When a man is thoroughly enmeshed in the horse business picking out apt colors for his enterprise, choosing suitable stallions to breed to his precious mares and watching his prize two-year-old put up brilliant fractions in his morning works, he knows the day will come when all this tomfoolery must be paid for. That can happen in a few different ways; he can sell the weanlings, yearlings or two-year-olds his mares produce either privately or at a thoroughbred auction, of which there are several; he can sell the mare in-foal to an appealing stallion; he can race the produce of his mares and hope for the best. The latter choice is like jumping off the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and hoping the bungee will hold. Nonetheless, people of abnormal dispositions sometimes choose to do it. We were some of those people.
First, Harolyn and I, in tow with Shelley Browning, went to an Ocala Breeders Sale to find a mare. We got a beauty named Bonquill for $16,000, a bargain but still a scary amount to spend in the early 1970s. We bought some life insurance before we even left the building. Bonquill’s first foal, owned by a Canadian lifer, broke her maiden two weeks later and earned black type the next year by winning the Shirley Jones Stakes at Gulfstream and placing in the biggest three-year-old filly race in Canada, octupling Bonquill’s value. A sensible person would sell the mare immediately, take the money and run, but who do we know who’s sensible? Probably Harolyn, but I talked her out of it. We would raise the mare’s next foal, win giant victories and drink champagne until the early hours of the morning, I assured her. What is it that they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men?
A Star Is Born (we hope).
One of the least fun jobs involving thoroughbred horses is waiting for the foals to arrive. The average gestation period for a thoroughbred mare is 340 days, roughly 11 months, but the foals can come a couple of weeks early or as much as a month late, always under the cover of darkness. And all this time, you—or somebody you trust very much—is awake, watching them and waiting for signs of impending birth. You sleep nervously if at all in a shedrow or the back seat of your car, your alarm set no more than an hour ahead, jumping awake suddenly, sure you missed the alarm and maybe the arrival of a needy baby. After several nights of this, you are a basket case, stumbling through the night, drinking coffee from a giant urn like a cop on stakeout. You check the mare’s teats endlessly, waiting for the slightest sign of the hallowed white milk which signals that delivery is near. You don’t shave, you transmogrify into a colossal grouch, no one will talk to you, but you soldier on through bad dreams and wakeful moments when you hear demonic screams in the country night and see Spanish galleons through the pre-dawn haze.
Then, suddenly, the moment arrives, hopefully legs first. You pull the critter loose, check the sex, cut the cord, clean the baby off and wait for the mare’s placenta to fall, then hang around to help the wobbly foal stand when ready. You immediately forgive every conformational flaw, assuring yourself nature will soon straighten everything out. You smile at this new and exciting creature, you walk around it assessing. You are suddenly the nicest guy in the world. You call your best friends at four o’clock in the morning to deliver the good news. You tell them all this is much better fun than bowling. You sleep the sleep of the dead.
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| Arlington Park in days of yore. |
The Ecstasy And The Agony
Our first foal, born April 26, 1975, was a chestnut & chrome colt named Star Spectre. His sire was Star Envoy, a stakes winner of over $300,000 who could run all day. We sent him to trainer Bobby Dubois in Miami late in his two-year-old year and he took to the track well. His pedigree being what it was—all distance—the intention was to move him up to a mile race in his second start. Dubois wanted to run him once in a six furlong sprint as a prep race, even though there was little chance of hitting the board at Hialeah, which was full of good horses from the north wintering in Florida. Being a rube rookie, I thought the colt was working well enough to get a piece of the pie. Mi amigo Michael O’Hara Garcia, who was always amused at my odd interests, traveled with me to Miami for the shenanigans.
The gates opened and the sprinters flew, Star Spectre in the rear third of a large field. The pace was fast but he moved up well on the turn, made up ground and finished fifth, beaten about four lengths in a maiden allowance race. I was crushed, Garcia thought it was great and Bobby Dubois, no optimist, was so impressed he nominated the horse to the Florida Derby. “You don’t realize the quality of the field,” he said. “Most of these horses are top pedigree colts owned by wealthy farms. Our horse beat half of them and he was just getting started.” I understood a little better when Dubois took the horse with him to Arlington Park outside Chicago and he was the morning line favorite despite being fifth in his only start. Star Spectre ran second that day at a mile and was primed for a win at the same distance next time out.
It was a rainy day in Illinois for the eventual run to glory. I convinced Harolyn, less an optimist than I, to make the trip and we watched the track puddle up from our hotel windows high above Arlington. “Hope he likes the going,” she said, wistfully. Some do, some don’t, others excel on an off track. Star Spectre’s groom wrapped his tail to keep the mud out, Dubois gave fabled Hall of Fame rider Eddie Delahoussaye a leg up and we paraded to our seats in a downpour, barely able to see the far side of the track with good binoculars.
The storm let up just before the horses went into the gate. Star Spectre broke well and sat in the first flight of horses down the backstretch. Delahoussaye, with the patience of Job, put him in good position for the turn and he eased to the lead inside the eighth-pole, winning comfortably just as the sun came out. Harolyn, who knew how hard it was to win any race, was astonished and rushed back to the hotel to phone everyone in her address book. Bobby D. beamed the smile of the victorious and it broadened when Eddie told him the horse had a ton of talent. Inside my vibrating brain, the Ode to Joy was playing on eternal loop. Some days are stones, some days are diamonds.
The ultimate stony day came next time out for Star Spectre. Back in Miami and ready to show his stuff, The Great Chestnut Hope bowed a tendon and was finished as a major talent. Now and then, a bowed horse comes back after a year or so off and can still compete at the same level, but it’s rare. Thunderstruck, we drove over to what is now called South Beach and silently sat on the sand, looking sadly at the ocean. Surely, we’d get another chance some day, who gets lucky first time out? We thought about all the time and good fortune it took to get a mare in foal, wait for the baby to grow to racing age, then hope he was any good. Harolyn looked at me, eyes blank, couched in disappointment, realizing the distance of the road ahead. “It’s a long way to Tipperary,” she said. A long way to go.
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| Keeneland September Yearling Sale |
That’s All The Songs For Awhile
After ten years of marriage, some good, some aggravating, Harolyn and I split up in 1980. She took the dog and I kept her kid, Danny, until he finished high school two years later. Naturally, she deserved some form of remuneration for putting up with me for ten years so we worked out a deal, We would split up our six horses and I would buy her a five-acre farm in Citra. Since five-acre farms in Citra weren’t going all that cheap, I devised a plan to come up with the money; I would go to the famous Keeneland September yearling sale in Lexington and buy half a dozen yearlings. Harolyn would train them at cost and I’d put them in various two-year-olds-in-training sales, sell them and---voila!---earn enough to set her up in business. I told my friends how I intended to solve the problem. It always amazes me how skeptics abound in these situations.
Worked like a charm, though. I picked out a half dozen prospects with the aid of Kentucky horseman Bill Mauk*, one tough evaluator of horseflesh. “I love the pedigree on this one, B.M., what do you think?” Too offset, won’t make it. “What about this big beauty over here?” Ankles too round, don’t like round ankles. If I found a great pedigree, Mauk found a ding in the conformation. If he found a perfect specimen, the parents were rats. Finally, after three days of haranguing, we agreed on six candidates and bid enough to get them. Total outlay: $40,000. Mike Garcia almost fainted when I told him. “Killeen,” he commented, “you need a life coach.”
Back at the farm, Harolyn did a bangup job of training the group. Simultaneously, many of the pedigrees improved dramatically with the success of older siblings on the track and two of our half-dozen were even accepted into select sales, where they did amazingly well. After sales commissions, Bill Mauk’s well-earned fee and training expenses were paid, I sold four of the six two-year-olds and netted $90,000, just ten grand short of the cost of the Citra farm. With this booming success, I felt like a minor genius, skilled in the ways of horse selection. The next year, I went back to Kentucky and doubled my pleasure, doubled my fun, buying twelve exotic yearlings. Let’s just say that bad luck often follows good---the pitchers didn’t pitch, the hitters didn’t hit and there was no joy in Mudville when that ball game was over. Hey, it’s okay. I took Philosophy 101 in college, I know how life works.
That’s all, folks….
*In the FLYING PIE edition of October 30, 2014, there is an expansive article replete with great photos of Lexington, Kentucky called “The Land That Time Forgot.” In it, there is an account of a visit with consummate local horseman Bill Mauk. If you like todays PIE, you’ll like that one. Just hit the blog archive to the right under the logo.
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| The irrepressible Bill Mauk |
