Fan Appreciation - by Susan Hayden Kennedy

Blood-Horse Staff — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:04:00 GMT

(Originally published in the April 18, 2009 issue of The Blood-Horse magazine. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions at the bottom of the column.)

Not too many years ago racing had one less fan. She was a “sometimer,” one of the many who watch the Derby, the Preakness, maybe the Belmont Stakes (all gr. I) if it appears a horse might duplicate the feat of Secretariat, Seattle Slew, and Affirmed. This casual observer loved the beauty and grace of the horse but knew nothing of stakes, furlongs, stud farms, or Bluegrass.

One weekend she met her father for a visit at a halfway point, and Keeneland seemed a pastoral backdrop for their reunion. They watched a couple races, then wandered among the barns where she could caress a few muzzles and murmur sweet nothings into pricked, fuzzy ears.

During one such encounter, they were approached by a man in jeans and a cowboy hat who introduced them properly to Flaming Dixie, introduced himself, then went about his business of pulling one of Dixie’s teeth. The woman was worried: Would it hurt? Couldn’t he give her some novocaine?

They walked farther along. Once again they were approached by the man in the cowboy hat, this time holding out his curled fingers, inviting her to open her palm. Upon it he laid the newly pulled baby tooth. The woman didn’t wince or complain.

Right then, she became a fan.

Folks in racing lament that the sport isn’t attracting new fans, wonder why it isn’t, and press for slot machines and casino-like atmospheres at America’s racetracks to improve the lure of the game. But the allure of the sport is not in the gambling on it, but in the personalities in it.

We all remember those childhood friends who went in together on a horse, rented a big yellow school bus to take them to the Derby because that’s all they could afford, and watched in amazement as Funny Cide romped under the wire first.

The following year Smarty Jones earned the appellation the “People’s Horse.” America was crazy for him. Why? Because we learned he had survived a life-threatening skull fracture sustained in a gate-schooling accident. Because we chuckled that he was named for his owner’s mother who had been known as “Smarty” in her childhood due to her smart aleck tendencies. Because we learned of his jockey Stewart Elliott’s struggle with alcohol and admired his hard-fought sobriety.

The next year, America latched on to Afleet Alex after he lost the Derby and had no hope of becoming a Triple Crown winner.

So why? Because a little girl named Alexandra Scott battled her cancer by selling lemonade at her front-yard stand, giving the money to her doctors to help find a cure for other children. Afleet Alex’s owners donated a portion of their winnings to Alex’s Lemonade Stand.

America cheers for the personalities.

It appears Animal Planet gets this. Its current series Jockeys shadows seven riders during last fall’s Oak Tree meet at Santa Anita. The show’s tag line is “Get to know the jockeys who risk it all for the love of horse racing.” Introducing potential fans to the game’s players, allowing watchers to get to know them and form attachments to them, creates an interest and a bond that will continue beyond the series.

Racing must promote its personalities: in short features and talk shows on television; in articles in non-trade magazines; through more documentaries like “The First Saturday in May;” with fan appreciation festivals featuring jockeys, trainers, and horses; even personal appearances at coffeehouses, sporting goods stores, or fairs. The more exposure the sport gets, the more opportunities the sport has of attracting new fans to its personalities, which ultimately results in higher attendance at racetracks, more wagering, and more interest in what it takes to become a racehorse owner or breeder. Racing needs people to feel a connection with the sport.

The woman who met Flaming Dixie and Larry Jones in the shedrow at Keeneland went on to follow the campaigns of Jones’ Hard Spun, Proud Spell, and Eight Belles. She tracks Flaming Dixie’s half-siblings Grasshopper and Turf War, racing with Neil Howard and Mark Casse, respectively. She has made some money (and lost some money) on wagers. She has traveled to Keeneland, Lone Star Park, Santa Anita, and Fair Grounds. She subscribes to an industry trade publication and volunteers her time with a retired racehorse organization. She thinks horse racing is awesome, all because of a couple personalities.

Racing enthusiast Susan Hayden Kennedy is an English teacher in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Sad Cide by Terese Karmel

Blood-Horse Staff — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:32:00 GMT

When I think back on that early May morning phone conversation five years ago, I am still surprised I got through so easily. At the time, I was writing a weekly column for a small Connecticut newspaper. But it was May—the time for rebirth and hope. And an unheralded New York-bred gelding, whose co-owner lived in my state, was giving hope for the possibility of a Triple Crown.

“I’ve got a business to run,” Dave Mahan told me when I expressed surprise that he answered the phone. His voice was hoarse from cheering Funny Cide to a 9 3⁄4-length victory two days earlier in the Preakness (gr. I). Now he had a few weeks’ breathing room to get back to the stuffed mushrooms and prime rib he served up regularly at the weddings he hosted at his banquet facility, Mahan’s Lakeview, in the western hills of Connecticut. His own celebration was on hold.

Mahan, a tall, robust fellow whose healthy head of red hair belied his age, died Jan. 15 at 61 after fighting brain cancer for years. He was the second of Funny Cide’s principal owners to pass away since the horse captivated a nation in 2003. In April 2007, Gus Williams, the flamboyant man-child who came to the races in a plaid jacket and yellow pants, died at 81, leaving Jack Knowlton as the remaining owner of the original Sackatoga triumvirate.

I was even more surprised when Mahan invited me to his facility that afternoon for an interview. It was hard to reach—the country roads were narrow and the hairpin turns had to be carefully negotiated. But finally, after about two hours, Mahan’s 20-acre lush green spread unfolded before me, the curving configuration of wide walkways reminiscent of a racetrack. His airy headquarters at the rear of one of the function buildings put me in mind of a trainer’s office, with more pictures of racehorses than anything connected to weddings. Mahan got into the catering business in the early 1990s when he answered “why not” to his father’s suggestion that he buy a similar facility in a nearby town. One August afternoon a few years later, when he and Williams were partying and betting horses at the Carousel Bar at Saratoga, he said “why not” again when Knowlton asked him if he wanted to be part of a new stable. The stable had modest success, but a $62,000 sale of a hard-knocking mare, appropriately named Bail Money, bailed Sackatoga out and supplied enough cash for them to spend $75,000 to buy Funny Cide.

“See that?” Mahan said to me as he pointed to a fieldstone wall that runs across the front of his property. “Funny built that wall. See that?” His hand swept across his land to a garden. “Funny built that.”

Back in Mahan’s office, the phone was going nuts as people he knew and some he didn’t hit him up for tickets to the Belmont Stakes (gr. I).
His family and the rest of the Sackatoga bunch would pull their yellow school bus into a parking lot of Rolls-Royces and Cadillacs (a Mahan idea: he was in charge of the social stuff, of course) and settle in for an afternoon of joy—regardless of the outcome.

Because Saturday is the busiest day in the wedding business, Mahan’s staff was never able to attend the races. They were too busy making sure the real celebrations went off without a hitch for the crowds of well-dressed guests oblivious to the bigger shows on stages in Louisville, Ky., Baltimore, Md., and Elmont, N.Y. When they could, cooks and waiters snuck peeks at a television set tucked away in Mahan’s office.

But history was not to be made June 7, 2003, as Funny Cide finished third, five lengths behind Empire Maker on a sloppy track. That summer the three principals were back at their usual spots at the Carousel Bar. Knowlton bought me a glass of Funny Cide beer, and my car still bore its Funny Cide bumper sticker.

Hopefully, as I write this, the caterer who was not afraid to take chances is in greener pastures. We know Funny Cide is, having entered the Hall of Champions at the Kentucky Horse Park in December to live out his life among adoring fans.

At Mahan’s Lakeview, the nuptials will continue being celebrated, but, I suspect, they won’t have the fervor of the post-Belmont Stakes party when 300 friends and family gathered at a hotel near JFK Airport and partied as if they had just won the Triple Crown.

Dave Mahan set up the buffet.

Terese Karmel is a Connecticut journalist and college professor

Final Turn : funny cide

Fan Appreciation - by Susan Hayden Kennedy

Sad Cide by Terese Karmel