Retirement
After the Racetrack
Our Revival had a modest career as a racehorse — she won her maiden at Keeneland, and then won 10 more times in 34 starts, at tracks such as Tampa Bay and Suffolk Downs — but trainer John Botty remembered her well:
“She was like a street fighter. She mostly won off the pace. She didn’t mind dirt in her face, she relished it,†says Botty, who claimed her as a 3-year-old in 2003. “She was like Dustin Pedroia, never afraid to get dirty. Like Milan Lucic, not afraid to dig in the corners.â€
Thank goodness, because when the mare turned up at auction in Texas, it was Botty — and a network of dedicated horse people — who ensured she ended up at Old Friends in Kentucky and not at a Mexican slaughterhouse.
Botty is also one of the many trainers at Suffolk Downs who work with CANTER New England to move horses from the track to a second career when their racing days are over. The organization’s annual end-of-the-meet showcase is scheduled for Sunday, October 14, beginning at 8:30 AM, and if you’re looking for a new jumper, eventer, or companion (or you know someone who is), be sure to put the Suffolk showcase on your calendar — it’s a chance to check out several horses up close and talk to their connections. Browse the listings of currently available horses; more will be added in coming weeks!
If you’re wondering what an off-track Thoroughbred is capable of, here’s just one success story of many: Unbridled’s Jewel, renamed The Tempest and pictured below with her owner and Susan Salk of Off-Track Thoroughbreds, was the star of a Steuart Pittman eventing clinic earlier this year, mere months after leaving the Suffolk Downs backstretch.
Suffolk Showcase
Are you coming to Suffolk Showcase on Sunday?
Looking for a new horse? The sixth annual Suffolk Showcase is this Sunday, October 23, at Suffolk Downs. From 9:00 AM to noon, visitors will have a chance to check out dozens of great thoroughbreds ready for new careers and ask questions of trainers and owners directly. Browse the CANTER New England listings to get a sense of what’s available. It’s no exaggeration to say there’s a horse for every rider — CANTER volunteers (including me) have been busy as the Suffolk meet winds down, cataloging horses athletic and adorable. Racehorses make terrific sporthorses and companions — as the success stories Susan Salk has been publishing on Off-Track Thoroughbreds prove, there’s little these athletes can’t do when they leave the racetrack.
10/18/11 Addendum: Today’s “I want him” CANTER horse. And more!
Friday Notes
As Ed DeRosa writes today in a piece about the importance of sanctuaries such as Old Friends, Joe Drape’s reporting on TRF has made the discussion about providing for racehoses when their careers end more public. It also seems to have made the conversation more urgent. The situations aren’t quite analogous, but there’s something reminiscent of the safety debate that followed Eight Belles’ death in the fresh attention on the retirement and rescue issue, a sense that racing has to come up with a solution to a problem that hasn’t been neglected — the work of hundreds of organizations attests to that — but is complex and will probably take collective action to solve. “The only chance that something good can come out of this mess is if this turns out to be a watershed moment in horse racing,” writes Bill Finley. He’s right.
Prepping for the Florida Derby, Dialed In worked four furlongs in :47.55 at Palm Meadows yesterday. Trainer Nick Zito, who said the colt “bounced” in his last race, “caught the final eighth in :11 flat.” Handicapper Mike Maloney calls Zito’s prospect one of three likely Kentucky Derby winners. “If he shows a decent finish in the FL Derby, even if not winning, I think he will be fine.”
Tomorrow is Dubai World Cup day, and Raceday 360 has an overview of every race. I wrote about the UAE Derby, a weak renewal this year, for the HRF Derby Prep alert, and only glancingly mentioned the remarkable entry of two Aidan O’Brien trained starters in the race, the first in six years. Like last year, I assumed that this year no UAE Derby finisher was likely for the Kentucky Derby — Sheikh Mohammed seems have given up on that path for Godolphin 3-year-olds after the disappointments of Regal Ransom and Desert Party in 2009 — but Alan Shuback proposes Coolmore could be using the race as a Derby prep for Master of Hounds or Alexander Pope. “It would be a large irony, indeed, if Magnier & Co. pulled a Kentucky Derby runner out of the UAE Derby hat in Sheikh Mohammed’s backyard.”
Sweet Ducky, recently sold and transferred to trainer Herman Brown, is apparently possible for Churchill Downs, though, if he runs big in the UAE Derby. “It would be tough to turn it down if he runs a great race.” That would certainly be an interesting move, considering the colt’s new ownership. Would Kentucky license Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov, called by the late Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, “a Stalin of our times“?
Black Caviar made it 11-for-11 in the William Reid Stakes.
Thanks to Pull the Pocket and The Knight Sky for posting about Kentucky Confidential. Have you pledged? We hope you’ll consider it.
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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