Tag: Connections

“The Arkansas Derby winner, and his name is Cyberknife!” 

Racing through his home in Del Ray Beach, Fla., owner Al Gold burst into the room just in time to watch his colt cross the wire in front and celebrate with racing manager Joe Hardoon.

Gold had been planning to watch the race outside on his iPad, a superstitious move that had worked with his most recent winner, but the iPad froze shortly after the field broke from the gate. He rushed into the house, but couldn't find the remote for the closest television. Gold then made his way to the room in which Hardoon was watching the race, managing to catch the final strides of his first Grade 1 victory.

It was a happy end to a weekend that had begun on the completely opposite end of the spectrum. Gold had planned to take his family and Hardoon to Arkansas for the race, but their plane lost cabin pressure shortly after takeoff and was forced to perform an emergency landing.

The loss of cabin pressure is a serious problem; it can cause hypoxia, leaving occupants without enough oxygen to maintain consciousness. 

“I always hated to fly,” Gold said. “We were up in the air for about 15 minutes, and I started sweating and my ears were hurting, and a few minutes later the wheels went down.

“We were happy to be alive.”

That sentiment extends to Cyberknife's name, as well. Gold, a 66-year-old retired construction manager from New Jersey, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2020. The CyberKnife System, a non-invasive robotic treatment, has kept him in remission.

The CyberKnife robot moves and bends around the patient to deliver radiation doses from potentially thousands of unique beam angles, significantly expanding the possible positions to concentrate radiation to the tumor while minimizing dose to surrounding healthy tissue.

“A lot of people don't know about it, and when you hear 'prostate cancer' it's easy to get afraid right away,” Gold said. “The CyberKnife is just five sessions at 18 minutes each, and it was effective; I've had no signs of anything since then. 

“Usually, I like to give my horses weird names, but this was the one serious name.”

Cyberknife, the colt, earned the weighty name by virtue of his early talent. Gold heard good things about his potential during early training, and decided he'd send the colt to Brad Cox.

“I wanted to give him to the best trainer out there, and Brad has won two Eclipse Awards,” Gold said. “He takes his time, he's very dedicated, very thorough, and just a very-detail oriented trainer.”

Gold appreciates those details. He said he had a very bad experience with a bloodstock agent years ago, which wound up going to court. Still, he refused to give up on the sport he'd grown to love.

Cyberknife was one of the first horses selected by 24-year-old Joe Hardoon, son of Jonathan Hardoon of the Ragozin sheets. Gold and the Hardoon family had become friends after spending time together at Saratoga, and the younger Hardoon is also Gold's racing manager.

Out of the multiple stakes-winning Flower Alley mare Awesome Flower, Cyberknife was a $400,000 purchase at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky yearling sale. While talented, the colt was somewhat immature mentally and has not been straightforward in his training.

Cyberknife crossed the wire first in his debut at Churchill Downs on Sept. 25, but was disqualified for interference in the stretch. In his second start, the colt ran erratically in the final eighth to miss the win by a half-length. Cyberknife put it all together on the day after Christmas at the Fair Grounds, finally breaking his maiden in his third career start.

Then came a backward step in the G3 Lecomte Stakes, in which Cyberknife could do no better than sixth. 

“He just needs to race and get some miles underneath him in the afternoons,” Cox told Fair Grounds publicity. “I think the talent is there, but he's got to take a step forward mentally, and I think he will… I think he's going to be a player in the 3-year-old division.”

Cox dropped the colt back into allowance company, and he was much more professional to post a three-length victory. 

It was time for the biggest test of Cyberknife's career, the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby. True to form, Cyberknife was playful in the post parade and unseated jockey Florent Geroux. Geroux hopped back aboard on his own, and carried on to win the race by 2 ¾ lengths. He still raced somewhat erratically in the stretch, but Cyberknife was well clear of the rest of the talented field.

“If you watch his race replays, they tell you more about him than anything in regards to his antics down the lane,” Cox said the morning after the win. “Obviously in the post parade yesterday, he did get Flo off and he's a handful, he really is. He's not bad. He's just full of energy.”

Gold echoed his trainer's thoughts on the talented, cheeky colt.

“He's been green every race of his career, but he's better than he was,” Gold said. “He's better every week.”

Heading toward the first Saturday in May, Gold said it would be just his second time attending the Kentucky Derby. Last time the horse he owned won the first race on the card, so Gold will be hoping that luck holds true in his second trip to Louisville, Ky.

“I started betting on the races 50 years ago, and I've had a few other good ones along the way, a Grade 2 and a Grade 3 winner, but something always happened that they didn't make it any further,” Gold said. “This is the one; he's stuck around and stayed healthy, and we're excited about the Derby.”

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Though Arlington Park may have been shuttered, longtime Chicagoland trainer Hugh Robertson has no plans to follow the city's jewel of a racetrack into the sunset. Not when the 71-year-old has Grade 1-winning horse Two Emmys in the barn, and especially not when he knows exactly how lucky he is to be alive after surviving a stroke three years ago.

On Feb. 26, 2019, Robertson went to the Fair Grounds Racecourse in New Orleans, La., well before sunrise. He recalls sitting in his tack room and speaking to a friend when he felt a bit groggy, and so went to the ambulance to be checked out.

When the EMTs released him, stating only that his blood pressure was a bit high, Robertson attempted to walk back to his barn. Instead, he found himself walking directly into a pole.

Friends found Robertson and called his wife, a retired nurse, who immediately transported him to the hospital. Surgery was performed quickly thereafter.

“If they can operate right away they can usually mitigate the results,” Robertson explained. “I was only in the hospital for three or four days. 

“I knew I was a lot better off when I'd go into that rehab and see other stroke victims. I could always speak and didn't have any paralysis, and the only thing I couldn't do is stand on one leg with my eyes closed. So basically I made a complete recovery.”

Robertson admits that he has slowed down considerably in the years since his stroke, noting that his wife says he still ambles a bit when he walks. Luckily, his son Mac has been able to take the heaviest workload of the approximately 100 horses the two men oversee.

“My other two kids both work in Omaha, and have done pretty well staying away from racing,” said Robertson. “Mac and I do switch horses back and forth, but we hardly ever go to the same track at the same time because we don't always get along! We're both very opinionated.”

Though the elder Robertson is the co-owner of stable star Two Emmys alongside a couple from his native Nebraska, he has occasionally sent the gelding to race out of his son's stable. 

“I don't hesitate sending everything to Mac because he does a good job,” Robertson added. “He's the one that can do more work, after all.”

The ascension of Two Emmys has helped keep Robertson in the game.

A $4,500 yearling purchase in 2017, Two Emmys developed into a G1 winner in last year's Mr. D Stakes, formerly known as the Arlington Million.

“He was small, and a June foal, and English Channels are late developing, so people at the sales don't really look at those horses,” Robertson said, explaining Two Emmys' bargain purchase price. “He moved good. I watch horses and see how they move when they're yearlings, and I like to buy those kinds of horses because usually they can run a little.”

Though he'd liked the gelding ever since he was a yearling, Robertson didn't go into the Mr. D thinking he had the winner.

“I thought he'd run third,” the trainer said candidly. “I thought there were two better horses than him in there, the Chad Brown horse (Domestic Spending) and the European entry (Armory, for Aidan O'Brien). Still, I didn't think we should be 25-1, and when he got loose on the lead it was incredibly exciting.”

Two Emmys held off the late run of multiple Grade 1 winner Domestic Spending by a neck.

“I never thought I'd have a horse in the Million, and then when I do, it's not a million [dollars],” Robertson told TVG's Scott Hazelton following the first G1 win of his career. 

“It's nice,” he continued, “but I wish they'd keep running.”

This year, while Two Emmys has added another graded stakes victory to his resume in the G2 Muniz Memorial at the Fair Grounds, that closure of Arlington Park has put a bit of a question mark on the rest of the year.

“It's left us in a bit of a lurch, for sure,” Robertson said. “I'll go back for Hawthorne's three month meet, and then when they shut down I'm hopefully gonna go home to Nebraska and take two months off, spend time with the family, while Mac takes everything to Minnesota.

“I hope to keep training for a couple more years, if my health doesn't go south. I'd like to have 20 horses, which I figure I can handle so long as Mac doesn't need help with too much overflow!”

The post Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Robertson Takes Two Emmys From $4,500 Yearling To Grade 1 Winner appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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It may be a bit early to get excited about a potential Kentucky Derby horse, especially one that has yet to start in a graded stakes race. 

When it's an undefeated colt who has won each of his two starts by five or more lengths, however, and he's also the first foal ever born on your farm, Roy and Jana Barbe have every right to indulge that excitement.

We The People (Constitution) was born on the Barbe's Henley Farms in Georgetown, Ky., on Feb. 26, 2019.

“We bought this farm because I was one of those little girls who loved horses and I never outgrew it,” Jana explained. “We decided that all of my and my daughters' show horses, they took care of us for all those years, so it was time to buy a farm and collect them all so they could retire.

“I'm lucky because I married a man who embraced the dream and made it his own.”

A former exercise physiologist and custom furniture builder, Chicago native Roy had no horse experience whatsoever prior to moving to the farm in 2012. While Jana continued to travel back and forth to Chicago for her job as a partner at the world's largest legal firm, Roy learned how to manage the farm.

“I was the butt of many jokes,” Roy said, laughing. “You just have to jump into it. You develop such an amazing relationship with these creatures when you're hands-on… I decided to stick really close to the veterinarians, grab a bunch of books to learn how to take care of them, and I just went from learning how to muck stalls to delivering the babies.

“The neatest thing about this world is how everyone involved just has this shared affinity and love for all animals. It's amazing.”

“He's really become this incredibly accomplished horseman, just by throwing himself into it,” said Jana.

Though not involved in the Thoroughbred industry at the beginning, the Barbes made a connection with horsewoman Marilyn Little and her father, Marvin Little, Jr. They decided to invest in a couple of racehorses, and when Marvin passed away in 2017, the Barbes decided to go all-in.

Now, Jana jokes that the farm is “part old-age home, part nursery.”

Roy adds: “As we like to say, that makes us the single-largest consumer of veterinary services possible.”

We The People's dam, Letchworth, an unraced daughter of Tiznow from the family of millionaire Graeme Hall, is the first Thoroughbred mare the couple purchased for their boutique breeding farm. They acquired her for $40,000 at the 2019 Keeneland January sale with the Constitution colt in utero.

Luckily for the maiden breeders, We The People's birth was especially uncomplicated. Letchworth was turned out alone one evening and came in the next morning with her healthy colt by her side.

“She's formidable, a great mom,” Roy said. “Two days later that foal was eating grass and grain because momma is a professional.”

The couple nicknamed the colt “Buckworth” due to his propensity for kicking up his heels as he ran in circles around his mother.

“He was a handful, you'd turn your back and he'd run after you,” Roy continued. “He loved playing with humans, and all the way up to doing sales prep with him we could never put another horse in front of him. He always had to be first.”

The Barbes sold their colt at the same year's Keeneland November sale, realizing $110,000 for the weanling from Machmer Hall. Resold through both the Keeneland September sale and the Fasig-Tipton March 2-year-old sale, the colt is now owned by WinStar Farm, Siena Farm, and CMNWLTH and trained by Rodolphe Brisset.

In his first start at Oaklawn Park on Feb. 12, 2022, We The People was the only first-time starter in the field but couldn't have been more professional under Florent Geroux. He rallied three-wide and drew off to win by 5 ¾ lengths, completing a mile in 1:38.93.

One month later in a first-level allowance in Hot Springs, We The People showed a bit more patience when waiting to take the lead until the far turn. Given his cue by Geroux, the colt pulled away to win by five lengths, completing 1 1/16 miles in 1:43.66 over a main track rated “good.”

Now, connections are planning to enter We The People in the Grade 1, $1.25 million Arkansas Derby on April 2.

“We tell people we weren't in it to win the lottery,” Jana said. “Our approach was to breed progeny that would be commercial, desirable, have good conformation and be likely to race successfully. We weren't gambling on breeding trying to get the next Kentucky Derby winner, which is why We The People is so cool.”

It feels right to have such success on the farm named for Jana's late heart horse, a show hunter named Henley. 

“I had a terrible fall, was carried out of the ring on a stretcher, and Henley was the one who taught me to ride and jump again,” Jana said. “When you drive into the farm, you'll see a picture of Henley on the gate. He was my once-in-a-lifetime horse.”

Today, they keep both their own retired horses and a few retired grand prix jumpers for a friend on the property alongside their burgeoning Thoroughbred program.

“Four of our geriatrics are still rideable; I ride them and so do my daughters when they come to visit, and they like to have a job,” said Jana. “I like to say, 'I've lost a step, they've lost a step, so everybody's happy.'”

On the Thoroughbred side, the Barbes built their broodmare band slowly, increasing from three mares in 2019 to eight in 2022. Jana did most of the research into the mares' pedigrees, she explained, seeking the best, most-established broodmare sires and breeding them primarily to stallions that are fresh off the racetrack.

They don't plan to grow the herd too much more, however.

“Everyone has the option of going large quantity scale, but what we find when we visit some other places is that they become such herd animals and are not as well-adjusted to humans,” said Roy. “Ours are socialized! They kind of get to explore that personal time, they are handled every single day, and we really get to see all the different personalities that just kind of shine.”

For example, one of their current yearlings, a filly sired by Mendelssohn out of a daughter of Ghostzapper, is extremely strong and independent, seeming to believe she's above the antics of all the other babies.

Another colt has developed a reputation for jumping over his four-foot paddock fence, going uphill.

Though most of the foals will be sent through the sales ring, the Barbes keep close track of every horse they've bred. 

“We want to be the type of breeders that, in the event there's not a place for our horses in the Thoroughbred world, we want to offer them a home back here,” Jana explained. “We care deeply about it. We're a small, boutique farm; we've got the land, we care a lot about all of our animals, and we wouldn't want to see anything bad happen to them.

“We get told that our horses know how to take treats, to give kisses,” she continued. “We're here because we want to live with our horses. They always have a home here.”

 

 

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Horses are instinctively drawn to assistant trainer Julie Clark, looking to her for reassurance and guidance as she oversees their training and care on behalf of trainer Keith Desormeaux. Her quiet, firm hands have helped to guide the likes of Preakness winner Exaggerator and Breeders' Cup winner Texas Red, and soon she'll head to Churchill Downs to help prepare Call Me Midnight for his turn in the spotlight.

Winner of the Grade 3 Lecomte Stakes at the Fair Grounds, Call Me Midnight is on target for the G2 Louisiana Derby on March 26. The late-running son of Midnight Lute easily defeated Epicenter, next-out winner of the G2 Risen Star, but will likely require at least a third-place finish to ensure he has enough points to make the starting gate for the Kentucky Derby.

Until Call Me Midnight heads to Churchill, however, the universe has other plans for Clark. Worsening old injuries to her spinal cord, including a pair of fractures, have forced her out of the barn on a day-to-day basis.

“I've always had a bad back since I was a kid, and doctors told me never to ski or to ride horses,” Clark said. “Of course, I did both, and it gave me so much core strength. When I stopped riding, I lost all that core strength.

“I fractured the wings on two different vertebrae, so it basically pinches on my spinal cord. Now, if I'm at the barn all the time I do way too much.”

Clark took a step back and now handles the logistical side of Desormeaux's business, handling travel arrangements and paperwork for the trainer. She has also been developing a travel blog, adding together her passions for photography and seeing the world.

One such excursion saw her taking a swamp tour in Louisiana by kayak.

“I've never been so terrified in my life,” said Clark. “I floated by a gator that was longer than my kayak, and since you sit below the water line in a kayak, his eyeball was even with my elbow. I saw like five poisonous snakes, too. I did get some awesome photos, though!”

Still, Clark is definitely looking forward to when the horses head up to Churchill Downs, when she can get back in the barn. 

“When it comes to horses, you're not going to hold me up for very long,” she quipped.

Clark remembers making scrapbooks of horse racing from the time she was three years old. However, the Ontario native did not get her early equine exposure from her family.

“The first time I took a horse near my grandmother, she peed her pants!” Clark remembered. “We were city people; we didn't even have a goldfish. You know how in kindergarten you get to take the hamsters home from school? Well, when they came to our house they drowned in our basement sump pump.”

Instead, the horse experience came from her fourth cousins, who lived on a Quarter Horse breeding and showing operation. Clark moved in with the family for three years, showing at the local fairs, helping with breeding, foaling, training, and riding.

“It was a full immersion into horses,” she said. “We did everything, and I loved it.”

At 17, Clark followed her equine passion to Vancouver after she saw an ad for a polo club. She talked her way onto the team and shortly began playing polo professionally. Clark fashioned a career in the polo industry that included traveling with the circuit across North America, from Jackson Hole to Aspen as well as Palm Springs.

She never forgot that early love of horse racing, and occasionally dabbled in pinhooking at the sales, buying a weanling to re-sell as a yearling or a yearling to sell at the 2-year-old sales. It was at a Fasig-Tipton October sale that Clark first met Desormeaux.

“We got to talking about Zenyatta and how she got beat (by Blame in the Breeders' Cup Classic),” Clark recalled. “His insights were so cool… Two weeks later he called and asked me to go to lunch because he happened to be in Houston, where I lived. I said, 'No.' Eventually he talked me into it, and here we are!”

The first group of horses Clark oversaw for Desormeaux included Texas Red, though Exaggerator is easily one of her favorites. She drove the horse trailer hauling him from California to Delta Downs in Vinton, La. for the Delta Downs Jackpot, which Exaggerator won, and was with him throughout the Triple Crown. 

Clark kept the colt calm in Kentucky ahead of his second-place finish in the Kentucky Derby, stayed by his side through his win in the Preakness, and even hauled him from Pimlico to Belmont. 

“The worst part was the tolls!” Clark said of that journey from Pimlico to Belmont Park. “It cost $800 in tolls, and they didn't take checks or cards. I was shocked. It was a good thing I'd bet a little bit on Exaggerator so I had some cash!”

Looking back on those experiences, Clark relishes the time she got to spend looking after such talented animals. 

“We've been super blessed, and had so many fun horses,” Clark said. “(Keith is) so protective of the horses, and he thinks it's most important for the horses to rest. I'm kind of a mother hen myself. I may be super shy, but I would tell the president of the United States to get away from my horse's stall when he's trying to eat.

“He also doesn't think that the horses have to go to the track every day; we always walk on Thursdays and Sundays. It's so funny to be on the road with a good horse, and all the media come back to the barn and freak out that our horse didn't go to the track that day. It took years for people to get it.”

While Clark had some Thoroughbred sales experience prior to meeting Desormeaux, the two took each other to the next level when they got together.

Desormeaux has become well known for his success at picking out talented prospects with inexpensive price tags. Texas Red cost $17,000 and earned over $1.7 million; Exaggerator was purchased for $110,000 and earned over $3.5 million; and Call Me Midnight was an $80,000 buy who has earned $220,000 thus far.

“We look at totally different things,” Clark explained. “I learned a ton from him, but I think I also taught him some things. In polo we never take a horse that ties in, and I can't stand one that's over at the knees; there are little things that each of us doesn't like. 

“The thing with Keith is that he does not look at the catalog – never. He looks at them coming up in the far back ring, if they catch his eye and he wants to see when they go inside, then he looks at the book. He likes to go around the barns in the mornings just to refocus his eye, get it recentered on babies instead of racehorses.

“He doesn't short list or anything. It's so frustrating sometimes! The one year I went with him to OBS and I wanted to buy a horse, it was a horse I absolutely loved that went for like $100 over what I said I'd spend, but he wouldn't buy it. Once he sets his mind that a horse is worth this much, he doesn't want it when the price goes over that.”

Clark explained that another commonality between Texas Red, Exaggerator, and Call Me Midnight is that all three are groomed by Victor Vargas, who Clark claims has a “sixth sense” about which horses are truly special.

“One of the first times I met Keith on the track, he sent one to Sam Houston to run and my friends and I met him on the backstretch,” she remembered. “I saw a light on in a stall that looked like it was one of Keith's, so I walked up to look and Victor had the horse on the wall, braiding his forelock, and I watched as he stroked him and kissed him on the nose. He didn't know I was there, and that's how he was treating the horse. Victor really loves his horses.”

With Vargas and Clark in his corner, Call Me Midnight has all the right tools to put in a big performance on the first Saturday in May. No matter what happens on the track, however, Clark will be there to tell the colt he's done his job well on the walk back to the barn.

“I love them like they're my own,” she said.

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