For Love of the Horse - by Morton Cathro

Blood-Horse Staff — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:26:00 GMT

Racehorse grooms, once judged in a USA Today readers’ poll as holding “The Worst Job in All of Sports,” are emerging from the shadow of obscurity into the sunlight of long-overdue recognition.

This is evidenced by the highly successful “Groom Elite” training program, outlined in The Blood-Horse (Nov. 24, 2007, page 6786), and by backstretch surveys at Santa Anita and Saratoga.

Additionally, the job of these unsung heroes of the turf is being celebrated in song and story as well.

Despite the dirty work, long hours, spartan living conditions, and modest pay, 78% of the 107 grooms interviewed at the two tracks by the University of Arizona’s Race Track Industry Program declared they sought the job for one simple reason:

They loved horses…

Few, I suspect, loved horses more than stud groom Willie Saunders, of whom a framed photograph hangs in my home. Taken back in 1966, the photo shows this correspondent posing with Saunders—then 80 years old—at Darby Dan Farm. Saunders is holding the lead shank of the hottest stallion in America at the time: Swaps, winner of the 1955 Kentucky Derby, setter of four world records, and sire, among others, of 1963 Derby victor Chateaugay and champion fillies Affectionately and Primonetta.

The photo was snapped by Mary Jane Gallaher, the late Lexington Turf journalist who was my guide that day 42 years ago when I visited Bluegrass breeding farms on my maiden trip to Kentucky.

Recently, a long-lingering curiosity spurred by advancing age prompted me to learn more about Saunders. Phone calls to septuagenarian Kentucky horseman Tom Gentry, and to Shannon Leva at the Kentucky Horse Park, who dug into the Gallaher archives there, yielded a story with a surprising bit of history.

Gentry, who says he was “bred and raised” at Darby Dan back when it was the Idle Hour Farm of legendary Col. E.R. Bradley, remembered Saunders as a “take-charge guy who was extremely proud of his job.” When important visitors came, recalled Gentry, “Saunders didn’t care who you were; he’d warn you to ‘stand out of the way,’ and say things like, ‘Now, none of you lady folks can come near the breeding shed.’ ”

Gallaher’s archived notes reveal a wry sense of humor as well. Asked by visitors what he fed Swaps, Saunders would recite the menu patiently, then add with a wink, “He eats like a horse!”

Saunders had gone to work at Idle Hour in 1924, and had five important reasons to be proud of his job. In addition to Swaps, his charges had included Bradley’s famous “Four Bs”—Behave Yourself, Bubbling Over, Burgoo King, and Broker’s Tip—Derby winners all.

Five Kentucky Derby winners in one lifetime? Even a groom in the heyday of Calumet Farm would have had difficulty matching that record.

Thus does Willie Saunders get my vote to be enshrined in a mythical Grooms’ Hall of Fame. There, he would join Will Harbut, Eddie Sweat, and untold numbers of other largely unheralded African-American farm and stable help who throughout racing history have devoted their lives to the welfare of the Thoroughbred.

Sweat, groom of Secretariat, is featured in the recent book The Horse God Built: The Untold Story of Secretariat, the World’s Greatest Racehorse by Lawrence Scanlan, which details Sweat’s close bond with “Big Red.” Harbut, groom of the other “Big Red,” Man o’ War, is remembered for his oft-quoted “mostest hoss” appraisal of America’s legendary champion. (The pair were so inseparable that when Man o’ War died in 1947, just one month after Harbut’s death, it was said the horse had succumbed to a broken heart.)

Harbut lives on in a melancholy ballad that, once heard, lingers hauntingly in the mind. In “The Ghost of Will Harbut,” by award-winning Lexington singer-songwriter Kiya Heartwood (www.wishingchair.com), the “ghost” laments:

“They’re selling the Bluegrass…the fences are black…the old days are gone…and they ain’t coming back.”

Gentry, too, remembers the old days. Not only were Idle Hour’s fences white, he said, “they got fresh paint three times a year.”

White fences or black, on farm or on track, the old days may be gone, but racing’s ever-faithful grooms inspire us still. As John Phillips, managing partner at today’s Darby Dan, told me, “They reflect the soul of the horse business far better than most.”

Morton Cathro, a resident of Moraga, Calif., is a retired award-winning newspaperman and lifelong follower of racing.

Farewell to the Meadows - by Morton Cathro

Blood-Horse Staff — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:53:00 GMT

"Memory draws from delight, ere it dies, an essence that breathes of it many a year…" — Irish bard Thomas Moore, 1779-1852

Bay Meadows, California’s pioneering racetrack, has been this aging fan’s delight for nearly my entire lifetime. Now, barring an unlikely last-minute reprieve, it is marching inexorably toward May 11, the final day of its final meeting.

Doomed by commercial real estate developers, the “track that Bill built” 74 years ago along the El Camino Real in San Mateo is to be demolished by the wrecking ball, thereby bruising the psyches of generations of faithful fans and splitting Northern California’s future racing dates into small bits and pieces.

A son of poor Irish immigrants, “Bill” was William P. Kyne of San Francisco, who abandoned plans for the priesthood to lead the 1933 campaign legalizing racing in California after its long absence. The “yes” votes on the statewide ballot hardly had been totaled before Kyne, the flamboyant trailblazer, was breaking ground at an abandoned airfield along the El Camino Real—“The King’s Highway” or “Royal Road” trod by those earlier trailblazers, the mission-building Franciscan padres.

“The Meadows” opened Nov. 3, 1934—eight weeks ahead of Santa Anita’s first meeting, many months ahead of Del Mar’s and Hollywood Park’s, and seven years before Golden Gate’s. Innovations introduced by Kyne included the enclosed stall, electric starting gate designed by Clay Puett and financed by Kyne, the electronic totalizator board, the photo-finish camera, the jockeys’ hot box, and transportation of racehorses by air.

Following are some of this fan’s memories of Bay Meadows over seven decades:
Most Historic Moment: May 21, 1939, watching Specify win the Bay Meadows Handicap on my first-ever day at a racetrack. (Specify later was to defeat Seabiscuit, who had won the race in ’37 and again in ’38.)
Most Thrilling Moment: Cashing two $2 win tickets following the three-horse blanket finish of the Thornton Stakes Nov. 11, 1939. The Thornton, a four-mile marathon, was the defining moment in a series of marathons created by Kyne, and took 7:17 3⁄5 heart-pounding minutes to negotiate. At 7-2, Anhelation came from 40 lengths back to catch two others at the wire, with legendary 12-year-old Malicious a close-up fourth. Wow!
Most Embarrassing Moment (in retrospect): Watching Cigar, a son of Palace Music and grandson of The Minstrel, finish third in a turf stakes Sept. 25, 1993, and grousing to my companions, “If he can’t win with a turf pedigree like that, he’s not going to amount to much.” True, Cigar didn’t amount to much for another year while his connections kept him on grass. In the autumn of ’94, however, Cigar switched to dirt and the result (16 straight victories) made horse racing history.
Most Festive Moment: Attending Ascot Day Oct. 23, 1983, decked out as a proper English gentleman in rented morning coat, gray-striped trousers and top hat, and with my fair lady on my arm. When guests so attired alighted from horse-drawn carriages at the finish line, they were introduced over the track’s p.a. system and escorted to an infield picnic. Almost lost amid the festivities was the American record of 1:382⁄5 for 11⁄16 miles, set that afternoon by Hoedown’s Day.
Most Poignant Moment: Grasping the hand of globetrotting English riding champion Lester Piggott when he competed in the annual International Jockey Competition in the ’80s. I thanked him for earlier making an unscheduled stop in New Zealand to ride my cousin’s horse in the Air New Zealand Stakes (NZ-I). Cousin Peter Cathro trained Arbre Chene, a miler, but never lived to see Piggott nurse the gelding to victory over the classic distance of 11⁄4 miles. Just days before the race, Peter had been killed in a freak stable accident.
Highest and Lowest Moments: Watching with John and Betty Mabee as their Event of the Year, an undefeated son of Seattle Slew, wins the 1998 El Camino Real Derby (gr. III) to become the favorite for the Kentucky Derby (gr. I). Eight days before the Run for the Roses, the colt is hurt in his final Derby workout.

❖❖❖

Such is the essence of one fan’s delights and disappointments along The King’s Highway. As Britons proclaim when a monarch dies and a successor mounts the throne, “The King is dead! Long live the King!”

Sadly, Kyne the kingpin is dead, his track is dying, and no successor travels the once Royal Road.

Born and reared in Northern California, MORTON CATHRO is an award-winning newspaperman, now retired.

Final Turn : morton cathro

For Love of the Horse - by Morton Cathro

Farewell to the Meadows - by Morton Cathro