John Forbes | Horse Racing Free Tips

John Hamilton Forbes, a top trainer on the New Jersey circuit for four decades and the president of the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, passed away Sunday after a battle with cancer. He was 73 years old.

“John was New Jersey racing,” said Dennis Drazin, chairman and CEO of Darby Development LLC, operators of Monmouth Park Racetrack. “He was a tireless advocate for the industry, for the horsemen and for Monmouth Park.

“With a boundless capacity for kindness, John embodied everything good about this business-honor, integrity, compassion and selflessness. More than that, John had an infectious energy for racing. I will forever cherish our many years working together and appreciate not just our friendship but our collective effort on behalf of the horsemen to better this industry and the lives of those who work in it.”

Forbes won more than 2,100 races from over 14,000 starters, most of them with his longtime assistant Pat McBurney at his side.

“I came around the racetrack when I was 15, 16 and he was like a father to me,” said McBurney. “Over the course of many, many years, he became like a brother and a best friend. It's a very sad time. He loved this sport. He had a great gift of gab and a great way with people. If he got a hold of an idea that he thought was right he just wouldn't let it go, no matter who he had to go up against. John and I spent decades together experiencing all the highs and lows that this business has to offer. It was always a team effort with John. Even after he stopped training on a day-to-day basis he was equally involved as an owner, advisor and most importantly, a friend. It's hard to imagine Monmouth Park without John, but Monmouth Park will forever be better because of John.”

Forbes was born June 20, 1947 in Maryland, the son of two trainers, John Hamilton Chew Forbes, and Nancy Shakespeare Forbes. His mother was one of the first women in America to obtain a trainer's license. He began his career in his home state in 1972 but soon thereafter switched his operation to New Jersey. He was lured to the Garden State by the charms of Monmouth Park.

“When the Meadowlands opened in 1977, we brought horses up to race, and from 1978, we stayed in New Jersey,” he said in 2014. “What was the deciding factor was this place here. Not many of the remaining racetracks in the country have the charm and ambience of this place. I fell in love with Monmouth, that's why we stayed. It's a little hard to describe how Monmouth captures you. But it's a step back in time.”

Forbes thrived after moving to New Jersey. He was the leading trainer at Monmouth five times and topped the standings at the Meadowlands seven times. In 1978, he won 109 races and followed that up with a career-best 233 in 1979.

Forbes dealt mainly with claimers through much of his career but proved he could win at the highest levels when given an opportunity.

In 1995, Forbes and McBurney formed a limited partnership, Phantom House Stables, that raised nearly $2 million to purchase yearlings. The most successful among the group was Tale of the Cat, who won five of his nine career starts including the GII King's Bishop at Saratoga in 1997 and who was second in the GI Whitney. Purchased for $375,000 at Keeneland September, the son of Storm Cat was sold for $11.7 million and has been a successful sire at Coolmore Stud in Lexington, Ky. Of the six horses they purchased that year, four became stakes winners, including Amarillo, winner of the GIII Delaware H., Sumija and Apogee.

Eddie Rosen, who served as the group's pedigree advisor, was a friend of Forbes's for 50 years, having met him in 1970, when Forbes was assistant trainer to John Tammaro, Sr.

“As dominant as he was in the training ranks in New Jersey, having been the leading trainer in New Jersey for so many years, I think his biggest impact came as president of the thoroughbred horsemen's association,” said Rosen. “He was able to employ his analytical and negotiating skills to advance the causes of horsemen in New Jersey. I think that's where he found his true calling.

Forbes was famous for launching the career of Julie Krone, who was his regular rider in the 1980s and early 1990. She rode Tale of the Cat in every race of his career.

“Opening my eyes this morning to a world without John Forbes is a much sadder place,” said Krone Monday morning. “The horses have suffered a loss, and so have the people. He was great with both.”

Forbes guides Tale Of The Cat and Jockey Julie Krone off the track at Monmouth Park after a morning workout. Bill Denver/EQUI-PHOTO

“Riding first call for John Forbes at Atlantic City launched my career,” she continued. “I got opportunities from that without any questions asked. The first year I lost my apprenticeship, I got to ride for them. He taught me everything–things about riding, and being convivial with trainers and owners, allowed me to spend time with his family, and taught me how to take care of myself.”

Forbes stepped back from training in 2012 to focus on horsemen's issues, and McBurney took over the stable.

He had been named President of the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association in 2010, after having helped to launch the umbrella organization, the THA, comprised of six states in the mid-1990s. “The whole process was really about trying to get an organization where everyone had an equal voice, and to address important issues of common interest for the benefit of the whole industry while not interfering with other states' issues,” Forbes said in 2017. “We agreed to help the states if they asked for help but also agreed it would be best not to interfere. It was agreed that the organization would not dictate to its members. We'd all be on our own but all together at the same time.”

Forbes also found time to engage in another of his passions: miniature golf. He was introduced to the game in the late 1950s when the family would travel to Atlantic City for racing, and Forbes would spend time in Ocean City, where the boardwalk was dotted with mini-golf courses. Forbes built the Blue Grass Mini Golf Course in 2012 at Monmouth, which hosted the 2014 and 2017 U.S. Open for Mini Golf. He was inducted in to the U.S. Pro Mini Golf Hall of Fame in 2020.

Under Forbes, the NJTHA became a racetrack operator as well, leasing the track from Darby Development when Governie Chris Christie decided in 2010 that the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority should get out of the racing business.

“John was a giant among the horsemen,” said Drazin, a longtime friend of Forbes's. “The THA would not have existed in New Jersey without him. He was instrumental in leading the effort to take over the racetrack when Governor Christie decided to put it up for sale. He was the backbone of the organization and he will certainly be missed.”

Forbes is survived by his wife of 40 years, Vicki, the Director of Customer Service for the TDN; daughter Anne and her husband Damien Zajac; son John, the Director of Operations at Monmouth Park, and his wife Nicole; daughter Carrie and her husband Eric Oberdorf; and two grandchildren, Avery and Estella.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there will be no services held.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations in Forbes's name to the Backstretch Community Assistance Program (BCAP), a program that assists New Jersey horse racing stable employees in the areas of counseling, health, education, recreation and benevolence. Their address is BCAP, c/o Monmouth Park, 175 Oceanport Avenue, Oceanport, NJ 07757.

The post New Jersey Horseman John Forbes Passes Away appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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From the TDN LOOK

Passion is a funny thing.

What is it, you wonder, about one place or another, one person or another, one career or another that is so compelling that the person caught in its grip will do anything to have it?

Ferrin Peterson can’t exactly tell you why she will at least temporarily put aside the eight years of study and sacrifice that earned her a veterinary degree from UC Davis, one of the top schools in the country, and a lucrative-and safe-career as a large-animal vet. Nor can she say why she’s willing to let her acupuncture skills and certification lie dormant, for now.

All she knows is this: “I’m following my passion.”

That alone would be an interesting story: girl sets aside career as a veterinarian to pursue her dream of being a jockey. But Peterson took the interest in her choice to a new level when she hired Julie Krone to be her agent, and announced that they would get their start together at Krone’s old stomping grounds, Monmouth Park, when the meet opens July 3.

Peterson is 5’4″, 108 pounds, with a polite manner. At 28, she brings a maturity and confidence to her career not found in most seven-pound apprentices. In all likelihood, she is the best-educated jockey in history, and her accomplishments go beyond that. She is also a certified acupuncturist and was a Division I pole vaulter at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo who reached the state finals in high school and at junior college.

Krone met Peterson at Del Mar last summer, and she made the snap decision to become involved in her story, and to represent her in her own first try at being a jockey’s agent.

“She had a reputation for being the girl who loves racehorses so much that she’s going to ride races while she goes to vet school,” said Krone. “She wants to be a jockey with passion of nothing I’ve ever seen in my life. Literally. Like, unmeasurable craziness. I’ve seen people try to talk her out of it, and they’re like, `Oh, you’re a nice girl. You’ve got a great education.’ And the way she sees it, she’s going to be a jockey until she’s old, and then she can be a veterinarian.”

“This is literally what I wanted to do my entire life,” said Peterson, who graduated a year ago, and felt the call of riding races pulling her back to the track full-time after getting on horses for trainers in the morning during her final years at school. “When I was a young kid, I was always talking about becoming a jockey. I grew up on the back of a horse.”

Monmouth was Krone’s idea. She said that the strength of the jockey colony and the small fields that have plagued Southern California make it a tough place to get your start. Krone parlayed her own success at Monmouth, where she won the riding title from 1987-1989, into a career on the New York and later Southern California circuits. And it’s not the only page they’ll take out of the Krone playbook.

John Forbes and his then-assistant Pat McBurney played a key part in getting Krone’s career off the ground when Forbes, the perennial leading trainer at Monmouth at the time, used her as his regular rider. McBurney has now taken over the reins at the stable, and when it came time to entrust Peterson’s career to someone, Krone sent her east to work with McBurney. She spent this spring exercising eight or nine horses a day for the trainer at Overbrook Farm, where McBurney stabled his horses until Monmouth Park opened for training. McBurney said that when Krone called, he listened.

“I received a call from Julie Krone and she asked me about an apprentice rider coming out to Monmouth Park this summer,” McBurney recalled. “If Julie was excited about a rider, of course we were going to listen to that. So she came out to Overbrook and has just been galloping and breezing horses. We only have a half-mile track here, so you can’t kick on too fast, but she’s doing very good; gets along with the horses as she learns about them, getting them to relax and everything. It’s hard to say what kind of jockey she is at this point, but has a great way with horses. She’s a very hard worker with a great attitude. Everyone likes her in the barn, and everyone is interested to see her get riding and see how she can do.”

Krone was inducted into racing’s Hall of Fame in 2000, and retired for the second and final time in 2004 after winning 3,704 races in a career that spanned almost 20 years. She has taken a particular interest in Peterson since meeting her at Del Mar last year, moving her into the home she shares with her husband, the writer Jay Hovdey, and their daughter in order to more efficiently impart her knowledge. They have reviewed films and form, done strength training, strengthened other muscles by surfing and playing pickleball, and have formed a strong friendship as well as working relationship.

Before they met, Peterson had been riding at Golden Gate while she completed her clinical year in veterinary school, but she always had her sights set on the Southern California circuit. “I thought, `I’m going to go to where I know of the best jockeys and trainers and try to learn from them. And if I don’t make it, then at least I tried my hardest and had an awesome experience.'”

She had had a handful of winners when, that summer at Del Mar, she set out to meet Krone, who was doing a book signing on Pacific Classic Day. Peterson saw the line that had formed, and realized that it wouldn’t be a good opportunity to talk, but happened to run into on her way out of the track that night. She introduced herself, and Krone invited her to her house to talk the next day. The following week, Krone suggested that she stay in San Diego and train with her, and return to racing in the spring.

For the past 15 years, Krone’s nearly full-time occupation has been as a mother. While she has done some racing commentating work here and there, her main focus has been her daughter Lorelei, a gifted singer and actress who is a community theater regular in the San Diego area who hopes to pursue that interest in college. Lorelei tearfully confessed her lack of interest in horses when she was young, and Krone has supported her passion for theater, helping out by painting sets, sewing costumes and even acting a bit here and there.

But in Peterson, she might have found not only her return to the sport, but a new career after her daughter heads off to school. While Peterson is 28, Krone has definitely taken her under her wing as if she’s her second child.

To read the rest of this story at the TDN Look, or to watch the video or hear it as a podcast, click here.

The post Are Krone and Peterson an Unbeatable Team? appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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