Category: Equine

“A Beast From Day One”

Equine 3 Comments

Bloodhorse;

So where did this powerhouse of a racehorse with the overwhelming physical presence come from? Three years earlier he was romping about the fields of John D. Gunther’s Glennwood Farm outside Versailles, Kentucky alongside another colt, later to be named Vino Rosso. Gunther and his daughter Tanya, who plans all the matings, couldn’t believe it when Justify won the Santa Anita Derby and Vino Rosso won the Wood Memorial an hour and a half apart.

 

John, who is from Canada, goes to Kentucky six or seven times a year and stays for a week to 10 days, leaving Tanya to “micromanage” the farm.

April 15, 2018: Reader Tips

Equine Reader Tips 27 Comments

In the late afternoon of Monday, Oct. 2, 1989, as I headed my car from the driveway of Arthur Hancock’s Stone Farm onto Winchester Road outside Paris, Ky., I was seized by an impulse as beckoning as the wind that strums through the trees down there, mingling the scents of new grass and old history.

 

For reasons as obscure to me then as now, I felt compelled to see Lawrence Robinson. For almost 30 years, until he suffered a stroke in March 1983, Robinson was the head caretaker of stallions at Claiborne Farm. I had not seen him since his illness, but I knew he still lived on the farm, in a small white frame house set on a hill overlooking the lush stallion paddocks and the main stallion barn. In the first stall of that barn, in the same place that was once home to the great Bold Ruler, lived Secretariat, Bold Ruler’s greatest son.

From Pure Heart, , by sports writing legend Bill Nack — dead at 77.

California Fires

Equine 8 Comments

Ugh.

Tweets from various California-based turfwriters and horsemen late Thursday indicate that barns at San Luis Rey Downs training center have caught fire as part of the rapidly-spreading Lilac Fire which started earlier in the day. Trainers there are telling media that one or more buildings at the facility are on fire. Some horses have been removed from their stalls and turned loose onto the training track, which an official with The Stronach Group, owner of San Luis Rey Downs, said was a confined area.
Trainer Cliff Sise told CBS 8 that one of his horses perished as he tried to save her. He estimated there were 10 to 15 horses dead as of about 8:15 p.m. EST.

Gut wrenching video of efforts to free horses. A number are safely moved to Del Mar but it’s feared many remain loose, while others have succumbed to smoke inhalation and injury.

The Children Are Our Future

Children R Our Future Equine 20 Comments

Veteran U.S. show jumper Katie Prudent;

Years ago–I’m not even going to mention the rider’s name–one girl rider had had a bad day, and the trainer wanted that rider to ride another horse and maybe work without stirrups. To pay her dues.
And the barn manager said, “Oh no, she has an appointment to go get her nails done.” I have to tell you, that is America in a nutshell right there. That is where we’re going in our sport in America. It makes me sick. And I don’t know a way out of it.

Reader Tips

Equine Reader Tips 25 Comments

“I watched him call a race, and [fellow announcer] Travis Stone was up in the booth with me,” Collmus said via phone. “And Sam was chatting with us right up until it’s time do the race. The race starts, and his program is on the desk behind him. Literally, he worked with nothing in front of him, and he was absolutely flawless-descriptive, dead-on, every horse right, no hesitation. It was just him and binoculars. And he wasn’t showing off-that was how he did it. I point to the program, and Travis and I are just shaking our heads, thinking, ‘Oh my God, this guy’s a legend.’ He was as good as it gets in harness racing, and he could call a Thoroughbred race, too. He was just one of those guys who was very talented, and not an egotistical bone in his body.”

Tonight’s tips thread pays tribute to the “voice of the Meadowlands”, the legendary harness race caller Sam McKee, who passed away March 7th after suffering a stroke. Thread open.

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