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Joe Clancy Tom McGreevy buys yearlings. It’s what he does. Sometimes, they turn out to be Songbird. Other times, they turn out to be Barefoot Mailman and if you’ve never heard of Barefoot Mailman that’s because he won one race and is now a show horse.
Katherine “Kat” Zwiesler was 12 years old, aboard a horse named Gambling Man at Sharp Farm in Delaware and really wanted to be somewhere – anywhere – else.
Got a half-hour? Park your car, decline a golf-cart ride, walk a bit, then find a fence to lean on beside a maple tree. It’s 6:09 in the morning and a cool breeze puffs under that maple tree next to that fence.
On the horsepath, road and racetrack shaded by that tree a morning unfolds.
“Morning sir.” “How you doing?” “Tired already.”
Here we are again. Fifteen years ago, we packed up much of what we owned and drove north to Saratoga to start a daily newspaper.
It was chaos.
Last year, they were galloping on the track at Gulfstream Park – 2-year-olds not quite up to blasting through rapid 1-furlong works to impress potential buyers. Now, they’re in the Queen’s Plate.
English movie producer Nick Ryle was talking with a friend, about sports, about film, about stories, when the subject turned to champion steeplechase jockey A.P. “Tony” McCoy. “What a great story that would be,” Ryle told his friend. “We should film that.”
What are you doing Thursday night? If you live anywhere near Wilmington, Del., get to Theatre N and see “Being AP.” The documentary chronicles the last season of jump jockey Tony McCoy’s career.
McCoy, if you don’t know, was the dominant jockey in English/Irish National Hunt Racing and arguably the most dominant athlete of his time no matter the sport.
David Bourke makes it pretty clear about his position as a trainer of racehorses. “This is more or less a hobby,” he said. “It’s not something I pay my mortgage with.” Of course, if 2016 continues the way it started, he might have to give up his job as a blacksmith.
At first, Graham Motion joked about running 4-year-old filly Miss Temple City in the Grade 1 Maker’s 46 Mile at Keeneland in April. The idea, he thought, was to avoid champion Tepin in the Grade 1 Jenny Wiley even if running in the Maker’s 46 meant facing males.
If you’re alive in 2016, you probably know someone. If you’re in Thoroughbred racing in 2016, you know someone. Or at least that’s the way it seems when it comes to alcoholism and its connection to racing, and everyday life.
I know a whole lot of people who are recovering alcoholics. Many are in racing. Some are quite close to me. I admire their courage, their ability to set aside that part of their lives, their skill at living one day at a time in sobriety and sanity. They didn’t destroy their lives, though some tell me they almost did, and they pretty much all left at least some destruction behind them.
