Tag: Chris McGrath

This Side Up: Quit Chasing the Dollar and Try Cruz Control

Assuming that you, too, have by this stage marvelled at the tenacity, balance and athleticism of Alex Cruz in winning a race despite losing both irons leaving the gate, at Emerald Downs last weekend, then perhaps you might also have been prompted to reassess our prejudices against the seat of the 18th Century guardsman.

To the modern eye, the long-shanked equitation of those days appears ludicrous: awkward, stilted and, above all, inimical to the freedom of the horse's movement. We think of the elevation of the modern jockey, as popularized in Edwardian England by the American Tod Sloan, precisely as a withdrawal from interference. Yet seeing how his mount reeled in her rivals, more or less under her own steam, it struck me that the one thing Cruz couldn't be doing, in these rather eye-watering circumstances, was supervise her mechanics. Albeit he did contrive to brandish his whip, it would be a stretch to say that he was in charge of the situation. Yet if he was little more than a passenger, then you have to say that the engine appeared to run very smoothly indeed.

 

Now it would clearly be unwarranted to extrapolate too much from this single sample. But tastes do change–after all, the Turf Establishment in Newmarket was initially scandalized by Sloan's posture, deriding him as a monkey on a stick–and maybe we are too eager to discover efficiency in the style we nowadays find most aesthetically pleasing.

Be that as it may, it would seem that all variations in technique share the same objective, which is to minimize the contribution of the rider. It's very striking, after all, that you hardly ever see a loose steeplechaser even make a mistake, never mind fall, after discarding its jockey.

And I'm afraid that this principle has repeatedly occurred to me, in the days since, as an apt one to pursue in how we present the Thoroughbred to the racing public. Because it does seem that human beings will tend to get involved only to let their own shortcomings–their avarice, their self-interest, their venality–get in the way of the contrasting, captivating nobility of the breed.

Emerald Downs | Reed and Erin Palmer

Now it so happens that Emerald Downs, the setting for Cruz's prodigious feat, filled the poignant gap created by the sale of Longacres to Boeing, resulting in its closure 29 years ago this very week. No such sanctuary, sadly, seems likely for Illinois horsemen after they pay their final respects to a still more storied venue at Arlington on Saturday.

It's going to be a shattering experience for the railbirds of Chicago–among which this Englishman has often been fortunate, over the years, from time to time to infiltrate himself–to watch the curtain come down on one of the most sumptuous facilities, for horse and horseplayer alike, anywhere on planet Turf. Even for those of us who never set foot in the place, the video of the final race at Longacres is extremely moving, with caller Gary Henson doing unforgettable justice to the moment by unexpectedly leaving it to be run in silence. As they galloped toward the clubhouse turn, he solemnly declaimed: “Ladies and gentlemen, these horses belong to you. Listen to their final thunder.”

And, sure enough, there was a sound familiar to our species for centuries before the advent of the horseless carriage, never mind the Boeing jet: the pounding of hooves, against which percussion you hear only the improvisation of 23,358 fans crammed into the stands, crying out and whooping. Some are seen hugging each other in a devastated silence of their own after saluting the winner–ridden, aptly, by Idaho-born Gary Stevens, who began his journey to greatness round this circuit.

Henson's father Harry himself called at Longacres for 14 years but was associated even longer with Hollywood Park–a still more grievous loss to our sport, in the meantime, on the Pacific coast. That track, of course, had passed through the hands of Churchill Downs Inc, whose behavior at Arlington permits little doubt of their unabashed priorities in considering, apparently almost exclusively, the perceived interests of shareholders.

“Perceived” is the key word here, though it's evidently futile to renew the warning that cashing in Arlington tugs fatally at the weakest link in capitalism–namely, that point where a drooling, short-term lust for dividends and bonuses wrenches future profit from its source, in the sustainable engagement of consumers.

Arlington Park | Coady

You really couldn't come up with a more deranged example than putting a wrecking ball through Arlington (Arlington! paragon of racetracks!) in order to corral zombie gaming addicts into a more efficient factory. I can't let this bleak day pass without again quoting Richard Duchossois himself, in a conversation a few years ago. “We're never going to chase the dollar,” he said. “If you have the best services you can, a quality product and a competitive price, then we feel the dollar will catch us… Providing product, that's mechanical. Customer service, people-to-people, is the most valuable thing we have.”

As it is, the track he rebuilt after incineration is this time to be deliberately destroyed–with little prospect, it seems, of a phoenix–by the kind of blindly groping corporate avarice that ultimately injures itself beyond repair.

No doubt others have been culpable, too. I certainly can't claim, if indeed anyone can, to read the inner workings of Illinois politics. But the bottom line is that human beings somehow seem determined, in unspoken but deafening self-interest, always to subvert the glory of the Thoroughbred–stewardship of which is a privilege that should sooner compel us toward a reciprocal beauty, courage and generosity.

I'm not remotely qualified to pronounce on the merit or otherwise of the proliferating litigations that have once again filled the pages of TDN this week, though dismayed to see even the non-racing states of Alaska and Mississippi, presumably on ideological grounds, harnessed to attempts to derail the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA). But one way or another there seem to be plenty of people out there with a personal agenda that can only erode public confidence in the way we handle the breed.

Our industry will only thrive if devoted to the horse, the whole horse and nothing but the horse. Future fans, if they are to emerge, are relying on us to breed a robust animal that thrives on the demands of racing–and not just to paper over the cracks as long as it takes to get them through the ring at Keeneland this past fortnight. It seems quite obvious that the long-term interests of the breed itself coincide with those of the fans.

Life Is Good in Pletcher tack | Susie Raisher

With its gray areas supporting yet more litigation, the Bob Baffert saga has arguably become an unhelpful distraction from operations whose sinister performance appears plainly legible in black and white. Some of these have patrons who purport to be respectable, but who can again be charged with wilful interference, in pursuit of short-term gain, with the natural functioning of the horse.

It must be tough for Baffert to see Life Is Good (Into Mischief), a refugee from his troubled barn, shaping as though he retains the potential to prove the most talented sophomore of all. His debut for Todd Pletcher was simply spectacular, and he will doubtless repay the prudent restraint of his rider that day when set a less exacting task in the GII Kelso H.

Baffert having meanwhile scratched the horse at the center of the storm from the GI Pennsylvania Derby, we welcome back a 3-year-old whose profile could scarcely be more different from Life Is Good in Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow). For all the contrasts between them, these two horses both capture the majesty of the Thoroughbred and its capacity to engage and enchant a mass audience.

So maybe let's all of us try throwing our legs out of the irons, and just leaving the horse to do its thing. That way, in the long run, we all prosper together–life will indeed be good for horses, horsemen and fans. That way, we can daily declare: “Ladies and gentlemen, these horses belong to you.”

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Like Her Trainer, Sconsin Closing with Every Stride

After 40 years, and standing seventh in the all-time Churchill Downs win list, it looks as though Greg Foley might just be getting the hang of this training game. Heading into the fall, he has already won more prizemoney than in any campaign since starting out in 1981: $2,335,202 and counting, from 33 winners at 19%. And the bases are loaded, too.

For instance, the pair that condensed Foley's maturing momentum in finally becoming his first and then immediately his second Derby starters, Major Fed (Ghostzapper) and O Besos (Orb), have both been restored to training after summer lay-ups. And then there's Sconsin (Include), whose hometown stakes success last Saturday not only had the winner's circle overflowing with family and friends but arguably confirmed her the most feasible pursuer of champion Gamine (Into Mischief) in the GI Filly and Mare Sprint at the Breeders' Cup.

“We've had a good run the last couple of years, and this year's been especially good,” Foley acknowledges. “But you know, I've just been blessed with some nice horses. Like anybody else, the horses will take you there if you can get them–and we've got a pretty good bunch right now. We're just trying to get a little better horse now, and keep this thing rolling along.”

Sure enough, Foley has been prospecting the second week of the September Sale with a diligence, and an eye, not so common among trainers nowadays. For this is an all-round horseman raised in the old school by his late father Dravo, himself a familiar figure on the Kentucky circuit for five decades as trainer of 1,123 winners. Foley has long since surpassed that tally, closing on 1,500, while sister Vickie excels them both (for now, at any rate) in having trained a Grade I winner, Hog Creek Hustle (Overanalyze) in the Woody Stephens S. a couple of years ago. Now Foley is grateful that sons Travis and Alex have taken the racetrack dynasty into a third generation, despite having demonstrated an eligibility for a different walk of life with an MBA and law degree, respectively.

This, in fact, is a barn so steeped in horse lore that the man who sets the standards, and the tone, represents perhaps the most venerable culture–and perhaps the most vulnerable–in the training business today: the Kentucky “hardboot.” Vulnerable, of course, only for the very reason such horsemen are so venerable, namely an insistence on the kind of hands-on care that inevitably leaves them overshadowed by megabrand trainers with a cavalry of hundreds spread across time zones.

But nobody should misapprehend “hardboot” as implying anything stony or stubborn, when it more often yields the kind of classy demeanor, genial and modest, typified by Foley's refusal to disparage more industrial competition.

“I take my hat off to those guys,” he says courteously. “I don't know how they do it. They do a hell of a job. Of course, it's tough when you're running places like Churchill Downs, the best of the best are going to show up, and the big outfits all have young horses coming through all the time. So if you just got a handful, you've got to step up to run with them, that's for sure. But that's just the way it is. We're running with 40 to 45 head of horse right now. And I like that range: I'm all in one spot, taking care of them every day.

“And that can be kind our selling point, too. I pride myself on my care of the horses. They look as well as anybody's, I think, when you walk them over. And that came straight from my father. He was an excellent horseman, with an excellent eye. He raised some very good ones, too, he had a farm, and I was lucky enough at 18, 20 years old, that he trusted me enough to go off to the racetrack with them.”

So while racing is notoriously a quantity game, Foley is happy to concentrate on maximizing quality so far as possible; and more than happy that he has the right team to do so, with Travis as assistant trainer and the backing of longstanding patrons like Lloyd Madison Farms, the Wisconsin ownership group behind Sconsin.

Competition in the sales ring, mind you, is no less exacting than on the racetrack. But Foley, when talking to TDN, was cheered by having just landed a $100,000 brother (Hip 2034) to GIII Sunland Derby winner Cutting Humor (First Samurai) from the Claiborne consignment.

“Yeah, I finally got to buy a horse!” he says. “It's been brutal. I haven't seen that many people there in a lot of years. I guess people are just happy to be out again, and to have some kind of normalcy. But there's a lot of money out there, that's easy to see, and they're spending it, too. We're kind of middle-of-the-road buyers, we don't have the big money, and that was the first one I really had a chance to buy. Nice colt, the mare has already had some good ones, and I'm happy we got him.”

It was deep in the same sale back in 2008 that Foley found a Tiznow filly for $90,000. Named Sconnie, she broke her maiden second time out by seven lengths but disappeared after her next start.

“She was a beautiful filly, gorgeous,” Foley remembers. “And she could run, too. We had some bad luck with her. After her work one morning, in Churchill, she almost got to staggering walking off and scared me pretty good. We sent her off to the clinic and they found this heart defect, so we retired her right after that.”

Sconnie joined the small string of Lloyd Madison broodmares boarding on Alex Rankin's Upson Downs Farm, near the Foley family home in Oldham County. Her third foal is Sconsin, who really announced herself with an explosive allowance score at Churchill last summer, and won the GII Eight Belles S. before just missing the podium behind Gamine at the Breeders' Cup. She has since become plenty familiar with the rear end of the champion, but wins in the GIII Winning Colors S. and then in the Open Mind S. last weekend suggest that she might yet close the gap if ever granted an adequate pace.

“You'd be pretty hard pressed to find a prettier filly than Sconsin,” Foley remarks. “And I think she's in the top three fillies in the country, sprinting. I know we ran fourth at Saratoga [GI Ballerina H.], but that was in a paceless race against Gamine: they went :23, :45, and I'm eight lengths back off it. And on a speed-favoring track she was one of few horses that made up any ground that day. If you look at her races, it's when they go :21-and-change, that's when she wins. Maybe we're crazy, taking on Gamine in her hometown, she's an unbelievable filly, but let's hope somebody might go with her early. Like the other night, it was a short field but with two speed fillies. That made it good both for us and [runner-up] Bell's the One (Majesticperfection). We've had our little rivalry going on, but we got her this time.”

Bell's the One, of course, represents another small barn supervised by a veteran horseman bearing a surname greatly respected by the old school. Foley is full of praise for the way Neil Pessin has kept his star thriving, and enjoys their divisional rivalry behind Baffert's monster, who cost $1.8 million at auction.
It was a shame that Pessin was denied the usual carnival atmosphere when Bell's the One won a Grade I on the Derby undercard last September, and it was much the same for Foley–both in winning the Eight Belles the previous day, and then in finally realizing every Kentucky horseman's dream by making the walk over from the backside with a Derby runner.

The participation of Major Fed, another Lloyd Madison homebred, brought full circle a friendship with patrons (Fred Schwartz, Jim Bakke and Tim Sweeney) Foley had first encountered through their mutual friend Rob Lloyd, who would host his Wisconsin buddies at the Derby every year.

“They went from never having owned a horse to becoming my main clients,” says Foley. “First-class people. They've been a dream to train for. Obviously [the September Derby, behind closed doors] was much different from other years, but I was thrilled to be in the race and we had a good time. Major Fed got pinballed around early, and got very keen. He needed to sit and finish, but he was only a length or so off the lead coming to the first bend and I knew then we were in big trouble.”

Major Fed faded to tenth but a stylish allowance win on his return in June suggested that he will reward his team's patience after another absence since. Foley is aiming him at an allowance race on Oct. 1.
Having waited so long to renew the Foley clan's Derby history–Taylor's Special (Hawkin's Special), bred by his father, didn't get home in 1984 after winning the GI Blue Grass S.–the barn wasted no time in finding a colt to sample a proper Derby day in O Besos, who outran his odds for an outstanding fifth in May. And certainly his Fair Grounds form with Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow), Midnight Bourbon (Tiznow) and Mandaloun (Into Mischief) looks none the worse for the rest he was given after finishing second in the GIII Matt Winn S. on his only subsequent start.

“O Besos actually just came back into the barn a couple of days ago,” Foley reports. “He looks great, and we're looking forward to later on this fall and early next year with him. He's run right up there with all those good horses that are still going now. In the Derby, when he came there saving ground on the inside, he made my hair stand up for a second, I thought we maybe had a good shot of winning. He was one of the few that made up any ground that day, and that was after being a little keen out of the gate which I think took away a little bit from his kick. He's filled out and grown up, from the little time off, and we're excited about having a big year with him [at four].”

So after all those years of incremental toil, it really does feel as though this admirable horseman is breaking into the next level. No doubt he has been helped by the next generation, with Travis excelling in client relations and recruitment. Foley admits that his son initially came aboard “just to give me a hand for a little while” while pondering career options, only to discover an inherited flair for the horse. Things played out similarly with Alex, who also helps out when his work for Steve Asmussen permits.

“I didn't keep them away but I did think they would wind up being lawyers or in business,” Foley says. “But anyway they found their way back over here and I'm happy they did. I grew up with it, and Vickie the same, as we were learning to walk. Years back, that's where trainers came from: it just ran in the family. So I guess it must be in the blood a little bit, they've taken to it so well.”

The boys' generation, of course, nowadays features among the opposition as well. But Foley, again, politely resists the invitation to agree that expensive horses, sent to younger trainers, will set them new puzzles that he has solved hundreds of times before.

“I would think experience would come in very handy,” Foley concedes with a chuckle. “But I can't knock anybody that comes up with good horses. You have to earn your way up. The horse is the whole thing. If you don't have a horse that can run, it doesn't matter who has them. It's just like if you're a football coach, basketball coach: you've got to have players to win ball games.”

Be that as it may, it's plainer than ever that Foley will reliably draw out the potential of whatever stock enters his seasoned hands.

“It took me a while to get to the Derby, but one thing about it, you want to do it again,” he says. “Sure enough, I was lucky enough to come back this year, and I hope it can become a habit.”

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This Side Up: Market Goes Back to the Future

The cyclical nature of our business, from the foaling shed to the race program, invites a length of perspective that can only be of comfort in times of trouble. This, too, shall pass–even a global pandemic. And if COVID disrupted our routines in 2020 as seldom before, with a September Derby and no Saratoga Sale, we appear determined to make as seamless a resumption as its lingering challenges allow.

Trade at Saratoga last month was eerily close to 2019. Of 180 hips into the ring for Fasig-Tipton's Select Sale, 135 sold for an aggregate $55,155,000 at an average $408,556 and median $350,000. Two years ago, 135 of 182 sold for $55,547,000 at $411,459 and $350,000.

Now, with a dark day at Keeneland on Friday permitting everyone to absorb a breathless start to the September Sale, it is possible to sharpen our sense of how the market is emerging from the crisis.

This, of course, was an auction that they did contrive to stage last year. While demand proved more resilient than many feared, predictably the sale took a big hit overall, rounding out at $249 million turnover for a $100,000 average, down from $360 million and $126,000 the previous year. But more reliable comparisons, to this point of the sale, are complicated by the fact that the one industry cycle that never quite repeats–paradoxically enough, at a place that so prizes tradition–is the format at Keeneland.

In 2019, Book 1 lasted three days before a two-session Book 2, a model last deployed in 2016. In 2018, Book 1 had been stretched to a fourth day. In 2017, conversely, it was compressed into a single session, with a three-day Book 2.

So let's hope that the new Keeneland team, with some extremely acute thinkers aboard, will give their chosen formula a proper chance to bed down. Judging on this week, they have every incentive to do so.

The most pertinent comparisons we can draw, entering the weekend, are with the 2018 and 2017 sales, which similarly presented the sale's best stock over four days, albeit packaged in different catalogs. Now remember that the 2018 sale was a knockout, ending up at $377 million at an average $129,335. This, being a nose ahead of 2019, represented the pinnacle of a bull run sustained through the decade since the banking crisis, thanks to relentless cash doping of the economy (nugatory interest rates, quantitative easing etc). As such, the 2017 sale had also registered a big leap, finishing with $308 million turnover and an average of $120,487, up from $273 million and $97,740 in 2017.

So let's put last year to one side–for what it's worth, the parallel two-day Books 1 and 2 yielded $168,130,000 from 643 sales at an average $261,477–and see how the best four days of stock in this market have performed against those boom years. In 2018, 640 head turned over $224,453,000 for an average $350,708. In 2017, 716 hips realized $200,760,000 at $280,391. In the first four days of this sale, 649 animals have changed hands for $205,754,000 at an average $317,032.

In other words, we are on track to restore the market to just about halfway between its 2017 and 2018 values, when we were approaching the absolute peak of a soaring market.

Now there's obviously still a long way to go. And even as it stands, plenty of individuals will have endured the tough experiences inevitable when you have to roll a sweaty stake to enter what proved an especially selective marketplace in Book 1 (barely half the published catalog both making it into the ring and finding a new home). That said, the hallmark of this week's trade appears to be its solidity and breadth.

One obvious factor is the increasing prevalence of high-end partnerships. Those vendors who resent combination instead of competition are missing the point. Because it's actually far more wholesome, on both sides of the market, for the big spenders to be spreading their risks.

In 2019, seven yearlings made $2 million or more at Keeneland. This year, it looks like we won't have one. But we know that people are spending the same kind of money, and the heart-breaking recent fate of Into Mischief's half-sister by American Pharoah, who topped that sale at $8.2 million, will doubtless comfort investors that they are both reducing their exposure even as they improve their odds of landing an elite runner. Many have evidently decided that to own only a leg in a future stallion represents a worthwhile sacrifice of ego in so precarious a business. And a wider spend, as we've seen this week, can reach very small consignments with life-changing results.

But the real key to this market may be a little simpler. While COVID has been a financial catastrophe for many households, some of the investors who drive our business are more affluent than ever–and they also have a renewed sense that life is for living. They have been piling up the cash, and don't want to sew pockets into a shroud.

That being so, it is vital that we give such people maximum confidence in our industry. And, in reality, the bloodstock market's buoyancy is menaced by many a needle.

The most perilous, of course, is literally that–and found on the end of a syringe. Commercial breeding for the ring, and not the racetrack, is another big problem. Then there's the foal crop, down again; unlike the volume of racing, which threatens a vicious circle via wagering disengagement. Even as Keeneland buzzed through its fourth session, moreover, Shadwell quietly announced the streamlining review feared since the loss of its founder Sheikh Hamdan earlier this year. The same Shadwell, that is, that topped spending at this sale in 2016 and 2017, and finished behind only Godolphin (owned by the late Sheikh's brother) in 2018 and 2019.

So none of us should be complacent in the perennial allure of the Thoroughbred. At the same time, we are entitled to take heart from the impetus behind the latest cycle this week.

How exciting, for instance, to see a 4-year-old Horse of the Year launch such a first crop of such startling precocity. After achieving a higher average this week than Tapit, War Front, Medaglia d'Oro and Uncle Mo, Gun Runner has the chance of a fifth graded stakes winner Saturday when Gun Town contests the GIII Iroquois S.–and the first starting points for the 2022 Derby.

Hope springs eternal! So begins another of those cherished, recurring cycles, by which we both take our bearings and also learn to transcend the narrow outlook of our own time and place. That's one of the reasons I love the statues unveiled at Churchill this week of Colonel Matt Winn, who died in 1949, seated in conversation with the late John Asher, who was born in 1956. Magnificent work as usual by local sculptor Raymond Graf and, in this instance, literally timeless. Good years, bad years, nothing lasts forever. And this, as a moment frozen out of time, might help to remind us that taking the long view actually boils down to living for the day.

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This Side Up: ‘Doc’ Was a Tonic to Us All

Three years ago this week, at the September Sale, I was privileged by as powerful a reminder as I'd enjoyed in a long time as to why this is such a great business. Not in the sale ring itself, watching the billionaires puffing out and locking antlers, but just sitting in the pavilion lobby with a guy who had been born in a one-room house to teenage parents–and had spent the intervening seven decades accumulating the kind of riches, being contingent on a mighty intellect and noble heart, that would forever elude most of those flaunting their wealth just a few yards away.

It was supposed to be a quick chat over a coffee, but as each hour ran into the next, the talk became ever more wide-ranging and fascinating. And, of course, he kept being interrupted: every other face that came through the door would light up, “Hey Doc!”, another handshake, often a murmured exchange on the well-being of some relative or neighbor or colleague, and often too, in parting, a warm expression of thanks for everything he had done.

And now, correspondingly, a whole community finds itself reeling at the loss of one who represented us so flatteringly in a wider, less frivolous world.

Dr. J. David Richardson is irreplaceable enough, purely in terms of a contribution formally measurable in his generous service on so many industry bodies over the years. But even that void does not begin to compare with the abrupt effacement from our midst of a friend to all ranks, from hotwalkers to tycoons.

As one of the most decorated surgeons in the land, Doc was always an amateur on the Turf. But he was no dilettante. He took great pride in the way he had honed his eye, wearing out his soles around the barns, of course mentored by none other than Woody Stephens (his “uncle”, actually his father's cousin). Richardson recommended Danzig as a yearling; and a shortlist of four put together for James Mills in 1985 included Gone West, who was purchased, and Alysheba, who was not.

Richardson, left, with longtime racing partner Dr. Hiram Polk | Horsephotos

But “Doc” also knew that the Thoroughbred is primarily a vehicle of humility. That day at Keeneland he derided the agents who would be going round telling clients that such-and-such a yearling “ticked all the boxes”. Because every year at Saratoga he would see horses that had cost a million bucks running down the field, when the winner cost $22,000, and the second $9,000. “And I wonder if they ticked all the boxes, too!” he said with a grin. “But that's what makes it fun.”

As a man of science, equally, he deplored the shortcuts sold to those of sufficient credulity. Data might be legible across the horse population, but individual capacities depended on too many intangibles. Cardiac physiology, for instance, was not a question of heart size but of function and efficiency. And even that, terribly complex as it was, remained only one element in a huge equation of attributes that had to cohere unreadably to meet the pressures of race day.

One apt memorial to Richardson, then, would be for prospectors returning to Keeneland this week to respect the lore and instinct that always governed stockmanship–and Richardson, typically, had been receptive to lessons learned with a friend who bred Hereford cattle–and to reject the “snake oil” or the software programs where it is often found today.

He remembered going out to Hermitage in 1982 with longtime racing partner Dr. Hiram Polk, to see a yearling filly they had entered for a sale. She was probably the smallest of maybe 20 fillies, but they all got out of her way when she wanted the feed tub. Who would perceive this alpha female in such a diminutive filly at the sales? They scratched her, and in their silks Mrs. Revere was a Grade I-placed, 12-time winner, since honored by a Grade II at Churchill.

If hardly any among us can begin to emulate Richardson in terms of professional achievement, then that should not stop us at least aspiring to his example in our family lives, or as donors of time, energy and experience to our community. Because he valued none of his cerebral gifts above the compassion available to the least of us.

The GII Mrs. Revere S. is still run at Churchill in the fall | Coady

Doc always told students that a little bit of you will die with every patient you lose. But their purpose in life was to help people through traumatic situations as best they could; to be confident–not arrogant, but definitely confident–in their skills; and to accept that some unpredictability of the human organism is unalterable. “I think if you are a compassionate person, it never gets easy,” he said. “If it does, then I worry about you. But if you do something out of love, then you never do the wrong thing.”

It is not as though a man who salvaged so many lives from the brink had failed to contemplate his own mortality. A few years ago he had survived a health crisis that allowed him to nurse his wife through her final days; and then, happily, to be consoled by new love and remarriage. But now that unpredictable human organism has pulled a vicious shock on us all, with grief rippling out in widening circles from what has always been a very close family.

Our society has few enough men of this stamp, never mind the narrow walk of sporting life we tread. Doc's passion for Thoroughbreds dignified our whole business. He made you feel that if such a sage and accomplished human being could be equally enthused, then ours could not just be some trivial, dumbass obsession. So if we borrowed something of his human luster, while blessed by his living example, let's now try to honor Doc by preserving it as our own–in how we engage with this business, and with each other.

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