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Chad Brown walks back to his barn after turf works Wednesday morning. Four burgeoning grass horses worked for Brown while Frankel, Juddmonte Farm’s undefeated British-based phenom named after the irascible, irrepressible American Hall of Fame trainer, won his 12th race, the soundtrack of the Sussex Stakes playing amid the din of clockers, trainers and gawkers watching the 10 o’clock turf show.
A Grade 1 winner starts for a $30,000 claiming price in today’s first race. Think the trainer is worried about losing the horse?
“No, I’m not. Nobody claims a jumper.”
Loring Heard didn’t want to take a hiatus. The veteran horseman owned horses he liked, just didn’t have the time. He and his wife Melanie needed to make some changes after his mother died and they sold their Virginia farm.
Winter Memories walks into the paddock, head high, big ears higher, and people notice. She gets saddled, on the walk at a low simmer, and people notice. She walks down the horsepath to the track, people notice.
Kiaran McLaughlin watched the Jim Dandy, isolated and alone in a fourth-row box. Traditionally, a big-screen viewer in the clubhouse, McLaughlin changed it up for Saturday’s Grade II stakes, winding up in a box, alone and in awe.
Mistakes. Everybody in the horse business knows about mistakes. The variables, so vast. The unknowns, so prevalent. The consequences, so costly.
This morning, Friday, July 27, 2012, all of our services were down for a time due to an upstream provider issue. The data center that supplies all of our power and internet services lost all internal power and power backup systems. The result was that any servers and server systems such as ours that depend on them were totally shut down.
He won six races Sunday. He was asked to raise six fingers in the air, he did it reluctantly. He posed with kids. Signed autographs. Answered every question. Went to dinner with his agent Steve Rushing and never mentioned a ride, a race, the feat. Drove his Honda Civic to the track in the morning.
He’d be 34. Retired? Maybe. A champion many times over? Surely. One of the all time greats? No doubt. A name you’d put there with Aitcheson, Fishback, Adams, Smithwick, Walsh? Most likely.
Jockey Robbie Walsh hadn’t won a race since March. Trainer Richard Valentine last found Saratoga success in 2005. Their horse, Demonstrative, lost his most recent start by 30 lengths.
