R.A.C.E. Fund to Auction Hoff Racing Memorabilia Collection

The R.A.C.E. Fund, a 501 C 3 non-profit organization established in 2004 and TAA accredited, will begin auctioning the private racing memorabilia of Christopher Hoff on eBay beginning Oct. 25.

“As a Thoroughbred racing photographer, I had the opportunity to witness the performance of such equine athletes as Alysheba, Sunday Silence, Personal Ensign, Private Terms and

many others,” Hoff said. “However, I also saw the fate of the 'discarded' horses who were deemed unprofitable for their owners. These beautiful horses are too often forgotten and I am thrilled that my collection of racing memorabilia can help provide a well-deserved pleasant retirement or help with the rescue of these wonderful animals.”

R.A.C.E. Fund President Marlene Murray said, “We cannot thank Mr. Hoff enough for donating such a vast collection of racing memorabilia to our organization to help the horses.”

The auction will be conducted in phases, with the first phase on eBay from Oct. 25 at 8 p.m. (EST) and ending Oct. 28 at 8 p.m.

Featured items include: Breeders' Cup Programs from 1984 to 1992 in mint condition; Breeders' Cup Racing Forms; signed pictures of trainers Carl Nafzger, Jack Van Berg, Sonny Hine, D. Wayne Lukas and jockey Laffit Pincay; Share The Glory and Fly So Free saddlecloths; and a 1987 framed Washington, D.C. International program signed by jockeys.

Subsequent phases and auction dates are yet to be determined. Updates can be found at www.racefund.org.

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The Week in Review: Back-of-Van Ride to Victory for Trainer Kirby in Claiming Crown

When trainer Tom Van Berg won two Claiming Crown races Saturday with his first horses in that series, most racing regulars made the connection to his father, the late Hall-of-Fame conditioner Jack Van Berg. But a link to another family legacy in that series might not have been as apparent: John Timothy Kirby, 25, who also saddled his first Claiming Crown starter to a victory in his first-ever race at Churchill Downs, is a third-generation horseman with strong roots that run deep in New England.

In fact, after more than a half-century of raising and racing Massachusetts-breds, the Kirby clan managed to outlast all Thoroughbred racing in their home region. That meant that even before Suffolk Downs ceased racing for good in 2019, the youngest trainer in the family had already been forced to hit the road and relocate to Parx in Pennsylvania to ply his trade.

The Claiming Crown likes to bill itself as the “blue-collar Breeders' Cup,” and that's a pretty fair analogy. But how many trainers at the national level are willing to make a 675-mile van ride in the trailer with their lone entrant for that event, like Kirby did with Hero Tiger (Hero of Order), the 4-1 winner of the $100,000 Ready's Rocket Express?

“I rode in the back. Just wanted to make sure he shipped good and everything,” Kirby told Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association (PTHA) video correspondent Dani Gibson post-win.

“Bobby Mosco's horse was on there, too,” Kirby added, referring to Out of Sorts (Dramedy), the 10-length victress of the $150,000 Tiara who completed a Parx-based double in a Claiming Crown otherwise swept by home-track Kentuckians.

“Everything went so smooth and the stars aligned. We just got so lucky,” Kirby said.

Perseverance and a horse-first work ethic honed by three generations didn't hurt either.

John T.'s grandfather, John F. Kirby, had always worked around horses growing up, and he began training Thoroughbreds in 1953, when racing in New England consisted of a robust circuit in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Maine, plus a summer and fall slate of regional county fairs.

Kirby started breeding Thoroughbreds at his Smokey Valley Farm in Dover in 1967, about a half-hour southwest of Suffolk Downs, and he had already built up a small band of broodmares by the time Massachusetts started earmarking money for state-bred purse incentives in 1972.

After training for outside clients for two-plus decades, the elder Kirby cut back to focus on his homegrown racing stock in 1975. When the Massachusetts-bred program expanded to include state-bred stakes in 1981, at least one Kirby-raised horse would win at least one of those stakes each year for a streak that lasted three decades.

The horses that carried the family's green-and-white shamrock silks were known for durability and soundness. One foal from Kirby's 1968 crop named Brik (“Kirb” backwards) won 23 races from 184 starts.

The family was hardy, too, and although not standings-toppers at Suffolk, they were widely respected for their horsemanship. In 1985, John F. Kirby said in a Boston Globe profile that between the farm and the track, the work schedule was “seven days a week, from dawn until exhaustion.”

Timothy Kirby, John T.'s father, began training in 1991 and still has a small stable at Parx. Patriarch John F. Kirby stopped training in 1999 and died in 2011. The once 40-acre family farm got downsized in pieces as the horses left the property and the bloodstock business in New England dried up and vanished.

The youngest Kirby recalled in a 2019 interview with the PTHA's Dick Jerardi how as a high schooler, he was often reprimanded for reading a Racing Form hidden inside his binder.

“If we had a horse racing, odds were that I would be at the track and not in the classroom,” John T. Kirby said.

But Kirby got schooled in other, more meaningful ways. Just as important as race results, he learned from his father and grandfather, was what happened after the finish.

“We always had Mass.-breds,” Kirby said in that PTHA write-up. “They treated us well. We mostly kept them when they were done and let them live out to their old age on the farm.”

On a raw, unseasonably snowy Saturday at Churchill that surely must have given Kirby flashbacks of the bygone, brutal days of winter racing at Suffolk, there was a moment at the head of the homestretch when it looked like Hero Tiger, despite being full of run, was going to get squeezed out of contention because a narrow gap that jockey Luis Saez had been aiming for turned into a wall of horseflesh before the 6-year-old gelding could punch through.

“Honestly, when that hole shut on him, I thought he lost his momentum. But Luis really rode him hard and got his momentum going again, and this horse just has the biggest heart–the biggest heart,” Kirby said, his voice momentarily cracking with emotion after the highest-profile win of his career.

With limited stock, Kirby has won 14 races from 98 starts this year, hitting the board at a 45% clip while competing primarily at Parx, Delaware and Penn National. But he's no stranger to New York, where he's won one race each at Saratoga and Belmont in 2021 and '22, the most recent victory being a 21-1 upset in June with a $45,000 claiming turfer who blitzed six furlongs in a swift 1:07.34.

Back on Sept. 4, Kirby dropped a $40,000 claim slip for Hero Tiger at the Spa on behalf of owner Gregg O'Donnell, and Saturday's claiming Crown win returned $56,000 on that investment.

Instead of taking credit, Kirby complimented his jockey in a post-race interview while brimming with enthusiasm about bigger and better things to come.

“The first horse we ever put [Saez] on, he won at Saratoga. And then earlier this year they [nearly] broke the track record at Belmont,” Kirby said. “So we're 3-for-5 with Luis, and this is just the beginning. We'll get him a lot more mounts.”

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Letter to the Editor: Happy 90th Birthday to JoAn Stewart

Throughout your life, there are people who make it better.

In 1964, when I moved to New Orleans to live with my soon-to-be adoptive mother, Marie Krantz, the caretakers of the Old Jefferson Downs were Jimmy and JoAn Stewart. The old Jefferson Downs was the converted Magnolia Park Harness track in Metairie (now Lafreniere Park). Jimmy had retired from race-riding and had a trainer's license with some good clients. It was summer and the camp bus would drop me off at the Caretakers Cottage on the grounds. JoAn would babysit me until the business day was over and it was time to go home. Fair Grounds Head Clocker and linemaker Mike Diliberto was another one of her clients. If you are from New Orleans, you knew Mike's dad Buddy as a sports reporting icon in the city. The Dilibertos lived down the street and Mike grew up with JoAn's sons.

After her stint at Jefferson Downs, she found work with the Louisiana HBPA and later at Fair Grounds. She handled Clubhouse Box sales and became the VIP Relations liaison. She was there through at least three regime changes. She raised several generations of racetrackers. Probably her favorites were Jack Van Berg and Billy Mott. You can include Al Stall Jr and Tommy Amoss in the next generation to come along.

Through all the chapters of my life, JoAn has been a constant. She has always been dressed in style and poised in every situation. In racing, she knew all the horsemen and all the customers and everyone felt like they were her best friend.

 

Her group of Lou Ladato, Edna Cardon and Sadie Marcello attended the Kentucky Derby for years and held court with all of their friends from across racing. If you were lucky, they would tell you what horse Bonny Holthus gave them out of Bob's entries that was the most live.

Her 90th birthday was Thursday. She has outlived her three sons and most of her friends. She has been living in suburban Atlanta for nearly 15 years.

JoAn doesn't do tech of any kind: no cell phone, no email, no social media. If you have time, drop her a birthday card or a note at:

JoAn Stewart

473 Silverleaf Lane

Dallas, GA 30157

–Bryan G Krantz, President, Krantz Commercial Services, LLC

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Remington Park Honors Retiring General Manager Scott Wells Friday

Remington Park president and general manager Scott Wells will always be the answer to one trivia question in connection with Oklahoma horse racing: Who was the first trainer to win a race when parimutuel racing returned to the state in 1984?

Wells was that trainer with a horse named Ye Song. There is nothing trivial about Wells' career after that, however. He was honored at Remington Park in Oklahoma City, Okla., on Friday night as he prepares to retire at the end of this Thoroughbred meet on Dec. 17.

When Wells announced his retirement, the chief executive officer of Global Gaming Solutions, who owns Remington Park, Skip Seeley, spoke highly of him in glowing terms.

“Scott Wells is an icon in the horse racing industry and a mainstay at Remington Park across parts of four decades,” Seeley said. “His steady guidance and his deep expertise of track operations have been integral to the success of both Remington Park and Lone Star Park in Texas. He helped create Remington Park as a destination in the racing industry and he leaves a legacy of superlative service both to horsemen and racing fans in Oklahoma, across the country and around the world.”

Wells' career in the industry reads like a Who's Who of National and International Racing.

Wells started in the business as an assistant to his father, Ted, who was quite the horseman in his own right, being inducted into the American Quarter Horse Association Hall of Fame posthumously in 2014. Ted came to be known as one of the top Quarter Horse trainers of his era, conditioning Savannah Jr to World Champion honors two years in a row.

Having garnered the knowledge and inherited the talent of his father, Wells worked for him at the Wells Ranch in Pawhuska Okla., one of the nation's largest breeders of Quarter Horse racing. After getting his start, Scott accepted a debate scholarship at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, before traveling to France in his junior year. While abroad, Wells rekindled the fire he had for horse racing. Returning to the states he was fortunate to catch on with a young trainer named D. Wayne Lukas. Lukas would go on to gain fame with 20 wins in Breeders' Cup races and be inducted into the National Racing Hall of Fame. He mentored Wells until the next rung in the ladder would form with a move to another Hall of Famer's barn, Jack Van Berg. Van Berg won the Kentucky Derby with Alysheba in 1987.

After two stints with Hall of Fame trainers, it was time for Wells to venture out on his own as a trainer. The native Oklahoman spent 17 years in the business as a licensed trainer and it included that win in 1984 at Blue Ribbon Downs in Sallisaw, Okla., the state's first pari-mutuel race in decades. Wells raced his horses in 14 different states before turning his sights on the track management side of the business.

Remington Park opened in Oklahoma City in 1988. Wells became a columnist for the Daily Racing Form in 1990, the same year he would begin a stint with Remington Park racetrack management. Through 1992, Wells climbed successfully upward in Remington Park's ranks. After two years in Oklahoma City, Wells packed his bags for the West Coast where Hollywood Park in Los Angeles, Calif., hired him as assistant GM. From there he became GM of Ruidoso Downs in the mountains of New Mexico. While there, he was the co-founder of the Ruidoso Downs Hall of Fame, originally installed at the Land of Enchantment state's Museum of the Horse.

Following his stay in New Mexico, Wells' feet became itchy for foreign soil once again. He became Director of Racing for the national racetracks of Mexico and Uruguay as well as a consultant to other Latin racing countries. He carried that knowledge back to the States with him in 2004 when he became the president and GM for Remington Park. For more than 16 years, he has led the track back from obscurity into the national spotlight with horses coming out of the Springboard Mile going into the Kentucky Derby the following year. While holding the top positions at the Oklahoma City track, he also became a leader for Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie, Texas, in 2013 with the same titles.

“It's a great feeling tonight being honored,” Wells said. “Horse racing is like a family with all the workers at Remington Park and Lone Star that have made us such a success. I came in following the example set by David Vance when he opened this track in 1988. Then joining and rebuilding with Matt Vance (executive vice president of racing operations) and Mike Chapple (VP of gaming operations).”

Wells also served three terms as President of the Thoroughbred Racing Associations of North America and three terms on the Board of Trustees of the American Horse Council. He has also authored three books – The Nicodemus Era, What A Way to Go, and Teaching Narcissus to Swim.

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In 2022, Wells will be inducted into the Oklahoma Quarter Horse Racing Hall of Fame.

Despite the mountain of accolades earned in his career, Wells claims one event as the greatest moment of his life over the past 25 years, when he married his wife Mellyn.

Remington Park racing continues Saturday, Dec. 4 with the first race at 7:07 pm Central.

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