Month: January 2023

A Fan Witnesses the Risk of Sports

I am a man comprised of many parts. Certainly among them: sports fan.

Yes, the big three–basketball, football, baseball–but also soccer, hockey, and, of course, horse racing.

I've attended a Summer Olympics, where I witnessed amazing track and field, swimming, and boxing. I also saw two sports for the first (and last) time–judo and team handball.

My father, before the interstate was even finished, would drive my siblings and I to Crosley Field in Cincinnati to watch our beloved Reds. As a youngster he took us to Kentucky football and basketball games in Stoll Field and Memorial Coliseum.

Many of my childhood heroes were athletes.

During the 1970s and early '80s, I attended many Cincinnati Bengals games with my longtime friend Chuck Oliver, who inherited season tickets from his father. In 1985, when Chuck moved from Indianapolis to Atlanta, he graciously passed the season tickets along to me. I've had them ever since.

I've rooted for the Bengals. And, during many seasons, rooted for the Bungles. My four children are Bengals (and Reds) fans. Interestingly, two now live in Cincinnati. Another resides in Ft. Thomas, Ky., about a five-minute drive to the baseball and football stadiums on the banks of the Ohio River.

In the old Riverfront Stadium, my four Bengals seats were 14 rows up from the field. Two seats were on each side of the 50-yard line. Today, in Paycor Stadium (formerly Paul Brown Stadium), I am at the 20-yard-line, two seats in row 21, two directly in front in row 20.

I rarely attend games on Thursday, Sunday or Monday nights for two reasons: 1) it is about a 90-minute drive home; and 2) though I enjoy a beer as much as the next guy, some fans tend to over-imbibe for late-starting contests.

Monday night, however, I was in the stadium because my close friend, Donna, is a longtime Buffalo Bills fan and the thought of being together to watch Joe Burrow versus Josh Allen was too enticing.

My daughter, Jennie, and her friend, Cole, were in attendance with us.

Wearing my Bengals hat and three layers of Bengals shirts, I was excited when “we” won the coin toss and elected to take the ball. We aren't deferring to the second half. We want the ball.
When my favorite player, Tyler Boyd, caught the game's first touchdown, it was game on.

Unfortunately, after Buffalo kicked a field goal and the Bengals began their second drive, the unimaginable happened. Tee Higgins caught a pass on a slant pattern and was tackled by safety Damar Hamlin.

I was looking right at Hamlin when he stood up for just a few seconds, then fell to the ground. I knew this was no torn ACL, no stinger, no concussion.

This was serious.

You really knew so when they asked players to surround the 24-year-old former Pitt player so fans could not see what was happening.

Being a horse racing fan, my thoughts turned to times when track personnel bring out a barrier so fans don't witness a horse being euthanized on the track.

Minutes seemed like hours as emergency personnel worked on Hamlin. We saw them get out the paddles. We could not see them performing CPR, but wondered aloud with other fans if that is what was happening.

We were disturbed that it took the league so long to cancel the game. A friend on Facebook reminded me it takes “corporations” a long time to make decisions.

Indeed, NFL teams and the league itself are corporations.

Thankfully, the right decision was made. After watching players openly crying on the field, how could they possibly compose themselves to carry on?

But what if it had been a playoff game? Or the Super Bowl? Would a different decision have been made? Would they have agreed to play the next day?

What happened to Hamlin is simply not a scenario you expect to happen.

There were many things in play–television ad revenues, playoff implications, players working at their craft for future contracts, etc. But the players, teams, league all realized first and foremost that ahead of the business of the game was concern, care and respect for Damar Hamlin.

Racing fans are often reminded of this relationship of sports and business, such as when colts are rushed off to stud and mares are mated more with the sale ring in mind than the racetrack.
In 1990, I was with my two brothers at the Breeders' Cup at Belmont Park. We had wonderful seats outside at the sixteenth pole. The Distaff was a thrilling duel between champions Bayakoa and Go For Wand, until the latter broke down right in front of us and had to be humanely destroyed.

My younger brother, not a huge racing fan, bid us farewell. He headed to the train station and departed, unable to remain after watching the tragedy unfold.

My older brother and I stayed. We had come to see Unbridled, who did win the Breeders' Cup Classic. Also, I think, being racing fans, we more easily accept that horses, sadly, do sometimes break down.

I wonder now, however, what would have happened had jockey Randy Romero, who was not seriously injured, lay on the track as long as Damar Hamlin lay on the field?
In football, the players are the athletes. In racing, there are two athletes – the human athletes and the equine athletes.

All athletes–and in the case of horses, the owners and trainers–know there is some degree of risk in what they do.

There is, however, a wide range in that degree of risk. Certainly horses and jockeys have a greater degree of risk than someone competing in ping pong.

While football players have a high degree of risk, it did not appear Hamlin's tackle of Higgins was particularly hard. Listed at the time of this writing in critical condition, medical professionals will hopefully shed some light on the cause of his cardiac event.

What I witnessed in Paycor Stadium was horrific. It left me stunned, dazed, bewildered.

It also left me to remember something important. Though I am a sports fan, and root for certain teams and against certain teams, at the end of the day, it's just a game.

The health and welfare of the athletes should always come first.

The post A Fan Witnesses the Risk of Sports appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Barton All In as Baldwin Bloodstock Makes its Third January Appearance

When Amy Bunt and John Barton teamed up to present their first consignment as Baldwin Bloodstock at the 2021 Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale, Barton was still based in Southern California and making a living underwriting auto loans. Two years on, Barton has made the transition full-time to the Bluegrass and Baldwin Bloodstock is set to present six horses in its third January consignment. While earning a living in the industry might have been a new experience when he joined forces with Bunt two years ago, Barton was anything but a novice to the sport.

“I grew up in San Gabriel, which is a stone throw from Santa Anita, about 10 minutes south of Santa Anita,” Barton said. “My dad, Neil Barton, owned horses back in the early '70s. And he went to a high school called Mark Keppel in Ahambra. He and Wayne Hughes of Spendthrift used to take bets out for their teachers during class. This was in the late '40s and early '50s. They would drive up to Santa Anita, make the bets and come back. My dad and Wayne were best friends forever, he was kind of like an uncle to me. So that's kind of how it got started.”

Barton's cousins Bob and Jude Feld have been involved in all facets of the game and, early on, Barton had dreams of following Jude into the Southern California training ranks.

“In the summer of 1996, when I thought I wanted to be a trainer, Jude said, 'Well, I have a string of horses at Fairplex.' I said, 'I want to give it a shot.' So that summer, I would walk hots for him. I did it for a full summer, seven days a week getting up at 4 a.m. Bob was the supervisor for that string at Pomona while Jude was at Del Mar during the summer. So Bob was running the show and I was a hotwalker. After three months of that, I said, 'I don't want to be a trainer anymore.' I went back to school that September and got my degree in finance in 1997 and went straight into auto financing.”

But Barton never lost his love of racing.

“I still had my eye on horse racing and the business,” he said. “I would go to Santa Anita whenever Wayne had a horse running–he still lived in Southern California at the time and hadn't purchased Spendthrift yet. So every time he ran a horse, my dad and I would go and I was able to pick his brain and talk about the business.”

It wasn't until 2020 that Barton finally made his first trip to Kentucky.

“My mom and dad used to come out a lot and visit Wayne and his wife Patty,” Barton recalled. “They would come home and tell me how great it is. But I never got to. Then in March of 2020, right as the pandemic hit, I kind of invited myself to Spendthrift. Wayne and his wife said, 'Yeah, come out and stay with us, you can see the farm and you can see if you like it out here.' So I got to Kentucky and I fell in love with it. I walked around Spendthrift, saw all the stallions and all the babies–it was March, so babies were being born as we were out there. My sisters and husbands were with me and they said, 'You know so much about the farm and everything,'–because I was rattling off statistics and numbers and history, they said, 'You should get a job here.' And we kind of laughed it off.”

He continued, “I went back home to California, to my auto finance, but I was kind of tired of it. I came out again to Kentucky in September of 2020 for the yearling sales. I stayed with Wayne and Patty. Spendthrift was very involved with the yearling sales, so I walked around with Ned Toffey, the general manager of Spendthrift, and their crew just learning about everything. One thing led to another and Wayne said, 'Why don't you move out here?'”

As he was contemplating the jump to Kentucky, Bob Feld introduced his cousin to Bunt, who was just launching her Baldwin Bloodstock. Bunt had been a partner in the Select Sales Agency, but was looking to pick up the slack when that consignment disbanded.

“I thought it sounded interesting,” Barton said of the opportunity to partner on the consignment, but Hughes had other ideas.

“I got on the phone with Wayne and he said, 'I don't know much about consignments. But I want you to come out here and be the tour guide for Spendthrift. You are a hard working, you like to talk, you know your history, you'd be perfect for it.'”

So Barton decided to do both. He sold his home in Southern California in February of 2021 and moved to Lexington the following month. He lived in a cabin at Spendthrift while giving tours to MyRacehorse owners.

Living on the farm gave Barton the opportunity to spend time with, and learn from, Hughes in the final months of the entrepreneur's life.

“I think he saw a little bit of my dad in me,” Barton said. “That's why we got along so well. He loved telling stories from way back when. And we talked horses and the business. And he was always worried about me. He told me, 'I think you'll do well as long as you work as hard as your dad did.'”

Baldwin Bloodstock had its biggest results at the November sales of 2021, selling C J's Gal (Awesome Again), dam of GIII Pocahontas S. winner Hidden Connection (Connect), for $450,000 at Fasig-Tipton and Jazz Tune (Johannesburg), dam of GI Breeders' Futurity winner Rattle N Roll (Connect) for $585,000 at Keeneland.

By 2022, the Baldwin consignment to the Keeneland November sale included 24 horses and was led by a son of Tiz the Law who sold for $105,000.

After that success with a first-crop sire, Baldwin returns to the Keeneland January sale with six horses, four of whom are short yearlings by first-crop sires. The group includes a filly by Global Campaign (hip 111), a daughter of Gift Box (hip 181), a filly by Higher Power (hip 1128), and a colt by Thousand Words (hip 1166).

“I know those first-crop sires, those babies sold well for all of them pretty much, we just hope it keeps going,” Barton said.

The Baldwin consignment also includes a short yearling filly by GI Belmont S. winner Tapwrit (hip 1175), whose unbeaten 3-year-old son Victory Formation just acquired GI Kentucky Derby points with a win in the Smarty Jones S. Sunday at Oaklawn. The gray filly is the first foal out of stakes-placed Duchess of Sussex.

“We are excited about her,” Barton said. “Duchess of Sussex was a black-type placed filly owned by Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners. She has Eclipse written all over her because they owned Tapwrit and they owned Duchess of Sussex. And the timing is perfect with Victory Formation winning Sunday.”

The Baldwin consignment is rounded out by the 6-year-old broodmare Mopolka (Uncle Mo) (hip 962), who is offered in foal to Improbable.

“These days everybody is looking for young broodmare prospects, so we like her a lot,” Barton said.

The business partnership between Barton, with his financial background, and Bunt would seem to be a match made in heaven. Bunt's vast experience in the racing industry includes stints with Coolmore in Australia, Van Meter Sales, Niall Brennan Stables and Eaton Sales, as well as time as a veterinary technician at Hagyard Davison McGee.

“Together, we make a great team,” Barton said. “It's absolutely perfect that I handle the financial stuff and she does the horse stuff. I am learning more about the horse stuff, about conformation. I knew a little bit about the breeding, but I am learning more. And you can't help but learn when you are around Amy because she just knows so much. If anyone was born to be in this business, it's her. She lives and breathes it. And I am starting to do that myself.”

As for the future of Baldwin Bloodstock, Barton said, “Hopefully someday we would like to get into the yearling sales, but right now we are still focused on the weanlings and mixed sales. I'd like to go Maryland and maybe Saratoga, we will see how it goes. We would love to expand, but still keep it small enough to where we can provide the attention that the horse and the client deserve.”

The Keeneland January sale will be held next Monday through Thursday with bidding commencing each day at 10 a.m.

The post Barton All In as Baldwin Bloodstock Makes its Third January Appearance appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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TB Makeover Applications Close Jan. 20

Applications for the 2023 Thoroughbred Makeover and National Symposium, presented by Thoroughbred Charities of America, are now open for submission, the Retired Racehorse Project announced Tuesday. The application period closes at 5:00 p.m. EST on Jan. 20. Accepted trainers will be announced no later than Feb. 15.

Interested applicants can start the application process now by logging on to Retired Racehorse Project website.

Entering its ninth year at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, horses and trainers will compete for more than $110,000 in total prize money, plus the coveted title of Thoroughbred Makeover Champion, at the Kentucky Horse Park on Oct. 11-14, 2023. The Thoroughbred Makeover features competition in ten disciplines for recently retired Thoroughbreds in their first year of retraining for a career after racing. Entrants may compete in one or two disciplines of their choice, including Barrel Racing, Competitive Trail, Dressage, Eventing, Field Hunter, Polo, Ranch Work, Show Hunter, Show Jumper, and Freestyle.

New for 2023, the Thoroughbred Makeover will also include a Former Broodmare division, presented by Claiborne Farm, serving as a pilot program for recently retired broodmares exiting the bloodstock industry.

. Full eligibility requirements can be found in the rule book also on the website.

The post TB Makeover Applications Close Jan. 20 appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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