable.”

The stacks of documentation required has doubled Luck’s staffing levels since BREXIT. 

“The paperwork all this entails is mind-boggling,” he reiterated. “The bureaucracy and red tape has gone up 20-fold. It is making anyone’s job very, very difficult. And, if a horse gets to [the border check] and there is one digit wrong on one microchip number on 64 pieces of paper, the vet will send that horse home, back to the UK.”

Needham agrees with Luck’s contempt for the added paperwork.

“[BREXIT] made for more paperwork on the European end,” he acknowledged. “They started to treat the UK as if it were the U.S. or Canada. We’ve become a sort of foreign country as far as the EU is concerned.”

Flying Grooms

Needham also cited the COVI pandemic as a source for many of his shipping woes. Different governments panicked in different ways, many with differing restrictions. Equine handlers, called “flying grooms,” became stigmatized by nationality.

“There wasn’t a problem with the horses; it was the problem with the people accompanying the horses,” he noted. “We have this ridiculous situation where, if you have a U.S. passport, you can get into the U.S.; but if you had any other passport, obviously you were a COVID risk, because holding a piece of paper in your hand affects the way a virus can infect you. 

“The freighters have to come over with U.S. grooms with the horses, and then the grooms go back to the states. It is a similar situation when flying horses to Hong Kong. Because Hong Kong is now a part of China, it has a zero COVID policy. Foreign people aren’t allowed in, even airline pilots, without two weeks in quarantine. The grooms have to go in on the plane, the horses get off, then the grooms come back out on the same plane they went in on.”

Needham mentioned that Korean International races have been lost because South Korea is another country that has gone with zero COVID regulations. He doesn’t hold much hope that international shipping will ever get back to the days when things were easier to organize.

“In Ireland, France and the UK, we’re racing quite normally and have been for a good while,” he said. “I think that situation is going to stabilize quite quickly. There were plenty of horses in the [2021] Breeders’ Cup. Getting horses to North America is no more complex than it was, and there is an appetite for it.”

Horses must fly in the accompaniment of FedEx-approved flying grooms. Getting approved is a lengthy, in-depth process. The airline requires a minimum of two grooms, whether you are shipping one horse or nine, according to Gotwals.

“The flight grooms that we use have been flying for probably 30 years and are professional handlers,” Gotwals said. “It is about a six- to eight-week process to have a flying groom approved. They have to have an expensive security threat assessment, which is a TSA high-level clearance with background and criminal checks. Unless you have a specific groom that is going to fly with horses three to four times a year, FedEx is not interested in getting them approved.” 

Flight Plan

Horsemen and shipping companies continue to plow through paperwork, staff COVID testing and route changes. Other big hits to equine travel plans, however, are inflation and the rapidly rising fuel prices worldwide.

Gotwals opined that she couldn’t imagine it will be long before FedEx adds a fuel surcharge, especially if oil remains over $100 per barrel.

“Everybody is having to add surcharges,” she said. “A tractor-trailer gets five to five-and-a-half-miles to the gallon. When you start to increase prices by a dollar to three dollars a gallon, it means every five miles is an additional three dollars. It adds up very quickly.”

Luck has navigated the pandemic changes but now winces at the energy crisis enveloping Europe.

“The clients are being hit by another whammy, in that fuel prices are going through the roof,” Luck said. “It is literally costing me double to fill up my car. It’s the same with aircraft; it is costing a lot more to purchase aviation fuel. Therefore, it is costing a lot more to fly horses. We’ve recently been hit by every airline we use with substantial rate increases across the board.

Shipping companies seem to agree that demanding regulations and rising costs could somewhat chill equine movement. They also agree it is essential to Thoroughbred racing that equines remain mobile.

“We are a resilient industry,” Luck opined. “We’ve been through a lot of things. I remember after the terrible events of 9/11, we had horses stuck in the UK; it was an awful long time before we could get those horses going again. We’ve been through disease outbreaks and more. But fundamentally, horses will still need to be moved.”

Earle Mack - The Eclipse Award winning humanitarian philanthropist

By Bill Heller

Many people wonder what they can do to help people in need. Other people just do it. That’s how Earle Mack, who received an Eclipse Award of Merit earlier this year for his contributions to Thoroughbred racing, has fashioned his life. So, at the age of 83, he flew from his home in Palm Beach, Florida, to the Hungary/Ukraine border to deliver food and clothing to desperate Ukrainian refugees who fled their homes to escape the carnage of Vladmir Putin’s Russian thugs.

“I’m going to the front,” he declared in early March. “I woke up and said, `I have to do my part.’” 

He’s always done more than his part. Besides being an extremely successful businessman, he was the United States Ambassador to Finland. An Army veteran, he is helping veterans with PTSD through a unique equine program. He supports the arts. He is an active political advocate. And he has enjoyed international success with his Thoroughbreds—breeding and/or racing 25 stakes winners, including 1993 Canadian Triple Crown Winner and Canadian Horse of the Year Peteski, a horse he purchased from Barry Schwartz; $3.6 million winner Manighar, the first horse to win the Australian Cup, Ranvet Stakes and BMW Cup; and 2002 Brazilian Triple Crown winner Roxinho. Two of his major winners in the U.S. were November Snow and Mr. Light. And he founded the Man o’ War Project, which helps veterans with PTSD via equine-assisted therapy.

“I love my country,” he said. “I love the arts. And horse racing is in my blood.” 

Literally, Ukraine is in his blood. He discovered through Ancestry.com that he is two-thirds Ukrainian. “My great grandfather fled Ukraine to go to Poland,” he said.

So he had to go to Ukraine.

“He’s an extraordinary man,” owner-breeder Barry Schwartz, the former CEO of the New York Racing Association and the co-founder and CEO of Calvin Klein, Inc., said. “I’ve known [Earle] a very, very long time. He loves the horse business. He’s extremely philanthropic. I’ve been on the board with him for the Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University [where Earle served as chairman for 14 years]. I get to see a different side of him. He’s smart. He’s articulate. He’s a class act.”

In early March, Mack, a trustee of the Appeal Conscience Foundation, called owner/breeder Peter Brant (a fellow member of that foundation) and former New York State Governor George Pataki (whose parents are Hungarian) to head to one of the most dangerous locations on the planet. Brant supplied the plane. His wife, Stephanie (Seymour), brought 40 big duffle bags of clothing, “She spent over $30,000 buying the clothes,” Mack said. “I took clothes off my racks. I brought all the fruit that we could find and a couple boxes of chocolate.”

The delegation landed on March 10th, two weeks after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and began an unforgettable experience. Displaying yet another talent, he wrote about his trip in an op-ed published by The Hill, an American newspaper and top political website, on March 16th:

“How would you feel, in this day and age, if you were fleeing your home with only the few things you could carry in freezing winds and winter temperatures? How would you feel sitting in your car for 17 hours, waiting to cross a border, all the while worried that the sound in the sky above might be a missile or bomb bringing certain death? How would you feel trapped in your basement or a public bomb shelter, food and water running out, afraid to leave and face death? How would you feel if your city was under attack and you watched as civilians were shot up close by Russian soldiers and neighborhoods were rubbled from faraway artillery? How would you feel leaving your fathers, husbands and brothers behind to fight against impossible odds?

“This is what I have wondered, listening to heartbreaking stories that have brought me to tears, told by Ukrainian refugees on my recent trip to the Hungarian border and into the Ukrainian city of Mukachevo, where hundreds of thousands have fled the war with Vladmir Putin’s Russia.”

Mack went on to share his experience of Ukraine, “Ukraine has cold winds. Thirty-five feels like 15. Lots of hills and farmland. Peter and his 17-year-old daughter stayed at the border. We went into Mukachevo, a city of about 20,000 to 25,000 people. At that point—two weeks into the war—there were more than 500,000 people in that area, hoping that there’s something to go back to.

“We went into a children’s hospital ward filled with children. We looked at a COVID ward with kids lying down. We went into a school converted into a dormitory. We saw all these kids, ages two to eight with their mothers. Men, 16 to 65, weren’t allowed to cross the border. The kids were crying. Not much to eat. We brought in the fruit. We brought in the chocolate.

“I started handing out the chocolates. These kids ate all the chocolate. I have the empty box. I put it on one of the six-year-old kid’s head and started singing, `No more chocolates; no more chocolates.’ That kid takes the empty box and puts it on another kid’s head. They’re all singing, ‘No more chocolates; no more chocolates.’ When I was leaving, the director of the center came running after me and said this is the first time they laughed in two weeks.” 

Mack wrote of this bittersweet moment in his story in The Hill: “As we prepared to leave, there was a 12-year-old girl who literally begged me to take her with us. I can’t describe how hard it was to walk away from this young girl whose life is forever changed.”

This from a man whose life is forever changing.

Terry Finley, the CEO of West Point Thoroughbreds, said, “Although we’ve never owned a horse together, we try to make a point to spend a couple of races at Saratoga, just the two of us in the box. I pick his brain. He’s such a good person. He’s got a world of knowledge. He’s a fun guy. He’s a caring guy—as cool a guy as there is in the industry.”

Peter Brant, Earle Mack, Lily Brant, Christopher Brant & Karen Dresbach (executive vice president of the appeal of Conscience Foundation) before boarding a plane loaded with medical supplies, food, clothing and other essentials for Ukrainian refugees arriving in Hungary

One of four boys born in New York City, Earle’s father, H. Bert Mack, founded The Mack Company, a real estate development company. Earle was a senior partner of The Mack Company and a founding board member of the merged Mack-Cali Realty Corporation. He has served as the chairman and CEO of the New York State Council on the Arts for three years and produced a number of plays and movies. His political action included an unsuccessful attempt to draft Paul Ryan as the 2016 GOP presidential candidate.

His entry into horse racing was rather circuitous. He learned to ride at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club in North Tarrytown, N.Y. “All the juniors and seniors were allowed to use the trails at Sleepy Hollow County Club,” he said. “I was 16, 17. I got to ride on the course. That’s how I learned to ride.”

Just after graduating college, he returned to Sleepy Hollow. “One day, I was dismounting; the riding master who taught me how to ride came over to me and said, `I’m very sorry to tell you this, but my wife has cancer and needs surgery. I need $2,500 to pay for surgery.’ He owned a horse who won a race up in Canada.”

Mack went inside with him to examine the horse’s papers. “I said, ‘I’m buying a $5,000 horse for $2,500’; I bought it on the spot. I thought this sounds like a good deal. The horse’s name was Secret Star. He stayed in Canada and raced at Bluebonnets and Greenwood. The horse won about $20,000.”

Flush with excitement, Mack bought four horses from George Kellow. “They did well. I said, ‘This game is easy.’”

He laughs now—well aware how difficult racing can be. That point was driven home in the late 1960s after Mack had graduated from Drexel University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Science and Fordham School of Law. He served in the U.S. Army Infantry as a second lieutenant in active duty in 1959 and as a first lieutenant of the Infantry and Military Police on reserve duty from 1960–1968.

In the late 1960s, he was struggling with his Thoroughbreds. “My horses weren’t doing that well,” he said. “I bought two seasons to Northern Dancer. His stud fee was $10,000 Canadian. When the stud fee came due, I didn’t have the money to pay for it. I walked over to my dad’s office. I said, ‘I need a loan.’ He said, `No, you’re in the wrong business. Get out of that business.’”

Mack walked back to his office. “I started to think, ‘How am I going to get this money?’ Twenty minutes later, my father threw a check on my desk. Then he got down on his knees, and he said, ‘Son, sell your horses. Get out of this business. You’re not going to make money in this business.’”

He might have had a good thought. “The two Northern Dancers never amounted to anything,” Mack said.

That seemed like the perfect time to follow his father’s advice and give up on racing. But Mack stayed. “I just loved the business; I loved being there. I loved the horse. I loved the people. I just loved it—that’s why. I still love the sport. I love to go to the track. I love to support the sport. I love to help any way I can. I’ve given my time and my efforts to our industry.”

That list is long: Board of Trustees member of the New York Racing Association 1990-2004; chairman of the New York State Racing Commission (1983–89); member of the New York State Thoroughbred Racing Commission (1983–1989); member of the Board of Directors of the New York State Thoroughbred Breeding and Development Corp (1983–89); and senior advisor on racing and breeding to Governor Mario Cuomo and Pataki. 

The Earle Mack Thoroughbred Champion Award has been presented annually since 2011 to an individual for outstanding efforts and influence on Thoroughbred racehorse welfare, safety and retirement.

He has been a long-time backer of The Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation and the Grayson Jockey Club Research Foundation.

In 2011, he established the Earle Mack Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation Award. The first three winners were Frank Stronach, Dinny Phipps and famed chef Bobby Flay.

His brother Bill, the past chairman of the Guggenheim Museum and Guggenheim Foundation, also owned horses, including $900,000 earner Grand Slam and $500,000 earner Strong Mandate. But he did better with investments in art. “He bought art; I bought horses,” Earle said. “Guess who did better? Much better.”

But who’s had more fun? Mack bought Peteski, a son of 1978 Triple Crown Champion Affirmed out of the Nureyev mare Vive for $150,000 from Barry Schwartz after the horse made his lone start as a two-year-old, finishing fifth in an Ontario-bred maiden race on November 14, 1992.

Earle Mack, Barry Irwin, jockey Jamie Soencer and Team Valor connections celebrate Spanish Mission winning the $1 million Jockey Club Derby Invitational Stakes at Belmont Park in 2019

After buying Peteski, Mack sent the horse to American and Canadian Hall of Famer Roger Attfield. Peteski and Attfield put together an unbelievable run: seven victories, two seconds and one third in 10 starts, finishing with career earnings of more than $1.2 million.

Mack told the Thoroughbred Times in October 1993, “Bloodstock agent Patrick Lawley-Wakelin originally called the horse to my attention. I’d always liked Affirmed as a stallion and together with my connections, we thoroughly checked the horse out before I bought him. I was lucky to get him. There were other people trying, too, but I had long standing Canadian relations and was able to move fast. They knew I was a serious player.”

All Peteski did was win the Canadian Triple Crown, taking the Queen’s Plate by six lengths; the Prince of Wales by four lengths and the Breeders by six. He followed that with a 4 ½ length victory in the Gr. 2 Molson Million. In his final start, Peteski finished third by a head as the 7-10 favorite in the Gr. 1 Super Derby at Louisiana Downs. 

 “The thrills he’s given me are something money can’t buy,” Mack told Thoroughbred Times. “One of the reasons for staying in Canada for the Triple Crown was because of the wonderful and nostalgic feelings of my youthful days spent racing there. This is the greatest horse I’ve ever owned.”

Earle with jockey Gerald Mosse at Newbury Racecourse in 2019

Mack would race many other good horses, but the ones who may have had the greatest impact are the anonymous ones he helped locate who participated in the Man o’ War Project—perhaps Mack’s greatest gift. In 2015, out of his concern about the mental health crisis facing veterans, he created and sponsored the Man o’ War Project at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center to explore the use of  and scientifically evaluate equine-assisted therapy to help veterans suffering from PTSD or other mental health problems. Long-term goals are to test that treatment with other populations. Immediate results have been very promising.

There is a sad reality about veterans: more die from suicide than enemy fire. The project was the first university-led research study to examine the effectiveness of equine-assisted therapy in treating veterans with PTSD.

“My love for the horse and my great respect and empathy for our soldiers bravely fighting every day for our country and not getting the proper treatment led me to do this,” Mack said. “Soldiers come home with the strain of their service on the battlefield. The suicides are facts. There was no science or methodology proving that equine-assisted therapy (EAT) could actually and effectively treat veterans with PTSD. All reports were anecdotal.”

The project was led by co-directors Dr. Prudence Fisher, an associate professor of clinical psychiatric social work at Columbia University and an expert in PTSD in youth; and Dr. Yuval Veria, a veteran of the Israeli Armed Forces who is a professor of medical psychology at Columbia and director of trauma and PTSD at New York State Psychiatric Institute.

After a pilot study of eight veterans lasting eight weeks in 2016, 40 veterans participated in a 2017 study also lasting eight weeks. Each participant underwent interviews before, during and after the treatment period and received follow-up evaluations for three months post-treatment to determine if any structural changes were occurring in the brain. Each weekly session lasted 90 minutes with five horses, using the same two horses per each treatment group. The veterans started by observing the horses and slowly building on their interactions from hand-walking the horses, grooming them and doing group exercises.

“We take a team approach to the treatment,” Fisher said. “We have trained mental health professionals, social workers, equine specialists and a horse wrangler for an extra set of eyes to ensure safety during each session.”

Marine Sergeant Mathew Ryba at the Bergen Equestrian Center

The results have been highly encouraging. A 2021 article in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry concluded “EAT-PTSD shows promise as a potential new intervention for veterans with PTSD. It appears safe, feasible and clinically viable. These preliminary results encourage examination of EAT-PTSD in larger, randomized controlled trials.”

Mack was ecstatic: “This is a scientific breakthrough. You could see the changes. It’s drug free. Before, you had to take more and more and more drugs. Before you know it, you’re hitting your family.”

The Man o’ War project works. It helps. It could possibly help a lot of people besides veterans. That would be the biggest victory of Mack’s remarkable life.

“That would be my Triple Crown,” he said.

Mack was asked how he does what he does in so many varied arenas. “Pure tenacity, drive and 24/7 devotion to the things that were important to me and public service,” he replied. “I’ve devoted my life to public service, my business, horses and the arts.”  

And now, to Ukraine. Lord bless him for that.

Where are they now? Where are trainers, who once called Arlington Park their summer home, going?

By Ken Snyder

In real estate, there’s an old saying that the three most important factors are location, location, location. It has become a factor in horse racing too, at least in the Midwest. For last year’s Arlington trainers, the search for the right race, however, is not to be found in a condition book but on a map. Trainers Chris Davis and Larry Rivelli are part of the involuntary exodus from the now-closed Chicago racing institution. 

Five years ago, Davis, then stabled at Keeneland in Lexington, Kentucky and racing in one of the country’s toughest meets in April and October, met with his owners with what turned out to be a sound idea: move their horses to Arlington. “You have to put your horses where they can win,” he told them.

The move worked. Davis’s stable progressed to finish in the top five in earnings the past two meets at Arlington.

Today, ironically, Davis was back in Lexington this spring in the wake of Arlington’s closing, stabling again at Keeneland. If earnings are any indication, Davis is better prepared to take on the top horses and trainers at the prestigious spring and fall meets at Keeneland. Last year, his earnings surpassed $1.3 million. “The talent level in my barn is significantly higher than it was five years ago; there’s no question.  And I have more liberty about where I run them.”

For Rivelli, who is moving to Hawthorne Race Course on Chicago’s south side, he was the perennial meet leader at Arlington in wins and earnings (nine straight titles through 2021). The loss of training and racing there is acute on an emotional level. 

“It was a beautiful facility…like going to a birthday party every day when you ran horses and won–such a great place to be.” On a professional level, that would mean birthday candles by the gross; his 230 starters last year at Arlington won at an astonishing 37% rate.

While Davis is, again, a Chicago native and also the son of parents who trained horses for over 30 years in the “Chicagoland” area, he is going home, if not professionally then personally. (He lives in Lexington.) Rivelli is adding 30+ miles to a daily commute. 

So where will other Arlington trainers go?

It is almost a certainty that some will make a move north to Canterbury Park in Shakopee, Minnesota, thanks to incentives. Arlington trainers who raced in Illinois during 2021 or this year can earn a $1,000-bonus if they race in May and if they have not raced at Canterbury previously. That $1,000 is in addition to another $1,000 paid to all trainers—Canterbury veterans included—for May starts. Bonuses are on top of any purse money earned, and the meet starts May 18. 

Additionally, Canterbury is offering a travel loan program for up to $25,000 per owner or a maximum of $1,500 per horse. This is for stables shipping in from anywhere outside Minnesota. Loan and stall applications were due on April 4.

“Chicago familiarity would obviously draw more eyes to Canterbury Park’s product and hopefully increase exposure and wagering interest,” said Andrew Offerman, senior vice-president of operations at Canterbury.

For trainers, Offerman points to Canterbury’s turf course. “I think it is probably the best or as good of a turf course as you can find in the Midwest.

“If you’ve been competitive in Illinois, you should definitely be competitive in Minnesota,” he added.

Indiana Downs in Shelbyville near Indianapolis would seem to be a natural draw for Arlington trainers except for one critical factor: stalls. Chris Polzin, racing secretary, has 10 Arlington trainers coming in, but there isn’t room for more. Polzin had applications for stalls for 1,856 horses last year but only 1,150 stalls. 

“The trainers we’re getting from Arlington, I think, will have a positive effect on us. If they have better horses, we can fill better races…Ingrid Mason—those kinds of people,” he said. 

FanDuel Sportsbook and Horse Racing in Collinsville in southern Illinois will certainly draw trainers as well with races (and bonuses) for Illinois-breds.

Chris Davis, a Chicago native and also the son of parents who trained horses for 30 years in the ‘Chicagoland’ area, he is going home. If not professionally, but personally (he lives in Lexington)

For Davis, the biggest loss from Arlington’s closing will be felt by owners. “The majority of my clients are from the Chicago area. They had a lot of fun going out to the races. They used to come to the races, come to the barn afterward and see their horses. They were hands-on and really enjoyed being around the barn atmosphere rather than just ‘Let me know when they’re running.’ 

“They took enjoyment bringing friends to the barn and saying, ‘This is my horse.’”

The closing of Arlington is a mixed bag for Rivelli. Hawthorne is “not as appealing to the eye but has purses this year bigger than Arlington’s, which were pretty significantly higher than they were last year.

“We’re going to be probably with the same company running for a lot more money. So, it’s not too bad. It’s just the actual facility itself and the memories of Arlington. We already miss it, and it’s not even time to be back there yet.” 

Rivelli’s decision was made for him, in part, by his barn help. “We wouldn’t have a problem going anywhere. It’s just that I’ve got help that’s been with me for 20 years. You hate to uproot them from their families and their houses and where they live; and everything gets to be tougher now.

“I’m fortunate to have great help. We’ve been together a long time, and that’s a big part of our success.”

With change being the one constant in life, Offerman thinks the closing of Arlington may not be the last major event to happen in the Midwest racing scene in the near future. “We have to see what happens in Chicago’s marketplace, what happens with their [Hawthorne’s] casino build-out, and what Hawthorne winds up doing,” he said. Included, too, in all the possible scenarios, is another racetrack being built in Chicago, according to Rivelli.

The one given that all parties agree on is that Arlington is irreplaceable.

“The grandstand itself is on par with any in the world, not just in the U.S.,” said Davis. 

Hawthorne Racecourse has increased purses, a larger horse population and the return of a spring stakes schedule this year

The recent announcement that Churchill Downs will host the “Arlington Million” in a special one-day event on August 13 this year is met with subdued interest by Davis. “It would be like moving the Santa Anita Derby to Gulfstream. It wouldn’t be the same kind of race,” he said. 

As for Arlington as a whole, he imagines how hometown Louisville trainers like Greg Foley, Brad Cox and Dale Romans would feel if Churchill Downs shut down. “It is absolutely a blow,” he said.

A long-held personal goal for Davis was to win the Arlington Million. He admits, however, he’d still love to win it, even at Churchill Downs.

The big winner in the Arlington closing is horse-van operators. Davis has plans to send some horses this year to Ellis Park for their summer meet, Churchill Downs (“if they’re good enough to run there”), and Indiana Downs.

Davis sees a similarity between Keeneland and a location on the mid-Atlantic racing circuit where trainers in, say, Maryland can pick and choose races at Laurel, Penn National, Charlestown, Mountaineer, and as far north as Monmouth. “With the money getting as good as it is in Kentucky and the option of running at multiple tracks within an hour, two hours, three hours, away, it’s a big draw for the Midwest.  You have the option to pick your races and cherry-pick the best spots. You’re not just tied to the toughest of the tough.”

He also will leave horses in South Florida, where he has been based this winter.  

Rivelli, too, has a small string earmarked for Keeneland this April. “I have 10 stalls there, and I’ll ship back and forth. It’s only a four-hour ship back to Hawthorne.”

Also based in South Florida in the winter, like Davis, Rivelli shipped some horses from there to Kentucky in March to get them acclimated to an unpredictable climate, much different from the high temperatures and humidity of South Florida.

It gets more complicated for Rivelli compared to Davis, due to Hawthorne closing after June 25 and not reopening until September 23. He will base operations at various times during the shutdown at Colonial Downs in Kent, Virginia; Churchill Downs; and Ellis Park in Henderson, Kentucky.

A rendering of what Hawthorne Racecourse will look like after the development project is complete

Staying at home at Hawthorne for Rivelli, even with the shutdown, has its advantages. “The purses at Hawthorne are bigger than Indiana, and the competition is going to be less. I’m not too proud to run at Hawthorne for $50,000 purses—believe me.”

Rivelli probably has the most reason for optimism given his domination at Arlington.  

“We breed a lot of Illinois-breds so we have bonuses. We should be ok,” he said, perhaps understanding things considerably.

There’s no question that going from The Bart—immortalized in a statue with John Henry at Million—to the Bears—Chicago’s woeful NFL team who bought Arlington—is a bitter pill to swallow for all in racing.

The only upside at racetracks from Minnesota to Kentucky to Florida will be barns better stocked with horses who normally would be at Arlington. But racing in the Midwest, and really everywhere in this country, won’t be the same.

Equality - How inclusive is racing?

Man o' War and groom Will Harbut with sportscatser Clem McCarthy

By Bill Heller

Gauging inclusiveness in Thoroughbred racing depends on where you look.

While backstretches are teeming with minority grooms, hotwalkers and exercise riders, there are few Black trainers and/or Black jockeys. Black owners are a small group, too. Black racing officials or Black people in racing’s front offices or upper management are as common as unicorns. 

Progress comes slowly.

In the 2018 Breeders’ Cup Classic, Uriah St. Lewis, a native of Trinidad, became the first Black trainer to start a horse in the 34-year-history of the Breeders’ Cup. His horse, Discreet Lover, finished eighth. “I’ve been all over the country,” the Parx-based, 64-year-old trainer said. “Being a Black man is tough. As a Black trainer, it’s hard.”

It used to be hard on Black owners. Greg Harbut, who has a rich family history in racing, knows.

His great grandfather, Will Harbut, was a racing celebrity as the groom of Man o’ War for more than 15 years, appearing with his great horse  on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. “It was very uncommon for an African-American man to receive that kind of notoriety,” Greg said. “What he did before Man o’ War was he broke and trained draft horses. Then he’d lease them out to African-American farmers. He became known as a horse whisperer. He was sought out by the Riddle family to work with Man o’ War because he was such a high-strung horse. He [Will] didn’t really go looking for a job. The job came looking for him. He was one of 10 children. Eight went to college and became professionals—very unheard of then. I’m very proud of him.”

Greg’s grandfather, Tom Harbut, was the groom of 1953 Kentucky Derby winner Dark Star. Yet in the 1962 Derby, he was not allowed to have his name in the track program as the owner of Touch Bar. And he wasn’t allowed to watch his horse finish 11th because the stands were for whites only. “He went to the grave very bitter about it,” Greg said.

But in the 2020 Kentucky Derby, Greg’s ownership group—The Scherr Boys—was listed as the owner of Necker Island in the track program. And Greg was allowed to see his horse—who was claimed for $100,000 2 ½ months earlier—finish ninth of 15. 

Kendrick Carmouche

In May, 2021, Kendrick Carmouche became the first Black jockey to ride in the Kentucky Derby in eight years. Black riders dominated the early history of the Derby, winning 15 of the first 28 runnings before being shunned and forced to travel abroad to continue their careers. 

One can only marvel how Cheryl White, a Black woman, was able to win 226 races after becoming the first African-American female jockey in June 1971. She then became the first woman to serve as a California steward. 

In the first Kentucky Derby in 1875, 13 of the 15 horses were ridden by Black jockeys including Oliver Lewis, who rode the winner Aristides. Aristides was trained by Ansel Williamson, a legendary Black Hall of Fame trainer. The former slave also won the 1875 Belmont Stakes and the Travers Stakes in 1866 and 1873. He also trained the undefeated three-year-old champion male Norfolk and undefeated Asteroid.  

George Leonard III and California Angel

Last November, George Leonard III became the first American-born Black trainer to start a horse in the Breeders’ Cup's 37-year history. That he did so with California Angel, a filly he purchased for $5,550, is a testament to his horsemanship. However, there were erroneous published reports citing Leonard as the first Black trainer in the Breeders’ Cup. Uriah St. Lewis was. 

There is such a long way to go.

Asked about Black people in racing, New York trainer Charlie Baker, a native of Jamaica who has made a career at the toughest level of racing in the country, said, “It’s most definitely a small group. It’s been that way forever. I’m looking around. I see a lot of Black grooms, a lot of Black exercise riders, but no Black trainers. My dad worked as an exercise rider under Allen Jerkens. My dad was telling me that there were a lot of good Black horsemen who were grooms. It seemed like no one was getting promoted to be a trainer. No one was moving up the ladder.”

One who has, as an executive, is Najja Thompson, who worked for the New York Racing Association in the marketing department before being named the executive director of the New York Thoroughbred Breeders in December 2020. Asked if he sees himself as a pioneer, he said, “I want to help another person of color find a role. I don’t ever want to be comfortable being the only Black person in the room. When we talk about diversity and inclusion, we have to be very careful that it’s not just for show.”

Jason Wilson, who has frequently spoken at the annual Jockey Club’s Round Table in Saratoga Springs, has a unique perspective on that because he came into racing from a non-racing background and quickly worked his way up. After working for the Jockey Club, he served as president and chief operating officer for Equibase for six years. On March 19, 2021, he was named COO of 1/ST CONTENT, charged with developing content platforms for Thoroughbred racing for Belinda Stronach’s tracks. “It’s very much driven by Belinda’s vision of creating the modern racing entity,” he said. “How do you present the sport overall?”

After graduating from Princeton, UCLA Law School and Columbia Business School, he thought his future was in finance. “I was working on Wall Street in 2009, and I was looking into doing something different,” he said. “I was recruited into The Jockey Club through a headhunter in 2010. This was before Twitter. No iPads. Even the world we live in now didn’t really exist. But you could see it coming.”

How does racing fit into this new world? How does it become inclusive? Begin by being realistic. “If you open this magazine and start looking through the pages, you can come to your own conclusion,” Jason said. “There hasn’t been a part of my life not touched by racism. I don’t think racing is exclusive, but I think that racing hasn’t spent a lot of time trying to figure out what inclusion means.

“I go to places, and I’m the only African American there. There aren’t a lot, even in the pipeline. We’re trying to rectify that. It’s just a fact of life. I’ve worked in law firms, in investment banks. There are more African Americans in other businesses. It’s disappointing. There are a couple of things going on. These positions don’t turn over very much. There’s not an opportunity to even break in. And, frankly, we do a really bad job of bringing people outside the industry into the industry in general. Belinda has talked a lot about what it means to be a modern racing organization. Part of that is making sure you have an inclusive environment.”

Jason referred to the studies conducted by McKinsey & Company. “The 2011 study found that only 14 percent of the general public feels that racing was for “someone like me” compared to 74 percent for other sports,” Jason said. “For persons of color, that is reinforced when you walk into meetings, go to the track and see images in the media that are overwhelmingly predominantly white. We need to be international in our approach to address this dynamic.”

Subsequent McKinsey & Company’s reports in 2015, 2018 and 2020 document the plusses of inclusion: “Our latest report shows that the business case for diversity, equity and inclusion is stronger than ever. Taking a closer look at diversity winners reveals what can drive real progress.”

After studying more than 1,000 large companies in 15 countries, the report said, “The most diverse companies are now more likely than ever to outperform less diverse peers on profitability. The representation of ethnic minorities on United Kingdom and United States executive teams stood at only 13 percent in 2019—up from seven percent in 2014.”

Minorities in horseracing executive teams aren’t in the same zip code of 13 percent. Ditto for trainers, jockeys, owners and stewards. 

Uriah St. Lewis owns all 28 of his horses stabled at Parx, with his wife, Amanda and their 27-year-old son, Uriah Junior; they are strictly a family operation. “They both help me,” Uriah said. “She is a registered nurse and comes to the barn on weekends. My son finished college, but he was always dedicated like his mother. He and I never missed a day of school for life: perfect attendance.”

Uriah came to the United States when he was 15. He went to a computer school and fixed computers for tote companies in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. “I decided I wanted to be a trainer,” he said. “I went to Oklahoma and bought a farm.” He was lucky to run into a Black trainer, Robert Hayes. “He taught me everything,” Uriah said. “He had patience. I started from scratch. I stayed with him for two to three years, and I branched out on my own, starting in 1987. I thought it was easy. It looks easy until you have to do everything.”

He began training at Parx in 1989, and is still there. Roughly 15 years ago, he decided to stop training for other owners. “I decided if I’m going to make a mistake, I’ll make it myself,” he said.

Uriah St. Lewis Jr. & Uriah St. Lewis with Discreet Lover, ridden by Manny Franco, after winning the 2018 Jockey Club Gold Cup

He has become renowned for springing huge upsets in graded stakes. Discreet Lover earned his berth in the 2018 Breeders’ Cup Classic by winning the Gr. 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup at odds of 45-1. More recently, his horse Forewarned won the Queens County Stakes at 42-1 last December 19th, then won the $150,000 Excelsior Handicap at 9-2 on April 2nd.  

“Our family sits down in the evenings and figures out where the horses are going next,” he said. “Sometimes we agree; sometimes we disagree; but it’s a family affair. It’s a lot of hard work, but it pays off.”

But only if there’s an opportunity to get into the game. “I think there’s been progress,” Charlie Baker said. “There are more guys coming in.”

After coming to America from Jamaica, Charlie began training at Finger Lakes in 1987. “I saw an opportunity to be a trainer there,” he said. “I got my training license in ’97. I stayed at Finger Lakes.”

In 2010, Charlie took a deep breath and headed for New York, where he has thrived. He recorded his 18th consecutive year of more than $1 million in earnings in 2021. His horses have made more than $37 million, and he’s recorded 1,747 victories off a gaudy 22 win percentage.

Yet he assumes nothing. “It’s always a grind, trying to get that horse, trying to achieve,” he said. “I’m always paying attention. It’s a tough business.”

He prefers no other. He relishes every trip to the winner’s circle. “It’s the greatest,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what race. You can win the cheapest race on the program, and it still feels good. A win is a win. A small win is just as important as a big one. It’s an uplifting feeling.”

George Leonard III, a native of  Louisiana, got that uplifting feeling at last year’s Breeders’ Cup despite California Angel’s 11th place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Filly. “It was a life-changing experience,” he said. “For me, it wasn’t about color; it was about watching my work come together. I enjoy racing. I’m thrilled to do it. I was treated like a king by everybody. I loved it. I can only hope I can get back there.”

The son of a trainer, he fell in love with horses when he was four or five. He now has a stable of 30, racing in Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana and Ohio.

Asked about inclusion, he said, “I don’t think there’s a lot of prejudice in racing. A lot of people don’t get opportunities.”

He made the most of his: “I love what I do. It’s the only way I can work seven days a week, 365 days. I don’t feel like I’ve worked a day in my life. It’s hard work sometimes, but I love what I do.”

So does Greg Harbut, who is a realist but also an optimist, committed to making his world of racing more inclusive.

“Race relations in America are not great,” he said. “It’s no secret. We’ve made progress, but there’s so much work that still has to be done.”

He’s doing more than his share.

The native of Lexington worked as a teenager at WinStar, then got a job with trainer Tom Amoss the day after he graduated high school. “I didn’t have any experience,” Greg said. “I contacted several trainers. He was the one who got back to me. I was able to shadow him and his assistant. It was a great opportunity to get my hands on horses.”

Evangeline Downs jockeys, 1978

“The golden rule in my barn was and will always be, ‘if you take care of me, I’ll take care of you,’” Tom said. “My assistant, Shane Jolivette, is Black and he was with me for over 20 years before taking another job. In all my time in the Midwest, I’ve never seen anything that would suggest being Black, Asian or anything else has any bearing on a job position. Greg was a quality guy. He worked hard. He was smart. I was lucky to have him.”

Greg became the first Black person and one of only two to be accepted into the Godolphin Flying Start Program that specializes in international racing and breeding. 

Greg Harbut

He didn’t complete the program but returned to Lexington and created Harbut Bloodstock in 2010. He has enjoyed considerable success, but he wanted to do more.

With his partner, Ray Daniels, Greg began Living the Dream Stables in 2019 to promote minority owners. “It’s not exclusively minorities, but minorities are a majority,” Greg said.

Daniels, a Lexington, Kentucky-based entrepreneur and business and community leader, has spent 26 years in various corporate positions for Waffle House. He founded Equity Solutions Group in 2017 to focus on more inclusive opportunities for minority companies. Daniels put together the syndicate group for Necker Island, who is still going strongly as a five-year-old. He won an allowance race/optional $80,000 claimer at Oaklawn Park, February 21st—his sixth career victory in 21 starts with one second, four thirds and earnings topping $630,000. 

 In partnership with Agave Racing Stable, Living the Dream Stables have Miss Bigly, who finished second in the Gr. 1 Beholder Mile at Santa Anita March 5th. She has won eight of 27 career starts with four seconds, eight thirds and earnings of nearly $750,000.

In 2021, Greg and Ray established the Ed Brown Society to promote minority participation in Thoroughbred racing while honoring Hall of Famer Ed Brown. “He was sold on the courthouse steps as a slave,” Greg said. “He studied under Anson Williamson, one of the first Black trainers. Ed Brown went on to be a very prolific jockey, a very prolific trainer and a very successful owner with multiple champions—one of the wealthiest African-Americans in the country.”

Born in 1850, he became a Belmont Stakes winning jockey in 1876 with Kingfisher, a Kentucky Derby-winning trainer in 1877 with Baden-Baden and the owner of several top Thoroughbreds during the last decade of the 19th Century. He died in 1906.

Thanks to Greg, his name will live on by introducing young minority college students to Thoroughbred racing. On January 25th, the Ed Brown Society announced a unique partnership with 1/ST’s home track, Gulfstream Park. Two selected interns from the University of Kentucky were chosen as the first recipients of the program. “It’s time for a new generation to come in and lead the way and also to celebrate the rich history of African Americans in the sport,” 1/ST’s Vice President of Communications Tiffani Steer said.

1/ST committed $150,000 to the program, covering all costs for several years so selected students can have a paid internship within the racing industry. “I feel excited for the students,” Ray said.

The first two recipients, both equine science majors at the University of Kentucky, are Charles Churchill and Deja Robinson. “This is supposed to show other students, especially students of color, that there is a place for you in the industry,” Churchill said. Of the coincidence of his name and the track of that name, he said, “I think my personality adds to the name Churchill rather than Churchill Downs defining who I am.”

Other minority interns will be selected from other colleges and universities in coming years.

“This is a wonderful industry,” Greg said. “I’m very proud of this industry. A lot of minorities don’t know about racing. We want to change that narrative. Racing can be inclusive.”

Jason Wilson is working hand-in-hand with Greg and Roy not only with the Ed Brown Society but other programs, too. “It’s not just from an employee perspective,” Jason said. “How do we increase the number of owners? LTD (Living the Dream) Stables is doing hospitality at our events, providing tools for them to navigate around the racetrack and give them a positive experience. We want to make sure to do whatever we can. We want to do more for the Ed Brown Society.

“I spent a weekend with LTD at Santa Anita, and the amount of love that was shown to these guys was very impressive—from the fans, from the racetrack. It was wonderful to see. It was very much a family-feel. That’s the way it should be. It was heartening to see that level of support.”

Jason was asked what will happen if he is successful with all his objectives. “If I do my job tremendously well, North American racing will grow,” he said. “You will have a higher level of engagement across a broader fan base. You’ll have robust international distribution, an entertainment option that is comparable to other sports and other entertainment options.”

Will inclusion be better? The bar has been set so low, how could it not improve?

But real inclusion in all facets of racing remains a distant destination. 

Christopher Duncan, a native of Jamaica who ran in the Olympics and is only in his second full year of training in Florida, said, “I don’t really see many other Black trainers. It’s shocking. But it’s not too late. It’s never too late.” 

A 1864 painting by Edward Troye depicts Asteroid with trainer Ansel Williamson (R), unidenified groom, and jockey Edward Brown (L, kneeling)

What's that noise? An overview of exercise-induced upper airway disorders

by Kate Allen and Geoffrey Lane

The majority of upper airway (‘wind’) disorders affect the regions of the pharynx and larynx. Most of these conditions are only present during exercise, when the upper airway is exposed to large changes in pressures associated with increased breathing rate and effort. This is the reason why performing endoscopy at rest may not give an accurate diagnosis. Endoscopy during strenuous exercise (overground endoscopy) has become key for veterinary surgeons to be able to give an accurate interpretation of upper airway function.

There are many different forms of upper airway disorders. They occur when part of the pharynx or larynx collapses into the airway, causing an obstruction to airflow. This obstruction causes turbulence to airflow, which in turn creates the abnormal noise. Observations of upper airway function during exercise enable veterinary surgeons to estimate the impact of the abnormalities with respect to race performance. Generally speaking, the more the structure collapses and the more the airway is narrowed, the greater the detrimental effect to performance. The mechanisms by which upper airway disorders affect performance are surprisingly complex, but in brief they influence the amount of air the horse can breathe in and also how hard the horse has to work to get that air into the lungs. 

A full understanding of an individual horse’s upper airway function allows targeted treatments to be performed. Although the more common treatments have been included here for completeness, it is important for you to discuss individual horses with your own veterinary surgeon. 

Understanding the anatomy is the first step to interpreting upper airway function during exercise. When looking at an endoscopic image, the left side of the horse is on the right side of the image as we look at it, and vice versa (figure 1). 

Figure 1: Most disorders of the upper airway are named according to the structure that is collapsing. Therefore, understanding the anatomy of the airway will help to understand the individual conditions.

  ← Horse’s RIGHT side : Horse’s LEFT side →

Fig 2a

Fig 2b

With good upper airway function, we are looking for full abduction (which means opening) of the arytenoid cartilages while the vocal cords and aryepiglottic folds remain stable, and the epiglottis retains a curved shape; the soft palate and pharyngeal walls also remain stable. This gives a wide opening called the rima glottidis for air to enter the lungs (Figure 2 a, b, c).  

Figure 2 a, b, Images showing good upper airway function.

Palatal instability and dorsal displacement of the soft palate

In the normal horse, the soft palate is positioned beneath the epiglottis. Palatal instability comprises billowing movement of the soft palate and often coincides with flattening of the shape of the epiglottis. The appearance of palatal instability can differ between horses (Figure 3 a, b, c). Palatal instability often causes an inspiratory noise.

Fig 3a

Fig 3b

Fig 3c

Figure 3 a, b, c: Images showing different types of palatal instability.

Dorsal displacement of the soft palate (DDSP) occurs when the free border of the soft palate becomes displaced and comes to lie above the epiglottis (Figure 4 a, b, c). In this displaced position, there is a substantial obstruction of the rima glottidis. Sudden onset ‘gurgling’ expiratory noises are characteristic of DDSP. Palatal instability almost invariably precedes DDSP, and it is thought these conditions may arise through weakness of the muscles within the palate itself.

Fig 4a

Fig 4b

Figure 4 a, b : Images showing dorsal displacement of the soft palate (DDSP). The epiglottis is no longer visible as the soft palate is now positioned on top of it.

Thus, in younger racehorses, palatal instability and DDSP will often improve with fitness and maturity. In the UK, the two most commonly performed surgical treatments are soft palate cautery and laryngeal tie-forward. The purpose of the soft palate cautery is to induce scar tissue to tighten the soft palate. The tie-forward has a different rationale. In some horses, the larynx slips backward just prior to DDSP, therefore the tie-forward holds the larynx in a more forward position, thereby inhibiting displacement. 

Arytenoid cartilage collapse

This condition is also called recurrent laryngeal neuropathy, laryngeal hemiplegia or laryngeal paralysis because it is caused by nerve damage to the muscles of the larynx. During exercise, we observe collapse of the arytenoid cartilage almost always on the left side. In the context of sales, most trainers are familiar with laryngeal function grading applied during resting endoscopy. The purpose of this is to predict what is likely to happen to arytenoid function during exercise. During exercise, arytenoid function is typically graded as A, B or C where A is full abduction, B is partial collapse and C is complete collapse (Figure 5 a, b, c). The majority of horses with grade 1 or 2 laryngeal function at rest have grade A function during exercise (96% and 88% respectively). Arytenoid cartilage collapse causes a harsh inspiratory noise, often termed ‘roaring’. 

Fig 5a

Fig 5b

Fig 5c

Figure 5 a, b, c: Images from 3 different racehorses, showing the variations in position of the left arytenoid. The first image shows a good position, followed by horses with increasing severity of collapse. In the last image, there is virtually no opening remaining for airflow.

Arytenoid cartilage collapse occurs when the nerve supply to the left side of the larynx is damaged. The most frequent surgery to improve complete collapse is a ‘tie-back’, which fixes the collapsing left side into a semi-open position. The potential limitation of this surgery is that if the arytenoid is fixed open, it cannot close to protect the rima glottidis during swallowing. Therefore, horses that have had a tie-back are susceptible to inhaling food into the lower airways leading to coughing. The tie-back is associated with a higher risk of complications than all other upper airway surgeries. More recently a nerve grafting surgery has been developed in which a normal local nerve is detached from a local muscle and then implanted into the laryngeal muscles. This avoids the potential complications of food inhalation but does take a few months to take effect. Both of these surgeries can be combined with ‘Hobday’ surgery. 

Arytenoid Subluxation 

This condition seems to be observed with increasing frequency. We see it most commonly in young flat racehorses; it is far less common in National Hunt horses, which probably reflects maturity of the laryngeal structures. One arytenoid subluxates or slips underneath the other arytenoid (Figure 6 a and b). The full name for this condition is ventromedial luxation of the apex of the corniculate process of the arytenoid cartilage (VLACPA). This condition appears to lead to instability of several other areas of the larynx, most commonly the vocal cords and aryepiglottic folds (Figure 7 a and b). There is limited scientific evidence for the best way to manage this disorder, and at present there is no effective surgical treatment. The instability within the larynx can be exacerbated the more the horse is exercised, therefore limiting the intensity of training to allow the larynx to mature may be recommended. 

Fig 6a

Fig 6b

Figure 6 a and b: Images to show a closeup of the arytenoid cartilages. The image on the left is normal, and the two arytenoid cartilages meet in the middle. The image on the right shows that one side of the larynx has subluxated or slipped underneath the other side. 

Fig 7a

Fig 7b

Figure 7 and b: Images to show arytenoid subluxation which has led to aryepiglottic fold collapse and vocal cord collapse.

Vocal cord collapse

Vocal cord collapse is often described as mild, moderate or severe, and typically causes a high-pitched inspiratory ‘whistle’ noise. Vocal cord collapse will almost always occur if arytenoid cartilage collapse occurs (Figure 8) but can also occur without arytenoid cartilage collapse (Figure 9). The traditional treatment for vocal cord collapse is the ‘Hobday’ procedure, which aims to remove the mucosal pocket to the side of the vocal cord along with the cord itself. 

Figure 8: Image showing left arytenoid cartilage collapse with vocal cord collapse. 

Figure 9: Image showing severe bilateral vocal cord collapse.

Aryepiglottic fold collapse

Aryepiglottic fold collapse is when the folds of tissue on the side of the larynx get sucked into the airway (Figure 10 a , b, c). This condition also causes a high-pitched inspiratory noise. It is typically graded as mild, moderate and severe. It most often occurs in conjunction with other conditions that alter the normal conformation of the arytenoid or epiglottis (i.e., palatal instability, arytenoid subluxation, arytenoid cartilage collapse). Treatment aims to remove a section of the folds.

Fig 10a

Fig 10b

Fig 10c

Figure 10 a, b, c: Images showing aryepiglottic fold collapse.

Pharyngeal wall collapse 

Pharyngeal wall collapse is when the roof or sides of the pharynx collapse, which tends to obscure the larynx from clear view (Figure 11 a and b). It occurs more commonly in sport horses than racehorses due to head and neck position; the more flexed the head and neck position, the harder it is for the walls to remain stable. The time that we most often observe it in racehorses is at the start of the gallops if they are restrained, and often it will improve as the horse is able to extend its head and neck. This condition also causes a coarse inspiratory noise. 

Fig 11a

Fig 11b

Figure 11 a and b: Images showing pharyngeal wall collapse.

Epiglottic entrapment

Although included here for completeness, epiglottic entrapment can usually be diagnosed during a resting endoscopic examination, particularly if the horse is triggered to swallow. The epiglottis becomes enveloped in the excess tissue that should lie underneath it (Figure 12 a and b). Sometimes the epiglottis remains entrapped, but sometimes it will entrap and release on its own which can make the diagnosis more difficult. The noise caused by epiglottic entrapment can vary, depending on the thickness of the entrapping tissue and whether DDSP occurs concurrently. Treatment involves releasing or resecting the excessive tissue.

Fig 12a

Fig 12b

Figure 12 a and b: Images showing epiglottic entrapment in two different horses. The image on the right shows an epiglottic entrapment that is more long standing, and the tissue has become swollen and ulcerated.

The disorders outlined above are described as if they are isolated single entities, but it is commonplace for horses to sustain complex collapse, which means collapse of multiple structures at the same time. Other less common disorders are epiglottic retroversion (when the epiglottis flips up to cover the rima glottidis), and cricotracheal membrane collapse (when there is collapse between the larynx and the trachea). On occasion obstructions to breathing can also occur in the nasal passages and the trachea (i.e., masses, ethmoid haematoma, sinusitis), but are far less common than those of the pharynx and larynx. 

Looking forward it is unlikely that any new conditions remain to be discovered. Research now centres around better understanding of the causes of these disorders and how best to prevent and treat them. A particular area of investigation amongst several research groups is understanding how to train the upper airway muscles more appropriately to reduce the prevalence of these disorders and to investigate methods to strengthen the muscles. This would have the potential to reduce the number of horses needing surgical treatments.  

#Soundbites - How much do you rely on veterinarians’ input for day-to-day decisions?

By Bill Heller

Mark Hennig

I wouldn’t say I rely on them on a day-to-day basis. We evaluate horses after a workout. But day to day, there seems to be a horse we want to look at. If a rider has any kind of negative comment, we make a point of going over those horses at the end of the morning. And we also go over the previous day's workers. We do have vets if there is a soundness issue or a horse needs scoping.

Tim Hills

I’m married to a vet, Laine, so I very much respect their opinions. I’m not old-school. They only get a vet when the horse is near death. 

Ron Moquett

Very little after what I’ve seen over the years. When I first started, the vets and blacksmiths weren’t allowed on the track until after the break. I use them for preventive stuff, taking care of the joints, because we’re asking these horses to do strenuous things. Other than that, I don’t rely on them at all.

Bret Calhoun

We use them when things get beyond our control—things like X-rays, ultrasound, scoping, things like that. Obviously we depend on them quite a bit for that. As far as day to day, we know our horses better than them. We see them every day. When there’s a change in them, obviously I bring them [vets] in for consultation. We use them for routine stuff like Lasix medications. Other than that, we don’t use them that much.

Mike Maker

Basically, we use a veterinarian as far as illness and lameness, and that’s about it.

Cliff Sise Jr.

I go over the horses myself pretty good. But sometimes a veterinarian’s suggestions are good, too. We have to rely on them in California. They check them for workouts; they check them for races. So we rely on a good vet.

Mark Glatt 

How much do I rely on them? Because of the rules now, the veterinarians are heavily involved. Most of these horses are checked twice a week.  

Eoin Harty

It all depends. You might go through a period where you only have a vet come to scope or vaccinate a horse. Then you go through a rash of bad luck, and you might have a veterinarian come for seven, eight days in a row. But the more experience you have, the less you rely on veterinarians. You see so much over the years. You can’t buy that education.

Alan Balch - Past is prologue?

By Alan F. Balch

Just over 35 years ago – when I was entrenched in California track management – I spoke publicly, and much more vehemently in our private executive confines, about my belief that the racing industry should invest heavily in research and development to meet the competitive challenges to come.  

While we could still afford to do it.

What I had to say then was met with shaking heads, laughter, rolling eyes, and then confined to the round file.  As this essay undoubtedly will be, too.

But the fact of the matter is that the future of racing then appeared dubious to me, even while on the crest of the wave we were riding in the mid-1980s.  The California State Lottery had been approved by the voters in November 1984, and its first tickets were sold in October 1985.  The United States Supreme Court upheld native American tribal sovereignty over the states in 1986, and by 1988 their gaming was beginning in several jurisdictions via compacts with state governments.  Satellite and intertrack wagering throughout California were well underway, and national simulcasting between jurisdictions was “old” then by comparison.   

At that point, we certainly couldn’t have envisioned all the ramifications of the Internet revolution; web browsing began about 1990.  Amazon was founded in 1994.  Websites became prolific.  My own marketing agency even had a Cool Site of the Day on the World Wide Web, and our client Del Mar developed one of racing’s first websites.

In short, it was no secret in 1985, and increasingly understood thereafter, that traditional gaming enterprises, and horse racing in particular, were going to be subject to greater competition than ever before, on a wider and deeper scale.  Shouldn’t we then have been sparing no effort to determine how we were going to innovate and compete in the evolving world?  

I remember citing Ted Levitt’s landmark work entitled “Marketing Myopia,” which pointed out the obvious (every successful business was once a growth enterprise) to demonstrate the not-so-obvious.  What happened to the vastly successful railroads, for example?  Well, they kept on insisting they were still in the railroad business (as opposed to defining the transportation business they were actually in, with all its other opportunities) until they were out of business almost entirely.  

Just think about that for a moment.  And apply it to horse racing.

In some ways, it’s a testament to racing’s strength as a sporting proposition that it has survived at all, or as well as it has, given the onslaught of competition and our continuing ignorance of potential opportunities.

One of my favorite corporate stories is American Totalisator Company, now AmTote.  Imagine what a revolutionary step it was in 1933 to be able instantaneously to calculate and display odds and payoffs, illuminated electronically via giant Tote boards to tens of thousands of bettors!  Based on the Straus patents, it’s no wonder that company had virtually no competition in American racing by 1940, when our sport was far and away this country’s biggest, most successful, and richest of all.  And is that possibly why Straus’ own myopia about what his company was really doing left the door open to its competitor IBM and every other technology enterprise since then?  

Technology now literally rules the world, and racing is becoming increasingly insignificant, a micro-market compared to its position 90 years ago.

My original racing mentor at Santa Anita, Robert Strub, used to warn all of us, “we don’t want to go the way of the buggy whip.”  And that’s what originally got me interested in industry, product, and brand life-cycles.  But heading a public company, as he and his Board did, also caused them to focus more on earnings-per-share-this-quarter, rather than assessing or investing in nebulous future opportunities.  And confronting the real threats we faced, covert and overt.  We didn’t have the discipline to do either.

So, rather than having had a coordinated industry approach developed decades ago to revolutionize betting on the races in America, we now have three behemoths – NYRA, Churchill, and 1/ST Racing/Stronach – battling each other.  They use outmoded ground rules, competing for horses now that foal crops are again at 1965 levels, while field sizes and starts per horse are at or near historic lows.

Here on the island of California, decreasing field size is leading to increasing competitive disadvantage in the national betting picture.  There’s so much hand-wringing you can practically hear it.  Rather than address these complex issues jointly among all organizational stakeholders, with some modicum of sophistication applied to objective data, our ongoing internal blame game has reached unprecedented heights of popularity.  Even though it’s never been a laggard in the ratings. 

The advent of the new Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority [HISA] may level the national competitive plane somewhat in California’s favor, once our safety protocols become widely observed.  But the fundamental structural problems will remain.

California trainers, owners, tracks, regulators, and key legislators, urgently need to understand and brainstorm the situation we face, together, the same way, at the same time, with the same data.  No idea should be off the table.  Sophisticated purse redistribution and participation incentives, based on level of competition, field size, field content, and surface, should head the list . . . along with potential realignment of racing schedules to fit the horse populations available, joined with robust recruitment programs . . . and critically needed capital improvements at Santa Anita and Golden Gate Fields particularly.

We’ve suffered from a California version of myopia for just short of a century now . . . isn’t it about time to open all our eyes, together?

John Alexander Ortiz - the trainer of Barber Road - has plenty to look forward to.

MY WAY

By Ken Snyder

John Alexander Ortiz has two favorite memories from his first Oaklawn Park meet in 2017: listening to Frank Sinatra’s signature song, “My Way,” on the eight-hour drive back to Lexington from Hot Springs, Arkansas after the meet and getting some advice that he has never forgotten.

“Steve Asmussen and I were in a race together. He ran third and I ran fourth; and [as] we were walking back to check our horses after the race, we happened to walk side by side. Steve and I didn’t really know each other that well at the time, but I like to talk a lot, so I asked him, ‘What advice would you give a young trainer?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Stick to your guns. Nobody knows your horses better than you do. Don’t let anybody else tell you where to run them. Don’t change your system. Be who you are.’”

Ortiz may have also interspersed “My Way” with whistling a happy tune on the way home. He saddled eight winners in 46 starts at Oaklawn, for a 17%-win percentage. That’s very respectable for a trainer in only his first full year on the racetrack. He went on to earn $688,013 for the year—an enviable figure for any new trainer.

“His way” and the advice he got at Oaklawn also produced impressive results this past year: $2,614,398 compared to $1,094,092 in 2020. Surpassing even that accomplishment, perhaps, is an innovation in barn management that may have other trainers shaking their head in amazement, others pretending they didn’t hear about it, and still more near Ortiz’s barn keeping a close watch on their own barn help.

“I quit paying the help by the number of horses that grooms were taking care of. Instead, I gave everybody a yearly salary. If you’re doing six horses, or seven or eight, or four horses, you’re going to get a yearly salary—the same paycheck,” he said.

The salaried system solved a chronic short-term problem of finding barn help and the long-term problem--equally, if not more importantly—of keeping barn help.

The closure of Churchill Downs this past summer for the new turf track installation was the time for Ortiz to launch his system. He is based in Lexington and had stabled during summers at Churchill Downs. Barn help didn’t want to travel to Colonial Downs in Virginia where Ortiz and many other trainers had to locate. “We went there with 27 horses and only two grooms. We didn’t have any hotwalkers,” he said.  Aside from the horses, the barn was Ortiz, three exercise riders, an assistant trainer, a foreman and the two grooms.  

With all-hands-on-deck required, the traditional pay structure of pay-per-head went out the proverbial window followed by job descriptions. 

Ortiz described the new system as “a test run that was scary.  

“Nobody was assigned a specific horse. My brother [Daniel, Ortiz’s assistant trainer] and the grooms would walk down the line and muck stalls together. Daniel and the exercise riders would walk hots, help catch horses and fill the water buckets. 

“When everybody was secure in knowing they were going to get paid a certain amount, they were happy to do whatever it took to get the job done.”

The system continued for a variety of reasons, primarily among them that it worked. The barn workers loved it. It also solved issues and problems that have always existed in racetrack barns.

“Normally, a groom gets a job taking care of five, six, seven horses; and they get paid by the head.  Usually, it’s about $110, $120 per head per week. I realized that there was a lot of juggling keeping track of it—how many horses this guy did, how many horses that guy did—and you can get a little bit of jealousy: ‘Why is that guy grooming four horses, and he’s grooming seven?’” said Ortiz.

The same check for grooms eliminates all that,” he said. Likewise, all hotwalkers, exercise riders, foremen and assistant trainers are paid the same.    

John and Daniel Ortiz

Salaries also minimize one hiring obstacle: Ortiz has had to turn away people who have told him, “If I can’t groom seven horses, I can’t work for you.” 

Post-Colonial Downs, and with a full complement of help, the system and benefits from it continued.  “With a salary, they’re willing to help me do extra things they normally haven’t had time for or don’t want to do because ‘it’s not my job.’ Those words don’t exist in my barn,” said Ortiz.

He freely admits he is “over-paying” barn help. “I’ve had grooms make up to $1,200 a week in pay. If they want to do laundry, I’ll tack on $200, do night watch: $200, walk a horse over and back for a race: $40.  

Workers traveling with Ortiz from meet to meet can make the following annually: exercise riders: $40,000 to $42,000; grooms and foremen: $34,000 to $36,000; and hotwalkers: $24,000 to $26,000.

“Not only do they have a good yearly salary, but at the end of the year, I gave everybody a bonus. I know how hard everybody worked last year. I know how hard they worked for me.”  

The key question—Are you getting it back in win totals and earnings?--prompts an instant answer from Ortiz: “One-hundred percent, yes.”

The exact number, of course, is incalculable.  

“I want to believe we’re having a lot more success because everybody in my barn is a happy worker. Everybody wants to see us succeed. They support me because I support them. I think that’s where I get the biggest return.” 

“Success” in 2021 is understating it. The increase from 2020 was just short of a whopping 139 percent—more than enough to take on higher barn pay.

If any other trainer has paid salaries rather than weekly, by-the-head wages, the affable Ortiz hasn’t heard of it. “It makes more sense to me to have reliable help than a bunch of people randomly here, coming in to get a paycheck. When everybody is secure financially, people seem to concentrate on what they’re doing.”

The change in how he paid help also comes from experience. Since being on the racetrack, Ortiz (not related to jockeys José and Irad Ortiz, as he is often asked) has worked every job in the barn including exercise rider. He knows well the ups and downs of financial fortune and constant worry about finances. “Hard-working people—the ones that really put their blood, sweat and tears into this—deserve to be secure financially. They have families.” Losing horses from the barn through a claim, for example, and the pay that goes with it, he added, is the “one thing that scares the help on the ground.”

John Ortiz and Sandra Washington, barn foreman

Ortiz is the son of former jockey Carlos Ortiz, who rode in Colombia before moving with his family to the U.S. to ride here. Embarking on a career in 1988, Ortiz rode at New York and mid-Atlantic tracks. A spill that broke his femur ended his jockey career but led to exercise riding for Bill Mott for 15 years. Working for Mott brought his son John into contact with the legendary trainer. 

As a small boy, he would accompany his father to the racetrack. “I was introduced to racehorses through Bill’s barn,” Ortiz recalled. 

“One summer at my dad’s birthday barbecue with trainers, jockeys, agents, etc., we were sharing horse stories, and Bill Mott looked at me across a table and asked, ‘What are you doing this summer? Why don’t you come and work for me?’”

Ortiz was 15 years old and walked hots for Mott that summer as well as on weekends. He said he fell in love with racetrack barns that summer, but with “an itch to ride horses like my dad. Bill got me on my first racehorse.”

He also wanted to know everything about barn operations—the foundation for his career as a trainer.   Even though he did not groom horses, he talked to those who did to learn everything he could about it.  “I was always interested in becoming a trainer. Even if I was a jockey, I knew it wouldn’t be long term because of my weight.”

As a kind of “plan B” to a jockey career, Ortiz spent a year at a trade school learning to be an auto mechanic. Jobs, however, were scarce after his training.

“My family moved to Ocala in Florida. I stayed back, and I couldn’t find a job as a mechanic. My dad said, ‘I left the helmet. I left some boots and the vest. Put ‘em on and go freelance. If you want to stay in New York, find your way.’”

“I breezed my first horse for Dominic Galluscio. He taught me how to breeze and gave me an opportunity.”

When Mott returned to New York from a winter in Florida in 2006, Ortiz went to work for him as a foreman and exercise rider. “I loved working for him. I learned horsemanship, which is rare nowadays,” he said. 

As important as Mott was to him, his former assistant trainer, Leana Willaford, was the most important influence. “Being under Leana, I learned all the tricks of the trade. I still use techniques and knowledge she gave me, and I’m forever grateful for that.”

In 2008, Ortiz went to work for Graham Motion at Palm Meadows in Florida and Fair Hills in Maryland and got his assistant’s license under the British trainer. From Motion, he said “I learned organization…what it takes to run a barn.  

“Everybody had a task, and it was all charted. How he ran his barn was like a business. Everything I do is on the computer, on a chart.”

After a year-and-a-half with Motion, Ortiz went to work as an assistant for Kellyn Gorder. “I’ve worked for some really great trainers—Bill Mott and Graham Motion—but working for Kellyn was the best experience in my lifetime. 

David Vincente

“I got to experience a new side of horses: the yearlings, the two-year-olds, and working for farms like WinStar, Dixiana and Three Chimneys.  

“I was able to see horses coming off rehab and how to develop the babies. That was one of the key elements that I learned from Kellyn.”

The best thing he ever learned from Gorder, however, may have been something intangible that he carried into his own stable and that may have been a contributor to a switch to paying salaries to barn help. “We would disagree on stuff, but he told me one day, if we didn’t disagree, we weren’t working together. His ideas became my ideas and my ideas became his; and again, that’s where I developed a mentality that this is a team effort.  

“It’s not about my name on a big board across my barn.”  He means that literally.

“My logo isn’t letters of my name; it’s two lines, two slashes. My hotwalkers, my grooms, my riders, my foreman Sandra Washington, assistant trainers Lindsey Reynolds, Felipe Nichols, and Daniel Ortiz—we all work here in parallel with each other. We don’t cross each other. I’m one of the green stripes, they’re the other, and we’re always side by side.”

Five years after the advice from Steve Asmussen, Ortiz refers to it often. “In 2021, there was a little dry spell in the summertime. I’m walking with my head down kicking rocks and thinking, ‘What am I doing wrong? I gotta change the feed program? We gotta’ do something.’ And then that’s when Steve’s advice popped up in my head: ‘Don’t change anything; stick to your guns.’  

“I stuck to what we were doing. It wasn’t that we were having a slow summer. We were having a successful summer, hitting the board in $100,000 races. We weren’t winning that much, but we were in the right races.”  

Asmussen’s counsel came to mind again more recently. Mucho, who came to Ortiz’s barn in 2021, had never won at a distance over six furlongs and had never raced longer than seven. “I put him in a mile race [the Fifth Season Stakes at Oaklawn on January 15 of this year], and I had a lot of people ask me why I’m stretching him out. ‘You shouldn’t do that; he’s a sprinter.’ No, I’m sticking with my guns. ‘He’s going to go two turns.’ The horse got beat by a neck. I knew my horse. That’s where I was reminded of what Steve told me.”

Mucho, by the way, earned $335,090 in 2021 in 10 starts for Ortiz after earning $350,829 in three years over 19 starts.” The right races, indeed.

The goals? “This year at Oaklawn is to always win a couple more than the year before. We won 15 last year. This year, we’re looking at 20.

“We’re also going to focus on the Breeders’ Cup. That’s the main goal.”

Right now, Ortiz also has a horse on the Derby trail—Barber Road—who at time of writing, has now finished second in three straight stakes races, including an impressive late running performance in the Gr. 3 Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn Park in late January. “Pretty good for a $15,000 weanling,” said Ortiz. 

Could Ortiz be singing “My Way” again after this year’s Kentucky Derby or Breeders’ Cup? We shall see.

Diversification of the Thoroughbred Sire Lines

By Nancy Sexton

From the time the breeding of racehorses became a more commercial pursuit, bloodlines have ebbed and flowed freely across differing racing jurisdictions. The export of various high-profile horses out of Britain to North America during the first half of the 20th century added weight to the development of the American Thoroughbred, giving it a foundation from which to flourish. And when more American-breds came to be imported back into Europe, the British and Irish Thoroughbreds benefitted as well.

All the while, it stands to reason that some sire lines will strengthen and some will die out. Some of those that lose their vigor in one nation might thrive in another. Others will merely be overwhelmed by a more dominant line, as was the case with game-changer Northern Dancer.

A glance at the leading North American sires’ list from 1972 reveals quite how much the Thoroughbred has changed in 50 years. Round Table, Claiborne Farm’s brilliant son of Princequillo, sat at the top with approximately $2 million in earnings ahead of Hamburg Place’s T V Lark, a son of the Nasrullah stallion Indian Hemp. Princequillo and Nasrullah, both of whom stood under Claiborne management, were dominant influences of their day but interestingly each of the top five stallions that year—Herbager, Beau Gar and Count Fleet completed the quintet—represented different sire lines.

Is today’s Thoroughbred a melting pot of fewer viable lines? The 2021 North American champion sires’ table would suggest that might be the case—its top ten containing four male line descendants of Northern Dancer (Into Mischief, Ghostzapper, Paynter and Hard Spun) and four belonging to Mr Prospector (Curlin, Speightstown, Munnings and Twirling Candy). 

Of course, given how each surviving branch of Northern Dancer and Mr. Prospector has evolved over time erodes the importance of comparing different representatives; Into Mischief, as a great-grandson of Storm Cat via Harlan’s Holiday, is a very different beast to Awesome Again’s son Ghostzapper as is Curlin to Speightstown and his son Munnings.

Conspicuous by its absence, though, is representation from the once vibrant Hail To Reason line, its most high-profile representative being the veteran More Than Ready in 26th place. Caro’s line is prominent via the deeds of top ten stallion Uncle Mo, although whether that horse can be classed as a typical representative of that line is a moot point. The In Reality sire line, which traces back to Man O’War, remains relevant primarily through Tiznow. However, it doesn’t take too much imagination to envisage it petering out in the near future, much like that belonging to Princequillo, Ribot, Buckpasser and Bull Lea before it.

In Europe, the situation is much the same, dominated by Northern Dancer influences descending from Sadler’s Wells, in particular Galileo, and Danzig, who is at his strongest via Danehill and Green Desert. The outlier at the top end of the market is Mr. Prospector’s great-grandson Dubawi. 

Sadly, those lines descending from the likes of Mill Reef, the last British-based champion sire prior to Frankel, Blushing Groom and Sharpen Up today hang by a thread. Others, such as Dante and Habitat, have more or less died out across Europe.

Fiona Craig (right) with Molyglare Stud’s Eva-Maria Bucher-Haefner.

“It has definitely changed,” says Fiona Craig, advisor to the Irish-based Moyglare Stud Farm. “Success breeds success, so to some degree the situation is maybe better because of the dominance of the more successful bloodlines. However, as a result, we may well all lose some of the genetic variation that is so vital for the vigor of a bloodline. It is difficult to fully evaluate at this point as it may take another 50 years to see the effect of the current concentration of bloodlines.”

Duncan Taylor of Taylor Made Sales goes far back into the 20th century, pointing to the success of the Phalaris sire line, and its subsequent concentration, as a catalyst for the current situation.

“From 1956, the leading sire by earnings for each year since tells the story of the Thoroughbred breed and its evolution,” he says. “Speed has been the centerpiece of the story. During this 65-year period, the leading sire list has been topped on only eight occasions by stallions from sire lines other than the Phalaris paternal line. Princequillo (1957 and 1958), Ambiorix (1961), Round Table (1972), Dr. Fager (1977), Nodouble (1980), His Majesty (1982) and Broad Brush (1994) are those eight sires.

“Every other time it has been led by a Phalaris line stallion—Northern Dancer, Mr. Prospector, Bold Ruler and Hail To Reason. If you look back at the leading sires list by earnings for 2021, you see that all bar one of the top 50 stallions traces back to Phalaris: 19 of the 50 trace through Mr. Prospector, 16 through Northern Dancer, 11 through Bold Ruler, two through Hail To Reason and one through Caro. Only the In Reality line, represented through Tiznow [in 45th], does not trace back to Phalaris.”

Taylor adds: “Phalaris was a modest racehorse at stamina distance. As a four-year-old, his trainer [George Lambton] turned to sprint races where he won seven of nine starts and was ultimately crowned England’s Champion Sprinter. As a five-year-old, he became known for his ability to carry more weight than his competitors, doing so with brilliant speed. He went on to become a leading sire of two-year-olds in 1925, 1926 and 1927. He was Champion sire in England in 1925 and 1928.

Duncan Taylor

“What I see in Phalaris and what I have learned about the customers that create the “bullseye market” for buying a yearling in America are very similar. Our horse-buying customers want early two-year-old performers with speed, and they like it when the horse can go on and race at three.  They would love for that fast two-year-old to be able to go on and win up to a mile-and-a-quarter at three. Phalaris and his offspring have delivered the speed necessary to put most of the other sire lines out of business. You will still see these other sire lines in pedigrees, but not as the paternal sire line.”

Globalization

Whatever way you look at it, globalization of the business has also been a driving force. On the one hand, it has allowed international breeders access to different bloodlines. On the other hand, it has been a major factor in the commercialism of the industry; once breeding racehorses became big business, fashion gained a new importance.

“The pendulum swings back and forth,” says Dermot Carty, director of sales at Adena Springs in Canada. “For example, one of the biggest influences during the 1930s and 40s was Hyperion. His son Khaled came to America and with success; another son Star Kingdom was successful in Australia; and then Aristophanes stood in South America where he sired Forli, who then came back to stand in Kentucky.

“With the international economics of the 1940s, 50s, 60s, there was a huge movement of horses, mostly back into North America. Then it went the other way—the Sangster group and the Maktoum family were driving forces into sending those bloodlines back to Europe. And all the while, Japan has been importing a lot of bloodlines and with great success—that was obviously how they came to have Sunday Silence.”

Headley Bell of Mill Ridge Farm in Kentucky concurs.

Headley Bell of Mill Ridge Farm, Kentucky

“My grandfather [Hal Price Headley] imported Order out of England and from him bred [champion] Ornament,” he says. “Then he bought Pharamond from Lord Derby and imported him to stand in Kentucky, where he sired champion Menow [sire of champion Tom Fool, in turn the sire of Buckpasser].

“We go through these different phases, and we get these cycles. You look at what John Gaines did at Gainesway, Leslie Combs at Spendthrift and before that Bull Hancock at Claiborne. They tapped into the British Stud Book and reaped the rewards—and that was a long time ago.” 

Such cycles have underpinned the development of the breed, initially allowing for more variety. When Never Say Die won the 1954 Epsom Derby under Lester Piggott, he became the first American-bred winner of the race since Iroquois in 1881. 

Columnist Frank Jennings, writing at the time in the Thoroughbred Record, noted that: “Never Say Die did a great deal toward changing this thought [that an American-bred would not be able to win the Epsom Derby] and at the same time provided a fine example of the fact that American bloodlines, when properly blended with those of foreign lands, can hold their own in the top company of the world.”

Just over 40 years later, the race boasted a further 11 American-bred winners as well another, Nijinsky, who had been bred in Canada.

“Properly blended” is a key phrase in Jennings’ text, with the industry’s global nature allowing for differing lines to blend in elsewhere to the point that it's not uncommon nowadays for a horse’s background to host European, North American, Japanese and/or Australian-bred names.

“It is important not to underestimate just how much the mare population matters to a stallion,” says Bell, “and how he might blend. We stood Diesis at Mill Ridge Farm—he was a champion two-year-old in Britain by Sharpen Up; and when he came here, he was provided with those American speed mares. And it clicked; it worked for him.” 

As Carty notes, Adena Springs’ stalwart Silent Name is another fine advertisement for a Thoroughbred melting pot. One of the first sons of Japanese supersire Sunday Silence to stand outside Japan, the Gr. 2 winner is a proven Gr. 1 stallion and sits perennially among the leading Canadian sires.

“Silent Name was bred in Japan by the Wertheimer brothers from an European pedigree that had heavy doses of North American influences,” he says. “He’s out of a mare by Danehill, and his second dam is by Blushing Groom. You’ve got Raja Baba, a son of Bold Ruler, in there, too. So it’s a really international pedigree. 

“To build this kind of family requires the ability to think long term, and it’s a long process. Credit to the Wertheimer brothers as they had the vision and sight to send mares to Japan and tap into these different bloodlines. Credit to the Wildenstein family and Maria Niarchos for doing the same as well.”

Contraction

Are we closing in on a situation where the breed might be contracting too much?

“Any answer will be determined on what you are trying to breed,” says Craig. “A sound racehorse with a turn of foot or successful sales horse? Do you prefer to out-cross bloodlines, or are you happy to concentrate on currently successful bloodlines to meet market fashion and sell well?  

“For me, primarily trying to breed racehorses, I find it increasingly restrictive simply because so many of the broodmares are by or out of the current stallions. That is an increasing problem, and I see the same in yearlings at sales. 

“We can make statistics to say anything, but what they do show is that speed is essential for a racehorse. But class speed. Sadly we are now in a world where cheap speed sells, and class stamina is overlooked or not wanted at the sales.”

The power of the commercial market is certainly a factor.

As Bell notes, most breeders are in the position of having “to play the commercial card.”

“The reduction of the foal crop is also something that’s at play here,” he says. “When you’re going down from 35,000 foals to 19,000, you’re going to get limitations. So we’re playing with the cards that we’re dealt.”

Away from commercial dictations, the shift can also be attributed to the overwhelming influence of Northern Dancer, a great-great-grandson of Phalaris.

Bred by E.P. Taylor, it is part of racing folklore how the late May-foaled Northern Dancer was shunned by buyers on account of his size as a yearling yet went on to win the Kentucky Derby in record time several weeks short of his actual third birthday. 

Northern Dancer was sired by a horse, Nearctic, whose female family had been imported by Taylor out of Britain in the early 1950s. At stud, he wasted little time in transcending the gap between North America and Europe, with the deeds of his second-crop son, 1970 Triple Crown winner Nijinsky, prompting a heightened interest in the stallion that was subsequently justified through the likes of Sadler’s Wells, El Gran Senor, The Minstrel, Secreto, Lyphard and Nureyev.

Today, the breed is awash with Northern Dancer, particularly in Europe.

“You look at the role that Northern Dancer played,” says Bell. “He’s by far the most significant. And we’re now seeing Northern Dancer on Northern Dancer work. Delving further in, Danzig on Danzig is more prevalent and can work. Sadler’s Wells on Sadler’s Wells can also work, as we saw with Enable [who was inbred 3x2 to the stallion].”

The idea of major breeders experimenting by doubling up on bloodlines is nothing new. 

Ultimus, an unraced but successful sire bred in 1906 by James Keene, was inbred 2x2 to Domino. In Europe, the breeding empire belonging to Marcel Boussac rested primarily upon the influences of his stallions Asterus, Teddy, Pharis and Tourbillon. Indeed, his 1949 Arc heroine Coronation was inbred 2x2 to Tourbillon. 

More recently in Australasia, Danehill has become so powerful that in some cases it is hard to get away from his influence. To date, there are no fewer than 15,400 foals inbred to Danehill worldwide—310 of whom are stakes winners. While the list contains various Australian heavyweights such as Verry Elleegant, Farnan, Alizee and Bivouac, it is also interesting to note the number of Australasian farms who market their stallions as being free of Danehill blood when the opportunities arise.

Yet while history tells us that some people will never hold back from multiplying on lines, surely the concentration of today’s sirelines poses some quandaries for breeders.

While Round Table was the North American champion sire of 1972, his place was taken 10 years later by His Majesty, a son of Ribot. By 1992, Northern Dancer was changing the landscape; Danzig was champion in America while in Europe, Sadler’s Wells was in the midst of a championship run that would come to consist of a record 14 sires’ titles. Sadler’s Wells’ own son El Prado broke through with his own American sires’ championship in 2002, and remains a firm influence today via Kitten’s Joy and Medaglia d’Oro. 

At the same time, the faster and more precocious Storm Cat, a grandson of Northern Dancer via Storm Bird, was gaining traction on both sides of the Atlantic that would come to be reflected in the successes of Into Mischief, Giant’s Causeway and Scat Daddy—all of whom remain extremely powerful and commercial forces in 2022.

Meanwhile, the Mr. Prospector sire line flourished, whether it be through the likes of Gone West (sire of Elusive Quality, Zafonic, Speightstown and Mr. Greeley), Forty Niner (sire of Distorted Humor and End Sweep), Smart Strike (sire of Curlin) or Fappiano, who has become an increasingly powerful force via Unbridled and Candy Ride.

The Seattle Slew line has consolidated its place as one of America’s best, notably through A.P. Indy and his son Pulpit, who has been so ably represented in recent years by Tapit.

However, all this has come at the expense of other sire lines. Granted, not all of them possessed the vigor to remain relevant. But others were popular and successful options of their time and merely fell foul of commercial desires. 

For instance, would Sunday Silence have been so successful had he stood in Kentucky? As it was, Arthur Hancock of Stone Farm attempted to stand his Kentucky Derby winner but support for the horse—one who had been unsold at $17,000 as a yearling and in possession of a light female pedigree—was underwhelming; and he was sold to Japan, where he became an incredible success. While his blood today saturates the breed in Japan, Kentucky options belonging to his sire Halo are limited.

Other causes include a combination of geography, value and circumstances, says Craig.

Ribot at Darby Dan Farm, 1960

“Horses were at one time mainly bred to be raced by their breeders,” she says. “The public sales market was to dispose of those that were not wanted. Mares also often visited stallions that were local and then with time and travel, they went further afield; and a center such as Newmarket began to develop for breeding as much as racing. 

“Walter Haefner [Moyglare Stud Farm founder] was one of the first breeders to ship mares by air to Kentucky. He was very wealthy and loved U.S. racing. He sent two mares from Ireland in 1968, primarily to breed to Sea Bird and Ribot. Irish Lass produced Irish Bird, the dam of Assert and Bikala, to Sea Bird. Another mare, White Paper, produced Gp. 1 winner Carwhite to Caro.”

Craig touches upon the wealth of European runners available in America at that time, with Nureyev, Lyphard, Riverman, Irish River, Blushing Groom, The Minstrel, El Gran Senor, Storm Bird, Sir Ivor and Vaguely Noble, among those to leave a lasting impact alongside Sea Bird, Ribot and Caro.

“Many of the top European stallion prospects were abruptly sent to the U.S. in the 1970s due to fear of equine abortion [prompted by the contagious equine metritis (CEM) outbreak in 1977],” she says.

“Comparing stud fees and yearling values in the 1950s and 60s to those at the end of the 1970s and onward shows a vast change, maybe originating in the U.S. as a result of CEM and the flight of leading stallions from Europe, [which] then migrated quickly back to Europe. 

“I will always remember attending a Matchmaker seasons and shares auction in the old Radisson in downtown Kentucky in the late 1980s and watching a Northern Dancer season make $1 million. Big business arrived into breeding and as a result into sales, and as we all know, much of this current industry is dictated by fashion. Traditional owner/breeders continued but increasingly found the associated stud fee and broodmare costs limiting.

“Commercial breeders are guided by fashion, and so stallions have to fit the commercial parameters in order to get enough mares; and currently early success and speed are everything. Proven, fast, good looking and recognizable—that doesn't leave many spots for the tough old stallions doing it the hard way. Would Persian Bold have made a stallion now? Would Broad Brush? Both were more than able to get a higher percentage of top performers than the speedy two-year-old performer that gets three times the number of mares.

“And with increased commerciality and 'fashion' came numbers. Fashion and commercial aspects meant that everyone [wanted] to breed their mares to the same sire or sire line, and others were ignored.”

She adds: “Yes, we need the class stamina lines of Roberto, we need Halo, we need Princequillo and Ribot. But they are not flashy or speedy, and sadly not fashionable. Hence the demand is poor, and so those sire lines fade into history.”

Craig laments the contraction of the Grey Sovereign line: “There was a brilliance to those, also temperament, but they worked on all surfaces and in different countries.” Similarly, she is disappointed to witness the contraction of that belonging to Never Bend, a “line of class and brilliance” that supplied Mill Reef and Riverman. 

For Headley Bell, use of the Roberto sire line has yielded great rewards.

“Hail To Reason and his son Roberto is such a powerful line,” he says. “I’ve played Roberto and I used Dynaformer a lot with success—our client Lael Stable bred [Kentucky Derby winner] Barbaro by him. I played Halo, more recently through his grandson Hat Trick, the sire of Win Win Win [a Gr. 1-winning homebred for Live Oak Plantation]. 

“I was also a big Stop The Music player back in the day, although he was different to most Hail To Reasons; he was typey with more speed.”

Of course, the subject of bloodlines isn’t as cut and dry as favoring one sire line over the next. Each stallion represents a blend of influences and as such, opportunities are there to be tapped into.

“Ribot and Roberto remain influential,” says Bell. “In Reality, Relaunch, Fappiano—they are all common threads as well. The Rough N’ Tumble line has been hugely influential—we see him today playing an important role through his son Dr. Fager, the damsire of Fappiano. And that pays tribute to John Nerud and those Tartan Farm families. They bred all those good horses: In Reality, Dr. Fager, Unbridled, Quiet American; and they remain relevant today.”

Independently, Craig was also quick to pay tribute to the impact left by Nerud.

“Tapit is the Bold Ruler - Seattle Slew line, but maybe his real success is due to those tough old Tartan Farm bloodlines,” she says, alluding to the fact that Tapit’s dam, Tap Your Heels, is a daughter of Unbridled (bred on the Fappiano - Dr. Fager cross) and also inbred twice to In Reality.

There is an argument to think that the health of the Thoroughbred is not going to benefit from the current situation. Sure, North America is home to an array of accomplished sires, but at the same time, the variety of several decades ago—an era when some would argue that the breed was sounder and more durable—is lacking. 

While Northern Dancer and Mr. Prospector cast a shadow over the top echelons of the 2021 champion sires’ list, there is also a similarity to the next big names, among them runaway champion first-crop sire Gun Runner who represents a fusion of Fappiano, to whom he is inbred, and Storm Cat. Another successful freshman, Practical Joke, represents Into Mischief over Distorted Humor and therefore broadly speaking, Storm Cat over Mr. Prospector.

“It is both a luxury and expensive to be an owner/breeder now,” says Craig. "Most breeding is trial and error. For sure, you can afford to take a few chances—breed to Saxon Warrior or Study Of Man [both sons of Deep Impact based in Europe], keep a few mares in the U.S. or Australia to try to use more of a variety of sire lines, but it is a challenge. There are limited options, and I think we are breeding a lot of slower horses as a result. We are moving inwards not outwards.”

State Incentives 2022

by Annie Lambert

North American Thoroughbred market breeders saw record sales in 2021, while breeding to race looks equally enticing in 2022. Even a pandemic has not stopped the racing industry from rewarding breeders and owners from producing, purchasing and racing quality horses.

Farm Futures

Spendthrift Farm, Lexington, Kentucky, are continuing with their trendsetting programs – Share The Upside and Safe Bet – following the death of Spendthrift founder and owner B. Wayne Hughes last August. Both programs have been directly copied or modified by other farms due to their obvious significance to breeders.

The Spendthrift Farm 2022 Stallion Roster consists of 25 sires, including newly added Basin (Liam’s Map), Known Agenda (Curlin), Yaupon (Uncle Mo) and By My Standards (Goldencents).

Safe Bet minimizes risk for mare owners by ensuring that the stallion they chose from the program will sire at least one graded/group stakes winner by December 31, 2022 from its first two-year-old crop, or the mare owner will owe no breeding fee. If the stallion does produce at least one black-type winner, the listed stallion fee would be due.

Spendthrift stallions in the program for 2022 include Cloud Computing, Free Drop Billy and Mor Spirit, all standing for a $5,000 fee.

“Safe Bet will continue this year with Free Drop Bill, Mor Spirit and Cloud Computing,” verified Spendthrift Stallion Sales Manager Mark Toothaker. “If they do not have a graded stakes winner in North America in 2022, then all of those contracts done under the program will be free. If they have a graded stakes winner, [breeders] are thrilled to death to pay $5,000. If it doesn’t work out, at least it doesn’t cost them anything, as far as a stud fee.”

Share The Upside has proved stunningly successful for breeders, while remaining a simple concept. Breed a mare to a program stallion, have a live foal and pay the stallion fee when due. That foal entitles the mare owner to a lifetime breeding to the stallion, an annual breeding share, with no added costs.

Program stallions for 2022 include: Basin, By My Standards, Known Agenda and Rock Your World (Candy Ride (ARG)), the latter two being already sold out.

“We have two different forms of Share the Upside,” Toothaker said. “Rock Your World and Known Agenda are both on two year programs with fees of $12,500 this and next year. Basin and By My Standards are both on one-year deals with a second year breed back for free. They are both standing at $8,500 one time and then in 2023 you breed a mare for free and you will have filled your commitment to have a lifetime breeding right.”

According to Toothaker, some stallions offer a pay-out-of-sale proceeds type offer this year. It is not a forgiveness of the stud fee, but it is a deferment arrangement.

“There are certain stallions that we will allow a breeder to defer paying the stallion fee, temporarily,” Toothaker said. “They can sell the mare in foal or sell the resulting weanling or yearling. We don’t usually want to carry it past a yearling season.”

Because the quality stallions can be very expensive to acquire, farms must try and turn each season into monetary income if at all possible. Various programs enable stallions to be marketed for the benefit of the stallion business and mare owners.

The Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund (KTDF) has increased purses within the state and has shown significant growth. Keeneland Race Course, for example, will award a record $7.7 million for 19 stakes to be run during their April 2022 spring meet. 

Spendthrift’s 2022 ‘Share the upside’ program stallions include Rock your world, known agenda, Basin & By my standards (pictured)

The KTDF will contribute $1.5 million to the stakes purses, pending approval from the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. KTDF funds come from one-percent of money wagered on live Kentucky Thoroughbred and historical racing. In addition, two-percent of all money wagered on Thoroughbred races via inter-track wagering and whole card simulcasting.

Only Kentucky-sired and Kentucky-foaled horses that are registered with the KTDF are eligible for these purse supplements. Each racetrack, pending approval by the KTDF advisory board, decides the purse payment structure. Payment is distributed to the owner of record.

State Lures

The California Breeder’s Association continues to have one of the most respected, and often copied, programs in North America. According to Mary Ellen Locke, Registrar and Incentive Program Manager, there have been no structural changes to their lucrative program from recent years.

California mare owners can breed to out-of-state stallions and still have a Cal-bred, providing the mare foals in the Golden State and is bred back to a California stallion. 

“We have no new changes for 2022,” Locke confirmed of the CTBA incentives. “There have not been as many inquiries from other states regarding our program recently. When most were starting out, they’d ask how our program worked. I think a lot of the states that want an incentive program have one.” 

Little Red Feather Racing Club is an established racing partnership group, which purchases prospects to race across North America. Founder and managing partner, Billy Koch, made it clear they are not in the breeding business, but definitely keep owner incentives in mind for his runners.

“We race everywhere in the country, so we look at the horses [bred in any state],” Koch explained. “Whatever racing jurisdiction you are running in, the incentives should be noted. When it comes to California, as they say, ‘It pays to own a Cal-bred.’”

Texas has been making big improvements for breeders to take advantage of in recent years, according to Mary Ruyle, Texas Thoroughbred Association Executive Director. Texas state legislatures passed a bill in 2019, which provides for $25 million annually to help the equine industry – seventy percent is set aside for purses. The monies are collected via a tax on equine goods and products. 

The TTA is actively promoting the Texas-bred Thoroughbred in 2022.

“What we are doing is going to each of the Texas Class One tracks and inviting new people to learn more about the process of becoming a breeder or a racehorse owner,” Ruyle said. “We’re also having an event in connection with our two-year-old training sale.”

Berdette Felipe, Arizona Thoroughbred Breeders Association, reported there were no major changes to their program, but that business was going well for breeders and owners.

“Turf Paradise has added money into the purses, the purses are bigger,” she said. “And, Turf Paradise does pay a breeder and owner award at the end of the meet.”

Mare owners in Arizona are able to breed to out-of-state stallions, similar to California, and still have an Arizona-bred foal. “As long as the mare foals here and the baby stays in Arizona for six months of its first year,” Felipe explained.

When Virginia passed their Historical Horse Racing legislation in 2019 Debbie Easter, Executive Director of the Virginia Thoroughbred Association (VTA), predicted good things for Colonial Downs. Last year, Easter began to see the numbers climbing in spite of no year around racing in Virginia.

Colonial Downs enjoyed a record setting Thoroughbred season in 2021 with purse monies of $522,000. That number is expected to grow to $600,000 this year. The Virginia Racing Commission also granted the 2022 meet an additional nine days of racing.

The VTA continues to provide incentives to their breeders, encouraging them to set up shop and grow in their state.

Even though the state of Minnesota has challenges for breeders and owners, those directly involved continue to stride forward with help from the Minnesota Thoroughbred Association and the Minnesota Breeders’ Fund [MBF].

The MBF, which is overseen by the Minnesota Racing Commission (MRC), awarded over $600,000 to breeders last year. Monetary awards are paid to Minnesota-bred horses that are registered with the MRC. There are ongoing attempts to promote state-bred horses.

 “Members of the commission have agreed recently to support an incentive whereby anyone who buys a share in a Minnesota Thoroughbred Association stallion auction will be rewarded,” Bob Schiewe, Deputy Director of the MBF, explained. “If you bring your mare to use the breeding and bring the mare back to Minnesota to foal, the Breeders’ Fund will pay a $1,000 incentive.

“It’s not a lot in the bigger picture, but it is something. We are hoping that it might result in 15 to 30 mares foaling in Minnesota that otherwise may not have.”

Minnesota not only suffers from severe winter weather. Lower purses at Canterbury Park, the only Thoroughbred track, are stressing the racing structure. 

“Canterbury Park, where we have had Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse racing since the 1980s, has a marketing agreement with the nearby Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux community, which owns/operates the Mystic Ways Casino,” Schiewe said. “The casino is very successful and has supplemented purses at Canterbury Park by about $7.5 million annually for 10 years. It basically doubled our purse account.”

But, much to Schiewe’s dismay, the decade long agreement with the casino to provide the added funding is expiring and the Native American community seems prepared not to negotiate a new contract.

“Unfortunately for horse racing in Minnesota,” Schiewe acknowledged, “it seems to be in very serious jeopardy of going away.” “You can do the math; we’ll be losing half of our purse account in this day and age.” 

Mr Monomoy

Independent Initiatives

Sean Feld is Managing Director of Climax Stallions, which he runs from Lexington, Kentucky. Sean’s father, Bob Feld of Bobfeld Bloodstock is the company’s Director of Stallion Acquisitions.

Climax Stallions now offer seven sires, most of which reside in varied regions of the United States, with one currently standing in Ireland. The concept of treating each stallion separately allows the company to find proper exposure for each horse.

“When we acquire a stallion we’ll make phone calls to various farms in various locations where we think the horse fits best and where we think he will get the best reception,” Sean explained. “Curlin To Mischief [a half-brother to Into Mischief and Beholder by Curlin] is in California because it was helpful that Into Mischief and Beholder did their running out there. That familiarity definitely helps.”

Son Of Thunder, a full-brother to the late Laoban, stands in New York, St Patrick’s Day, by Pioneerof The Nile, resides in Florida and Mr. Monomoy, by Palace Malice, is in New York. Editorial, a half-brother to Uncle Mo by War Front, and Fortune Ticket, a full-brother to Gun Runner, are both in Maryland. The only stallion standing outside of North America is Bullet Train by Sadler’s Wells.

“We have Bullet Train leased to a national hunt farm in Ireland,” Sean said. “He’s going to be a steeplechase stallion. His first foals in Ireland are three, so they’ll start running soon.”

Climax Stallions are placed with consideration of breeder and owner awards offered as well. Mr. Monomoy, with his dirt pedigree fit well in New York considering the amount of money in the Stallion Stakes races as well as winter races in Aqueduct being run solely on dirt.

State-bred programs like California, Florida, New York and Maryland all have outstanding incentive programs overall, according to Sean. And, Sean appreciates mare owner programs like those offered by Spendthrift.

“We offer a Share the Upside type program for all our freshman sires,” he pointed out. “In the regional market it is a lot harder to compete than the Kentucky market. You have to be creative to get as many good mares as you can. There are leading breeders in every state and you try to get as many mares from leading breeders as possible.” 

“Our tagline is, ‘We bring Kentucky to you,’” he added. “We have Kentucky quality pedigrees in the regional market; we try to help the regional-bred horses as much as possible in the pedigree department.”

Ontario, Canada’s province most entwined in Thoroughbred racing, sports a range of incentives to promote Thoroughbred breeding in the province. 

There are monetary bonuses allotted through the Mare Purchase Program that applies to in-foal mares with progeny of 2022 when purchased at an Ontario Racing recognized public auction. Through the Mare Recruitment Program, a breeder who brings an in-foal mare to Ontario to foal in 2022 is eligible for incentive funds, with some stipulations.

A breeder of record is eligible for several bonuses through the Thoroughbred Improvement Program, including out-of-province breeders awards. Ontario sired purse bonuses are also paid out. There are many angles to beef up breeder awards in Canada.

It would quite possibly take the entire magazine to explain each and every North American opportunity for mare owners to enhance their bottom lines. The more you dig, the more opportunities are found. And, with competition growing, there are certainly deals to be made. You won’t know until you ask. 

Antimicrobials in an age of resistance

By Jennifer Davis and Celia Marr

Growing numbers of bacterial and viral infections are resistant to antimicrobial drugs, but no new classes of antibiotics have come on the market for more than 25 years. Antimicrobial-resistant bacteria cause at least 700,000 human deaths per year according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Equivalent figures for horses are not available, but where once equine vets would have very rarely encountered antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, in recent years this serious problem is a weekly, if not daily, challenge. 

The WHO has for several years now, designated a World Antibiotic Awareness Week each November and joining this effort, British Equine Veterinary Association and its Equine Veterinary Journal put together a group of articles exploring this problem in horses.

For more information:  https://beva.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/20423306/homepage/sc_antimicrobials_in_an_age_of_resistance

How do bacterial populations develop resistance?

Certain types of bacteria are naturally resistant to specific antimicrobials and susceptible to others. Bacteria can develop resistance to antimicrobials in three ways: bacteria, viruses and other microbes, which can develop resistance through genetic mutations or by one species acquiring resistance from another. Widespread antibiotic use has made more bacteria resistant through evolutionary pressure—the “survival of the fittest” principle means that every time antimicrobials are used, susceptible microbes may be killed; but there is a chance that a resistant strain survives the exposure and continues to live and expand. The more antimicrobials are used, the more pressure there is for resistance to develop.

The veterinary field remains a relatively minor contributor to the development of antimicrobial resistance. However, the risk of antimicrobial-resistant determinants traveling between bacteria, animals and humans through the food chain, direct contact and environmental contamination has made the issue of judicious antimicrobial use in the veterinary field important for safeguarding human health. Putting that aside, it is also critical for equine vets, owners and trainers to recognize we need to take action now to limit the increase of antimicrobials directly relevant to horse health.

How does antimicrobial resistance impact horse health?

Fig 1. This mare’s problems began with colic; she underwent surgery to correct a colon torsion (twisted gut). When the gut wall was damaged, bacteria easily spread throughout the body. The mare developed an infection in her surgical incision and in her jugular veins, progressing eventually to uncontrollable infection—resistant to all available antimicrobials with infection of the heart and lungs.

The most significant threat to both human and equine populations is multidrug-resistant (MDR) pathogens, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producing Escherichia coli, MDR Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Enterococcus faecium, and rising MDR strains of Salmonella spp. and Clostridium difficile. In an analysis of 12,695 antibiograms collected from horses in France between 2012-2016, the highest proportion (22.5%) of MDR isolates were S. aureus. Identification of ESBL E.coli strains that are resistant to all available antimicrobial classes has increased markedly in horses. In a sampling of healthy adult horses at 41 premises in France in 2015, 44% of the horses shed MDR E.coli, and 29% of premises shedding ESBL isolates were found in one third of the equestrian premises. Resistant E. coli strains are also being found in post-surgical patients with increasing frequency.

Fig 2. Rhodococcus equi is a major cause of illness in young foals. It leads to pneumonia and lung abscesses, which in this example has spread through the entire lung. Research from Kentucky shows that antimicrobial resistance is increasingly common in this bacterial species.

Of major concern to stud owners, antimicrobial-resistant strains of Rhodococcus equi have been identified in Kentucky in the last decade, and this bacteria can cause devastating pneumonia in foals. Foals that are affected by the resistant strains are unlikely to survive the illness. One of the leading authorities on R.equi pneumonia, Dr. Monica Venner has published several studies showing that foals can recover from small pulmonary abscesses just as quickly without antibiotics, and has pioneered an “identify and monitor” approach rather than “identify and treat.”  Venner encourages vets to use ultrasonography to quantify the infected areas within the lung and to use repeat scans, careful clinical monitoring and laboratory tests to monitor recovery. Antimicrobials are still used in foals, which are more severely affected, but this targeted approach helps minimize drug use.

What can we do to reduce the risk of antimicrobial resistance?

The simple answer is stop using antimicrobials in most circumstances except where this is absolutely avoidable. In training yards, antimicrobials are being over-used for coughing horses. Many cases are due to viral infection, for which antibiotics will have little effect. There is also a tendency for trainers to reach for antibiotics rather than focusing on improving air quality and reducing exposure to dust. Many coughing horses will recover without antibiotics, given time. Although it has not yet been evaluated scientifically, adopting the identify and monitor approach, which is very successful in younger foals, might well translate to horses in training in order to reduce overuse of antimicrobials.

Fig 3. Faced with a coughing horse, trainers will often pressure their vet to administer antibiotics, hoping this will clear up the problem quickly. Many respiratory cases will recover without antibiotics, given rest and good ventilation

Vets are also encouraged to choose antibiotics more carefully, using laboratory results to select the drug that will target specific bacteria most effectively. The World Health Organization has identified five classes of antimicrobials as being critically important, and therefore reserved, antimicrobials in human medicine. The critically important antimicrobials which are used in horses are the cephalosporins (e.g., ceftiofur) and quinolones (e.g., enrofloxacin), and the macrolides, which are mainly used in foals for Rhodococcal pneumonia. WHO and other policymakers and opinion leaders have been urging vets and animal owners to reduce their use of critically important antimicrobials for well over a decade now. Critically important antimicrobials should only be used where there is no alternative, where the disease being treated has serious consequences and where there is laboratory evidence to back up the selection. The British Equine Veterinary Association has produced helpful guidelines and a toolkit, PROTECT-ME, to help equine vets achieve this.

How well are we addressing this problem?

Disappointingly, in a recent review of prescribing behavior of three “reserved” antimicrobials at first-opinion equine practices in the USA and Canada between 2006-2012 published in Equine Veterinary Journal, only 5% of prescriptions for the reserved antimicrobials enrofloxacin, ceftiofur and clarithromycin were informed by culture and sensitivity testing. There was also an overall trend of increased prescribing of enrofloxacin across the study period, and despite increasing awareness of the challenge of antimicrobial resistance, a decreasing proportion of enrofloxacin prescriptions were based on culture and sensitivity results.

Judicious use of antimicrobials for surgical patients

Antimicrobials are commonly used in the perioperative period. In both human and veterinary medicine, antimicrobial use for surgical prophylaxis has been a target for reducing or eliminating inappropriate antimicrobial administration. The British Equine Veterinary Association recommends administration of penicillin pre- and post-operatively for 24 hours for clean surgeries; penicillin and gentamicin pre- and post-operatively for five days for contaminated surgeries; and penicillin and gentamicin pre- and post-operatively for 10 days for complicated surgeries. Furthermore, for uncomplicated contaminated wounds (e.g., hoof abscesses), antimicrobial therapy is not recommended. A 2018 survey of perioperative antimicrobial use among equine practitioners in Australia revealed that most equine vets selected an appropriate antimicrobial agent. However, the dose of penicillin chosen was often suboptimal, and therapy was frequently prolonged beyond recommendations in all scenarios except for castration. 

Judicious use of antimicrobials through appropriate routes of administration

Fig 4. Using antimicrobials as effectively as possible helps to reduce their use overall. For septic arthritis, intravenous regional perfusion of antimicrobials can achieve very high concentrations within a specific limb. This involves placing a temporary tourniquet to reduce blood flow away from the area while the antimicrobial is injected into a nearby blood vessel. The technique is suitable for some but not all antimicrobial drugs.

Due to increasing isolation of MDR organisms, research into local therapy of “reserved” classes of antimicrobials is of interest. Intravenous regional limb perfusion of ceftiofur sodium may be appropriate for septic arthritis but is less clear cut for osteomyelitis. 

Oral and rectal administration of antimicrobials are common means to provide cost-effective and convenient treatment options for owners. However, these routes of administration can lead to variable absorption and therefore have the potential for subtherapeutic concentrations. Rectal administration of some antimicrobials has been explored in order to provide antimicrobials to horses with diseases that prevent oral administration, such as small intestinal problems or to provide an alternative for horses that find drugs unpalatable and go off their feed. Metronidazole is one of the few drugs for which pharmacokinetic data following rectal administration have been published, but the optimal dosing regimens via this route have yet to be determined.

Clinical conclusions

Given the increasing prevalence of resistant bacteria affecting the equine population, judicious use of antimicrobials is necessary. Trainers and vets must work together to implement this, otherwise before long, we will find we have no effective drugs left. Firstly, in any given situation, we should question whether antibiotics are really necessary.

Appropriate antibiotic selection, as well as choosing the correct dose, frequency, duration and route of administration should all be considered. Veterinarians should encourage culture and sensitivity testing to allow for guided and narrow spectrum therapies whenever possible. It is also important to keep up-to-date with the latest information on drug treatment schedules and be prepared to modify and adapt as new information becomes available. Appropriate antimicrobial stewardship in veterinary medicine will ensure the availability and legal use of antimicrobials remains an option for our equine patients.

Frank Di Giulio, Jr.

By Bill Heller

“Patience” and “Thoroughbred” don’t belong in the same sentence, but prominent Canadian owner, breeder and industry leader Frank Di Giulio Jr., has it ingrained. His father, a life-long racing fan, waited until he was 71 to buy his first Thoroughbred, Truganini, on April 1, 1981 at Greenwood. “He was a four-year-old, $5,000 maiden claimer,” Frank Jr. said. “He won the day he claimed him, won his next two starts and got claimed for $7,500. My dad was mad when he got claimed.”

He shouldn’t have been. Truganini never won again, losing his final 21 starts.

Five years later, Frank Jr. got his first horse at half his father’s age when he teamed with his father to claim Sacred Rite for $6,260 on October 24, 1986. The Di Giulios had to wait 5 ½ months for Sacred Rite to locate the winner’s circle at Woodbine by a head. “The first win—it was great,” Frank Jr., now 60, said. “I remember dreaming about horses when I was a kid. As a teen, looking at claimers I couldn’t afford, I always wanted to name my own horse. You can’t do that when you claim one.”

This one they claimed, Sacred Rite, mirrored Truganini’s career, losing his final 16 starts. He was claimed away from the Di Giulios for $6,250, then lost his final 12 races.

The lack of success didn’t faze Frank Sr. who had emigrated to Toronto (Canada) in 1923. “He was originally a barber, then got into real estate,” Frank Jr. said. “He loved going to the track with his buddies. That rubbed off on me. I went to the track for the first time when I was 10.”

Frank, now 60, followed his father into the property management business and became one of the most successful Canadian owners and breeders. He has served as a director of the Ontario Division of the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society the last 26 years, and was named one of the “Top 25 Influencers in Canadian Thoroughbred Racing 2020,” by Canadian Thoroughbred magazine. 

Four-and-a-half decades later, Frank Jr. and his four partners in Entourage Stable purchased a yearling for $30,000. Frank Jr. had the opportunity to name this yearling, but it was one of his partners, Ed Longo, who came up with the name of Pink Lloyd, taken from the character Lloyd on the TV show “Entourage” and the rock band, Pink Lloyd.

Pink Lloyd winning the 2017 Kenora Stakes at Woodbine, a race he would go on to win again in 2018 and 2019

Pink Lloyd looked like he had a lot of talent but couldn’t make it into the starting gate. He would require a ton of patience.

“That was frustrating,” Pink Lloyd’s Canadian Hall of Fame trainer Bob Tiller said. “It was one thing after another. He came up lame as a yearling. We had to stop with him all the time. A hock. A bad shin as a three-year-old. Dead lame. We had to give him enough time to get over that. Then he had a muscle issue behind.

“I always believe in stopping with a horse when he has an issue. We knew he could run. When he worked, all he wanted to do was run by horses. He just loved chasing horses and going by them.”

Tiller dearly wanted to see this promising horse make it to the track. “I had the right owners to let me be patient. I’ve trained exclusively for the Di Giulios for 40 years. I started with his dad. They’re wonderful people. The management of this horse was outstanding.”

Waiting wasn’t easy for Frank Jr. “It was a frustrating thing,” he said. “He’d work a couple times. Something came up. Go to the farm. Come back. Nagging things, pulled muscle behind, a shin. All different things. Bob always really liked him. He didn’t run until late August in his four-year-old year. I never looked forward to a first start more than that with him.”

Man, was he worth the wait. This remarkable gelding won his first start in a sparkling 1:09 at Woodbine on the way to a three-race win streak to begin his career. Five years later, he finished his career with a three-race winning streak, taking his finale in the Gr. 2 Kennedy Road Stakes at Woodbine in 1:08 4/5. In between, he had an 11-race winning streak, which led him to be named 2017 Canadian Horse of the Year, and another five-race win streak.

“It’ll be another 100 years before you see another one like him—as good at 9 as he was at 4,” Tiller said.

Pink Lloyd had three victories, a second and a third in five starts in the Kennedy Road Stakes. He had four victories and one second in five tries in the Gr. 3 Vigil Stakes; and he posted three victories, including a track record and one second in four appearances in the Gr. 3 Jacques Cartier Stakes.

Frank Di Giulio Jr with wife Jennifer and children Luke and Olivia

His final numbers were 29 victories, including 26 stakes, three seconds and two thirds in 37 races and earnings of $1,884,584. All but his first three career starts were in stakes.

He never competed in the Breeders’ Cup, never raced in a Gr. 1 and never raced out of Canada. “He  liked it here,” Frank Jr. said. “He was kind of high strung when he was younger. He had a special stall lined in rubber because he liked to kick. There were a lot of people saying, `Run him in the U.S. and try the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. I said, `No.’ We were never really tempted. It paid off with six years of racing. It was all at the highest level.”

Along the way, Pink Lloyd was dubbed “The People’s Horse.” “I think people really liked him,” Frank Jr. said. “I do believe he had a fanbase. People did cheer for him.”

They could have cheered for his connections. “He retired sound,” Frank Jr. said. “He could have run this year.”

Frank Jr. was delighted to share Pink Lloyd’s career with his two children, 27-year-old Olivia, a teacher, and 24-year-old Luc, a financial analyst.

The Di Giulio’s decided to share Pink Lloyd’s retirement with the public, sending him to the LongRun Thoroughbred Retirement Society in Erin, Ontario—the home of more than 50 retired Thoroughbreds. He was treated like a rock star when he arrived there December 8th. The farm’s manager, Lauren Millet-Simpson, said, “The second he walked off the trailer, he struck a pose. He's a true professional. It will be cool to work with a horse like that.”

Frank Jr. said, “It’s great for us because we’re fairly close, and it’s a good draw for them. It’s a win-win for everybody.”

Asked in early January how much he misses Pink Lloyd, Frank Jr. said, “Right now, it’s just the off-season. He wouldn’t have been running. I’ll miss him a lot more once the season starts. He was a once-in-a-lifetime.”

Thanks to his patient handling. 

Calvin Nguyen

Calvin Nguyen grew up around animals on a farm in Vietnam. “I hung around the farm with livestock, but we didn’t have any horses,” he said. He would.

During the Vietnam War, Calvin’s father—a very religious Catholic—was a high-ranking officer working with the American forces stationed in Guam. “When he realized the South [Vietnam] was losing, he captained a ship to go back and get my mom and us,” Calvin said. “That’s how he was captured. He tried to get his family out. He was in prison for 10 years.”

Though he was only a child with three siblings, he felt the pressure of daily life of his family after Saigon fell, ending the war. “Vietnam was an oppressive country,” he said. “It was a Communist country, so my mom had arranged for us to get out for a better future.”

She did, but it took years.

Calvin’s mother tried to visit her husband. “She was denied many times,” Calvin said. “He was moved around a lot. She didn’t know if he was alive. Five, six years after his capture, she was allowed to visit him. He was in a labor camp. They tried to re-educate him to be a Communist.”

His father resisted.

Calvin was eight when his family came to America without Calvin’s imprisoned father. “The U.S. Catholic Church sponsored us, and we lived in Tallahassee, Florida,” Calvin said. “Then my uncle found out we had relatives in Southern California.” They settled in Anaheim.

Back in Vietnam, Calvin’s father’s health deteriorated so badly, they thought he was going to die. “They released him in 1985,” Calvin said. “He didn’t come to the U.S. for another five years.” When he did, his health returned. “Miraculously, he recovered,” Calvin said.

Calvin had seen pictures of his father, but meeting him was a whole different experience. “It was awkward,” Calvin said. “I really didn’t know him. I didn’t know who he was. I grew up in America and culturally, I was into certain things. My father was very religious. He had an interesting life. I was grateful to spend 30 years with him. He passed away a couple years ago. He was almost 80.”

Bob and Jackie and jockey Jose Valdivia Jr after winning the 2021 San Gabriel Stakes on opening day at Santa Anita Park

Calvin attended Western High School in Anaheim, and was two years ahead of classmate Tiger Woods. “I got to meet him,” Calvin said. “My best friend in high school was on the golf team. I don’t know if he remembers me. He was already a known figure.”

In Calvin’s senior year, he and a friend, Scott, wanted to go out on Friday night to see a California Angels’ game and watch one of the greatest pitchers of all-time, Nolan Ryan. “He was on his farewell tour,” Calvin said. “I was a big baseball fan,” Calvin said. “I loved Nolan Ryan.”

He had to love him from afar. The game sold out. “And back then, the Angels never sold out,” Calvin said. 

Now what? Scott said, “Let’s go to the racetrack.” Los Alamitos was just a few miles away. Calvin, who had never been to a track, was mesmerized: “I saw the horses. I saw the attention. A lot of people attended the races then. The roaring of the crowd, the disappointment when your horse lost, a lot of emotion. These majestic animals. I fell in love right there. I just fully enjoyed it. I liked all sports, boxing, basketball, football. Seeing these horses—they are so majestic in how they move.”

Owning a horse seemed highly unlikely. “I was 18. I grew up poor. But you dream.”

Calvin pursued his education, graduating from UCLA with a degree in economics and accounting. He considered becoming a doctor: “My intention was to go back to school and get my Master’s, but I never did it. I worked in insurance and in finance. I was just trying to find my way—something I was interested in.”

A single conversation changed his life. “I met a client who was buying nutrition products from Price Club and shipping it to China,” Calvin said. “I said, `You’re buying retail, and you can make money?’ He said, `Yes.’ I said, `What if I can source it out for you?’ He was buying 5,000 bottles of Vitamin C. I reached out to the manufacturer, and this guy’s volume was so high, they would deal directly with me. I was able to do that. If he was paying $10, I could get it for $6 and sell it to him for $7 or $8. Then I said, `What if we start making our products?’ We started to make products.”

Calvin founded and now serves as CEO of GMP Products, more than 25 years later. “I enjoy it, using my college tools and dealing with people,” he said. “It’s given me a good life.”

And disposable income.

Calvin, connections, and trainer Richie Baltas (far right) after Bob and Jackie’s San Gabriel win

Calvin was back at Los Alamitos, hanging out with George Baltas, whose brother Richie trains. When Calvin mentioned possibly buying a horse, George said, “You should talk to my brother.”

Calvin did, and on June 10, 1999, Calvin and Richie claimed a maiden, Freedom Crest, for $32,000. The gelding was second by a neck that day, then finished 5th, 10th, 2nd and 3rd before winning a maiden $40,000 claimer. He was on his way to 13 consecutive finishes in the money, capped by a three-length victory in the Gr. 2 San Pasqual Handicap, June 7, 2001. After Freedom Crest won the Gr. 2 Goodwood Breeders’ Cup Handicap, Freedom Crest shipped to Belmont Park to contest the Gr. 1 Breeders’ Cup Classic. He was 13th by 33 lengths to two-time Horse of the Year Tiznow. Freedom Crest finished his career seven-for-31, eight seconds, four thirds and nearly $650,000 in earnings—not bad for a maiden $32,000 claimer.

Richie took a 4 ½ year hiatus from training on his own from 2008 through the middle of 2012. When he returned, the trainer who had Calvin’s horses, James Kasparoff, decided to take a job with Santa Anita. He’s now the stakes director there. Calvin reunited with Richie. “We got back together,” Richie said. “He’s pretty loyal, which I love about him. We got back together, and he’s spending a lot of money.”

Idol was worth his yearling purchase price of $375,000. Now five, Idol finished second by a half-length in the 2020 Gr. 2 San Antonio Stakes, then third in the Gr. 2 San Pasqual. Then, on March 7, 2021, Idol won the Gr. 1 Santa Anita Handicap by a half-length.

“It was a surreal moment,” Calvin said. “To win that type of race was an incredible feeling. I hadn’t been to a racetrack in more than a year because of COVID. That was the first weekend they allowed owners to attend. No fans. My wife and two daughters were there. They made it more special. I still can’t believe it.”

Idol was training for last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic when he strained a muscle in his butt. “We couldn’t put him like that in that kind of a race,” Calvin said. “We decided to give him time off. He started galloping two weeks ago.”

His absence was eased by Bob and Jackie—a $195,000 purchase who made an auspicious first dirt start last December 26th, capturing the Gr. 2 San Gabriel when it came off the turf. On grass, he had finished fourth, third and second in a Gr. 2 stakes and second in a Gr. 3.

Idol and Bob and Jackie are the stars of Calvin’s 12-horse stable. When asked his goals, he said, “Just to have fun, [we] try to compete at the highest level. We don’t win all the time, but it’s what I like to do. Hopefully, we have another moment like Idol winning the Big Cap. That’s what you’re in this for. It’s indescribable.”

Frank Fletcher Jr.

By Bill Heller

How can you not like owner Frank Fletcher Jr., a man who names all of his Thoroughbreds for his dog Rocket? Especially when one of them, Lady Rocket, whom he owns with Ten Strike Racing, takes off at Aqueduct December 4th, winning the Gr. 3 Go for Wand Stakes by nine lengths. That was another thrill for Frank Fletcher, whose whole life has been thrills, successes and philanthropy.

When you marry the captain of the cheerleaders, work for and with Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, and count your fraternity brother at the University of Arkansas, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones as a close friend, you know you’ve done well in life. The fact that he is a major contributor to Toys for Tots, Easter Seals and the Make-A-Wish Foundation tells you all you need to know of his character.

He has prospered in restaurants, automobile dealerships, hotels and horses, frequently working like a dog to achieve success. He’s not averse to taking chances. Hell, he got into trouble with his father once for piloting his Cessna 172 plane without permission. He was 14. 

“The successful entrepreneurs are the people willing to take risks,” he said in a 2013 interview.

Maybe it’s because people took a risk with him, adopting him as a baby in Little Rock. He was raised as an only child and has spent an entire lifetime making his parents proud.

Before he was a big man in business, Frank was a big guy in the seventh grade: six-feet-four. He helped his basketball team win a state championship and also played football until the 10th grade when he had three teeth knocked out in practice.

By then, he’d already set a rigorous work pattern, working in a cotton gin after school and on weekends. He hit it off with Judy Hamm, the captain of the Pine Bluff High School cheerleading squad, when he let her borrow his car to ride in a parade. They married and have two children, Chris and Jerilynn and three grandsons, Jacob, Sam and Adam.

At the University of Arkansas, Frank joined the Kappa Sigma fraternity and met Jones, who would later lead him into owning Thoroughbreds.

Fletcher served in the Army Reserves, then took two jobs, working at a bank from 8 to 5, and then at a pizza place from 5:30 to midnight.

Then Frank landed a job selling paint for DuPont, which led him to Sam Walton. Frank tried selling him 300 gallons of paint, and he only wanted 50. He said it was too costly. Frank called headquarters, and they agreed to let Walton have four months to pay. That did it.

Two years later, Walton made Frank a manufacturer’s representative. Like everything else in his life, he went full throttle, arriving at 5:30 a.m. and working until 9 p.m.

Everything was great until Walmart decided to deal with manufacturers directly instead of through reps. Walton suggested Frank start manufacturing products Walmart would buy, and that’s exactly what Frank did. He rented a garage and began making lamps.

His success doing that led him to getting involved with a breakfast investment club, a Hilton hotel in North Little Rock and, ultimately, car dealerships. Fletcher Auto Group now has 10 dealerships in Arkansas and Missouri.

When Jones bought the Cowboys, Frank started traveling frequently to Dallas. He said Jones convinced him to bet $2,000 to win on a Thoroughbred that Jones owned. The horse finished fourth. Frank kept the faith, bet on the horse again, and he won. “I was hooked,” he said.

Lady Rocket winning the Gr3 Go for Wand Stakes by 9 length at Aqueduct

He initially hired Bob Holthus to train his horses, and he won his first race with Boss Man Rocket in 1989. He had subsequent success with Son of Rocket, who was third in the 2001 Gr. 1 Arkansas Derby, Rocket Twentyone, who won the 2013 Gr. 3 Arlington Washington Lassie, and Frank’s Rockette, who captured three straight graded stakes in 2020: the Gr. 3 Victory Ride, Gr. 2 Prioress and Gr. 2 Gallant Bloom Handicap.   

His long list of awards includes the 2011 Sales and Marketing Executive International Arkansas Top Manager of the Year. In 2013, he was inducted into the Walton Business Hall of Fame at the University of Arkansas. Three years later, he was presented with the university’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

With Jerry Jones, Frank founded the Students Acquiring Knowledge through Experience program at the Sam Walton College, which provides college students with real-life, hands-on experience with businesses. It’s a head start for the students’ careers and cements Frank’s contributions to the American dream, the one he lived.    

The Hirsch family legacy

by Annie Lambert

California’s Bo Hirsch has always relished horse racing, but winning last year’s Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint (Gr. 1) with his homebred, Ce Ce, was “icing on the cake.” 

“My goodness, what a thrill,” Hirsch remarked about Ce Ce’s championship. “You talk to people that don’t know anything about horse racing, mention winning a Breeders’ Cup, and they ask what it is. I tell them the best comparison I could give was the Olympics. If you win a Breeders’ Cup race, you’ve pretty much won a gold medal. We won a gold medal last year, and I’m tickled pink.”

Ce Ce, a six-year-old by the late Elusive Quality, accelerated near the top of the Del Mar stretch, overcoming a trio of leaders, including defending champion Gamine, to garner the $1 million purse. Ridden by Victor Espinosa, it was trainer Michael McCarthy’s second Breeders’ Cup victory. 

Hirsch’s love of the sport harkens back to his father, businessman Clement L. Hirsch, who left giant footprints across the racing industry before his death in 2000 at 85. The elder Hirsch was instrumental in co-founding the Oak Tree Racing Association at Santa Anita as well as the current Del Mar Turf Club organization. Ce Ce’s Breeders’ Cup success at Del Mar was homage to Clement.

Clement also invested in pedigree lines that continue to produce the likes of Ce Ce. And, Bo’s love of his father and appreciation for the sport to which he introduced him could not be clearer.

“I just love this business; there’s nothing like it, you know?” Bo, 73, asked rhetorically. “It’s a grownup toy store—a wonderful toy store.”

Founding Father

Clement Hirsch’s common sense, drive and dry sense of humor no doubt contributed to his success in business and racing. He attended Menlo College near San Francisco during the 1930s.

While still in college, Clement and some friends bought a washed-up Greyhound dog for very little money. The owner was going to euthanize the canine because it was too broken down to race. The boys brought the dog back to good health, ended up racing it and were excited the process culminated with winning some money. That may have been the future horse owner’s first taste of racing, but it was most certainly his catalyst into the business world.

It didn’t take long to figure out the “people person” with street smarts would choose business over school. Having learned about caring for dogs with the Greyhound, Clement—who served a stint in the Marines during World War II—realized people, mostly, fed their pets table scraps in that era. He began selling a meat-based dog food, door-to-door, out of the trunk of his car. The entrepreneur wound up building that effort into Kal Kan Pet Foods, which he ultimately sold to the Mars Corporation that now markets it under their Pedigree label.

By 1947, Clement decided to invest some of his success into Thoroughbred racing. He hired Robert H. “Red” McDaniel, an established trainer in Northern California. They claimed Blue Reading, a $6,500 outlay, which went on to win 11 stakes, including the 1951 Bing Crosby Handicap, San Diego Handicap and Del Mar Handicap, earning $185,000. From that introduction, Clement was hooked; he owned horses for the rest of his life.

Breeders Cup winner CeCe is a third generation homebred, and Hirsch plans on extending the pedigree line

More Horses, Same Trainer

Clement hired Warren Stute to train his horses in 1950—his second and final trainer. Stute remained his trainer until Clement’s death, 50 years later—a feat we may likely never see again.

“My father could be difficult, and Warren had a mind of his own,” Bo pointed out. “I remember someone asking my father, ‘How did you guys stay together so many years? How could you put up with Warren all those years?’ He said, ‘I just turned down my hearing aide.’” 

“It worked,” Bo added with a laugh.

The line of bloodstock that Ce Ce hails from began when Clement attended a sale at Hollywood Park in March 1989. Upon walking in, Mel Stute, Warren’s brother, was bidding on a horse. Mel told his brother’s owner the horse was going over his price range, but that it was worth the money. Clement did make one bid, which dropped the hammer at $50,000.

Hirsch could hardly believe he bought a horse with one wave of his arm, but the result was fortuitous. He had purchased the two-year-old, Magical Mile (J.O. Tobin – Gils Magic, by Magesterial). 

The colt won his first out, a maiden special weight, at Hollywood Park just two months later. He broke the track record that day, running the 5-furlongs in :56 2-5, while winning by 7 ½ lengths. He came back in July to win the Hollywood Juvenile Championship Stakes (G2), ultimately earning $131,000 (7-4-0-1) during his career.

“I remember my father being interviewed once when the horse was really doing well,” Bo recalled. “Someone said, ‘You must be getting Derby fever.’ My father said, ‘No, no, no, that’s not realistic; I wouldn’t think in that area, it’s such a long ways off.’ There was a hesitation, then he said to the guy, ‘But, for what it’s worth, we’re trying to get the name Magical Mile changed to Magical Mile and a Quarter.’”

The Howell S. Wynne family owned Magical Mile’s dam, Gils Magic, a mare with no money earned in only one start. Clement tried more than once to buy the mare, but to no avail. He did, however, show up at the sales every time one of her offspring was offered.

“The next great one was Magical Maiden,” Bo said. “He kept trying to buy Gils Magic, but they wouldn’t sell, so he bought what he could from that line. It built up.”

Magical Maiden (by Lord Avie) was a multiple graded stakes winner of $903,245. She is the second dam on Ce Ce’s pedigree. Magical Maiden foaled Ce Ce’s dam, Miss Houdini by Belong To Me in February 2000. 

Miss Houdini, trained by Warren Stute, only made a total of four starts at two and three, but managed to win the Del Mar Debutante Stakes (Gr. 1) just about six weeks after a successful maiden special weight debut. Her two wins and a second totaled lifetime earnings of $187,600.

Clement and Warren imported Figonero from Argentina in 1969. The four-year-old stallion was already a winner in his homeland, but he made waves in the United States. Figonero ran third to Ack Ack in both the American Handicap and the San Pasqual Stakes. He won the Hollywood Gold Cup with the late Alvaro Pineda riding. Rumor has it, Stute tore out a wooden deck in his backyard and replaced it with a swimming pool shortly after the Gold Cup. 

Pineda was also aboard when Figonero set a world record for 1 1/8 miles while winning the 1969 Del Mar Handicap at Del Mar.

“Figonero was a good one,” Bo remembered. “He ran multiple races in just a few weeks. He won an overnight race, ran third in the American Handicap and came back, ran against [1969 and 1970 co-champion handicap male] Nodouble in the Gold Cup and won the darn thing. They took him back to Chicago in the mud and he didn’t do well, came back here and broke the world record in the Del Mar Handicap.” 

“That record lasted about three years until this horse called Secretariat broke it,” he said, chuckling. 

Big Ideas

During the late 1940s, Clement got the idea to establish a racetrack in Las Vegas, Nevada.

After acquiring the land and finding investors, Hirsch ran into a multitude of setbacks, which slowed down his project. Eventually the frustrations ended and they had a racetrack. Hirsch brought in some of his own horses to encourage his friends and others to bring more livestock, according to Bo.

“They tried to get it going and it just didn’t work,” the younger Hirsch commented. “[Some local businessmen] offered to buy him out, and he was smart enough to sell. They were only in business for a very short time. I think it was a tough deal there with the heat in the summer and just getting the people to go to the races. They were gamblers, but not racetrackers—a different kind of gambler.”

Hirsch gave Las Vegas a shot and it didn’t work out, but it’s possible his vision was just a little ahead of its time.

By 1968, Clement was securely ensconced in the Thoroughbred industry as a breeder and owner. The businessman had a “never let an idea lay idle'' mindset; so when he noticed unused calendar dates between the summer meet at Del Mar and Santa Anita’s winter meet, the wheels began turning.

Hirsch organized a meeting with Robert Strub, owner of Santa Anita at the time, Lou Rowan, an owner/breeder; and equine insurance broker, veterinarian Jack Robbins and a few others to discuss options for utilizing Santa Anita on those dark dates. The organizers were able to get their dates approved, and the Oak Tree Racing Association at Santa Anita had their opening meet the following fall.

“Once they got approval for the dates, they came back to finalize things with Strub,” Bo said. “Jack Robbins told me the story that they’re in a room and Robert Strub looks up and says, ‘You know, if this thing doesn’t work out, it’s going to cost us, Santa Anita, a few million bucks.’ That was a lot of money in those days. My father said, ‘You’re covered.’ Strub looked at my father and said, ‘You’ve got a deal.’ Then they shook hands, which was the way they did it in those days.”

Pivotal in creating Oak Tree was Clement Hirsch’s concept that the organization be created as a non-profit.

Clement Hirsch (dark jacket), seated alongside his friend and Oak Tree racing association co-founder Dr Jack Robbins and surrounded by other oak tree board members

 “None of the board members or executives, which were all horsemen, got salaries,” Bo explained. “For the betterment of the horse racing business, they took all that money and put it back into the business and charitable organizations.”

Shortly after the Oak Tree negotiations, Del Mar (owned by the state of California) came up for an operational bid. Clement put together another group of horsemen figuring the non-profit structure would also work for Del Mar.

“My father put the [Del Mar Thoroughbred Club] group together and they bid for the track and the racing dates,” recalled Bo. “Nobody could compete with a non-profit organization. It was a great idea and, of course, they got it. The same group runs it today; it’s been a very successful organization. I’d like to see more of this happen in horse racing across the country.” 

Blended Family

The Hirsch family was an interesting blend of families as Bo was growing up. Clement was married four times, so Bo has full-siblings, half-siblings and step-siblings, which he jokingly calls “a motley group.” He was the only one of those eight kids to take an interest in the racehorses.

“The horse business either gets in your blood or it doesn’t,” Bo opined. “It got into mine; I just loved it the minute I saw it. My father never encouraged me; he thought I was stupid to get in it.”

“He told me I was going to lose my money,” he added with a laugh. “But he loved it, and he couldn’t defend himself for being in the horse business in a practical way. He was successful at it, and I know now why he was in it. I’m in it and I understand: It brings you such joy.”

During the mid-1950s, Clement built his CLH Farm in Chatsworth, outside of Los Angeles. He stood several stallions there over the years, with limited success. When he relocated his family to Newport Beach, he moved the farm to Poway in San Diego County.

Bo said he enjoyed the farm as a kid and did his share of shoveling manure and riding ponies, but he always preferred “to hang out on the front side” at the track.

Similar Guys

Like his father, Bo, who resides in Pacific Palisades, is a businessman. After graduating from the University of Southern California, he worked as a stockbroker until the market dropped in 1972; then he began looking for a different career path. 

His father had sold the pet food company but retained a pioneering company, Rocking K Foods, which provided portion-controlled meals for hospitals and the like. There was also a cannery there where the company canned foods for the government to send to the troops in Vietnam. 

Out of the blue, Bill Gray, president of the company who ran the operation for the retired Clement, asked Bo if he’d consider leaving the brokerage firm to work for him in sales and marketing. Bo replied, ”When do you want me to start?” 

Bo Hirsch

After a short scrimmage with his father over his qualifications regarding a job in the food industry, Bo settled into the job. He ultimately developed the Stagg Chili food lines, which he later sold to Hormel.

“My father always wanted to make sure you knew what you were doing,” Bo explained. “He wanted to make sure you heard both sides of a story, to be sure you were doing what you wanted to do and the right thing to do. He’d always challenge you, take the other side to challenge you and make sure you believed in what you were doing. 

“He did it at home with his kids, too. It was a wonderful lesson to learn to get all the facts before you start making decisions—get in there and figure it out. That was just the kind of guy he was and why he was so successful in all the things he ever did.”

Clement’s energy and unique personality lent itself to memorable stories remembered by those who knew him.

“Alan Balch [now executive director of California Thoroughbred Trainers Association] told me the story of Fred Ryan [an executive at Santa Anita at the time] being in a heated phone conversation,” Bo recalled with a chuckle. “Ryan slammed the phone down and, looking at Alan, said, ‘That damn Clement Hirsch—he’d kick a hornet’s nest open just to get a reaction!’”

When Clement passed away, his son stepped up to continue developing the pedigrees his father had been procuring. Miss Houdini, now 22, was foaled just prior to Clement’s death, but greatly enriched her family tree.

“I started with Warren Stute,” said Bo, regarding his racing stable. “When [Warren] passed, I went to his nephew, Gary Stute—Mel Stute’s son. I still have horses with him. Gary’s a good horseman and we’ve done well; plus, he’s a lot of fun. He’s my cigar smoking partner.”

 “I’ve had as many as four trainers at one time, just trying to feel things out. I liked them all, but I don’t think it’s the best way to go in the long run, at least not for me.”

Cece ridden by victor espinoza, wins the breeders’ cup filly and mare sprint at del mar 2021

Bo sent horses to Michael McCarthy on a recommendation from Michael Wellman, a long-time California owner/breeder.

“If there is a trainer that is a harder worker than Michael McCarthy, they’re living on a day that is longer than 24 hours,” Bo said. “He just works night and day; it’s his life.”

Anticipating Greatness

Miss Houdini has obviously been a wonderful producer for Hirsch. Her current honor roll offspring, Ce Ce, has won eight of her 16 starts, earning $1,753,100 through last year’s aforementioned Breeders’ Cup win. The mare has captured additional group races including the Beholder Mile (Gr. 1), Apple Blossom Handicap (Gr. 1), Princess Rooney (Gr. 2) and the Chillingsworth Stakes (Gr. 3).

Miss Houdini foaled a colt in 2006, Papa Clem—a Kentucky-bred by Smart Strike trained by Gary Stute, which also made his dam proud. Papa Clem broke his maiden at two on his third try. At three, he went on to win the Arkansas Derby (Gr, 2) and finished his career as a four-year-old by winning the San Fernando Stakes (Gr. 2). Between those Gr. 2 races, however, Papa Clem contested two legs of the Triple Crown.

“[Papa Clem] ran fourth in the Derby; he just got beat a head for second,” Bo recalled. “He was sandwiched between Pioneerof The Nile and Musket Man, and there was some bumping. We ran him in the Preakness and probably shouldn’t have. He just looked dead to me in the barn. He was usually jumping around, and he wasn’t. I think he ran sixth. We gave him some time off prior to the San Fernando and then retired him to stud.”

Bo has seven mares in his arsenal. Stradella Road (Elusive Quality) is a full sister to Ce Ce. She was a winner at three and four, ran third in the Lady Shamrock Stakes and has lifetime earnings of $130,169.

The stakes-placed Magical Victory (Victory Gallop), earner of $66,928, also resides in Bo’s broodmare band. She produced Hot Springs (Uncle Mo), a winner of five races and $272,343 including the Commonwealth Turf Stakes (Gr. 3).

Unraced Mama Maxine, named after Bo’s mother, is the dam of Ready Intaglio (Indygo Shiner) that won seven races, earning $197,418 while winning seven races, including the Canadian Derby (Gr. 3). She also foaled the stakes-placed Mama Said No (Exaggerator). Mama Maxine will be bred to California sire Grazen (Benchmark) this year.

“I always want to keep involved in California,” Bo said. “They have a good program to get you to breed here. I’m going to bring Mama Maxine out here; she’s a nice mare from the family. The other six will stay in Kentucky. I have a two-year-old now, four yearlings; and in the next couple of months, we’ll have a few more. They do add up.”

All the people involved with his racing operations are appreciated by Hirsch. Those in Kentucky include Kathy Berkey at Berkey Bloodstock. His mares reside at Columbiana Farm in Paris, while Rimroc Farm in Lexington starts his babies. Some go into advanced lessons with Bryan “Scooter” Hughes as they progress. When he has a layup or mares in California, they go to Rancho Temescal, north of Los Angeles.

Hirsch and connections celebrate CeCe’s Breeders’ Cup triumph

The Hirsch passion for the Thoroughbred racing and breeding industry is multigenerational. His wife Candy enjoys going to the races and spending time with the horses at the barns. Their daughter Hayley, 29, was excited when Dad named an auction purchase after her: Hayley Levade (Dialed In). The thus unraced three-year-old is training with Stute for her debut.

 “Horses are great animals, and this business makes you get up in the morning and keeps you going,” Bo said with a smile. “It’s a wonderful thing to be in the racing business and have this opportunity and the thrills you get. Anticipation is the name of the game. You look and you dream about this and that… I’ve been very lucky.”

Experiences with a new surgical technique for ‘Wobblers’ horses

By Lynn Pezzanite

Wobbler syndrome, also known as cervical vertebral compressive myelopathy (CVCM),  is the most common cause of neurological disease in horses and affects many breeds. Although numerous spinal surgeries are performed on humans, this is the only condition of the spinal cord for which surgery in horses is often performed. 

Wobbler syndrome involves compression of the spinal cord due to narrowing or abnormal development of the spine in the neck, which results in neurologic deficits—specifically ataxia. Ataxia is a term used by veterinarians to describe incoordination and inability of an animal to properly place their legs and maintain balance when they are standing and walking. It is easy, therefore, to see why horsemen describe CVCM horses as “wobblers.” CVCM has been described in many breeds, and it was estimated to affect up to 3% of thoroughbreds in one UK study. There is a high prevalence in young male horses, and these horses comprise 75 to 80% of cases. The condition negatively affects athletic performance, and up to 2/3 of horses diagnosed with CVCM are euthanised due to severity of the ataxia or perceived poor response to therapy and subsequent loss of use of the horse. Treatment recommendations are controversial due to the fear that horses cannot recover function when diagnosed with this condition, as well as concerns regarding the cost of treatment, its invasiveness and complications associated with current surgical procedures. Also, at the current time, it is still very unlikely a veterinarian can accurately predict the degree of improvement and prognosis for a specific horse undergoing treatment. Furthermore, veterinarians do not always agree amongst themselves how severe the ataxia is, which makes it even more difficult to measure improvement following treatment and compare treatments. Despite these concerns, there are many horses that do improve and return to athletic use after neck spinal surgery. 

What are the current options for spinal surgery?

The goal of spinal surgery for CVCM is to remove the ability of two vertebral bodies to move by fusing the two adjacent bones together. The result is that over time, the two bones and joints will change in configuration, the fused bones shrink and more space becomes available for the spinal cord. By removing the compression of the spinal cord, neurological function improves. Current surgical treatments for CVCM include methods for ventral interbody fusion: kerf cut cylinders and ventrally placed locking compression plate and dorsal laminectomy (the top portion of the vertebral body is removed entirely to reduce any compression on the spinal cord). Fusion with using the kerf cut cylinder remains the most commonly performed surgical procedure for cervical stabilisation, but this does not provide stability when the spine is in extension. Locking compression plate technologies are difficult to apply due to the shape of the vertebral body and limited flexibility in placement of the fusion construct and the associated screws. Despite great advancements in equine surgery over the past years, these surgical methods for equine cervical stabilisation require specialised equipment and extensive surgeon experience and still have a high risk of complications, including implant migration or failure and vertebral fracture with a high chance of associated horse fatality. 

The goal of spinal surgery for CVCM is to remove the ability of two vertebral bodies to move by fusing the two adjacent bones together

Recent developments in spinal surgery

Because CVCM is relatively common and there is huge interest in returning affected horses to athletic function, there is a demand to develop surgical techniques that are less technically challenging while reducing complications associated with surgery to safely return horses affected by CVCM to their intended use. Overall, there remains room for improvement in surgical treatment of CVCM to both increase biomechanical stability and reduce complications associated with implant placement.

A new technique for spinal surgery

In a recent pilot study by our group at the PreClinical Surgical Research Laboratory at Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO, USA), a new technique using advanced surgical implants known as pedicle screws and connecting rods with an interbody fusion device (IFD) were evaluated as an alternative to current techniques for cervical fusion in horses. The idea to use these novel implants came from human surgery, where interbody fusion devices are considered the standard technique for lumbar spine fusion in people, resulting in improved success rates in neurologic function and return to activity. The IFD device was evaluated initially in four horses, showing that the construct integrated with surrounding bone within eight months and did not result in any severe complications, such as implant failure, migration or fracture (as has been reported with other techniques). In addition, we noted that the polyaxial pedicle screw head allowed for increased screw placement options compared to previously described techniques. In particular, this is an improvement compared to the locking compression plate technology, which is limited by the conformation of the ventral keel of the cervical vertebrae. The results obtained in this pilot study prompted further investigation of polyaxial pedicle screw and rod technology in equine patients clinically affected by CVCM. 

The Colorado team’s results

We found 10 horses at the Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital that were diagnosed with Wobbler syndrome based on examination and diagnostic imaging including x-rays, myelogram, and CT scan. The owners of the horses approved to have them undergo this new surgery with placement of the IFD and polyaxial pedicle screw and rod construct. The 10 horses were closely followed, and clinical outcomes and owner reports were recorded and described in our recent publication in Equine Veterinary Journal. 

The breeds of horses treated included warmbloods, Tennessee Walkers, Arabians and quarter horses. No horses in this case population were intended as racehorses. The median age of horses at the time of surgery was two years (24 months, range 12-168). Male horses were overrepresented as is typical for CVCM, with four geldings, four stallions and two mares treated. Preoperative grade of ataxia ranged from 1 to 3 out of 5 based on the Modified Mayhew neurological grading scale. Surgical fusion was performed at one site in three horses and two sites in seven horses. In 6 out of 8 horses with ≥1-year follow-up, ataxia improved by 1–3 grades, with an average improvement of 1.25 grades. In four horses, ataxia improved to grade 0 (normal) or 1 (mild ataxia). In two horses, the gait was unaffected, but neck comfort improved according to owner follow-up. There were no fatal complications associated with the placement of implants. Complications encountered included swelling around the incision site (seroma), pain and fever. Although we found more serious complications including screw breakage in two horses, a vertebral fracture in one horse, and implant infection in one horse, none of these horses required additional surgical procedures to remove the implants. Two horses were euthanised within the first year after surgery. In one horse with severe neurological deficits preoperatively, surgery did not result in improvement of signs; and the horse was euthanised at six weeks postoperatively. The second horse developed upper respiratory tract obstruction immediately following general anesthesia and was euthanised at the time. 

Long-term follow-up with owners was performed by phone and survey consultation. All eight owners for which at least one year follow-up after surgery was available, reported that their horse’s clinical signs and quality of life were improved, and for all horses the level of exercise was increased since surgery. Five horses were being ridden at the time of follow-up, and one additional juvenile horse was beginning training. All four horses that had been ridden before surgery had improved under saddle. Overall, owner satisfaction with the procedure was reported as excellent in five cases or good in two cases, with one owner not responding to the question. All eight owners reported that they were overall positive about the procedure and would recommend this surgery to other horse owners in the future.

This new surgical technique to treat horses with Wobbler syndrome resulted in at least one grade of gait improvement in 6/10 cases and 6/8 cases for which ≥1-year follow-up was available, which is a similar result when compared to other methods. Advantages of this surgical procedure over others to treat this syndrome in horses include that this technique requires less bone removal from the vertebral column and that the implant itself (polyaxial screw head) may be more easily applied to the vertebral body, as its shape can be varied and so can be tailored to each individual horse. Importantly, this technique offers greater stability in two planes (tension and compression), which is not provided by other techniques such as the Bagby basket or kerf cut cylinder. There were no fatal complications related to implant placement in this procedure. This is in contrast to other techniques such as the basket or kerf cut cylinder, where euthanasia of the horse is the more typical outcome if the implant fails and vertebral fracture occurs due to the extent of damage that usually results in spinal cord injury with subsequent severe neurologic signs. In summary, this technique may represent a safer alternative to current techniques of ventral interbody fusion while achieving similar outcomes in performance. Polyaxial pedicle screw and rod systems for cervical fusion should be considered as an alternative to minimise fatal complications associated with surgery while achieving one to three grades of improvement in neurological signs in horses with Wobbler syndrome. However, this study was performed in a small number of horses, so continued study of this method remains critical, as well as further development and optimisation of other surgical techniques that may result in lower frequency of complications and greater neurologic improvement.

Pezzanite, et al, Outcomes after cervical vertebral interbody fusion using an interbody fusion device and polyaxial pedicle screw and rod construct in 10 horses (2015-2019) https://beva.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/evj.13449

Ocala - where preserving the past whilst developing for the future is a tricky proposition

By Bill Heller

In Ocala, the seat of Marion County in central Florida known as “Horse Capital of the World”—preserving the past while developing for the future—is a tricky proposition. There are land mines everywhere.

What seemed like a gigantic victory for preservation—the sale of part of a historic Thoroughbred farm to a horsewoman who has continued using the track and barns there—would have been overshadowed by the loss of an historic cemetery on another part of the farm. The 17 graves there included one of racing’s greatest champions, Dr. Fager, and the champion mare Ta Wee. An intervention by Thoroughbred owner, breeder and an admitted “history guy,” Arthur Roy, with considerable help from Tammy Gantt, the associate vice-president of the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association, saved the site. “There are champions buried there,” Roy said. “That was a no-brainer.”

If a graveyard with Dr. Fager had been replaced by a housing development, wouldn’t that have been game over? 

Development 1, Thoroughbred history 0. Thankfully, it’s not.

Left uncertain is the fate of the house of Hall of Fame Trainer John Nerud, who trained Dr. Fager and Ta Wee on that very same farm when it was Tartan Farm. If that part of the property isn’t sold to a sympathetic buyer, and perhaps converted to a bed and breakfast, it will be lost—another relic bulldozed for progress.

This is Ocala and Marion County’s dilemma.

The sparkling, enormous year-old World Equestrian Center has brought all breeds of horses and global attention to both the city and county, but Thoroughbreds are their lifeblood with a rich history—one its owners, breeders and leaders are intent on preserving and celebrating.

The 193,000-acre farmland preservation area, established in 2005, and Horse Farms Forever, an association formed in 2018, is dedicated to preserving that area, to restrict development. Accordingly, not everyone is selling their farm to profit from Ocala’s meteoric transition from a sleepy village to a bustling city. Those farms range from Charlotte Weber’s massive 4,500-acre Live Oak to Lynne Boutte’s modest 35-acre Eagle View Farm. 

Gail Rice

Gail Rice breeds one or two mares every year at her daughter’s 18-acre farm. Rice bred 2021 Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit, and she is still recovering from the horse’s shocking death last year from a heart attack. “It’s so sad,” she said. “It hit me pretty hard.” Yet she remains passionate about preserving Thoroughbred farms. “This is our land,” she said. “This is what our horses need. We don’t need more houses.”

It takes a community to save the past.

Weber, who won the 2021 Acorn Preservation Award from Horse Farms Forever for “an individual who has made a significant contribution to the preservation of horse farms in Marion County,” knows what the alternative is: “Once you give it away, you never get it back.’”

One trip is all it takes to fall in love with Ocala and Marion County and their green splendor. A horse grazing in front of a circle of trees, perfectly happy in a natural habitat. Other horses run across expansive paddocks. Green everywhere. 

“Do you want to see green grass looking out your window or dust and bricks?” Weber asked. “Does it matter if horses walk on grass or walk on concrete? I like green grass. I like trees.”

In Marion County, the grass beneath horses is rich with limestone, providing much-needed calcium—an important mineral helping horses’ bone growth, maintenance and muscle function. Add in spring-fed water, warm winter weather, and it’s easy to see why horsemen flocked to central Florida to breed and train their horses. 

Carl Rose opened the first Thoroughbred farm in the county in 1939. Hundreds and hundreds have followed, helping Ocala to earn that moniker as Horse Capital of the World. When the phrase was first used, citizens in Lexington, Kentucky, protested. But the facts were clear that Marion County’s horse population—now 80,000 including more than 37,000 Thoroughbreds—is annually the largest in the country. That title for Ocala and Marion County was read into the Congressional Record in 1999, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture okayed its use in promotions using that label. And it’s true. According to the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association, there are more than 1,100 Thoroughbred farms and training centers in the county.

And Ocala and Marion County’s population are sky-rocketing. Ocala’s was 13,588 in 1960, 22,583 in 1970, 37,170 in 1980, 42,045 in 1990, 45,943 in 2000, 56,585 in 2010 and 61,810 last year. Marion County’s population jumped from 331,340 in 2010 to 375,908 in 2020.

Charlotte Weber has owned and managed the 4500 acre Live Oak Stud for over 50 years

“I got here in 1968; it’s just not the same place,” Weber said. “It just exploded. It frightens me. Every time I pick up the newspaper, 10,000 homes here, 10,000 at another place. It’s not a rural community anymore. I’m not opposed to change, but I don’t think it’s been well thought out. I support Horse Farms Forever, but I think that it wasn’t formed soon enough.”

Her friend and former neighbor, Wanda Hooper Quigley, who ran Hooper Farm with her husband Fred from 1970 through 2000, agreed. Asked if Ocala has changed, she said, “Oh my God; it’s overwhelming. I wish the forefathers had paid attention to development. I wish everything hadn’t been built.”

Lynne Boutte experienced culture shock when she moved from Long Island, where she’d been working at Belmont Park, to Ocala in 1980. “They used to call it ‘Slow Cala,’” she said. “There was nothing in Ocala. Three traffic lights. I was living in a room on a farm. I picked up a phone, and it was a party line. There were three TV stations, and they all went off at 10 p.m. I walked everywhere. I miss ‘Slow Cala’ and the camaraderie back then. Everybody was for everybody. There were so many moms and pops in the ‘80s and the ‘90s. The moms and pops can’t afford it anymore.”

George Isaacs, the general manager of Bridlewood farm, moved to Ocala in 1989

George Isaacs, the general manager of John and Linda Malone’s Bridlewood Farm, moved to Ocala in 1989. He then worked for Allen Paulsen, returning to Ocala in 1996 for the Malones, the largest landowners in the United States. “When I moved to Ocala in 1989, it was very, very rural and extremely agriculturally focused,” he said. “There were large farms including Mockingbird, Tartan Farm, Hooper Farm—a who’s who of some of the top owners and breeders. They enjoyed racing their own horses. They bred mares to their own stallions. They had training operations on their farm. That was racing as it is meant to be. I don’t know if we're ever going to see that again.”

Isaacs is charged with making sure they are remembered. He is the chairman of a Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association Committee to install a Thoroughbred Walk of Fame in downtown Ocala. Two of the dozen horses to be honored are Dr. Fager and Ta Wee. The others are Needles, Florida’s first Kentucky Derby winner in 1956, Carry Back, Susan’s Girl, Desert Vixen, Foolish Pleasure, 1978 Triple Crown Champion Affirmed, Precisionist, Holy Bull, Skip Away and Silver Charm. “We started with the ones who are obvious,” Isaacs said. “Covid has obviously slowed down a lot of things. It’s probably going to be a little while.” 

What will Ocala be like in a little while? “We understand the passion of people who feel that there should be no growth, but that’s not realistic,” said Lonny Powell, the CEO of the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association. “Thank God, we have the preservation act. You can’t let history be forgotten. I’m not in this game for the short play. I’m a lifer. To me, I wouldn't have done my job if we didn’t protect the Thoroughbred industry.”

Thoroughbreds touch so many lives in Ocala now: the Ocala Breeders Sales, hundreds of training centers, the Florida Horse Park, horse shows, farm tours, horse retirement farms, the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association’s Museum and Gallery, and a brand-new after-care facility. On January 10th, the New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program announced it has opened a satellite facility in Anthony, less than eight miles north of Ocala. 

Visitors to Ocala have a huge choice in lodging in Ocala, from the magnificent hotel rivalling the Waldorf Astoria at the World Equestrian Center to the quaint Equus Inn, where rooms feature walls of black and white horse photos.

More and more visitors are going to be coming.

To preserve at least part of the land in 2005, the Marion County Commission created the Marion County Farmland Preservation Area, protecting nearly 200,000 acres, to “provide a buffer for farmland against increasing growth” and “serve as a major recharge area which strains rainwater that feeds into both Rainbow and Silver Springs.”

Horse Farms Forever was created in 2018 after the Florida Department of Transportation announced a plan to put a toll road through the heart of Marion County horse country. In an article in the January 2022 issue of the Blood-Horse, Isaacs, a board member of Horse Farms Forever, said, “I have never witnessed in all my years here a single issue that drew the entire community together so quickly to eliminate a potentially devastating threat that would have destroyed the beauty and economic value of many of our farms.”

For the last three-plus years, Horse Farms Forever has partnered with the Alachua Conservation Trust, which contributed a $20,000 grant to implement conservation easements and permanently protect farmland and provide environmental benefits by maintaining a wildlife habitat and protecting water quality that would be significantly impacted by heavy development. 

The cause has been championed by Bridlewood Farm’s owners John and Leslie Malone, who was presented the 2021 Robert N. Clay Conservation Award. The Malones, who own more than two million acres in the country, purchased Bridlewood Farm in 2013 for $14 million. The farm’s 800 acres have grown to 2,200. “Anytime Mr. Malone buys a property he really likes, when land contiguous to it becomes available, he likes to buy it,” Isaacs told Blood-Horse. “Mr. Malone is a conservationist who wants to preserve and protect land for future generations. He’s a capitalist at heart who believes in owning things that are sustainable. He’s not a developer. He has never sold an acre of the land he’s bought.”

Others have. Others will.  

Is it ironic or cruel that a development project in Ocala which replaced the iconic Bonnie Heath Farm, the home of Needles, is called the Paddock Mall? Opened in 1980, the enclosed shopping area was anchored by J.C. Penney, Macy’s and Belk.

Other nearby farms and farmland are now retail development and houses. 

Then there is Winding Oaks, which encompasses both Tartan Farm and Harry Mangurian Jr.’s Mockingbird Farm.

In November, 1960, owner William McKnight purchased the Bonnie Heath Farm and its 320 acres. McKnight made millions—thanks to the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co., 3M, which made Scotch Tape and Post-It Notes household necessities. 3M’s red plaid symbol became the colors of McKnight’s silks when he started Tartan Farm. A year earlier, he had the good fortune of hiring John Nerud. A string of champions followed, none more spectacular than Dr. Fager, who won four championships (Handicap, Grass, Sprint and Horse of Year) in 1968 and set the still-standing dirt-mile record of 1:32 1/5 while carrying 134 pounds at Washington Park. He won 18 of his 22 starts with two seconds and one third, earning more than $1 million. Ta Wee, Intentionally, Aspidistra, Codex and Dark Mirage joined Dr. Fager in the Tartan cemetery. 

In 1970, Harry Mangurian Jr.  purchased Tartan Farm, renamed it Mockingbird Farm and raced such stars as Valid Appeal, also buried at the cemetery.

Mangurian Farm had grown to 1,000 acres when he sold it to Eugene Melnyk in 2001, who renamed the farm Winding Oaks. At the time, Melnyk said, “We have gotten letters from people in the community saying how grateful they are for us keeping this a farm and not selling it for commercial development. I’m committed, as long as I’m around in the horse business, to keep it as a working farm.”

He and his wife Laura generated enormous success in racing, at one time owning nearly 500 horses, including more than 160 broodmares. They campaigned 2004 Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Speightstown and graded stakes winners Graeme Hall, Harmony Lodge, Strong Hope and Host.

In 2014, Melnyk decided to get out of the horse business. He wanted at least part of his property to continue as a horse farm, and in December 2019, he sold 178 acres to Becky Thomas, a native of Florida who had enjoyed considerable success in New York State, for a reported $6.25 million. She added 46 acres the following year and is thrilled to be running her stable, Sequel at Winding Oaks, on the track Melnyk rebuilt there: a one-mile dirt oval with an interior 7/8ths turf course. “It’s unlike any track in Marion County,” she told Showcaseocala.com. “You could run a race meet there. Mr. Melnyk put in a lot of money to build it right.”

Melnyk intended to develop the rest of the property under his company Cradle Holdings. The plan calls for 2,068 single-family homes and 1,080 multi-family units and commercial development.

Arthur Roy heard about it in September 2020. “They notified all the abutters,” he said. “We happen to live 500 feet from Winding Oaks Farm. He had already sold the training center, and the rest of the farm is going to be houses.”

In a Zoom meeting, Roy, who happens to be on the board of the Winthrop Maine Historical Society, raised his hand, then said, “I'm not opposed to development, but I mentioned there’s a horse cemetery there with several champions including Dr. Fager and Ta Wee. They said they’d heard there were a few. Then they said, `Let’s talk.’”

Roy described the cemetery: “There were 17 graves in a horseshoe pattern. It’s like a big circle of land, and behind that, a gazebo. It’s a beautiful location. It’s the highest peak of the farm. I sent a letter.”

Melnyk stepped up and did the right thing. “He said they will keep it,” Roy said. “They will add parking spots. The FTBOA will work on the signage about the importance of the location. That happened within a couple of months.”

Case closed. Almost.

Nerud’s house, 100 yards from the cemetery, was not spared. “They were going to demolish it,” Roy said. “Last April, we had a meeting, and what they agreed to do was to make that area part of an estate, and instead of tearing down the house, try to sell it. I asked for the price, but they said it’s not for sale.”

Talk about mixed signals.

John Nerud

“So far, I’ve been very happy with the developers,” Roy said. “We preserved the cemetery. We’re trying to save the house. I want to preserve it because of one guy, John Nerud. He was one of a group of gentlemen that were important in bringing Thoroughbred training and breeding into Florida. I’m from New England. I get excited if I see a sign saying, `George Washington slept here.’ He started the Breeders’ Cup. He trained champions. You have to try to save it for future generations.”

Roy thinks Nerud’s house could be converted into a bed and breakfast. He’s cautiously optimistic the house will be saved. But even if it is, he has this gnawing question: “Being a horseman, an owner and a breeder, I’m wondering how many other places have been demolished in Ocala because of development.”

Lynne Boutte knows one way to slow development: “My farm’s in a very unique area up here. It’s not for sale.”

Gail Rice put it this way: “It’s about money and money talks; but what’s important is peaceful living and having this land to raise our horses. Without green, what do you have?”

Christopher Duncan - his transition from an Olympic athlete to training racehorses in Ocala

By Bill Heller

Unlike most Thoroughbred horsemen in Ocala, 46-year-old trainer Christopher Duncan isn’t deeply rooted in his profession. He is, however, deeply confident he will be. He even wrote a self-published book about it: Mind Shift.

Just in his second full year of training, Duncan is a former Jamaican Olympic track star and real estate dealer in Virginia, all the while never ignoring a passion for Thoroughbreds, which he’d experienced in his native Jamaica as a child. “I wanted to be a jockey in Jamaica, but I was too big,” he said.

A near fatal 1997 car accident in Washington, D.C., rearranged his thinking and his life. “A young lady ran a red light,” he said. “I needed emergency surgery. My left lung collapsed. They cut me out with no drugs. They stuck a tube in. The doctor said, ‘If you move, you die.’ I said, ‘God, if you bring me through this, I’m going to serve you.’ It hurt. There’s not a word to describe it. It burned like pepper. I said, ‘God, help me.’ I couldn’t do it myself. God brought me through that. I needed something bigger and stronger. I lost 50, 60 pounds. I couldn’t do a push-up when I got out. That’s when my journey began. That was the turning point of my life.”

He began writing down his ideas and thoughts. He moved from Virginia to Ocala. “For the good weather and the horses,” he said. He found a new career in the medical transportation business—a business his wife continues in. 

He published his book in 2011. Then, he finally confronted his passion for horses: “I said, `You know what, I’m going to train horses.’” 

He purchased a cheap mare, Adonai Bless, and won his first race in her first start for him when she captured an $8,000 claimer at Tampa Bay Downs on November 20, 2020. “It was a great moment,” he said.

She didn’t give him any more, losing two subsequent starts badly and was retired to become a broodmare.

He races 12 horses now at Tampa Bay Downs and at Gulfstream Park. Through early January, he has six wins, one second and one third from 54 starts with earnings of $86,425. “I love it,” he said. “It’s good, and it’s going to get better. It’s a passion. It’s something I want to do. If you do something and enjoy it, it’s not work.”

Drawing on his experience in track and field, he trains his horses for endurance. He has the full support of his wife and their four children.

His long-range goal is to win a Gr1 or Gr2 stakes. He is fully confident he will. “List is just to keep working,” he said. “It’s about the mind. You can’t do anything without thinking. I have to believe I’m going to be successful. If I don’t, it will never happen.”

When it does, he knows whom to thank. “It’s God,” he said. “He gets the credit for it. My goal is to be of service.” 

#Soundbites - What would you do if you weren’t training Thoroughbreds?

By Bill Heller

Mike Trombetta

Mike Trombetta

That’s a heck of a good question. I’ve been doing this so long, I couldn’t tell you. I really don’t know. Construction and demolition, that would be an option. I did that for 15-20 years, but I was doing this at the same time, too. I like this a heck of a lot more.

John Kimmel

John Kimmel

There are two things besides horses I love: snow skiing and deep sea fishing. I’m in Utah, skiing right now. I’m not that far from retirement. I’ve been doing this for 40 plus years. When things tail off, if my business slows down, that’s what I would be doing.

Mark Casse

Mark Casse

I’ve thought about that many times. Probably real estate. I just think it’s a challenge, and the rewards are great. That’s what I would probably do.

Jeremiah Englehart

Jeremiah Englehart

Oh, wow! I’m not sure. I’ve been doing horses since I was so young; I always wanted to be a trainer. I guess I would like to do something with football. I’ve always had a passion for football, maybe coaching or working with kids. I’ve always been a fan in sports. I played sports in high school. That’s something I would like to do. 

Craig Dollase

Craig Dollase

I’ve always wanted to pursue sports. I’m a big sports advocate. I’d go for something in the sports world, not physical—something to help people in the sports world. I have a cousin who was actually the trainer for the San Francisco 49ers. I had an in. I could have gone in that direction. But I went to work for my dad, and now I’m a trainer. It turned out pretty good.

Tony Dutrow

Tony Dutrow

You know, at 64, I’m so much still in love with horses and horse racing. There will never be anything else for me. But if I would have never done horse racing, I’d try my hand at real estate. Because that’s a challenge.

David Donk

David Donk

A good question. Later in life, what interests me is management—racing management. But I’m lucky to be doing something now I love.

Fausto Gutierrez - The story behind the trainer of Letruska

By Frances J. Karon

“Now I need to start again,” Fausto Gutiérrez says.

Reinventing yourself 35 years into your career is no easy proposition, and not even the man whose name was firmly at the top of the trainers’ standings in Mexico for a decade gets a free pass when he sets up shop on the U.S. side of the border.

Over breakfast at the Keeneland track kitchen in Lexington, Kentucky, one morning in late July, Gutiérrez describes himself as “homeless.” Not, of course, in the literal sense, although these days he’s not been spending much time at home in Florida, where he lives with his wife María and their children Ana, 15, and Andrés, 13.

Instead, he’s traveling with his stable of 11, pointing his compass in whatever direction his star mare Letruska dictates.

This is a drastic change from his previous life in Mexico City, where he’d once maintained a stable of as many as 200 horses at the Hipodromo de las Americas, on a resume highlighted by two Triple Crown winners, both in 2018—Kukulkan and Kutzamala, who won the fillies’ version—and countless champions among countless Graded stakes wins. (To understand more about racing in the country, see sidebar, “A Brief Intro to Racing in Mexico.”)

 There’s no publicly available database in Mexico for accessing information or charts more than a month old, but Mexican racing authorities provided a complete record of 20 years’ worth of starts, from 1999 to 2018—which covers only part of Gutiérrez’s career—and in that timeframe, the trainer is credited with 2,261 wins. Add to that figure a cool 100 wins from the 2019 season, which Gutiérrez corroborated with the final standings that were printed in the racing program, and it takes him to 2,361 wins in Mexico. He won, if not all the Graded stakes races in the country, most of them, and he trained at least 19 champions.

Gutiérrez laughs at the suggestion that he’s the Mexican version of Aidan O’Brien. “Mas o menos,” he concedes. More or less. (It should be noted here that although he speaks English, most of the quotations attributed to him have been translated from Spanish.)

“In Mexico, I ran 12, 13, 15 horses in one day, or if there were stakes, 20,” he says. If that sounds exhausting, he agrees with the assessment. “And you know, you get to the day when it’s not about what you win anymore. It’s what you lose. If you win, it’s normal. If you lose, it’s ‘¡Perdió este!’” It’s, This one lost!

Gutiérrez didn’t deliberately leave his life in Mexico City permanently behind when he shipped some of his stable to Florida in late fall of 2019 for the Caribbean Series that December. This annual trek—most recently to Gulfstream Park, but previously to racetracks in Puerto Rico, Panama, and Venezuela—was the norm for Gutiérrez, who always sent a team to run in the black-type stakes restricted to horses trained in member Caribbean regions.

It was his adventurous spirit that took him out of Mexico to begin with, but as the pandemic began to spread and Las Americas shut down for all of 2020, it turned out that there was no racing to go back to.

This wasn’t the first time that racing in the U.S. had provided a safety net for Gutiérrez.

Back in August of 1996, the Mexican government closed Las Americas, the only racetrack in the country, due to a permit dispute. “They kept saying, ‘It’ll open next week,’” he says, but “next week” turned into more than three years. It was a grim situation for the entire racing and breeding industry.

Gutiérrez’s horses were out of action for the second half of 1996 through almost the entirety of 1997 before he had an idea: he’d move his stable to Texas. A couple of other trainers, he says, did the same, but none with as many horses. He loaded up about two dozen, all of them Mexican-breds, and sent them to Laredo. Two didn’t pass quarantine requirements and were denied entry into the U.S., and the rest had to spend an extra three weeks in the middle of nowhere.

Once the horses allowed to cross the border arrived at Sam Houston Race Park, Gutiérrez saddled his first runner. That was in February 1998, when Cuadra Vivian’s Tere Mi Amor ran second in an allowance race off a 21-month layoff. She went on to earn black-type when third in the Tomball Stakes and set a five-furlong track record at Retama Park.

Gutiérrez stayed on the Texas circuit—Lone Star, Retama, and Sam Houston—for nearly two years, having his final runners there in October 1999. He ended the chapter with a win on his last day, when Boldini got to the winner’s circle for the fifth time in the U.S.

But a new-and-improved Las Americas was on the verge of reopening, so Gutiérrez returned home with his claim-depleted stable and prepped for Mexican racing to resume. There was a soft opening in November before a full resumption in March. 

Gutiérrez says of his spell in Texas, during which he sent out 11 Mexican-bred winners of 20 races: “It was very important for me because I learned many different things there. There’s no school for trainers. There aren’t written guidelines like with other professions. It’s day to day: what you can see, what you can learn, or what you can invent. It’s all about what you see and what you apply from the people you can watch, so we each have our own system. But in the end, the most important thing is that no two horses are the same. Each horse is different.”

Gutiérrez, 54, didn’t grow up working with horses. He was born in Madrid, where his father was a lawyer with business ties in Spain and Mexico. The family moved back and forth between the two countries several times until Gutiérrez was 13 or 14, when they settled in Mexico City. Although they weren’t involved in horse racing, they did attend the races, where Gutiérrez developed a taste for the sport at Hipodromo de la Zarzuela in Spain and Las Americas in Mexico.

“There’s something about horses that grabs your attention. You know what I’m talking about…the sights, the sounds, the colors, the smell. It calls you, and that’s what I liked most about the racetrack,” he says. When he was about 15, he started studying the form in the newspapers and programs, then he’d go to the track by himself in the afternoons.

One of the opportunities that set Gutiérrez’s career in motion from an early age came when he was in college at the Universidad Anahuac Mexico. He remembers bringing a Thoroughbred auction catalogue with him and placing it beneath his desk on his first day of classes. A professor who happened to have a horse in the sale spotted the catalogue and invited him to come along.

It was a foot in the door, an entrance to a world he’d already started to love. Of course, he went to the sale.

“From there I began to know more people from the horse industry,” Gutiérrez says. Soon afterwards, at 18, he claimed an inexpensive gelding in partnership.

“He was called George Henry. There was a famous John Henry, no?” He laughs. “Well, this was George Henry. So I was very excited. I was a horse owner now. I had a horse! But we ran him 15 days later and he was claimed. He didn’t win and we lost him.”

Nonetheless, Gutiérrez’s enthusiasm only grew from there.

He claimed another horse and, while continuing to attend university, took out his trainer’s license and began to spend more time on the backside of Las Americas. In 1993, a “very special horse arrived in my life,” Gutiérrez says of his acquisition of a four-year-old Bates Motel filly, Mactuta, with some friends. He trained her to win 19 races, 12 of them stakes—all with international black type—and she was his first champion.

It was during this period when, now a college graduate with a degree in communications, Gutiérrez was approached about becoming the racing correspondent for Reforma, a major new daily paper. He felt unqualified to be a writer, but he went ahead and took the job. “It was good money compared to other things, and I could do it from home,” he says. “I had one or two horses and I wrote, and you know what happens when you write for an important newspaper? You have power. It was important, and it helped me. I had a lot of clout at the racetrack.”

Fausto Gutiérrez, Germán Larrea (second from right), Jockey Jose Luis Campos and connections celebrate Igor winning the 2018 Longines Handicap de las Americas

Reforma gave Gutiérrez the best of everything. “It permitted me to continue to go on in racing because otherwise, I would have had to look for a job in communications or at an advertising agency. When you’re young and you have to decide what to do with your life, I could dedicate myself to my hobby, my passion. It was the perfect scenario for me because I wrote for a paper, I got money, and I had a superior horse. Sometimes I even got to write about my horse.”

This idyllic setup was ended by the extended shutdown of Las Americas, when there was no racing to write about and Gutiérrez left Mexico for Texas. While he was in the States, though, he went to Kentucky and attended his first September yearling sale at Keeneland, where he bought a cheap yearling right before he was supposed to catch a flight from Blue Grass Airport across the street. But first he stopped off at the consignor’s barn to see his new purchase. “There was a horse with a lot of blood on his knees and they were hosing him down. I thought, ‘What’s going on here?’ I saw the hip number, and it was mine.”

W.B. Rogers Beasley, then the director of sales at Keeneland, told him in no uncertain terms that even though the horse had been injured while in the care of the consignor, he belonged to Gutiérrez. Beasley, however, offered to try to work something out if the injuries were severe enough. He told Gutiérrez, “All I want is for you to come back and buy another horse next year.”

Gutiérrez kept that promise to Beasley many times over, and then other Mexican connections began to attend the Kentucky sales, too, to bolster the small annual foal crops born in their country.

It was Gutiérrez’s custom of shopping for yearlings in the States that laid the groundwork for his next big break, albeit, as he acknowledges, one that originated in tragic circumstances after the 9/11 terrorist attacks 20 years ago.
“I got a phone call from Germán Larrea. ‘Can you go to Keeneland?’ he asked me. When the airports re-opened, I went on one of the first planes that left.”

Johnny Ortiz ponying Letruska on the Keeneland training track

Thus began Gutiérrez’s association with Larrea, the billionaire who, racing in Mexico under the stable names of both Cuadra San Jorge and Cuadra G L, is the country’s dominant owner. Their affiliation began small, with Gutiérrez getting the lesser horses, until Larrea’s main trainer retired and Gutiérrez took over the primary role, which set him firmly on the path to becoming the country’s preeminent trainer.

But Las Americas was too small to contain his big dreams.

On April 28, 2017—his 50th birthday—Gutiérrez fulfilled one of those dreams: saddling a runner at Keeneland.

He’d looked through the spring meet condition book as soon as it came out to see what races were scheduled on his birthday, found one to target with Grosco, and called Keeneland-based trainer Ignacio Correas IV—who’d had a lot of success training in Argentina before moving to the U.S.—and asked for his help.

Grosco was a Mexican-bred who had been claimed cheaply at Las Americas. The cost of travel, as Gutiérrez remembers it, was around $2,500 to get him to Kentucky, involving a 20-hour van ride from Mexico City to the border, three days of quarantine, and a 24-hour haul from Laredo to Lexington just to run in a $10,000 claiming race.

Why Grosco? It wasn’t so much that he was a particularly good horse but that the dark bay gelding held special meaning for his family. He’d been born at the farm where María Gutiérrez worked, and their son Andrés had helped foal Grosco. As far as Gutiérrez was concerned, it had to be that horse. “I wanted to see him in the Keeneland paddock,” he says.

Grosco ran fifth of six. “¡No importa!” Gutiérrez says. It doesn’t matter! “When you get to Keeneland and you stand in the paddock beneath the trees, you can say, ‘Here I am. I made it.’ It’s important.”

A second dream was fulfilled that same year when the Caribbean Series— alternatively known as the Serie Hipica del Caribe—was contested at Gulfstream instead of at one of the member jurisdiction racetracks where he’d already trained winners, including a Copa Velocidad in 2012 with Epifanio at Camarero in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. But Gutiérrez wanted to win on continental U.S. soil. In 2017 and 2018, the series’ first and second years at Gulfstream, he trained Jala Jala and Kukulkan, both Mexican-bred Horses of the Year, to win back-to-back Caribbean Classics for Larrea’s St. George Stable LLC (which is the English translation of Cuadra San Jorge). The same horses followed up with consecutive wins in the Copa Confraternidad del Caribe (recognized by The Jockey Club as the Confraternity Caribbean Cup the year Kukulkan won) for older horses in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Until Letruska, Kukulkan, who in addition to being Horse of the Year was the divisional champion at two and three, was Gutiérrez’s best horse, and the trainer’s ambitious handling of that colt gives good insight into how he would go on to plan Letruska’s 2020 and 2021 campaigns.

After winning the Caribbean Classic, which was Kukulkan’s first-ever line of internationally recognized black-type, by 10¼ lengths three years ago this December to remain undefeated, connections opted to keep the dark bay in Florida, targeting the Gr. 1 Pegasus World Cup Invitational the following January.

“Kukulkan had done everything he needed to do in Mexico,” says Gutiérrez. “Then I had to face reality [in the U.S.], and reality is another thing. That’s why I felt that the Pegasus would be perfect for losing. I didn’t want to lose in a lesser race. I wanted to lose against the best.”

The son of Point Determined was 11th in the Pegasus but stayed in the States afterwards, eventually winning an allowance at Churchill, placing second in a Gr. 3 at Mountaineer, and third in a Listed race at Indiana Downs for Gutiérrez. Kukulkan closed out 2019 with the win in the Confraternity.

More importantly, the U.S. unveiling of St. George’s homebred Letruska, a winner of all six of her starts in Mexico, came in the Copa Invitacional del Caribe, a 10-furlong race for three-year-olds and up, two races after Kukulkan’s Confraternity. The only female entered, Letruska got out in front and never looked back, beating opponents, including older males, by 4¼ lengths.

Gutiérrez was in the process of establishing a small experimental U.S. division, anchored by Kukulkan, who’d already been in the country to begin with, and the up-and-comer Letruska at Palm Meadows Training Center. But as had happened with Kukulkan after the Pegasus 11 months earlier, some of the shine wore off the previously undefeated Letruska when she ran last of 13 in Gulfstream’s Tropical Park Oaks, her only try on grass, at the end of December in her next outing.

Soon thereafter, in February 2020, the first cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Mexico. The emerging pandemic made a return home difficult when Las Americas stayed closed, and Gutiérrez was lucky to have the small stable he’d brought to Palm Meadows, although he hadn’t yet had a winner on the year. The trainer himself continued to travel between Florida and Mexico until March, when he brought Andrés with him on what was supposed to be a five-day trip. They never went back to Mexico again.

By summer, with racing at Las Americas at a standstill—the racetrack never did open at all that year—and Gutiérrez beginning to fear that the pandemic would close the border between the countries, his wife and daughter followed him and Andrés to the States. María and Ana arrived in time to go from the airport to Gulfstream to see Letruska win the Added Elegance Stakes on June 27th, the trainer’s eighth win of 2020 and the mare’s first stakes win since December.

It was only just beginning to sink in that perhaps his life as a trainer in Mexico was behind him. The coronavirus changed the trajectory of Gutiérrez’s life, and he hates to consider how different things would be for him today if the “reality” that had shown him that Kukulkan wasn’t good enough to compete at the top level in the U.S. applied to Letruska, too. Or had it applied to Gutiérrez himself.

Reflecting on his career at Las Americas, he says, “When you’re leading trainer and you win between 100 and 200 races per year, you’re in a comfort zone, but at the end, I think my cycle there was over because nobody wants to see you there. They want you to go, especially in a country where there’s not much money to go around. It was like that: the giant against everybody else.”

It was markedly different for Gutiérrez in the States. He’d gone from being a giant in one country to almost unrecognizable in the other. The exploits of Letruska, though, have returned him to “giant” status.

After the Added Elegance, the Kentucky-bred daughter of Super Saver whom Larrea had bought in utero for $100,000, went on to win a pair of Gr. 3s: the Shuvee at Belmont in August and the Rampart at Gulfstream in December.

Going into her five-year-old season this past January, Letruska shipped to Sam Houston for the Gr. 3 Houston Ladies Classic. It was a homecoming of sorts for her trainer, who was disappointed to learn that only the bookkeeper remained from his first time there in the late 1990s. Still, it felt good to be back, especially with a high-caliber horse like Letruska, who won the race.

Her trainer, however, had his eye on a bigger prize.

“When you come from the minor leagues and reach the major league, you want an autograph. I wanted a photo with Monomoy Girl,” he says, speaking of the 2018 champion three-year-old filly and 2020 champion older dirt female trained by Brad Cox.

With a matchup in the Gr. 1 Apple Blossom Handicap in his sights, Gutiérrez sent Letruska to Oaklawn, where she’d won an allowance optional claimer in April the previous year, to use the Gr. 2 Azeri Stakes as a prep for the Apple Blossom. In the Azeri, Letruska met with her only loss of 2021, finishing second, a head behind last year’s Kentucky Oaks winner Shedaresthedevil, Monomoy Girl’s stablemate.

Then it was on for his Mexican champion to face two reigning Eclipse Award winners, Monomoy Girl and Preakness winner Swiss Skydiver, trained by Kenny McPeek, in the Apple Blossom. Monomoy Girl was favored by the betting public, followed by Swiss Skydiver and Letruska. At the half-mile pole, announcer Vic Stauffer’s race call described the trio, led by Letruska, as “the interloper and two champions” as Gutiérrez’s dream major league matchup unfolded.

“For me, it was perfect,” Gutiérrez says of the stretch run battle, where Monomoy Girl put her head in front of his mare—the “interloper,” despite being a champion herself—and he thought Letruska would be second. “I knew that I was not going to lose absolutely anything. Second was a great result, and when I saw that we were going to get second, few times in my life have I enjoyed so much a race I was losing. When I saw Monomoy Girl winning, I said, ‘It’s okay. It’s a very good result. We’re not coming second or third by 20, and we’re up against the best mares.’ So I sat like this, watching.” He leans back in his chair and stretches his arms out, the posture of a relaxed man savoring his achievement.

“My whole history in Mexico ran through my mind, everything I had done to get there to that race,” he continues. “And that was when the announcer said, ‘And Letruska…!’”

Gutiérrez waves his hand dismissively as he recreates the scene. He was fully not expecting to get the win and refused to get his hopes up...second to Monomoy Girl? He’d take it. But Stauffer’s call was right. The margin in the Apple Blossom was a nose, with another 6½ lengths back to Swiss Skydiver in third.

“It was incredible. I had dreamed of winning, but not like this. That race is going to be one of the moments of the year, because both of them ran strong. It wasn’t that Monomoy Girl stopped and Letruska came along and won.”

In the aftermath of the Apple Blossom, Gutiérrez sensed a change in his mare. “From then on, she understood that she was big. The horse that won the Shuvee, it is not this horse.”

By the time he arrived at Keeneland in early May with his small stable, Gutiérrez was as recognizable there as he had been at Las Americas, with strangers walking up to talk to him about Letruska. “I just love your mare,” they’d say. Or, “When is she coming out to train?” It’s almost always “la yegua,” “she,” or “her”; very rarely do they use her name, which is superfluous by now.

Gutiérrez, a quiet man, doesn’t often say much, but he smiles, nods, and thanks them all.

Before long, every time she’d come out to train, the bay mare with three white legs, a small star, and a regal bearing was being pointed out and discussed by other trainers, owners, grooms, EMTs, bloodstock agents, and random folks standing on the rail. At first, riders would turn their heads as they jogged past on their mounts to ask her rider, “¿Esa es la yegua?” Is that the mare?

It’s not just that she’s the best older filly or mare in the country; there’s more to it than that. Backstretches across the country are heavily fueled by a Hispanic workforce, including many from Mexico, so there’s an added element of pride in seeing one of their own, even though she’s not a Mexican-bred, emerge as a championship contender, with the architect and owner two more of their own. Gutiérrez feels that pride, too.

It’s fair to say that regardless of the future, the Apple Blossom was a defining moment—or perhaps the defining moment—for Gutiérrez. But Letruska has taken him from defining moment to defining moment, and she may not be done yet. With the top race mare in the country in his care, Gutiérrez feels the gravity of his responsibility.

“When you have a horse like this, you can’t make any mistakes. I have to be very careful and give her special care, while knowing at the same time that she’s a horse,” he says. “I can’t do more than I can do, and it can make your head spin. I don’t think about how much she’s worth. I just try to keep her well and get her to the next race.”

Letruska’s campaign has been a fearless one. After the Apple Blossom, she trained at Keeneland and shipped to New York to win the Gr. 1 Ogden Phipps Stakes at Belmont. Brad Cox, the trainer who had defeated Letruska once with Shedaresthedevil, tried to beat her again, but his pair of Bonny South and Shedaresthedevil were second and third in the Phipps. Then, in a move that surprised many, Gutiérrez wheeled Letruska back in the Gr. 2 Fleur de Lis at Churchill, 21 days after the Phipps.

Letruska is a keg of dynamite on four legs. She can detonate one minute and docilely allow a toddler to pet her nose the next. When Gutiérrez noticed that the Phipps hadn’t taken much out of her, he felt it would be better to run than leave her in the stall with no outlet for her explosive energy. In what was essentially a paid workout, she won the Fleur de Lis by 5¾ lengths on his daughter Ana’s 15th birthday.

Groom José Díaz Jiménez has a special bond with stable star Letruska

Gutiérrez credits groom José Díaz Jiménez for his bond with Letruska. “José is very important. He has a lot of passion for what he does, and he knows her. This mare is very difficult. And we know each other very well, the three of us. When she feels better, she’s more aggressive. José tells me to be careful because she’s no longer playing, and she’ll get you. She’ll put her ears back, and she’ll turn around and fire. That’s why I don’t put her on Regumate, because she’d get even more aggressive.”

His target for Letruska after the Fleur de Lis was the Gr. 1 Personal Ensign Stakes at Saratoga. “It’s a Grade 1 race. We can’t leave it. Don’t you agree? Do I sit here and keep fighting her, or not? If you’re number one, you have to defend that and you have to keep winning. You take the risk. You can’t defend it at home. That’s my opinion. After 30 years of doing this, you need to know how to lose. If you know how to lose, one day you’re going to win. And she wants to run. She’s more of a problem for me if she doesn’t run. Like I said about Kukulkan, we’ll lose a Grade 1. I don’t want to lose in a Grade 3.”

You already know that she won the Personal Ensign, despite pressure on the front end and talented fillies and mares coming at her in waves. Old foes Bonny South and Swiss Skydiver were second and fifth, respectively, split by Chad Brown’s two: Royal Flag and Dunbar Road.

After returning to Keeneland, her adopted home track, in September, Letruska trained up to the Gr. 1 Spinster Stakes on Fall Stars Weekend in October with two bullet works. Cox and Brown tried again to beat her, but Letruska was in front at every call, with Dunbar Road and Bonny South again filling the minor places. It was her fourth Breeders’ Cup Challenge automatic berth “Win & You’re In” victory.

Only one more start, the November 6th Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Del Mar, remains to close out the five-year-old mare’s season. Rogers Beasley, who is now executive vice president and chief strategy officer of Breeders’ Cup Limited, is happy to see his old friend coming in with the favorite for the Distaff, saying, “It’s fantastic. He’s just a genuine, unassuming person. Fausto feels very honored and very blessed to have a wonderful mare like Letruska, and I think he’s doing an excellent job managing her.”

It’s true; it’s a heckuva campaign Gutiérrez laid out for Letruska, an Eclipse-worthy campaign—not only for his mare, but as the architect behind her every move, potentially for him as well. In seven 2021 starts, Letruska has a record of six wins and one narrow second, all in Graded stakes races, including four Grade 1s, with one more Grade 1 on the schedule. It speaks to Gutiérrez’s appreciation for racing as it should be as well as his confidence in Letruska, who is better than she’s ever been.

“I don’t know how high she can go. She’s more horse than before.”

She’s won seven of eight races since Gutiérrez removed her blinkers after a fourth-place effort of four runners in last year’s Beldame at Belmont.

“Before, with the blinkers, she ran with the clock, not against the other horses. Now, she sees them.” Is that partially responsible for a big change in her? “Oh, absolutely,” says Gutiérrez. “She has more control of the situation now.”

His handling of this special but not easy mare is perhaps the biggest reminder that Gutiérrez is already a champion trainer. He’s always watching and reading Letruska, adapting to her changing moods, and he likes to shake up her routine occasionally.

“I try to keep her distracted,” Gutiérrez says.

One morning, he stopped her rider as they were coming off at the gap. “Take her around one more time,” he told him. “She needs to do more.” Another time, he handed her off to trainer John Ortiz, in whose barn she’d been at Oaklawn, to pony without a rider on the training track at Keeneland.

Gutiérrez doesn’t adhere to a strict breeze schedule with Letruska, who comes out of her races looking as though she’s ready to go right back into the starting gate. “Sometimes I think she’s going to come up short on training, but no,” Gutiérrez laughs. “All she needs to do is conserve herself. She doesn’t need to work every six or seven days.” 

When she does breeze, she goes alone, and she’s gotten the bullet 18 times in 36 works in the U.S., at Saratoga, Keeneland, Oaklawn, Belmont, and Palm Meadows—everywhere she’s ever worked bar Gulfstream, where she had just one breeze before her first start in the country.

Letruska broke well from the gate before she made the early lead in the Personal Ensign

She has her quirks. “She was very nervous, so we taught her to stand on the track,” Gutiérrez says. Before training, she relaxes and watches everything around her, which she enjoys doing so much that doesn’t always want to move when it’s time to get going. Díaz has been known to slide underneath the rail to grab her reins or wave his arms to coax her into motion, or an outrider or one of the pony riders will try to get her to budge. It’s not unusual for it to take five minutes or more to get her going. “It’s just part of her personality now.” The longer she’s been at Keeneland, though, the more cooperative she seems to have gotten.

Larrea designates a different first letter of the alphabet for each of his foal crops. All of his 2016s have L-names, the 2017s are “M”s, the 2018s “N”s, and the 2019s “O”s. So when it came time to name Letruska, who has a stakes-placed older half-sister named American Doll, he wanted to name her for the Russian matryoshka doll—a wooden doll that opens and contains a series of smaller dolls, each of which opens to reveal more dolls, in decreasing size increments, until the innermost doll is revealed. “Letruska” is a play on the Spanish word for the matryoshka, and in the mare’s case, no one has gotten down to the bottom of her to know how deep the layers go.

It’s similar with her trainer, who’s shown with each adversity that he has more layers beneath the surface. And while the success of this—the reincarnation of Gutiérrez’s training career—is largely down to one horse, he’s no one-trick pony, having won three races this year with Vegas Weekend and two with Dramatic Kitten to contribute to his 15-win total so far in 2021. From three starters at Saratoga over the summer, he had three winners.

“I don’t have the horses of Brad Cox, Steve Asmussen, Todd Pletcher, Tom Amoss,” he says. But he has a Letruska, and he’s placing his other horses well and grinding out wins. Vegas Weekend was claimed from him for $50,000 at Saratoga, but he quickly filled her stall with a horse he claimed for $25,000. That gelding, Quick Return, proved to be well-named: a month after the claim, he won an allowance at Belmont for Gutiérrez and owner St. George, earning $44,000.

Still, Gutiérrez knows that his will be a very different story when the big mare eventually retires, which he hopes won’t be for a while, as he’s got designs on taking on the boys in the Saudi Cup or the Dubai World Cup in 2022. But looking ahead to a future without Letruska, he bought close to 20 yearlings on behalf of Larrea at the recent Keeneland September sale. Among his purchases was one that seemed meant to be as soon as the catalogue came out: a Super Saver filly, like Letruska, out of Mexican champion Pachangera.

As we wait to see if any of next year’s two-year-olds will be as good as Letruska, Gutiérrez is prepared to weather whatever fate throws his way. When his rider comes back from galloping a three-year-old More Than Ready colt carrying a broken stirrup strap in his hand, the trainer just shakes his head and laughs. “Sometimes I want to sit and cry, really. But I get back up and I say, ‘Let’s see what happens next.’”

It’s the getting up to see what happens next that’s gotten him this far, and he doesn’t let the thought of himself ‘starting over’ faze him.

“Sometimes in life, you have to let things be,” he says. All the obstacles Fausto Gutiérrez has had to overcome in his career show him to be a master of converting ‘let’s see what happens next’ into a big leap forward.

“Pero bueno,” he says optimistically. “This is my first crop!”

In the span of less than five years, the man who once said to himself, “Here I am. I made it,” as he stood in the enclosure at Keeneland to tighten the girth on a horse who ran unplaced in a $10,000 claiming race, saddled the favorite for a $500,000 Grade 1 in the very same paddock—and he won.