Zenyatta Jersey to Benefit Several Thoroughbred Charities

Will she, Won't she, the debate continues among racing fans if Zenyatta will run actually in the Vanity at Hollywood Park on Sunday, June 13.

What is known is that there will be a jersey available for purchase carrying Zenyatta's name and the blessings of the connections from MVP Champions. A two-time champion, Zenyatta, 6, has won 16 races and $5,924,580. If she wins the Vanity for an unprecedented third time, she would surpass the 16-race winning streaks of Cigar and Citation. A special Jersey signing will be held at Hollywood Park on June 13 and at Del Mar on August 7th to coincide with the probable race dates for Zenyatta.

MVP Champions has recently come on the scene with a series of collectible and/or wearable jerseys to benefit Thoroughbred charities. The first to be offered was Bob Baffert's Hall of Fame jersey which benefited Old Friends in Kentucky.

MVP Champions website states they launch merchandising solutions to benefit charitable causes with remarkable results. Donations are made at point of purchase to benefit designated charities. Our commitment to craftsmanship, design, and technical innovation provide a unique niche in the sports manufacturing market.
We also offer unique promotional opportunities at all of our charitable events. Our nationally publicized fund raisers, product launch promotions, and autograph signings give our supporters national exposure with profitable results.

To view the Jerseys or to order go to www.mvpchampions.com

On another note there will be a Zenyatta Bobblehead give-away on the same day at Hollywood Park on June 13th. www.hollywoodpark.com for details.

The Retirement of Smokey Stover to Old Friends and what The Second Race is all About

On Sunday evening, I received the news I had been waiting to hear, Smokey Stover had safely arrived at Old Friends. The story of Smokey Stover's retirement to Old Friends is one that exemplifies what networking,and The Second Race is all about.

The events leading to his arrival at Old Friends began approximately two weeks prior when I was alerted late at night of a posting on the CANTER California website that Smokey Stover was listed on their website for sale at $ 600.00. I was surprised and thought that someone had made a mistake. I went to the site and sure enough the description was there. He had been listed on the site on 9/4/09 and the contact information was that of his former trainer. There wasn't a picture of the glorious black gelding, but I knew it was in fact the former Breeder Cup winner that was for sale. I just couldn't stand the thought of this horse going to someone that didn't know who he was, or that he could not have the retirement he deserved. He was a bit arthritic, so what would his future career be? The listing said he loaded well, stands when shod etc, but not much more about what he could or couldn't do. I at that moment made it my mission to do what The Second Race does, and that is Network for Results.

The following Facebook post by Vivien Morrison describes in some detail what transpired and his arrival at Old Friends. Vivien is a volunteer for Old Friends and keeps the thousands of followers up-to-date on the activities of the equine athletes that reside there.

Smokey arrived safely at Old Friends Sunday, just before nightfall. Before leaving the Golden state, he received excellent care in the barn of trainer Greg Gilcrest, but now retired from the racetrack, it became apparent that Smokey was looking for a forever home. For a time, it appeared he might go to an adopted home through CANTER, and equine advocates, including the FOBs began to raise funds on his behalf...however, Sharla Sanders, of The Second Race spotted his adoption listing and with a great appreciation of his contributions to the racing world, she went into action, contacting his connections and referring them to Old Friends. Sharla's efforts were rewarded as Michael Blowen was very happy to see this lovely fellow home and so with Ms. Sanders continued assistance, transportation was arranged and with the aide of Mr. Gilcrest he was on his way to the Bluegrass!...... Best known to some as the stablemate of the star crossed Lost in the Fog, he was owned by the late Harry Aleo and trained by Greg Gilcrest. Bred in Florida, by Put it Back, out of the Jolie's Halo mare Milady's Halo, Smokey Stover was a successful stakes winner during his three and four year old campaigns, started 14 times and only finished off the board once..... He ended his career with over $ 750,000 in earnings and 8 victories. His most high profile victory perhaps was in the Sunshine Millions Sprint at Santa Anita. He also captured the G2 Potrero BC H and the G3 Bay Meadows BC H. Sprint. The best part of the Smokey Stover story is that his connections were willing to put the horse first and his arrival at Old Friends is a true testament to the appreciation and respect true racing supporters like Sharla Sanders have for these outstanding athletes...Smokey brought joy to his followers in California and her primary aim was to find him a forever home in which he could be admired by his many fans and given the dignity and respect deserving of such a fine champion. We are honored to have this beautiful...and tall...fellow in our Old Friends family.
I want to extend my thanks to Greg Gilchrist, the family of Harry Aleo, Diane Repp for alerting me to Smokey Stover's posting on CANTER, Michael Blowen, KC Transport, Irish Rose Farm in Bradbury for allowing me to visit Smokey before he continued on his journey to Kentucky and for the 100's of racing fans that cared about him when discovered he was available to a new home. The networking that took place in literally hours, shows what can be done when racing fans, organizations, and people work together for a common good. Best wishes to Smokey and enjoy your retirement you handsome boy....until next time.....

Tour of the Cat-- A tale of an 11 year race horse and those that cared

The Second Race is dedicated to ensuring that ex-race horses find a second chance. Here is a reprint of an article by Joe Drape and the account of one such horse, Tale of the Cat. Enjoy!

August 24, 2009

Around the Final Turn, and Heading for a Home

By JOE DRAPE

GEORGETOWN, Ky. — Tour of the Cat looks at home here in this prime patch of Kentucky bluegrass. Among about 50 fellow retirees are some of the most revered names in horse racing, like Sunshine Forever and Ogygian. These horses won tens of millions of dollars on the racetrack.Tour of the Cat belongs with them. He is a multiple graded-stakes winner who earned more than $1.1 million over a nine-year career. Still, he is lucky to be here.

Just last month, Tour of the Cat, 11, was at Presque Isle Downs in Erie, Pa., competing at racing’s lowest levels. He had at least one sore ankle and raced for the 79th time, managing to beat only one other horse. His odyssey from bottom-level horse to unlikely stakes champion and back again illustrates how many in the racing industry routinely overlook their responsibility to aging animals.Tour of the Cat might have made an 80th start if not for a group of racehorse devotees who know one another mostly through the Internet and who share a conviction that old horses should be retired with dignity.

The group found a sympathetic horse owner, Maggie Moss, who claimed Tour of the Cat for the rock-bottom price of $5,000 on its behalf.She then shipped him here to Old Friends at Dream Chase Farm. “It was like finding Babe Ruth sleeping under a bridge,” said Michael Blowen, the farm’s president and founder. “They breed 36,000 of them every year, and three years later only one of them is going to win the Kentucky Derby.

The question is, What happens to the rest of them?”At least 3,000 racehorses come off the track annually in need of homes, the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation estimates, and only about one-third of them are as fortunate as Tour of the Cat. Many more are abandoned, euthanized or slaughtered. Ferdinand, the 1986 Kentucky Derby winner, wound up slaughtered in Japan in 2002 after failing as a stallion. Even though the federal government closed the last United States slaughterhouse in 2007, horses are regularly sold at auction and trucked to slaughter in Mexico or Canada.

In fact, it was the appearance this year of racehorses belonging to the prominent breeder and owner Ernie Paragallo in a New York kill pen, one step from being slaughtered, that led to an investigation and subsequent charges, on 35 counts of animal cruelty. Paragallo pleaded not guilty, but nearly 100 of his horses were taken from his Center Brook Farm, south of Albany. “The bottom end of the rung can be hideous for a horse,” said Hal Handel, chief operating officer of the New York Racing Association. “Collectively it’s the responsibility of the industry. That’s the racetracks, the breeders, the owners, you know, everyone who makes a living off or touches the animal owes the animal something back.”

The Derby dreams of Tour of the Cat and his owner, Susan Gannon, ended in the spring of 2001 when he finished a well-beaten second in the Flamingo Stakes at Hialeah Park. Even though Gannon was new to the racing game, she understood that Tour of the Cat, a gelding she had claimed for $25,000, was developing too slowly to be a Derby horse. She instead chose a diet of modest stakes races in Florida. Her plan worked, and by the time he was 6, Tour of the Cat was a consistent stakes winner and even ran in a $2 million stakes in Dubai. “I was blessed to have him,” Gannon said, her voice cracking. “He took me all over the world.” But his long decline began late that year, when Tour of the Cat injured his right front foot and was turned out to pasture to heal for 17 months. Now, Gannon wishes she had left him there. Tour of the Cat was 8 — an advanced age for an American thoroughbred to be racing — when he returned to the track in 2006. He was no longer a stakes horse but a durable and popular claiming horse on the Florida circuit.

In claiming races, which are staples of everyday racing, any licensed owner can buy any horse running at an established price. On Nov. 29, 2008, that price was $16,000.“It was supposed to be his last race,” said Gannon, who lives on a small farm with a handful of mares in Ocala, Fla., “and then I was bringing him home.” Instead, Tour of the Cat was claimed by David Jacobson, who had had success with older accomplished horses in New York. “They are professional, seasoned,” Jacobson said. “If you put them in with cheaper horses, their back class shows.” Jacobson’s subsequent campaigning of the horse was noticed by horse rescue advocates. In a span of 36 days in January, Tour of the Cat raced three times in New York and once in Maryland. He won twice and finished second and fourth at the lowest level of the sport. “I was seeing things on the message boards about this 10-year-old horse with a wonderful record that deserved better than getting the last bit of juice squeezed out of him,” said Beverly Strauss, executive director of Mid-Atlantic Horse Rescue, which usually buys slaughter-bound racehorses.

In June, Strauss became more concerned when she heard from Dr. Margaret Ohlinger, the veterinarian at Finger Lakes racetrack in upstate New York, that Tour of the Cat was on the grounds and no longer fit to race. Ohlinger is also co-founder of the Finger Lakes Thoroughbred Adoption Program, which is run in collaboration between horsemen and the track’s management. Ohlinger scratched Tour of the Cat hours before a June 27 race, although he was the favorite.“His left front tendon was swelled, hot and sore to the touch,” Ohlinger said. “He was too thin, and his muscle condition didn’t look like he was in racehorse condition. It was a disservice to the horse, the rider and the other riders to let him run.”She discovered that Tour of the Cat had been scratched in the spring by the track veterinarian at Aqueduct, and that Jacobson intended to send him to run at Presque Isle Downs. Strauss orchestrated a $2,500 offer for the horse to be retired, but Jacobson declined. “I believed he was in good condition, and had some races left,” Jacobson said.

Strauss contacted Moss, an Iowa-based lawyer who has a large stable of horses, who made the claim with money from Internet supporters.“We had hoped the industry would take care of cases like this,” Ohlinger said. “But it’s really the fans who do not know much about horses who are doing right by most of these horses.”

Some in the racing industry have recently increased the focus on finding second homes for retired thoroughbreds. The New York Racing Association, for example, raised $125,000 to work with the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation to try to find homes for all former racehorses in New York State. Tour of the Cat, meanwhile, has put on 50 pounds and is getting used to ranging at his leisure. It will cost Old Friends about $2,000 a year to keep him at the farm, said Blowen, its founder. He remains mystified why a multibillion-dollar agribusiness does not do better by its stars.“Without them, there’s nothing,” Blowen said. “There is none of this bluegrass, no horse business, no racing, no jockeys, there’s nothing. There’s no feed people or veterinarians or anything. It’s all because of them that everyone’s here. And at the end of the day, we can’t just treat them like trash and throw them to side of the road.”

The End of a Racing Meet Finds Me With a Renewed Sense of Hope?

It was Sunday late in the afternoon after the 8th race at Hollywood Park that I decided to visit the backside to see how Spring House was after his race.

Two weeks prior I had visited him in Julio Canani's barn and he was full of himself. You sensed he was ready for a big race. He was jumping out of his skin and the handsome dark brown gelding was a joy to be around. Spring House has become a favorite of mind during this past meet. As usual, the barn was a bustle of activity. If you have never been to the backside of a race track there really isn't anything else like it. It has it's own rhythm, culture and lifestyle. Saturday, the day before the race was much the same. I did note that there were more horse transport vans than usual, and rental vans had desks, chairs, tack and every other item you can imagine loaded up in them, but that was to be expected as the horsemen had been excitedly talking for a week about Del Mar, the next stop on the So Cal racing circuit. I watched as horse after horse were being lead up the ramps, and wondered who he or she was. All with their legs wrapped ready for the long ride down the highway, they were loaded up efficiently.



Well Spring House did not win his race on Sunday, but I was proud of him just the same and wanted to say goodbye before I left. The difference in 24 hours was amazing. The backside at this late hour of the afternoon was a ghost town. Barn after barn were cleaned out, some looked as if nothing had occupied the stalls even a day prior. When I reached Julio's barn, Spring House was happily eating up his mash, and barely flicked his tail in recognition that someone was standing outside his stall. To me that was a sign of a happy and hungry race horse, and so I said goodbye and told him I would see him soon. As I was getting ready to leave, for some reason I looked down the shed row and noticed five or six heads peering out from their stalls. To that point, I hadn't paid attention to who else occupied the barn.



The horses looked forlorn and there was something different about them that drew me to walk down the row. I noticed several of the stalls were empty, most with trash strewn about and these five or six horses. One in particular with the brown eyes that only a horse possesses stared at me. I stared right back and found my pulse quickening. Where was their hay, where was their food, and where were their caretakers? I looked around and there was no one in the barn at all. And then a thought crossed my mind, have these horses been left behind? Are these the "less than's" that I worry about at the end of a racing meet? Surely someone was coming for them? Another horse was eating the straw in his soiled stall, and I was beginning to feel a sense of panic that I couldn't describe. I was imagining things, I told myself, too much time spent thinking about rescuing horses had made me jaded. I faintly heard my friend say "who left these horses here"?



As we both stared at each other and the horses, a van pulled up to the barn. We slowly, in our own thoughts, walked to my car. We looked back in unison to see if the proximity of the van to the barn somehow ensured that we were correct and the van was there to take the horses to the next stop, Del Mar. Surely no one would leave the horses behind, I told myself over and over again. Yes, of course don't be silly Sharla, of course someone will wrap their legs and give them a small bit of hay as they drive down the highway to make the trip less stressful, of course they will, of course they will be running in Del Mar enjoying the cool beach air, of course........ I drove home in silence.



For a story about a horse that was not forgotten read this post from The Blood Horse regarding Boule D'Or.



http://cs.bloodhorse.com/blogs/thoroughbred-bloggers-alliance/archive/2009/07/15/boule-d-or-a-new-beginning-for-an-old-friend.aspx