For many racing fans who watched the breakdown of Maple Leaf Mel in the stretch of the Grade 1 Test Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 5, the first thought was of her trainer, Melanie Giddings.
Giddings' bond with the 3-year-old gray filly has been well-documented and was featured in a video package aired on FOX Sports prior to the race. Giddings is a cancer survivor and Maple Leaf Mel was named in honor of her fight against Stage 4 endocervical and ovarian cancer. Giddings was hands on with Maple Leaf Mel in the early part of her career when both were in the barn of Jeremiah Englehart, and the filly came with her when she went from being an assistant to opening her own stable earlier this year.
Based on her position down on the track that day, Giddings had a front-row seat to the filly's horrific fall and subsequent euthanasia. Like all professional horsefolk, she didn't have the option to take time away from the barn the next day to process her feelings. She has other horses who needed her.
“Nobody's going to let me stay home; my help can't either,” she said. “So we're all in it together. We just try to keep going.
“Coach [Bill Parcells, owner] told me … you've got 24 hours to cry and that's it. I said, OK. I'll just do like chemo where I'll cry in the shower where no one can see me and carry on when I get out. I don't think as racetrackers we like people to see us a certain way. It hardens you a little bit.”
Fellow Thoroughbred lovers on social media united in their grief for the lost horse, but also for Giddings. That's when several of them came up with an idea to help from afar.
“The whole story had touched us deeply from the beginning all for different reasons and we were so torn up at the fact that it had the worst possible ending,” said Sophie Shore. “We were speaking with Leah Brandon on Twitter a bit and all had the idea to fill the stall up with flowers. Because there's nothing worse than an empty stall.”
Shore, together with Averie Levanti and Belinda von Breitenbach, offered to collect donations from their followers in case anyone else also wanted to pay tribute to the horse.
They were overwhelmed by the response. Donations flooded in beyond what they needed to send bouquets, or even to buy breakfast for the barn crew (which they also did).
“We really didn't expect a whole lot of a response, mostly thinking it would be from people we knew personally that we felt would trust us,” said Shore. “So when we put it out there and got the response we got, we were kicking ourselves. I think almost all of us exceeded our DM limit on Twitter by responding to people who had reached out to us asking where to donate.
“We really appreciated it so much. The hardest part was finding a florist that would be open on Sunday. But we found one and explained the situation and they were willing to totally clean out the shop for us.”
The group realized this was a chance to do something for other horses, too.
“Our plans quickly expanded beyond flowers – the remainder of the truly staggering donations will be split equally between Take the Lead (New York aftercare), the Grayson Jockey Club [Research Foundation] (breakdown research), and the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance in honor of Mel and Mel,” von Breitenbach tweeted. “We hope that everyone in the barn knows that the entire racing community mourns with them and has their backs.
“We'll never forget your girl, and we hope to honor her memory.”
The group made donations of $810 each to the three charities, which Giddings says has brought her some comfort in this difficult time. Maple Leaf Mel's stall is now set up as a shrine, the center of which is the Test flower blanket, which Brendan Walsh – trainer of Pretty Mischievous, who inherited the lead in the Test after the injury – delivered to Giddings Sunday morning in tribute.
“Everybody's been super thoughtful,” Giddings said Tuesday. “I knew she had a fan base but I guess I didn't know it was that big.
“I don't want everybody to waste money on flowers. It's nice and everything, but it's not going to bring her back. I think I'd rather they donated to horses that need it. It's about what we can do for the horses.”
Giddings said this week, which is a particularly busy one that includes Fasig-Tipton yearling sales, has kept her moving. Friends talked her into looking at yearlings earlier this week to keep her mind off the loss of Mel. The last horse they pulled was a gray filly. As Giddings stood watching her walk, a maple leaf tumbled down from a nearby tree and stuck gently to her back as she moved.
“I was like well, maybe I should get this one,” she said. “Then I thought, I've gotta go.
“We'll see what the future brings.”
There won't be another horse in Maple Leaf Mel's stall for a while, but Giddings knows who will go in there when she's ready. Parcells bought another Cross Traffic filly he named Mel's Baby Sister. She's also gray, and shares a sire with Maple Leaf Mel.
“Originally I thought the name was really stupid,” she said. “All of us made fun of him for how stupid it was. In hindsight, now I feel like maybe it was for a reason. There are a lot of personality similarities. I wouldn't say she's as sweet right now [as Maple Leaf Mel] but Maple Leaf wasn't when she was a baby; she was kind of wild-spirited.”
Giddings said a friend is hoping to start a fund for aftercare in Maple Leaf Mel's honor, and she's hoping it takes off. She'll be happy to pitch in to help raise money. For Giddings, it's an important chance to bring some good out of the tragedy. And she's hopeful that her relationship with Mel can serve to remind people how many horsemen on the backstretch feel about their animals.
“I think maybe people finally got to see a different side in the sense that I kept hearing people say how nice the story was the whole day,” she said. “Maybe for once, people got to see how much we love them. She's not just another number. I don't have 50 horses here where I'm just replacing her. She's irreplaceable. It's good for people on the outside; they don't see every day what we do for them – or what they do for us.”
The post ‘We’ll Never Forget Your Girl’: Fans’ Outpouring Of Support Results In Charitable Contributions In Memory Of Maple Leaf Mel appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
