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Joe Clancy 
Opportunity. It’s about opportunity, and the National Steeplechase Association teamed up with the Carolina Cup Racing Association to make sure horses and horsemen get an opportunity with a second day of racing at Springdale Race Course April 6.
He’s the dean of American steeplechase trainers, and fairly close to that status among all trainers – flat and jump. On an episode of our Jumping Around Podcast, Jonathan Sheppard talks about his career, some horses who helped make it and how he came to America (the first time was on a cargo ship). Part … Read more
Of all the horses stabled at Fair Hill Training Center in 2018, none won more races than Justa Scoch, but she’s not about to let it go to her head. No, the only thing she’d like to go to her head is your hand – your rubbing, scratching, continually moving hand. She’s got an itch, an itch she can’t reach – and you should scratch it.
Reading his obituary, I probably should have talked to Buck Kisor about money instead of horses and writing. But horses and writing it was.
At steeplechase meets, racetracks and associated events of one kind or another, I’d find myself talking shop with Kisor. He was a good listener, had sound opinions. He admired the product and the process of our newspaper Steeplechase Times. His horses, always at the lower end of the game, even made the pages of ST now and then. Lochnagar won at Middleburg in 1999, finished second four times in 2000 and 2001; Heir Apparent did OK; Sumo Power won twice at Tryon; Gather No Moss came through at Foxfield, and did it again at Morven Park, even placed in the timber stakes at Shawan Downs.
Chris Andrews never saw Evening Attire race, never knew the fit, determined, hard-trying racehorse. But she knew all about Evening Attire.
“The stall he is . . . was . . . in is the key stall right next to my office and he talked to me every morning and every night,” said Andrews, executive director of Akindale Thoroughbred Rescue where Evening Attire lived out his retirement for the last 10 years. Andrews talked back because, well of course she did. Horses like Evening Attire make you talk to them. On the racetrack, he won nine graded stakes, earned just shy of $3 million and won legions of fans while making 69 starts over nine seasons. He died Sunday of colic, leaving a big hole at Akindale.
In the end, there wasn’t all that much drama. Since November, Thoroughbred racing’s water-cooler conversations spun a Horse of the Year debate between Triple Crown winner Justify and leading older horse and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Accelerate. They never met on the racetrack, but they did clash in the ballot box. Sort of.
A year removed from winning the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, Funny Cide stepped onto the track at Saratoga Race Course – a few miles from where he was foaled at McMahon Thoroughbreds – and brought a crowd. Free pint glasses helped push the attendance figure to a near-record 70,175, but most would have come to see the local star anyway and sent him off at even money in the 2004 Saratoga Breeders’ Cup Handicap.
Funny Cide was supposed to win, receive a thundering ovation and head back to the barn while his fans celebrated by chugging Funny Cide beer out of all those free pint glasses.
Nobody told Evening Attire.
The last time Ricky Hendriks went to the Eclipse Awards with a chance – a real chance – to win was after the 1982 racing season. He was 18 years old, and – as the jockey of steeplechase star Zaccio – actually knew he was going to win.
After watching stable star Glorious Empire finish last in the Breeders’ Cup Turf in November, trainer Chuck Lawrence turned away from the track and offered the only excuse he could come up with at the time.
“Well, he must have bled again.”
Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop . . . the hoofbeats closed in as I crossed Union Avenue toward the Oklahoma stable area at Saratoga Race Course. About halfway across, I looked back and a big-but-little bay horse was on my heels and closing in.
He reminded me of a first-grader at recess on the first day of school. Unsure. Shaky. Lost in a “I’ve-never-been here-before” way.
“Come on, you can do it,” I found myself instinctively saying.
