Category: Updates from the yard

Alex Waldrop (or more probably his handlers) has been actively struggling to convince people lately that medication has somehow been eliminated from U.S. racing. This started after Joe Drape at the New York Times openly criticized U.S. drug rules in a recent column (although he was forced to choose an unlikely standard-bearer in John Gosden, who does use the drugs when he races in America).  In a posting on the Bloodhorse Web site, Alex actually said this in patting his NTRA organization on the back:

“Race-day medications have been virtually eliminated nationwide.”

This is such fiction that I’m not sure where to start in criticizing it. Does he actually BELIEVE this? Does he think anyone involved in racing does?? I tried to post a comment on the BH site, but it was blocked. Apparently the Bloodhorse does actually believe it. These guys in suits that don’t know which end of a horse eats should be sat down with some before-and-after films of  a lame horse treated with bute, which is allowable on race day in many states. A dose of bute will make a lame horse look sound. Racing on it should be grounds for losing your trainer’s license. If a horse needs pain relief, it needs to be put away to race another day, not drugged and sent out to risk breaking down because it tried to run through the problem. Open your eyes, Alex.

I also thought it was a somewhat desperate measure on Alex’s part to lump those of us who want to eliminate medication in with extreme animal-rights activists who want to end racing altogether. He has already insulted most of the world in the past by calling it “inhumane” NOT to administer lasix. He’s starting to sound increasingly like someone who has been backed into the corner and is looking for any way out he can find.

Kempton was fun, but now it’s time to concentrate on the horses at home. Turfani has an entry Wednesday at Fontainebleau; 24 have start declared and only 18 can run, so I’ll have to wait until final decs on Monday to see if we get in. I’m hoping, because it should be a nice easy comeback race for her, which is what she needs because she seems to be a bit fragile, mentally. Physically, she’s in good form, but she is definitely a little worried about what we might ask her to do. It’s clear she hasn’t enjoyed her racing much in the past, and she seems to be carrying some bad memories. The race Wednesday is 2,000 meters for apprentice jockeys, claiming for either 9,000 or 12,000 euros. They don’t get easier than that in the Paris region. She will run for a tag of 9,000.

Tommy, meanwhile, is still on target for his comeback at Longchamp; again, we’ll see once entries are in what the chances are of getting into the race. His target is also a claimer, but for 17,000 euros. I would prefer to run a handicap with him, but he’s been off the track for so long that he has lost his qualification and needs to run a claimer first. We should be safe – he hasn’t run since the autumn of 2007 so no one should even think about buying him.

The rest of the guys are coming along fine, so now it’s just training ahead patiently until they say they’re ready.

Just got back from a sort of surrealistic night at Kempton racecourse, where Mafaaz won a perfectly scripted inaugural Kentucky Derby Challenge Stakes. Plastic American flags were being passed out at the entrances, Woodford Reserve was kind enough to provide free (!) mint juleps, a taped trumpeted call to post was played before every race and a stand usually called Le Creperie was tarted up as The American Diner – although it was still serving crepes.

Most of the people I talked to weren’t all that interested in the Kentucky Derby, but they said they might pay some attention now that John Gosden says he plans to take Mafaaz stateside.  Mafaaz is owned by Sheikh Hamdan, Sheikh Mo’s brother. Interesting to see that the horse gets a guaranteed post position after only the second start of his life, while Sheikh Mo is busy buying top Derby candidates and shipping them all over the world to try to accomplish the same thing. Sort of takes family rivalry to a whole new level.

We’ll see if Mafaaz actually ends up in the Run for the Roses. Gosden said tonight that he plans to ship to the States soon to run the Bluegrass as a prep for the Derby. A suivre…and pass me another free mint julep please…

While horses on the U.S. side of the pond are pounding their way to the Kentucky Derby through a series of tough Group (ah, sorry, that’s Graded for you guys) races, there is a small back door in Europe that seems to be quite a bit easier. The Kentucky Derby Challenge Stakes will be run at Kempton Park  near London on Wednesday night, and the winner is assured a spot in the Run for the Roses. Whether the winner will choose to take up the challenge is another matter, but if he does (there are no fillies in on Wednesday), he will surely be the lowest money winner to line up for the Derby. The favorite has bankrolled a grand total of just 5,000 pounds, or $7,000, and the highest earner in the race is sitting at just under 43,000 pounds. Even with the first prize of just under 50,000 pounds on Wednesday, the winner is unlikely to approach the kind of cash his U.S. counterparts have to earn to snag a spot.

To be fair, a three-year-old in Europe has little chance to earn big purses in Group races before the summer. While Group/Graded stakes are available in the United States virtually all year long, the first Group race in Europe was just this past Saturday in France, and it was for four-year-olds and older. The first Group races for three-year-olds won’t happen until late April, way too late for a Derby prep.

It should be an interesting race Wednesday; I’ll be writing about it for the New York Times, and will also contribute to their Rail blog again this year. I’ll be talking to trainers at Kempton about what appeal the Kentucky Derby holds, and whether they would actually ship a horse over to run it.

Turfani and Tommy galloped this morning, and Turfani was much more pleasing this time around. Tommy was his usual lazy self, so we didn’t go all that fast, but it suited Turfani just fine after the tough time she had working with a sprinter last week. She got into her stride pretty well, and most importantly came back pleased instead of panicked. I’m now looking to enter at Fontainebleau for the 25th in a 2,000 meter claimer for apprentices and young  jockeys. The racing won’t get much easier than that, so she’ll just have to get on with it and see what happens. Tommy is going well, and should be ready by early April. Since he is very particular about the ground, the two best tracks for him will probably be Chantilly or Longchamp, and there is a nice race for him at Longchamp on April 9, so that’s our target. It’s still too far off to get excited, and anything could happen, but at least the horses are working well enough to set some concrete goals now.

The planets must be aligned in some way that is drawing humans to horses for better and for worse. On the for better front, I see that my fellow blogger the Wind Gatherer has started taking riding lessons; coincidentally, I started giving riding lessons this week to my newest owner, Mark Tronco. Wind Gatherer is already jumping, so he’s a little ahead of Mark, but I can see progress will come quickly because Mark is a runner and a boxer, and that athleticism really helps in riding.

On the for worse front comes news from Chicago that somebody at Hawthorne Park was stupid enough to allow two overweight (and that’s the best I can say for them from the photo I saw) morning disk jockeys race each other, apparently thinking it was safe enough if they put these  guys on the “pony” horses instead of actual racing stock. (And apparently neither they nor the reporter from the Sun Times knows the difference, but that’s a separate problem.) Neither one of these guys knew anything about riding, so why they thought this would be a fun promotional stunt is beyond me. One of them, unable to stop his horse (surprise!) decided it would be better to jump off. This would be Darwinian except that he managed to survive the fall. He was, however, just smart enough to regret the whole thing and realize how stupid an idea it was.

It’s really amazing what horses will put up with, and what stupid humans will subject them to. Riding around on horses seems to be such a primordal part of human evolution that we forget that it is a privilege, not a right. Horses put up with us because we have developed a somewhat symbiotic relationship, with the horse usually getting the short end of the stick. Those two yobs in Chicago had no right to climb up on those animals.

Mark and the Wind Gatherer are doing it the right way: Find a kind schoolmaster, take some lessons and earn the privilege of working with the most noble of animals.

Skid’s back, now gelded and showing not much awareness that anything is different, which is good. Everybody else is training on, slowly edging toward a race. The season has started in the Paris area, with opening day at St. Cloud on Saturday and Auteuil getting under way last week, so I’m itching to have a runner. But the winter set training back, and it looks like I’ll have to be patient a while longer.

Turfani was entered for Deauville on Thursday, but her workout Sunday was a little less impressive than I wanted to see, so I’ll wait another couple of weeks with her. She will still probably be the first runner of spring, probably near the end of the month. Tommy is nearly ready, but doesn’t go on soft ground, so there’s no point in rushing. Hard Way thinks he’s ready but won’t be for a bit, probably mid-April. Tyke is coming along well, but he’s such a big horse it will still take more time to get him up to speed. I don’t think he’ll be ready until the end of April.

The nice part is that I can see progress, and April should be an interesting month.

I’m back from my quick field trip to the States, and for the first time left feeling encouraged about racing in America. I have two friends that train off the farm in the Winter Haven, Florida area, and while I was there they each had a runner at Tampa Bay Downs, which was one of the more horse-friendly backsides I’ve seen. The barns are nicely spaced and there is actually a fair amount of green around. Round pens are available for turnout.

The highlight of the trip had to be the race of a good old campaigner called Ide be O for Ten, who is actually two for 98. Ide is 10 years old, and his owner wants to retire him when he hits 100 starts, sound and medication-free. The day I was there, Ide ran a very credible third, and I’ll bet he manages to get up for a win when that 100th start comes around, which won’t be long. He’s trained by Janet DelCastillo, who wrote a book called “The Backyard Racehorse” that shows it is possible to succeed as a small trainer not stabled at the track. Ide was the only horse in the race not on Lasix (he wasn’t on anything else, either), and it was quite a thing to see old Ide barreling up the stretch.

Two days later, we got to see Ellie Crowder’s Major Parker running his second race back after a long layoff. Ellie bred Major and lost him in a claimer when he was five, already a two-time winner. The trainer who claimed him assumed he could do better than Ellie by pumping full of all the medications Ellie didn’t use. Instead, the horse burned out, bowed a tendon and dropped down to the ranks of $4,000 claimers, which is how Ellie got him back. Ellie game him two years off, then let her grandchildren ride him over the summer. I rode him two days before he raced, and he cantered up Janet’s sandy hill next to the orange groves like a happy, fit horse. He ran 7th last Saturday, but he got stuck in traffic on the rail. From where I sat, he should have finished third. He came back sound and content, and I have every confidence he’ll come back and win again, too.

While I was in the neighborhood, I took a tour of some of the breeding and training operations around Ocala, which were eye-poppingly beautiful. I was jealous of the weather and the turnout.  Plenty of trainers had private facilities that allowed them to stable off-track.

Janet and Ellie were the bests hostesses anyone could have, and I’m sure I’ll get back to Florida more often now that I see how things are done there. It was all very refreshing, and it makes me all the more resolved to keep pushing for a ban on race-day medication. Such a shame to waste such fantastic infrastructure by breaking down horses at the track with the drugs. It was great to see the resilience of trainers like Janet and Ellie, who do it their way. OK, so you’re not likely to see them on the Triple Crown trail anytime soon. But I did see some good-looking, healthy horses on their farms, and just keep an eye on old Ide. He’s sitting on a win.

I’m off to Tampa and Ocala, Florida, tomorrow for a few days of much-needed sun (I ordered it in advance, I have a confirmation number and I expect it to be there). I also vow to understand an American condition book, which, despite allegedly being written in my native language, could be in Swahili as far as I can understand it. The French one seems perfectly clear. Maybe I’ve been here too long.

Tyke, Tommy and Turfani all got to stretch their legs this morning, and the boys were the stars of the show. In defense of Turfani, she worked on her own on the all-weather track, and since there was no company, she wasn’t motivated to put much effort into the proceedings. She has a nice, big stride, but needed to be niggled to accelerate to a decent speed. It was the first time I had galloped her, and I had expected a big more. I will work her in company from now on.

Tommy and Tyke galloped 1,600 meters on the sand track. Tommy served as the leader, and he worked like the professional he is, accelerating gradually, taking a nice breath just before the elbow, then re-accelerated coming out of the elbow for a nice finish. Tyke surprised me by sticking right with him and actually giving me quite a bit to hold onto to keep him behind. The big guy might have some seriously ugly knees, but it looks like he’s got an engine behind him that will compensate for quite a lot. About half way up the track, I said to myself, well, so this is what a 50,000 euro stud fee will get you – some pretty decent speed. (Although I see Cape Cross has since come down to a bargain 35,000 euros.) I’m trying not to get too optimistic over his first real workout of the year, but I was indeed pleasantly surprised.