Goodbye Storm Cat. The 30-year-old stallion was euthanized at Overbrook Farm Wednesday. A winner of four races from eight starts, Storm Cat sired eight champions and 35 Grade/Group I stakeswinners. At his zenith, the Overbook homebred stood for a $500,000 fee while his yearlings fetched monumental prices at public auction.
Storm Cat’s game-changing career began, somewhat, by accident.
Storm Cat was originally supposed to sell in the 1984 July yearling sale at Keeneland. The son of Storm Bird tested positive for EVA, equine viral arteritis, nixing that plan. Next he was supposed to go to Ian Balding’s British yard but couldn’t ship because of the EVA diagnosis. Next thing you know, Jonathan Sheppard gets a call from Dr. Robert Copelan. And the rest as they say is history…
Here’s Sheppard, talking about his fastest horse in an interview about five years ago.
“Overbrook was just getting started and I never heard of Mr. (William) Young. They called and asked me to take this horse if he couldn’t go to England. I didn’t know exactly what EVA was, I looked into it and talked to five different vets, and they gave me five different answers. I agreed to do it, kind of got talked into it by Copelan.
“He was just small – short thick neck – and, it turned out, really nasty. He had just about everybody off. After we started breezing him, I started to realize he was pretty speedy. The last time we breezed him in Camden before we shipped north, I told my riders, ‘Enough of this staying together, at the eighth pole, give them a crack and see what happens.’ This little bugger opened up 5 in a matter of strides. I said, ‘I think we have a runner.’ Gradually he started to look the part, too. He got sleeker-looking. His front end caught up with his hind end, and he was fine-looking horse.”
“He had these bad knees. Copelan wasn’t particularly worried, but the better he got, the more people worried. We had these board meetings it seemed like once a week, about six of them – pedigree man, money man, Mr. Young…
“They decided to take the horse away from me. This was the best horse I ever trained, but in a roundabout way, it turned out well. (Wife) Cathy and Mr. Young got to be pretty good friends. When all this was going on she said, ‘If you insist on this, I want it known that this horse will never make it back to the races. The only reason he made it to the races was because Jonathan is a good horseman and knows how to keep him sound. On top of that, the least you can do is make sure Jonathan has a breeding right because I know this horse is going to be a great stallion.’ When he took the horse away, he sent me a signed letter saying I would have a breeding right.”
