Editor’s Note: A native of England, Iain Holmes started working with racehorses at age 11. He holds a bachelor's degree in business from the University of Buckingham, and he undertook post-graduate studies at Harvard, where he also played on their polo team. He worked for trainer Michael Matz before going out on his own to found the Iain Holmes Racing Partnership.
I was recently on a business trip down to Fair Hill to meet Bruce Jackson in regards to sending horses to him next year. When The Blood-Horse heard about my trip, I was asked to write a blog entry about Nicanor, since I am a former employee of the Matz barn.
Lacking in journalistic talent, I arrived early and took copious notes. Afterward, I spent the better part of a day mulling over ideas on what to write. Having tried to start the piece multiple times, I couldn’t decide if I was suffering from writer’s block, or if I was struggling to find an interesting aspect to write about, as Nicanor seems remarkably normal.
He doesn’t get extra mints from Michael, or any more attention than Ready Set, another Lael horse. His routine is not unique; he does everything exactly the same as every other horse in the Michael’s barn (and as thousands of horses across the United States do every day). He jogs to the right and then gallops to the left.
He does not get bottled water, and I even checked his shoes, and they were not made out of gold. Please don’t get me wrong--he is a strapping colt and exudes class and confidence, but at Michael’s barn you could say the same about numerous horses.
So here I was, a green journalist, being asked to write about a racehorse who rivals an Equicizer horse (www.equicizer.com) for experience on the track and by all accounts leads an incredibly normal life.
After twirling my pencil for the better part of an hour, I put the pieces together as to why Nicanor is special. His brother introduced thousands of horse lovers to the wonderful sport of horseracing. There is little debate that the largest growth in racing fans is from horse lovers – some took riding lessons, some have owned and/or still own horses, but all of them smile at seeing a horse in a field or on TV.
These people not only are digging into their pockets to add TVG to their cable package, but they are also raising substantial sums of money in order to re-home and retrain racehorses (or really any horse that comes their way that needs help). They have also joined our unified front, working to make racing as safe for our horses as possible, and I would like to be the first to say “welcome.”
People want Nicanor to win the Triple Crown so he can finish what Barbaro started but was unable to do. However, there is an even more important role for him, one he started long ago. While Barbaro attracted these horse lovers to our sport, Nicanor is here to educate them about it.
As he grows, their knowledge will too, and while his triumph at the track is cause for celebration for his people, his presence at the track is celebration for the sport. We will soon have more fans that are educated horse-lovers, and what could be better than that?
So each day Nicanor is standing on normal racing plates, drinking water that came out of the hose, and just being a normal horse, he is also helping to teach our new fans – many of whom have already dedicated so much time, money, and effort in helping the horses we love – about our sport. They are learning what goes into training a racehorse and about the care they receive.
That sounds like a pretty special horse to me, and as success greets him at the track, he will only get more special.
Stay tuned for part two, which will look at what goes on during this stage of Nicanor's training.
