Claude ʻʻShugʼʼ McGaughey III, the legendary trainer of champions
/![Claude 'Shug' McGaughey IIIBy Bill Heller Sustained excellence is a rare commodity in any endeavor, even more so in Thoroughbred racing when success is tied to 1,000-pound horses traveling 35 miles per hour, guided by jockeys making rapid strategic decisions one after another. “For every good thing that happens, 20 bad things happen,” Hall of Fame trainer Frank Whiteley advised his young assistant, Shug McGaughey, decades ago. McGaughey didn’t listen, made it into the Hall of Fame, and continues to succeed. He recently turned 70, and his horses have earned more than $2 million for 37 straight years, thanks to a win percentage of 21 at the highest level of racing. GREATEST HONOURHe won one Kentucky Derby with Orb in 2013—the best victory of all for a Lexington native. And he hoped to do it again this year with Courtlandt Farm’s Greatest Honour, who fired off consecutive victories in the Holy Bull Stakes and the Fountain of Youth Stakes before finishing third in the Florida Derby as the 4-5 favorite. Doing the right thing for your horse is easier when he’s doing well but much more difficult when he isn’t. McGaughey noticed something wrong with Greatest Honour and acted accordingly. “I wasn’t pleased with the way he galloped Saturday and Sunday,” Reported Shug on Thursday, April 8. “I said on Monday, `We have to get to the bottom of this.’” That meant X-rays, a bone scan and consulting with Dr. Larry Bramlage, who has always been close to Shug’s heart. Bramlage’s successful surgery on Personal Ensign when she suffered a broken pastern as a two-year-old allowed her to come back at three to resume her historic, unblemished career, culminating with her victory in the 1988 Breeders’ Cup Distaff.McGaughey said Greatest Honour had a minor problem in his ankle which wouldn’t require surgery. On Wednesday, April 7, just 24 days before the Kentucky Derby, McGaughey announced that Greatest Honour would get 30 days off at Courtlandt Farms and then be re-evaluated, hopefully in time for him to race in the midsummer Derby— the Travers at Saratoga. “We just need to give him a little time. I feel bad for Don Adam [the owner of Courtlandt Farms] and for the horse.”McGaughey had to make that difficult phone call to Adam to tell him the bad news. “It’s not easy, but I’ve made that call a lot of times,” As Shug put it. “It’s part of the game.”Greatest Honour would have been one of the top contenders in the Triple Crown series. By doing the right thing, McGaughey is allowing Greatest Honour to reach his potential, no matter how much McGaughey wanted to win another 3yo classic race. The challenge of getting Greatest Honour back to the winner’s circle is one McGaughey has enjoyed his whole career. “I enjoy the horses, the competition, the clients; I don’t enjoy the politics in racing today. It makes it hard to keep focused on training: the visas, the cost of workman’s comp, knowing how far out you can give horses medication. Certain states have certain rules. Other states are different. I will be happy when we get some kind of uniformity.” Thanks to the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, that is about to happen. “I think the Horseracing Integrity Act is a good thing; it’s definitely a good thing. We weren’t going to do it ourselves. We tried policing ourselves, and it didn’t work.” What has worked for McGaughey is letting his horses earn their way into major stakes by their performances. Greatest Honour would have been only McGaughey’s ninth starter in the Kentucky Derby. “He doesn’t put a horse in a race just to have a horse in a race,” his 34-year-old son Chip, an administrator at Keeneland, said. “He wakes up every morning and goes to sleep every night thinking about his horses. He wakes up in the middle of the night thinking about his horses. He has dedication to getting everything he can out of his horses by developing them. His training philosophy has always been doing what’s best for his horses. He’s always had that. He is a very patient trainer, allowing a horse to tell him what the next step is.” LET THE HORSES TALKMcGaughey said, “I think the biggest thing is you have to watch them and let them tell you what’s going on. I try not to wake them up too soon. I like to see them go well within themselves. I tell the exercise riders not to get them tired when they work them. I don’t want to overdo it. I want to teach them how to run, breeze them up in company, breeze them behind horses, a half in :50 or :51. They get enough out of the workout.”Reeve, Chip’s 31-year-old brother, who is off to a promising start on his own training career, saw Shug’s approach first-hand, working for his dad after stints with Eion Harty and Reeve’s uncle, Charlie LoPresti: “There are only a handful of guys who have sustained excellence for the duration of his career, he works hard. He’s a very good trainer. Obviously, what’s worked for him has worked for him for a very long time. It helps to get good horses.”It helps even more to get good horses with patient owners. Asked if he enjoys the process of understanding horses as individuals, McGaughey said, “Very much so. That’s the way I sort of centered my career around: try to develop good horses. One of my big breaks was working for Loblolly, and that’s what they wanted. Then I stepped into the Phipps job, and also Stuart Janney. That’s what they were interested in, trying to develop a nice horse that can compete in big races. All the people I train for—that’s what they want: getting a horse to stakes quality.”And winning with them. That’s what great trainers do. Their work ethic is a given. Long hours. An open mind is a decided asset. “I think that you’re still learning; you see something new almost every day. I don’t know if I’m a better trainer, but I understand it more. I think you understand the game better placing horses. I know when I was young, I thought they should win every race. If they didn’t, I thought it was my fault. Now I understand the circumstances of the race. You can get in trouble. You might not be in the right place. You can get stopped.”McGaughey hasn’t stopped attacking his profession. “That son of a gun is like the Energizer bunny,” Shug’s wife Allison said. “He works his butt off. He lives, eats and sleeps those horses. I’m younger than him, and I don’t know how he does it. He gets up at 4:30ish, leaves the house around 5, 5:15. Works at the barn til 11. Maybe plays a little golf, showers and goes back to the barn. He wants to be at the barn all day, run them and go back to the barn. It’s like a constant, non-stop. Won’t go out to dinner if there’s a horse to cool out or he’s waiting for a shipper to arrive. I say, `Why don’t you take it easy?’ ‘No.’ Why don’t you take a nap?’ ‘No.’ Why don’t you take a vacation?’ ‘No.’ But we enjoy it.”She enjoys the races a bit differently than Shug. “I get very excited; I like to yell. And his thing is, he takes them over there. He wants them to run well. If they don’t, he wants to work it out. If he runs well, he’s already thinking what the next start is. I’m more in the moment.” LOOKING BACKMcGaughey’s happiest moments include Personal Ensign’s last-gasp nose victory under Hall of Famer Randy Romero in the 1988 Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Churchill Downs to retire undefeated—a race chosen by fans in 2009 as the most exciting Breeders’ Cup race in its first 25 years. “I thought she was hopelessly beaten,” said McGaughey. Instead, she won, retiring as the first major undefeated horse with at least 10 starts since Colin, who retired with a 15-for-15 mark in 1908. No horse has done it since Personal Ensign, so it’s now 113 years. McGaughey’s saddest moment came 18 years later, in the same race—the 2006 Breeders’ Cup Distaff, at the same track—Churchill Downs. McGaughey’s three-year-old filly Pine Island, who had won the Gr1 Alabama and Gazelle Stakes, suffered a fatal injury early in the race. “This was the worst; it’s bad when it happens at Aqueduct. It’s not that easy to say, but I’ve always tried not to let myself get too close to them because I know this is something that can happen. They can be here today and gone tomorrow. When the newspaper arrived, I told them to put it in the trash. I didn’t want to see the pictures.”There were many more happy pictures than sad as McGaughey churned out one talented Thoroughbred after another. Shug’s nine victories in the Breeders’ Cup are topped only by D. Wayne Lukas and Bob Baffert. Fourteen of McGaughey’s horses earned more than $1.5 million. Eight of those topped $2 million. Their common denominator was treating out-of-money finishes as if they were the plague. Personal Ensign’s 13-for-13 set the bar impossibly high, but McGaughey’s Easy Goer, Inside Information, and Heavenly Prize, never finished worse than third. Inside Information was 14-for-17 with one second and a pair of thirds. Heavenly Prize, whose losses included a lopsided one to Inside Information in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, was nine-for-18 with six seconds and three thirds. Easy Goer was 14-for-20 with five seconds and one third, and earnings of $4,873,770, over $2 million more than any of McGaughey’s horses.THE EARLY YEARSBut McGaughey’s life could have been much different. His family was in the laundry and dry cleaning business in Lexington. McGaughey was 12 or 13 when his dad took him to Keeneland. Soon, McGaughey and his buddies were sneaking into Keeneland. “I’d pick up the Daily Racing Form from the people who had taken out just the Keeneland PPs and bring the rest of it home. I’d read the articles and maybe look at the horses that were running at Arlington.”McGaughey got a job with trainer David Carr, a brother-in-law of one of his friends. “I became enthralled with the whole atmosphere. I mean I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed being around the barn. I enjoyed the after hours. When the work was done in the morning, I’d like to hang around. They were teaching me, and I was intrigued. If anything had to be done, I always wanted to be there to watch. I was always looking over the veterinarian’s shoulder. I felt that if I ever had to do it by myself, I wouldn’t want anyone standing over my shoulder and telling me what to do. I wanted to be able to make those decisions by myself.”When he decided to move on, he landed a job with Frank Whiteley in South Carolina. Ignoring Whiteley’s career advice, McGaughey went into training. Judging by his $154 million in career earnings—10th highest of all time and his 20 horses who have won at least one Gr1 stakes—he’s done all right.Catching on with John Ed Anthony’s Loblolly Stable was a huge break for McGaughey, and he made the most of it, guiding Vanlandingham to an Eclipse Award as the 1985 Champion Handicap Horse. He also guaranteed a painful decision by McGaughey: to leave Loblolly and accept an offer to train for the Phipps family. “John Ed Anthony was very, very good to me; I think he was stunned. It was a very, very difficult thing for me to tell him.” THE PHIPPS YEARSHere’s how it happened on October 5, 1985: McGaughey journeyed to Dinny Phipps’ home in Old Westbury, Long Island, to interview that morning to take over as the Phipps family’s trainer. “I was scared to death, but he immediately put me at ease.” The interview went well. “I felt like I was going to get the job,” said McGaughey.That afternoon at Belmont Park, Vanlandingham won the Gr1 Jockey Club Gold Cup by 2 ½ lengths under Pat Day. Dinny, the chairman of the Jockey Club, presented the winning trophy to McGaughey. How’s that for a deal closer? Shug was hired four days later and has been training for the Phipps ever since. “We had a wonderful relationship for years; they not only made my career, they made my life, too.”Dinny passed April 6, 2016, at the age of 75. “I still have eight or nine of their horses in training and some two-year-olds and foals; they’re trying to keep it going.”DEVELOPING A DYNASTYAfter hiring McGaughey, Dinny Phipps explained to his new trainer that the foundation of the racing stable is based around broodmares. And to be good broodmares, they had to perform on the racetrack. Some trainers are better training fillies. In the Phipps operation, you had to be able to train fillies.McGaughey didn’t wait long to address that concern. Twelve days short of a year after he was hired, McGaughey unveiled Personal Ensign, who won her debut by 12 ¾ lengths, then the Gr1 Frizette by a head. She was the personification of McGaughey’s career, coming back from ankle surgery after the Frizette was thought to be career-ending. Instead, she returned, was managed brilliantly by McGaughey and resumed her unforgettable career. She eased back into Gr1 competition and punctuated her perfect career by running down loose-on-the-lead Kentucky Derby winner Winning Colors at Churchill Downs—a track Personal Ensign had never raced on—to finish 13-for-13. “That was going to be her last race,” McGaughey said.But she wasn’t done, producing Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Filly winner My Flag, a daughter of Easy Goer, who got up in the final strides to win the 1995 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Filly. It had to feel like déjà vu—a horrible version of one—for Winning Song’s trainer D. Wayne Lukas, who also trained the two fillies that My Flag ran down seven years later: Cara Rafaela and Golden Attraction. As a three-year-old, My Flag finished third in the Belmont Stakes. She then produced Storm Flag Flying—the 2002 Champion Two-Year-Old Filly whose four-for-four season culminated with a half-length score in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Filly. Three generations of Breeders’ Cup winners over a 14-year period. Patience can pay off. Personal Ensign’s brother Personal Flag won the 1988 Gr1 Suburban and earned more than $1.2 million in his career. McGaughey’s Seeking the Gold posted eight victories, including the 1988 Gr1 Super Derby, and six seconds in 15 career starts, earning more than $2.3 million. In 1989, Easy Goer, the 1988 Two-Year-Old Champion Colt, avenged his losses to his nemesis Sunday Silence in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness by denying him the Triple Crown, winning the Belmont Stakes by eight lengths. Easy Goer added the Whitney Handicap, Travers, Woodward and Jockey Club Gold Cup before losing to Sunday Silence again—this time by a neck in the Breeders’ Cup Classic—a result that cost Easy Goer the Three-Year-Old Colt Championship and Horse of the Year honors. Even with three losses to Sunday Silence, Easy Goer finished his career 14 of 20 with five seconds, one third and earnings of $4,873,770—McGaughey’s top money maker by more than $2 million.Rhythm, the 1989 Two-Year-Old Champion Colt, gave McGaughey consecutive victories in the Travers, winning the 1990 Mid-Summer Derby by 3 ½ lengths before losing his final seven races.McGaughey celebrated another Travers victory in 1998 with Coronado’s Quest, a head case who had tested even McGaughey’s patience, occasionally freezing on the way to the track. Following up on his victory over Belmont Stakes winner Victory Gallop in the Gr1 Haskell at Monmouth, Coronado’s Quest defeated him again in the Travers. Asked if Coronado’s Quest was his most difficult horse to train, McGaughey answered, “For a star horse, yes. It just took us a while to understand him. The Travers was really special—to win a race like that at Saratoga stretching out to a mile and a quarter. I give Mike Smith a lot of credit for that.” Coronado’s Quest finished 10-for-17 with earnings topping $2 million.On September 15, 1993, at Belmont Park, McGaughey unveiled two incredible two-year-old filly Phipps’ home-breds an hour apart. Inside Information won her debut by 7 ½ lengths in 1:11 3/5 under Mike Smith in the third race. In the fifth race, also under Mike Smith, Heavenly Prize won by nine lengths in 1:10 4/5.The two fillies’ careers then diverged. Inside Information finished third in an allowance race and didn’t start again as a two-year-old. Heavenly Prize won the Gr1 Frizette by seven lengths but lost the Two-Year-Old Filly Championship when she finished third by three lengths to Phone Chatter in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Filly. As a three-year-old, Heavenly Prize won the Gr1 Alabama by seven lengths, the Gr1 Gazelle by 6 ½ and the Gr1 Beldame by six lengths. Though she lost the Breeders’ Cup Distaff by a neck to One Dreamer, Heavenly Prize won the Three-Year-Old Filly Eclipse. At four, Heavenly Prize won four consecutive Gr1 stakes: the Apple Blossom at Oaklawn Park, the Hempstead at Belmont Park, and the Go for Wand and John A. Morris at Saratoga. In the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, she finished second by 13 ½ lengths to her incredible stable mate Inside Information.Inside Information won 13 of her 15 starts as a three- and four-year-old, the lone misses a distant third to Lakeway in the Gr1 Mother Goose and a non-threatening second to Classy Mirage in the Gr1 Ballerina. Inside Information won the Gr1 Ashland and Acorn Stakes as a three-year-old. At four, she captured the Gr1 Shuvee, the Ruffian by 11 lengths, the Spinster by a head and, in as dominant fashion as a race can be, the final start of her career: the Breeders’ Cup Distaff by 13 ½ lengths. Mike Smith rode Inside Information in 16 of her 17 starts. José Santos was aboard when she won the Shuvee by 5 ½ lengths.Lest McGaughey be classified as a top dirt trainer, two horses 20 years apart proved McGaughey’s prowess with grass horses. The speedy Lure posted 11 victories, including back-to-back victories in the Gr1 Breeders’ Cup Mile in 1992 and 1993. In 18 grass starts, Lure posted 11 victories and six seconds, earning $2,515,289.Twenty years later, the powerful closer Point of Entry—who rallied from 26 lengths behind to win an allowance race by a length and a quarter—captured five Gr1 stakes: the Man o’ War, Sword Dancer, Turf Classic Invitational, the Gulfstream Park Turf Handicap and the Manhattan. In two starts in the Breeders’ Cup Turf, Point of Entry finished second by a half-length to Little Mike in 2012 and fourth by 1 ¾ lengths to Magician in 2013. He made $2,494,490. Then came Orb, who made $2,612,516. “Orb was just a special, special thing—me being from Kentucky—to win the Kentucky Derby for the Phipps[es] and Stuart Janney was special. Going there to Louisville with the favorite for the Derby was a very special week for Allison and myself. We did enjoy it very much.” He expected to enjoy the Preakness, too. “He came out of the Derby very well; he had a good work before we went to Pimlico. But he drew inside when he wanted to be outside. He finished fourth. He was a victim of circumstances. I was disappointed. I would have loved to bring him to Belmont—a special place for me—to have a chance to win the Triple Crown at Belmont. That’s my favorite place to train. I’m comfortable there. There’s nobody else in my barn. It makes it easier. It’s not real busy. And I love a big racetrack.”Honor Code—a gorgeous black closer who was from the last crop of A.P. Indy out of Serena’s Cat by Storm Cat—was McGaughey’s next star. He only raced 11 times but made the most of it with six victories, including two emphatic 2015 Gr1 scores in the Met Mile, when he made an astounding rally to win going away, and the Gr1 Whitney. He finished his career by running third to American Pharoah in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, earning just over $2.5 million. Will Farish’s home-bred Code of Honor stamped himself as a top Kentucky Derby contender by winning the 2019 Gr2 Fountain of Youth. He finished third to Maximum Security in the Gr1 Florida Derby then gave McGaughey quite a thrill in the Kentucky Derby, making a bold move on the inside of Maximum Security as if he’d spurt by him coming out of the far turn. “There was a second and a half it looked like he was going to win,” Shug’s son Reeve said. “Then he lost his momentum.” Still, Code of Honor finished third and was moved up to second when Maximum Security became the first horse ever disqualified from a Kentucky Derby victory.Code of Honor came right back to win the Gr3 Dwyer, the Gr1 Travers and the Gr1 Jockey Club Gold Cup. He then finished seventh to Vino Rosso in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. After a seven-month vacation, Code of Honor returned to win the Gr3 Westchester. It was his last victory to date. He finished third in the Gr1 Met Mile, fourth in the Gr1 Whitney, second in the Gr2 Kelso, second in the Gr1 Clark and, in his last start on January 23, 2021, fifth in the 2021 Pegasus World Cup. LOOKING FORWARDGreatest Honour is poised to join McGaughey’s most accomplished horses when he returns. The son of Tapit is out of Better Than Honour, who has produced two Belmont Stakes winners: Jazil and Rags to Riches. “With his pedigree, the further he goes, the better for him.”Earlier on the Florida Derby card, Allen Stable’s three-year-old filly No Ordinary Time won a maiden race by a neck under Julien Leparoux for Shug. She was shipped to New York to make her next start. Shug might have another top three-year-old. Will Farish’s Bears Watching was mighty impressive, winning a seven-furlong maiden race by 7 ¾ lengths March 13, but he too is being freshened. “I had to stop on him too; he had a little chip in his ankle. He’ll be out for 30 days.”Shug will develop his horses the way he always has—prudently. It’s what made Shug a Hall of Famer. “Of course I’m proud of him, but not all of his accomplishments are in racing,” Allison said. “He’s a great guy—very kind, very understanding. He’s fun. We have a great relationship. We go fishing together. We golf together.” And now, Shug and Allison have a new member in their family. Chip and his wife Jenny have a baby daughter, Lily, who was born on February 2. She is Shug’s first grandchild. “She lives in Lexington, and we’re looking forward to meeting her.” Is Shug ready to be a granddad? “He’s mellowed a little bit,” Reeve said. “He’s still working every day, but he might take off a day or two. He needs to ease back and try to enjoy life a little bit more.” Lily may just make that happen for Shug. She may require patience, but her accomplished grandpa knows all about that.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/517636f8e4b0cb4f8c8697ba/1619185270908-34LKUMNTZJULHFJ5T31Q/_Z9A6617.jpg)
Sustaining Excellence
By Bill Heller
Sustained excellence is a rare commodity in any endeavour, even more so in Thoroughbred racing when success is tied to 1,000-pound horses traveling 35 miles per hour, guided by jockeys making rapid strategic decisions one after another.
“For every good thing that happens, 20 bad things happen,” Hall of Fame trainer Frank Whiteley advised his young assistant, Shug McGaughey, decades ago.
McGaughey didn’t listen, made it into the Hall of Fame, and continues to succeed. He recently turned 70, and his horses have earned more than $2 million for 37 straight years, thanks to a win percentage of 21 at the highest level of racing.
Greatest Honour wins the Holy Bull Stakes, at Gulfstream Park, 2021.
• Greatest Honour
He won one Kentucky Derby with Orb in 2013—the best victory of all for a Lexington native. And he hoped to do it again this year with Courtlandt Farm’s Greatest Honour, who fired off consecutive victories in the Holy Bull Stakes and the Fountain of Youth Stakes before finishing third in the Florida Derby as the 4-5 favorite. Doing the right thing for your horse is easier when he’s doing well but much more difficult when he isn’t. McGaughey noticed something wrong with Greatest Honour and acted accordingly. “I wasn’t pleased with the way he galloped Saturday and Sunday,” Reported Shug on Thursday, April 8. “I said on Monday, ‘We have to get to the bottom of this.’” That meant X-rays, a bone scan and consulting with Dr. Larry Bramlage, who has always been close to Shug’s heart. Bramlage’s successful surgery on Personal Ensign when she suffered a broken pastern as a two-year-old allowed her to come back at three to resume her historic, unblemished career, culminating with her victory in the 1988 Breeders’ Cup Distaff.
McGaughey said Greatest Honour had a minor problem in his ankle which wouldn’t require surgery. So, just over 3 weeks out from the Kentucky Derby, McGaughey announced that Greatest Honour would get 30 days off at Courtlandt Farms and then be re-evaluated, hopefully in time for him to race in the midsummer Derby— the Travers at Saratoga. “We just need to give him a little time. I feel bad for Don Adam (the owner of Courtlandt Farms) and for the horse.” McGaughey had to make that difficult phone call to Adam to tell him the bad news. “It’s not easy, but I’ve made that call a lot of times,” As Shug put it. “It’s part of the game.”
Greatest Honour would have been one of the top contenders in the Triple Crown series. By doing the right thing, McGaughey is allowing Greatest Honour to reach his potential, no matter how much McGaughey wanted to win another 3yo classic race.
Shug with current stable star Greatest Honour.
The challenge of getting Greatest Honour back to the winner’s circle is one McGaughey has enjoyed his whole career. “I enjoy the horses, the competition, the clients; I don’t enjoy the politics in racing today. It makes it hard to keep focused on training: the visas, the cost of workman’s comp, knowing how far out you can give horses medication. Certain states have certain rules. Other states are different. I will be happy when we get some kind of uniformity.”
Thanks to the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, that is about to happen. “I think the Horseracing Integrity Act is a good thing; it’s definitely a good thing. We weren’t going to do it ourselves. We tried policing ourselves, and it didn’t work.” What has worked for McGaughey is letting his horses earn their way into major stakes by their performances. Greatest Honour would have been only McGaughey’s ninth starter in the Kentucky Derby. “He doesn’t put a horse in a race just to have a horse in a race,” his 34-year-old son Chip, an administrator at Keeneland, said.
“He wakes up every morning and goes to sleep every night thinking about his horses. He wakes up in the middle of the night thinking about his horses. He has dedication to getting everything he can out of his horses by developing them. His training philosophy has always been doing what’s best for his horses. He’s always had that. He is a very patient trainer, allowing a horse to tell him what the next step is.”
Shug with Storm Flag Flying, 2002.
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![Is the Casino Band-Aid Falling Off?By Bill HellerThe danger signs are everywhere.Casinos at racetracks were always seen as a band-aid—a temporary fix to horse racing’s massive problem of not doing enough business to survive, let alone prosper.What happens when the band-aid falls off?In Illinois, where horsemen battled for nearly 10 years to finally get casinos approved at its racetracks, Churchill Downs’ decision not to pursue a casino at Arlington Park has left the future of this international-caliber, iconic Chicago racetrack in dire doubt.In Florida, another Churchill Downs’ racetrack—Calder Raceway—which has operated as Gulfstream Park West on a lease agreement with Gulfstream Park, sought and received legislative approval to keep its casino open with jai alai replacing horse racing. This year’s Gulfstream Park West meeting is its last, with horsemen having to remove their horses by April 15. In the interim, horsemen are hopeful that an appeal and two lawsuits will change that reality.The governor in Pennsylvania in February called for revenue from casinos legislatively targeted to racetracks be used instead to offer free college education. And that was before the coronavirus pandemic made every state in America revenue strapped. Pennsylvania horsemen are hoping they’ll be protected under existing legislation.The sky is falling.“Frankly, not everyone is going to survive,” trainer John Servis, a board member of the Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen Association, said. “We all knew this was going to come. We need to be able to stand on our own two feet. We have to stop relying on the casinos.”Can they?The plight of Illinois horsemen is downright depressing. “The thing that strikes me is that Illinois never had the band-aid of the racino,” said Dave McCaffrey, a long-time harness racing trainer who was president of the Illinois Harness Horsemen for eight years and is now the executive director of the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association. “At least Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania had this nice run of 10 or 15 or 20 years of dramatically increased purses and increased racing dates because of casino revenue.”A native of Iowa who went to college in Minnesota and fell in love with Quad City Downs—a harness track in Illinois—chronicled the decade-long battle to get slots approved at racetracks. It began while McCaffrey was the head of harness horsemen. It began with a typical, historic cooperation between the state’s Thoroughbred and harness horsemen. “The harness and Thoroughbred horsemen, typically in the country, do not agree on much,” McCaffrey said.McCaffrey and Thoroughbred trainer Mike Campbell, who was president of the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen Association, had met at the University of Arizona Racing Symposium in 2009. The following year, they decided to work together. “Both breeds were in such dire straits we figured we were stronger together,” McCaffrey said. “What’s good for us is good for you. We hooked up in a great alliance, and in three months we crafted a bill that I think is the best racino deal in the country. It would have produced 15 percent of adjusted gross revenue to purses. In other states, the casino revenue goes from the racetrack to the state to the purses. In Illinois, it would go straight from the track to purses—a huge difference. When other states are strapped, they don’t want to pay that money for purses. In Illinois, they never get their hands on it.”Neither have Illinois horsemen because there are still no racinos at Illinois racetracks a decade later. What went wrong? McCaffrey provided the two-word answer: “Illinois politics.”In various stages, the racino bill was a victim of the city of Chicago wanting its own casino; the governor vetoing the bill; one house passing the bill but the other house declining to do so; a governor who couldn’t get anything through because both houses were of the other party. “They fought like cats and dogs for four years,” McCaffrey said. “The bill didn’t even get to the floor.”Right before the election of a new governor, Jay “J.B.” Pritzker, who supported the gaming bill, in 2018, Churchill Downs, bought a 60 percent interest in the Rivers casino, 13 miles from Arlington. “I remember it being Halloween when that deal was announced,” McCaffrey said. “There was all this optimism that the damn gaming bill might finally be passed in 2019.”Prtizker took office in January 2019. The gaming bill passed both houses and was indeed signed into law on June 27, 2019, authorizing Illinois’ three remaining racetracks: Arlington Park, Fairmount Park and Hawthorne to build racinos. But Churchill Downs didn’t even apply for a racino license. “Churchill Downs decided this gaming bill doesn’t work for them and were not going to apply for the racino license at Arlington despite the fact that they were screaming for the bill to get passed for 10 years,” McCaffrey said.It got worse. The coronavirus pandemic struck this spring, and Arlington’s already reduced meeting of 70 days were slashed to 30 minus Arlington’s signature races including the Arlington Million.On July 31, according to a story in Chicago’s Daily Herald, Churchill Downs Inc. CEO Bill Carstanjen, on a quarterly earnings call with investors, said, “The long-term solution is not Arlington Park. That land will have a higher and better purpose for something else at some point. But we want to work constructively with all of the constituencies in the market to see if there’s an opportunity to move the license or otherwise change the circumstances so that racing can continue to Illinois. For us, we’ve been patient and thoughtful and constructive with the parties up in that jurisdiction, but long term, that land gets sold.”Mike Campbell is buying none of that. “I’ve repeatedly said I’ve had conversations with several gaming companies to buy Arlington Park—three gaming companies and a very wealthy horse owner all made inquiries to Churchill Downs. Churchill Downs said, `Not interested.’ They’re just not interested. Carstanjen said, `a higher use than a racetrack. Who the hell is he to say it’s suited for a better purpose? There are thousands of jobs involved. I think that what’s going to happen at Arlington is that in the middle of the night they’re going to come in and excavate that track in a manner that it can’t be fixed. Just do it and don’t ask questions.”“It’s exasperating,” Campbell said. “I’ve been president of the horsemen for 10 years. I’m all in for my horsemen. I told my board I’ll do everything I can to step in front of the train to slow it down. But money always wins. I’m the first to recognize it.”Phone calls to Churchill Downs, Inc. requesting a comment were not returned.Campbell, who trains a dozen horses, spent the past year on the road. “We traveled a lot,” he said. “I was in Tampa for seven months, then at Colonial. I plan on going to Keeneland, then back to Florida. I don’t want to do that. We’re being driven from our homes. This is very personal to me. I’ve lived 12 miles north of Arlington Park for 25 years. I raised my family there. My two sons are jockeys. They’re driving us from our own homes. We’re going to move. We’re going to sell our house. There are dozens like me. They’re not taking a gaming license? It’s absurd people are letting them get away with it.”According to McCaffrey, Hawthorne will begin building its racino in September. “It will take 12 to 14 months,” he said.Arlington Park could be shuttered by then.In Florida, Calder Raceway, a.k.a. Gulfstream Park West, will become history. “Our lease was up at the end of the year anyway,” said Billy Badgett, Gulfstream Park’s executive director and former trainer of Filly Champion Go for Wand. “They had everything put in motion to get jai alai approved. I don’t know how it got approved.”He certainly understands Churchill Downs’ motivation: “They can run jai alai at a very minimal cost. They don’t have to have horse racing or dog racing. Eventually, everybody is going to do that or try to do that. This is the edge everyone wants to take.”The impact on South Florida horsemen is real. “We’re going to lose 430 stalls,” Badgett said. “We’re building more barns in Palm Meadows (Gulfstream Park’s training center, 20 miles north) so they’ll have a place to go. They let us extend an agreement to keep the barns open until April 15.”Badgett said Gulfstream Park will also “lose some substantial purse money,” but is working to mitigate that loss. “We’re working on some legislative action, including night racing.”Badgett is convinced that racing must address its own future. “I’m a firm believer that racing should be able to stand on its own two feet,” he said. “If you have to rely on your casinos for purse money, it’s not good.”He is not losing faith in horse racing’s appeal. “We’ve been lucky that people still love horse racing,” he said. “As you can see during the pandemic, the handle numbers have been huge. Even on Travers Day at Saratoga, they were up 38 percent (???) with no people there.”In the meantime, the Florida Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association (FLHBPA) has two lawsuits pending before an appellate court arguing that Churchill Downs built a jai alai fronton with no connection to its casino as the statute of Florida law stipulates. “Churchill Downs was allowed to tear down the grandstand at Calder and [was] told if they apply for a summer jai alai permit, they would no longer have to put horse racing on to maintain their casino license,” Kevin Scheen, the executive director of the FLHBPA said. “This is how they side-stepped their obligations to the horsemen and the horse industry. Their only consideration is to their shareholders—the bottom line. We’re losing 40 days of racing. We’re hopeful we’ll prevail on the appeal. If we don’t, we’ll be examining our options.”He mentioned Palm Meadows and Ocala as possibilities. “We’re lucky we have a great relationship with Gulfstream Park.”In Pennsylvania, Servis—who did a masterful job with 2004 Kentucky Downs and Preakness Stakes winner Smarty Jones—and Sal DeBunda (president of the Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association since 2010) continue to battle for horsemen’s future. “We’ve been battling every year,” Servis said. “Every year they want to take money from us. The governor can say take the money for education or highways or senior citizens, for whatever. Does the money ever get there? Politics is politics.”He continued, “There’s a bill where they want to put slot machines in the bars and restaurants. It may not be this year. It may be next year. But it’s coming. If that happens, we’re going to have to fight to get a piece of that. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. We have to be aggressive. We have to take care of ourselves.”DeBunda believes they already have through Article 71, which gives a percentage of slots to the Pennsylvania Horse Development Fund. “They’ve been taking money out of the Fund since year two after slots were passed 11 years ago,” he said. “If they take more than $31 million, they have to return all the money they’ve taken the last 10 years. That was a way to not let them take more. The governor was told this by his staff before his statement about education. If we were going to allow slots in the same facility where we have horse racing, we were going to take a piece. That’s been forgotten. They put in table games and on-line gaming, and we get none of that. When he first got slots, we looked at each other and said this is terrific. We didn’t realize every year we have to educate people. The biggest factor is educating our legislature.”With slots, DeBunda said, average daily purses at Pennsylvania tracks have increased from $130,000 to $250,000. Without them? “I’m an optimist,” Servis said. “I don’t want to paint a negative picture, but we’re battling every single year.”Will New Jersey and Kentucky tracks have to battle, too?In late August, the governor of New Jersey submitted a proposed state budget which did not include the $20 million subsidy that has been split evenly between the Thoroughbred and Standardbred industry.Meanwhile, a court ruling in Kentucky on September 24, has endangered the wildly-popular Historical Horse Racing (HHR) slot-like machine game, a completely different version of the Instant Racing game which literally saved Oaklawn Park in Arkansas, and allowed Kentucky tracks to boost their purses dramatically. On September 24, a Kentucky Supreme Court reversed a 2018 court decision allowing the game at Kentucky tracks. The ruling said that one part of the game using exactas violated the state law on legal parimutuel wagering. That decision could be devastating. In the 2019-2020 fiscal year, which ended in June, $2.2 billion was wagered on HHR at Kentucky tracks, generating $15.6 million for the Thoroughbred Development Fund, $11.8 million for the Standardbred Development Farm, $650,000 for the Equine Industry Program and $320,000 to Equine Drug Research.Churchill Downs Inc., which saw its share price drop by 9.74 percent on the day of the court ruling, released a statement that Churchill Downs tracks does not use the exacta in any of its HHR facilities.Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said that HHR contributes $21 million to the state budget and that his office is working to find “a path forward.”Sooner than later, many racetracks are going to need a path forward, one dependent on its quality of racing and the marketing of its races rather than slot machines.*************************Oaklawn SidebarBy Bill HellerCenturies after Plato said, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” Eric Jackson, the senior vice president at Oaklawn Park in his 40th year at the Cella family’s beautiful track in Hot Springs, Ark., was desperate. “We had been imperiled in the 1990s,” he said. “We had casinos popping up outside us in Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Louisiana. We had lost 50 to 60 percent of our business. We nearly went out of business. We knew we had to have an electronic product.“In Arkansas, we were allowed parimutuel betting. I had an idea to develop a slot-like wagering device based on horse racing. It took a while to germinate—three or four years.”That idea (Instant Racing) not only saved Oaklawn, it ultimately led to the state of Arkansas approving four casinos—one of them at the track the Cella family has owned for 117 years. Oaklawn is predicting purses for its next 57-day meet will top $700,000 daily.With the addition of the casino, Oaklawn Park dropped Instant Racing in November 2018, and it has done nothing to slow Oaklawn’s continuing purse growth, one which will accelerate when Southland Casino Racing in West Memphis abandons greyhound racing by December 31, 2022. That decision has already been made and announced. Southland Casino received 40 percent of targeted casino revenue for purses and Oaklawn 60. “When they close, we’ll get 100 percent,” Jackson said.“We believe we have the best racing gaming model in America, and the model is based on a single concept,” he continued. “And the concept is ‘racing comes first.’ We have been a track for 117 years. The Cella family loves racing.The irony is epic. A slot-like machine based on horse racing allowed Oaklawn Park to prosper, then was abandoned when the track added a full casino. But that wouldn’t have happened had Oaklawn not used Instant Racing to literally continue to operate. “It exceeded our expectations,” Jackson said.His boss, Louis Cella said, “We buck the trend. You don’t see feel-good stories today. I think the answer is we focus on Oaklawn. We don’t have a higher agenda. We believe in it, and we’re going to lead by example. We have an unbelievable relationship with our horsemen and with the state racing commission. It’s the opposite of typical. Other companies focus on the bottom line. We don’t. We don’t have shareholders. A lot of our success is because we don’t have shareholders. We want you to have fun. We couldn’t care less if you make a wager. That’s not our focus. We prefer people come with a family, go in the infield with hot dogs, and enjoy the sport. We’re lucky. We don’t have professional sports in Arkansas. We are in the game to sell the sport. If you can’t, shut the doors.”His track nearly did.Oaklawn invited several technology experts to visit Oaklawn Park and meet with racetrack officials and officials from Amtote in 1998. Eventually, they devised Instant Racing, which allows betters to do a bit of handicapping, satisfying Arkansas’ state law description of parimutuel racing.Instant Racing was introduced in January, 2000, and then expanded in 2009. Purses grew exponentially. “In 2018, there was an effort from the Quapaw Native Indian tribe. They came up with a novel idea,” Jackson said. “They would get one of four casinos in Arkansas, and they were willing to put casino revenue into purses. The voters approved it.”Oaklawn Park has flourished ever since. “First off, we’re really lucky,” said Cella, a lawyer and real estate dealer in St. Louis who took over the track’s operation three years ago after his dad died. “We don’t have professional sports in Arkansas. We’re really hard to get to. Once you get there it’s very hard to leave it. It’s the natural beauty surrounding us. We’re part of a park (Hot Springs National Park). It’s beautiful. Because of that, we have a very close relationship with our community. Hot Springs’ population is around 35,000 to 40,000. We’ll have 70,000 people on Arkansas Derby Day. We don’t have professional sports in Arkansas. People sneak in and go and have fun.”Of course, Oaklawn has a decided edge. Just like Saratoga, Oaklawn has a limited single meet every year. People miss racing. “Our nickname was Saratoga South,” Cella said. “That was our mantra. Follow them.”Oaklawn Park has done that with decisive, innovative ideas. “We took over our catering 25 years ago because we had to keep prices reasonable,” Cella said. “When you have an outside company, they have to make a profit. When we had our 100th anniversary celebration on opening day in 2004, we said, `What happens if we roll back prices to what they were 100 years ago?’’ We had 10-cent sodas and 50-cent corned beef sandwiches. We basically give away six tons of corned beef. We do that every year on opening day. That’s how we kick off the season. You see folks with sandwiches piled high. Businesses send people running in to get a stack of sandwiches. Because we don’t have shareholders, we get to choose. What’s best for our industry? We ask ourselves every single day, `How do we improve our sport in Arkansas?’”Jackson and Cella came up with an original idea. “When we started to grow, we had to hire gaming folks from outside Hot Springs or outside Arkansas,” Cella said. “We said most of our managers have no idea what horse racing is. Eric created an agenda for Oaklawn University. Eric does everything for it. The purpose is to give these new members a smidgen of information about horse racing, our family and our community. It ends with a tour of a horse farm. It has nothing to do with casinos. It’s about horse racing and our history. That’s the message.”Cella enrolled himself. “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever been through.” He said. “I had no idea. I loved it. It’s a great program.”The six-week curriculum, Jackson said, “explains how we got here, why certain things are important to us. When you connect all the dots, it says racing comes first. We want people to never forget that.”Jockey Ron Moquet and Jeanette Milligan—office manager of the Arkansas Horsemen Benevolent and Protective Association, whose husband Alan is a trainer—are Oaklawn University graduates.Oaklawn’s successful business model with Instant Racing led to tracks all over the country to invite him to speak. One discussion, maybe 15 years ago, sticks in his memory. “I was at Derby Lane Dog Track in Tampa, Fla.,” he said. “I was with representatives of the dog industry and horse racing. They wanted to know about Instant Racing. I told them if one party gets greedy, it’s not going to work. You have to agree to have lower margins because the people will show up. People started yelling at each other, dogs vs. horses. I banged my glass and stood up. I said, `Gentlemen, you’re wasting my time.’ And I walked out.”](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/517636f8e4b0cb4f8c8697ba/1603704568534-DM1VCL3TR93JB62ZUL68/HYR46T%2B%25281%2529.jpg)
![Cover Profile - Thomas Drury Jr.By Bill HellerNudged into the Kentucky Derby spotlight by Art Collector’s commanding 3 ½-length victory in the Gr2 Blue Grass Stakes July 11 at Keeneland, Tommy Drury is an overnight sensation—30 years after he began training Thoroughbreds. Art Collector gave Drury his first graded stakes victory in the Blue Grass Stakes, earning enough points to start in the Kentucky Derby for owner/breeder Bruce Lunsford.“When you’re 28, you’re thinking about winning the Derby and Breeders’ Cup races,” said Drury, who took over Art Collector’s training at the beginning of his three-year-old season. “At 48, I didn’t even know I’d win a graded stakes. To win the Blue Grass is pretty special. I’m still trying to find the words.”This success immediately went to his head. He celebrated his greatest victory with a cold beer and a frozen pizza when he finally got home after the Blue Grass. “I didn’t finish either,” he confessed.Why? To be back at the barn at 5:30 a.m. the next day, a Sunday. His work ethic is just one of the elements of his highly successful, yet quiet, career. His career winning percentage is an outstanding 21 percent. He won at least 20 percent of his starts in 11 of his last 14 seasons heading into this year, including seven years when his victory clip was 25 percent or higher.No wonder top horsemen, including Al Stall, Bill Mott, Steve Asmussen, Frankie Brothers and Seth Hancock, have sent many of their horses needing a layup after surgery or time off to Drury’s barn at the Skylight Training Center, 27 miles northeast of Churchill Downs.“As far as top horsemen, he’s been a top one for years, but he just hasn’t had the opportunity to win at the highest level,” Stall said. “I send him rehab cases. We’ve had a good working relationship for more than 10 years. I might have sent him, oh gosh, over 20 a year—a couple hundred for sure. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he’s spot on about their fitness level.”Brothers said of his time knowing Drury, “It started with Tommy galloping some horses for me at Churchill Downs. He’s a smart, conscientious young man—an excellent horseman.”So how did Drury amass just 55 victories in his first six years of training after getting his license at the age of 18? He had to gallop horses on the side to pay his bills. “It didn’t come easy, and it didn’t come quickly,” he said. “There were days I said, `This isn’t going the way it should be going.’ But I always had at least one horse I was training.”There was another reason he persevered. “I didn’t know how to do anything else,” Drury said.His biggest fan, his mother Patty, said, “He started with one horse, and to have a horse like this [Art Collector] is unbelievable. I’m so happy and proud of him because he worked so hard to get to this point.”Drury’s father, Jerry, who galloped horses, passed away two years ago. “We were close,” Drury said. “I never had the privilege to work with him a lot because he had a lot of horses. He pushed me: if you work, you have to do it at the top level. He always pushed me to do that.”Drury began hot-walking on weekends as a kid. “I can remember walking horses when I was 10 or 11,” he said. “It’s all I wanted to do. On weekends, I’d go to the track. It’s just been in my blood. I could never see myself doing anything else.”He wanted to be a jockey but grew too big to do that. So he focused on training. “I had a friend, a little older, who got his license at 19,” Drury said. “Once I saw he was able to do it, I felt comfortable in my horsemanship.” He passed the trainer test and applied for a license at the age of 18.Racing steward Bernie Hettel didn’t believe he was 18. “I looked like I was 12,” Drury said. “I think I weighed 110 pounds. I showed him my driver’s license.”In his first six years, his win totals were five, seven, nine, eighteen, eight and eight. “I was working a second job, always galloping to help pay the bills,” he said. “Eventually, it started going the way I wanted. So I stopped galloping a few years ago. When I was riding, I worried about too many details. I think better when my feet are on the ground rather than in the air.”One of his most successful horses was Timeless Fashion, who won 11 of 34 starts, including six stakes, and earned more than $400,000. Unfortunately, Timeless Fashion’s first jockey, Justin Vitek, wound up with leukemia.Vitek rode Timeless Fashion in his first two starts, finishing second by a neck in a maiden race at Turfway Park, December 7, 2007, then winning an allowance race there February 2, 2008, by 4 ¼ lengths.“Justin had told me that whole day he was feeling bad,” Drury said. “He went to the hospital that night and was later diagnosed with leukemia. It went into remission and he worked for me and rode in races. Unfortunately, his leukemia came back, and he passed away. Justin was one of my closest friends. I flew to Texas and was with him the night before he passed. It was terrible.”Vitek, a native of Wallace, Texas, died on January 28, 2010 at the age of 36. Vitek’s biggest victory came on Miss Pickums, who captured the 2000 Gr2 Golden Rod Stakes at Churchill Downs. He had won 763 races with earnings topping $9.8 million.Six weeks after Vitek died, Turfway Park held a night to celebrate Vitek’s life, with his mother to present the trophy to the winner of the Tejano Run Stakes. Drury, who entered Timeless Fashion in the stakes, wore one of Vitek’s University of Texas caps which Vitek’s sister had sent to him. “Justin was a big Texan football fan,” Drury explained. Drury wore the cap that night and never again.Timeless Fashion hadn’t raced since the previous December 12th when he took the first of two consecutive runnings of the Prairie Bayou Stakes. Timeless Fashion won the Tejano Run Stakes by a half-length. “Justin’s mom presented the trophy to Judy Miller, the winning owner, and she gave it back to her,” Drury said. “Right before we went upstairs, we sprinkled some of Justin’s ashes in the winner’s circle. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It was insane. It was brutal, but we were fortunate to have had him in our lives. It was so special to win that race with his family there.”Drury resumed his career, which may have already been redirected by his Blue Grass victory. “This is going to change Tommy’s life,” Lunsford said. If it does, he’ll share it with 15-year-old daughter Emma, who rides show horses, and his 19-year-old son Matt, who’s in the restaurant business. They live just outside Louisville.Art Collector, a home-bred colt by Bernardini out of Distorted Legacy by Distorted Humor, has special meaning for Lunsford—an attorney, businessman and politician who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 2008, losing to incumbent Mitch McConnell.Lunsford’s Bunting was the dam of his Vision and Verse, who finished second to Lemon Drop Kid in both the 1999 Gr1 Belmont Stakes and Gr1 Travers. Vision and Verse won four of 21 starts and earned a tad more than $1 million. “Bunting was one of the first two horses we bought,” he said. “She had several useful horses, including Distorted Legacy, who finished fourth in the 2011 Gr1 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf. “We kept her as a broodmare. Her first foal was a filly that didn’t race. Art Collector is her second foal.”Lunsford routinely sends 10 of his yearlings to be broken and trained at Travis and Ashley Durr’s Webb Carroll Training Center in St. Matthews,S.C. Durr does the breaking and training, and Ashley is the Center’s business manager.Travis’ family raced and trained Quarter Horses, and Travis rode them at bush tracks in Georgia, S.C. and N.C., starting at the age of 12. When both his grandfather and father began working with Thoroughbreds, Travis started breaking and training them. Travis was 15 when his father passed in 1995, and he took over the business. Travis joined Webb Carroll in 2007, and in 2016, he and his wife purchased the Center.“We are known for our large sets—15 to 17 horses in the winter,” Travis said. “All we do is breaking, training and layups. We don’t have to have things being done by a specific time. We have a lot of turnouts. We individualize the horse’s training. We just try to produce racehorses.”Art Collector is just the latest top horse the Training Center has developed, following Havre De Grace, Country House, Abel Tasman, Firenze Fire, Goldencents, Runhappy, Irish War Cry and Shackleford.Art Collector arrived at the Training Center in July 2018. “He showed ability from day one,” Travis said. “He stood out. He handled the breaking very well, always did his job—an easy horse to be around. He started breezing in February. He was breezing a lot easier than others. As we went on with the horse, he kept progressing the right way. He was the best of Bruce’s bunch. He sends us around 10 yearlings a year.”On May 9, Art Collector was sent home and then to trainer Joe Sharp to begin his career at Saratoga in July. Art Collector’s first three starts were on turf. He finished second in a maiden race at Saratoga August 15, first in a maiden at Kentucky Downs and then seventh in the Gr3 Bourbon Stakes at Keeneland.Switched to dirt on November 30, he lost his action in a 6 ½ furlong allowance race under Brian Hernandez Jr., who has ridden Art Collector ever since. Hernandez was about to pull Art Collector up, but Art Collector wasn’t done, getting back in the race and finishing sixth by 8 ½ lengths in the first of four consecutive races at Churchill Downs.Art Collector’s final start as a two-year-old last November 30 was a breakthrough 7 ½-length victory on a sloppy track.That victory would be taken away months later. On March 3, word broke that Art Collector was one of several sharp horses who tested positive for levamisole, listed as a Class 2 drug by the Association of Racing Commissioners International largely for its potential to metabolize into the powerful stimulant aminorex. Art Collector was disqualified.Lunsford needed a new trainer. “I didn’t want to be in the middle of that,” he said. “I took him off the track. Gave him three months. I said, `Forget the Derby. We’ll shoot for something later, like the Travers.’”Then the world began changing as the coronavirus pandemic swept around the entire globe. Suddenly, the Kentucky Derby was not on the first Saturday of May, rather postponed until the first Saturday in September, the 5th. “The delay was the best thing that could have happened for us,” Lunsford said. “I gave him to Tommy. I told him, `If you get this horse back and he wins first out, you have the horse for life.’”Why Drury? “Because I trust him,” Lunsford said. “I’ve watched him for years. I’ve given him horses that we rested and given them one start back in Tommy’s name. Watching him grow up, I think of Tommy like a nephew or an adopted son. We’ve had a lot of success. He’s a humble guy. He has no ego. Works his butt off. He treats people nicely; his barn help stays with him. He treats horses nicely. If it’s really about the horse, you just don’t say it—you do it. I knew with Tommy and Jose (Garcia, Tommy’s long-time assistant), that Art Collector would be treated better than I get treated in my life, with the exception of my girlfriend. If we win the Derby, I don’t know if I’ll be happier for Tommy or for the horse.”With Art Collector at Skylight Training Center, Lunsford stops on the way to check up on his star. Trainer Ian Wilkes is on the other side of the Drury barn. “There are 21 guys there, and I pick up biscuits for the guys on the way there,” Lunsford said. “They rub their stomachs when they see me coming.”Drury didn’t take long to like what he saw coming with Art Collector. “I knew Bruce really liked the horse,” he said. “When someone like him says something like that, you pay attention. He’s been there before.”Drury quickly realized why Lunsford liked Art Collector. “I have never had a horse like this,” Drury said. “He’s a very good-looking, well-balanced horse. What I like most is his intelligence. He’s a very smart horse. You work him with others, and he’s fine. You can move him with your fingertips.”Drury began slowly with his new colt. “We eased him back into it,” he said. “We started breezing him. I got Brian Hernandez to work with him. He had ridden him as a two-year-old. He shared his thoughts. It helped. We worked as a team.”Garcia has been an important member of the Drury’s team for 22 years. “We started together with a small stable with just a few horses,” Garcia said. “I like him and he likes me. We have good communications. You have to see to the details. The small details are very important.”Art Collector made his first start for Drury in a seven-length allowance race on May 17, 15 days after the original date for the Kentucky Derby. He won by 2 ¾ lengths, covering seven furlongs in 1:22 3/5.“He won so impressively,” Lunsford said. “Seth Hancock texted me. He said, `I hope you’re going to leave your horse with him.’ I said, `That decision’s already been made.’”That decision looked even better when Art Collector won another allowance race—this one at a mile-and-a-sixteenth, by 6 ½ lengths as the 7-5 favorite in a sharp 1:41 1/5, earning a 100 Beyer Speed Figure on June 13.Art Collector was ready to step up. He would make or break his case for the Kentucky Derby. He had no Derby qualifying points, and the 100 for the winner of the Blue Grass would either propel Art Collector onto the Derby or force Drury and Lunsford to choose an easier path.The horse to beat in the Blue Grass and the slight betting favorite at 2-1 was Kenny McPeek’s outstanding filly Swiss Skydiver. Art Collector was the 2-1 second choice in the field of 13. “We wanted to put pressure on Kenny’s filly,” Drury said. “The only thing I told Brian was not to be locked in with one trip. It actually went the way we thought it would go.”Hernandez delivered a flawless ride. He made a good decision early to avoid a three-horse duel on the front end, and Art Collector settled in nicely as a close third. Around the far turn, Swiss Skydiver took over, and Art Collector quickly ranged up to her.At the head of the stretch, Swiss Skydiver found more. “There was a split second near the eighth pole, she dug in, and I thought he wasn’t going to win,” Drury said. “After that point, it becomes a blur. `Oh, my God, we’re going to win the Blue Grass!’ It’s hard to describe it in words. You wait for the opportunity, and when it happens, it’s huge. You’ve waited so long to be there.”After the race, Drury cooled out Art Collector. “We gave him a good soaking bath, took him out to the grass, let him graze, put the bandages on him, and got ready to go back home,” Drury said. When he got home, he splurged with cold beer and even colder pizza.Drury knows that Churchill Downs’ decision to push back the Kentucky Derby four months allowed his late-developing three-year-old to walk into the starting gate. “We’re certainly aware of it,” Drury said. “It’s been a strange year. It’s almost like it was meant for us.”Before the Blue Grass, Drury instructed his mother not to use the “D” word. Two days after the race, she texted him, asking, “Are you definite for the Kentucky Derby?” Drury texted back, “Eight weeks to the Derby—that’s a lifetime.” He explained, “Eight weeks is a long way away when you’re talking about horses. I hope we get there. It’s a big deal, but we’re not doing anything to jeopardize this horse.”Drury and Lunsford must decide whether or not to give Art Collector a race before the Derby. “It’s really a good problem to have,” Drury said. “I think it’s a fantastic problem to have.”Initially, he ruled out the Gr1 Travers at Saratoga, August 8. “People ask, `Travers?’ No way. I’m not shipping to New York to run against Tiz the Law,” Drury said. If Art Collector gets a Derby prep, it will likely come in the Ellis Park Derby August 9.Lunsford was asked what a Kentucky Derby win would mean to him. “I go all the way back to Secretariat,” he said. “I said, `One of these days, I want to own one of these horses.’ If I won the Kentucky Derby with 40 friends rooting for us because we’re from Louisville, it’d be like the World Series for this poor kid from Piner, Kentucky.”For Drury, it would be an affirmation of three decades of hard work. Asked what it’s like to be an overnight success after 30 years, Drury said, “It’s funny. For me, I’ve never received this amount of attention. I’m usually the guy behind the scenes. That being said, I’ve been close enough to good horses, and that’s helped me a lot. At the end of the day, we have to focus on the horse. You take the rest of it in stride. It’s not about me. It’s about him.”Actually, it’s about both of them—teammates in the pursuit of Kentucky Derby immortality in the strangest year the world has ever seen. ](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/517636f8e4b0cb4f8c8697ba/1596792110442-ZKLXNEUI8IGB2263R98Y/20_0716_Tom+Drury_mw-6159.jpg)
![Grade 1 OwnersBy Bill HellerGeorge Bolton (Nadal)Having campaigned such stars as two-time Horse of the Year Curlin, Lady Aurelia, My Miss Aurelia and The Factor did absolutely nothing to diminish George Bolton’s excitement for his latest home-run hitter, the undefeated three-year-old colt Nadal, whom he owns in partnership with Barry Lipman, Mark Mathiesen and Arthur Hoyeau.Unfortunately, on May 28, after working a half-mile at Santa Anita, Nadal suffered a colyndar fracture of his left front knee. Surgery was done with two screws were inserted, and Nadal will be able to start a new career as a stallion.Bolton is thankful that he saw all of Nadal’s four victories. Bolton sneaked into Oaklawn Park May 5 to watch Nadal improve his record to four-for-four by taking the second division of the rescheduled Gr1 Arkansas Derby for trainer Bob Baffert.“If they can really run, you get your ass there,” Bolton said. “I went to see every one of his races: his maiden, his San Vincente, Rebel and the Arkansas Derby. I was the only owner allowed in at Oaklawn. I snuck in. I had a mask on, but I wasn’t near anyone. I wanted to be with the horse. This is a special horse. I spent as much time at the barn after his race as before. I never missed Curlin, Lady Aurelia, The Factor and My Miss Aurelia. For me, you get the one that’s good, you go see him.”He was perfectly happy sharing the experience with his partners. “Celebrating by yourself isn’t much fun,” Bolton said. “You spread the risk. At the level I play at, when you’re buying, you have to do it as a partnership.”Bolton, who is the chief investment officer, portfolio manager and partner of WestEnd Capital Management in San Francisco, currently lives in Key Largo, Fla. He was born near Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. “I grew up on a farm that my great, great aunt owned,” he said. “It was left to my father. He had a lot of jumpers. I grew up around it.”He graduated with honors from the University of Virginia in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. He’s been an avid supporter of the Cavaliers, and rode the roller coaster of seeing Virginia become the first basketball No. 1 seed to lose to a No. 16 seed—the University of Maryland-Baltimore-County—in the NCAA Tournament, and winning the national championship the following season. “I’ve been swinging with the Cavaliers for a long time,” he said. “Virginia is a great place.”In college, Bolton had the good fortune of becoming friends with Bill Farish, whose father, Will, a former United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, was building Lane’s End Farm in Kentucky.“Bill asked me to get involved in the business in 1989,” Bolton said. “I just got off to a good start. I didn’t have anybody marking up horses for me.”By 1989, Bolton had moved to San Francisco after working for Alex Brown & Sons in Baltimore. He continued to work for them in San Francisco, becoming the firm’s youngest managing partner in 1991. While leading institutional equity sales on the West Coast, he also separately managed accounts for high net-worth individuals. In 2004, Bolton left Alex Brown to become a partner and chief investment officer at WestEnd Capital Management.His ongoing success has allowed him to pursue his passion, where he’s become a major player. The Farishes brought Bolton in on a Miswaki filly named Exotic Moves. “We sold her after she won three races for a clean `double,’ and I was hooked,” he told the Paulick Report in a March 26, 2018 story.Curlin—the 2007 and 2008 Horse of the Year—took him to a whole new level, winning 11 of 16 starts and earning more than $10.5 million. No victory was more meaningful to him than Curlin’s come-again victory in the Preakness in Pimlico. “He got passed, and he came again,” Bolton said. “It was crazy. Most of the stretch, I thought he would lose.”Bolton’s My Miss Aurelia, the 2011 Champion Two-Year-Old Filly won the first six starts of her career and never finished out of the money in 11 starts, earning more than $2.5 million. The Factor, who continues a marvelous stallion career at Lane’s End, won six of 13 starts and more than $900,000. And Lady Aurelia, who won five of 10 starts and more than $800,00, captured the 2017 Gp1 King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot, defeating 17 colts and three fillies.The international bloodstock agent Kerri Radcliffe hooked up with Bolton in 2018, buying yearlings for him in Australia, Europe and the United States. “George got in touch with me, and he said `I want you to buy for me,’” she said in a phone interview from Newmarket May 15.She purchased Nadal—a massive, muscular colt by Blame out of the Pulpit mare Ascending Angel bred by Sierra Farm—for $700,000 at the 2019 Gulfstream Park Two-Year-Olds-in-Training Sale that March for Bolton and another investor. The second investor bailed, and Bolton reached out to Lipman, Mathiesen and Hoyeau. Trainer Randy Bradshaw had originally purchased Nadal for $65,000 as a yearling. “When I was looking at him, Randy told me, `Kerri, this is a special horse,’” Radcliffe said. “He breezed like a monster, and when you saw his breeze and saw how big he was, you couldn’t quite figure out how that horse did that.”She named him for tennis star Rafael Nadal. Previously, she had named a colt Gronkowski for Ron Gronkowski, the All-Pro tight end of the New England Patriots.The equine Nadal had a rough time getting to the races. After beginning training at Los Alamitos, Baffert shipped Nadal to his barn at Santa Anita. On the van trip there, he kicked out of his stall and got his hind leg caught over the partition. “He flipped over,” Bolton said. “He cut himself on the back of his legs and had lacerations on his hocks. When we finally got him back, he wasn’t working well. We examined him again and gave him three months off. Sometimes, missing a two-year-old year helps as a three-year-old.”Nadal, who weighs in at 1,325 pounds, hasn’t done a thing wrong since returning to Baffert. “He’s a monster,” said Bolton, who compared him to former New York Giants tight end Jeremy Shockey and legendary Hall of Fame Buffalo Bills’ defensive end Bruce Smith. “It takes him a little while to get going, but his gait versus the other horses is exciting.”So are the results. “I had 68 texts right after the Arkansas Derby,” Bolton said. “Twenty-eight were from racing people; 40 of them were from Virginia and business people. All of them watched the Derby. It was great for the sport because it’s great that people know him.”And the tennis star he’s named for? “I’ve talked to his agent,” Bolton said. “He’s aware of the horse. I am a big fan of him as a person and as an athlete. I hope he’s enjoying the horse.”Bolton sure did. So did Nadal’s other owners: Lipman, whose family runs Lipman Family Farms—North America’s largest tomato grower with headquarters in Florida; Mathiesen, who owns a medical service company and was introduced to racing by his daughter Hannah; and Hoyeau, a French-based bloodstock agent. “These guys are guys you want to work with,” Bolton said.Chris Mara (Charlatan)New York Giants Senior Vice President Chris Mara’s passion for Thoroughbred racing goes back a long way. After purchasing a football franchise—which ultimately became the New York Giants—for all of $500 in 1925, his grandfather, Tim Mara, was a legal bookmaker at Belmont Park in the 1930’s. Tim passed both his Giants’ legacy and his love of Thoroughbreds onto his son Wellington, who in turn passed it onto Chris and his brothers.“He influenced my dad, and my dad influenced me,” Chris said in a phone interview. “The first Saturday in May, you couldn’t find my dad. He and my mom were at the Derby.”His father took him to Belmont Park for the first time when he was 10.Chris’ first trip to the Kentucky Derby was in 1982 when he, his parents and their dear friends the Rooneys watched Gato del Sol take the first leg of the Triple Crown. Chris would marry Kathleen Rooney, NFL pioneer Art Rooney’s granddaughter.Chris spent one summer, while in college at Boston College after transferring from Springfield, parking cars at one of the Rooneys’ racetracks, Yonkers Raceway. “I loved it,” Chris said. “It was a very interesting job to say the least. The guys were teaching me how to park cars. I parked one, and when I returned the car, the guy gave me a $20 tip. That was like 1977 or 1978. It was a lot of money. I told the guys, `They gave me $20.’ They said, “You [bleep, bleep].’”He came a long way from parking cars at that harness track. Some 35 years ago, he owned his first Thoroughbred, Itchy Hooves, with his mom. Fast forward a lot of years. After meeting Starlight Racing’s managing partner Jack Wolf in a Saratoga golf tournament hosted by basketball coach, Thoroughbred owner and long-time friend of the Mara family Rick Pitino in August 2012, Chris decided to make a serious commitment to Thoroughbred ownership by joining Starlight Racing.“I had been looking into it,” Chris said. “I sought out a couple different people and asked them what they thought I should do. They suggested various syndicates. I looked at all of them. Then I sat down with Donna Brothers (who works for Starlight Racing) at the Saratoga Sale. Then I met Jack Wolf on the golf course at Saratoga National.”That did it. Maybe Chris was feeling giddy—the after effect of a memorable year, which featured the New York Giants beating the previously unbeaten New England Patriots in the Super Bowl; and his daughter, Rooney Mara, for being nominated for an Academy Award for her title role in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”In a May 3rd Newsday story, Chris told Ed McNamara, “I sat down with Jack, and he asked me what I was going to bring to the table; and I answered, `Luck! We just won a Super Bowl, and my daughter is up for an Academy Award!’”That very afternoon, Chris and Starlight Racing’s two starters in the 2014 Kentucky Derby—General Rod and Intense Holiday—finished 11th and 12th, respectively, to California Chrome.In 2018, two months before the Kentucky Derby, Chris, through Starlight Racing, became a partner on both Justify and Audible, who finished first and third in the Run for the Roses. Then Justify became racing’s 13th Triple Crown champion and retired as the only undefeated Triple Crown champion.This summer, Chris and Starlight are back again as partners on undefeated Charlatan, who injured his ankle in early June and will be pointed to the Preakness Stakes, now the final leg of the Triple Crown this year. Charlatan’s ownership includes a bunch of other partners and partnership groups. “It’s a lot of people,” Wolf said May 14. “They’re really fine partners to have.”Charlatan was scheduled to test his three-for-three record in the rescheduled Belmont Stakes on June 20 as the first leg of an entirely rescheduled Triple Crown, to be cut back from a mile-and-a-half to a mile-and-an-eighth in this chaotic year defined by the coronavirus pandemic plaguing the entire globe.“Ever since I got involved with Starlight, the ultimate goal was to get a horse to the Derby,” Chris said. “With Charlatan, it’s just fun to have a horse like this.”Hearing that would make his grandfather smile.“I just love this sport,” Chris said. “I loved reading about my grandfather.”It’s hard for Chris to not think of his grandfather. “I walked into Belmont Park one day and there was a picture of my grandfather taking bets on the second floor,” Chris said.In the picture, Tim Mara is wearing a large, silver button stating he was a legal bookmaker. The button has been passed on to Chris. “I kept it in my pocket before the 2018 Kentucky Derby,” Chris said. “I didn’t wear it, but it worked. I will bring it with me for Charlatan.”Asked what he thought as Justify crossed the finish line to win the 2018 Kentucky Derby, Chris said, “I hope I didn’t lose all the winning tickets. I had a lot of them. My grandfather would have been proud, but he wouldn’t have been happy because he was the bookie.”Jack Knowlton (Tiz the Law)Can it be 17 years since Sackatoga Stable partners rolled into Churchill Downs on a rented yellow school bus and left with all the roses when Funny Cide became the first New York-bred to win the Kentucky Derby? Funny Cide added the 2003 Preakness Stakes for the stable, which returns to this year’s Triple Crown chase with another New York-bred: Gr1 Florida Derby winner Tiz the Law, whose four-for-five record stamps him as one of the top contenders for this year’s revamped Triple Crown; he’s now beginning with the mile-and-an-eighth Belmont Stakes on June 20.Tiz the Law’s co-owner Jack Knowlton, the managing partner of Sackatoga Stable, can’t wait to see Tiz the Law back in action off his impressive victory in the Florida Derby March 28. “The good news is this horse has proven twice he could win off layoffs,” Knowlton said.It was Knowlton, who runs a health consulting firm in Saratoga Springs and created Sackatoga Stable by a seemingly innocuous question to his long-time buddies at a 1995 Memorial Day barbecue in Sackets Harbor on the shore of Lake Ontario: “Do you want to take a shot?”They did, and now they’re taking another with a whole different group of investors who comprise Sackatoga Stable—a name derived from his hometown, Sackets Harbor and Saratoga, where Knowlton works and lives. “Our merry band of 10 people, including five guys I went to school with, was a very closely held group,” Knowlton said. “After Funny Cide retired in 2007, it made sense to try to expand the horizons. We formed a management entity, Sackatoga Stable, Ltd. Then we formed 2 LLCs after that.”Only Knowlton and Lou Titterton remain in Sackatoga, which now numbers 50 people. There are 35 partners on Tiz the Law. “What’s great is we have numerous people who have been with me for 10 to 15 years,” Knowlton said. “We’ve vastly expanded geographically.”He has partners from California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York of course, South Carolina and Texas. “It’s much more challenging logistically to put on events for 60 to 80 people,” Knowlton said. “For the Holy Bull, we had four suites at Gulfstream Park. We had a crew. We’ve got a lot of people who love the game.”It’s hard to imagine anyone loving horse racing as much as Knowlton, who had previously raced Standardbreds at Saratoga Harness across the street from Saratoga Race Course with Frank Coppola—a top driver and trainer at Saratoga Harness. They called their stable The Breakfast Club because they’d go out for breakfast together on Saturday mornings after their horses finished training. They did well, especially with Sunset Blue, who won more than $270,000 from 33 victories, 33 seconds and 32 thirds from 209 starts over seven years; and Paulas Big Guy, who posted 49 wins, 52 seconds and 35 thirds in 259 starts. The Breakfast Club owned both horses for part of their careers.A labor dispute and a horsemen’s strike at Saratoga Harness in 1994 pushed Knowlton out of harness racing. The following May, he popped that innocuous question to his buddies at a barbecue and the rest is history—wonderful history for Knowlton and his partners.Sackatoga Stable’s first horse was Sackets Six, a New York-bred who cost $22,000 and earned $111,730 under the guidance of trainer Tim Kelly. Four years later, they hired Tagg. Their first horse with Tagg, Bail Money, was purchased for $40,000 and earned $108,665 before he was claimed for $62,500.When Funny Cide lost his Triple Crown bid by finishing third to Empire Maker in the sloppy Belmont Stakes, Knowlton simply shrugged his shoulders and kind of smiled—a classy gesture by a classy man seen on national TV and in many pictures.Knowlton has used Funny Cide’s success to help the sport he loves by doing anything he can. He served as a member of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association’s Jockey Insurance Working Group; with the Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of Racing in New York State; with the New York State’s Task Force on Retired Race Horses; and as a member of the New York State Gaming Commission’s Aftercare Summits in Saratoga Springs.After Tiz the Law’s victory in the Florida Derby, Knowlton was doing a TV interview with Kenny Rice. “The second half of the talk was about Funny Cide,” Knowlton said. “The school bus—it never gets old. We became everybody’s darling. It was a feel-good story when the county needed a feel-good story.”Sounds like today, doesn’t it?](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/517636f8e4b0cb4f8c8697ba/1591896315852-GUMB2TW62O5J70FNKYF7/z200502_ArkansasDerbyDay_Manning_2438+%281%29.JPG)
