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Plains, trains and automobiles. Actually, just automobiles, from Keeneland yesterday to Camden today. Kicked tires at Keeneland, looking at horses too used or too expensive for our program. Watching the dispersal of the Conquest Stable horses, it was more like a yard sale than an estate sale, strange to see people jump in and jump … Read more
My father kept walking out of the kitchen with another plate. It was 1984, I was 14, in between winning pony races at Far Hills and Pennsylvania Hunt Cup, just a kid, desperate for a place, enthralled by the sport, engulfed by the thought of becoming a jockey.
“You’ve never been here?”
It happened – oh, I don’t know – a half-dozen times this morning. And, no, I’ve never been to Santa Anita Park, host of the 2016 Breeders’ Cup World Championships, until today. What a place. It’s a classic American racetrack, one I’d somehow never been to in my 51 years on Earth.
They say you always remember your first.
Your first Breeders’ Cup, that is.
What was your first?
Keeneland’s fall meet has come and gone. Box fans, rubber matts, webbings and brush boxes line each corner of the stable area this morning. Crossing guards fiddle with their phones, there are few horses coming and going on a sleepy Sunday morning. Larry Jones, still hard at it, rides one home. The track kitchen’s lights … Read more
Road trip. Off to Kentucky to watch Motivational run at Keeneland. We’ve never won a race at Keeneland, a couple of seconds and third (as a jockey and an owner), perhaps, Friday is the day. Miles is putting his finishing touches on his Halloween costume, Marquis de Lafayette. He could have been anybody or anything … Read more
The early 1990s were heady times for American steeplechasing, and Dr. John K. Griggs was right in the middle of it with a chestnut flash named Warm Spell. The Kentucky-bred son of Northern Baby challenged the bigger names from the barns of Jonathan Sheppard, Janet Elliot, Bruce Miller and company – and frequently beat them.
You need the win. You always need the win. Every horse, every race, you need the win. Whether it’s for the owner, the trainer, the jockey or the job, when you participate in Thoroughbred racing, you need the win. It’s your team, your decisions, the wins can be culmination, reclamation, affirmation or salvation – sometimes all four.
Leave it to my great friend, running buddy and former Lexington assistant fire chief Rick Jordan to get philosophical on the roughly 75-mile drive from Lexington to Clermont, Kentucky, last Friday.
My dad’s first big horse Owhata Chief, winning the Samuel K. Martin in 1979. We called it Essex, it was a good meet, but far from the best meet. That would change.
