Lost And Found Presented By LubriSynHA: Wise Dan And Lo Presti Still Best Friends, Homebodies After The Track

Hall of Famer Wise Dan and his trainer Charlie LoPresti always have been homebodies. Now they can enjoy more of that hominess together in Lexington, Ky., at Forest Lane Farm, which is owned and operated by LoPresti and his wife Amy.

During his stellar career, Wise Dan wintered at Forest Lane which has become his permanent residence. The 13-year-old Wiseman's Ferry gelding closed his career in 2014 with a $7.6-million bankroll and 23-2-0 record in 31 starts. His 11 Grade 1 victories include the Breeders' Cup Mile in 2012 and 2013, the same seasons he earned Eclipse Awards as Horse of the Year, champion older horse and champion grass horse for a total of six trophies. He was named to the Hall of Fame this year.

Admirers have not forgotten Wise Dan and routinely send cards, holiday greetings and treats. Although he has made guest appearances at Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Horse Park, Wise Dan has not left the property since starring in a fundraiser at Old Friends Equine in nearby Georgetown last year. LoPresti is reluctant to take Wise Dan out of his familiar surroundings but welcomes visitors by appointment, including the gelding's former jockeys and their families.

“He has people who want to see him and if we can accommodate them, we will,” LoPresti said. “John Velazquez has been out numerous times and Jose Lezcano came to see him when he was in town for the Breeders' Cup. I even legged him up so he could sit on him in the stall.”

When not mingling with guests, Wise Dan does a whole lot of nothing in his natural yet pampered lifestyle. He spends most of his time in a spacious paddock with his G2-winning half brother Successful Dan, a 14-year-old Successful Appeal gelding who banked just shy of $1 million while winning eight of 15 starts. The sons of the winning Wolf Power mare Lisa Danielle were bred and raced by Morton Fink, who passed away in 2019 at age 89.

The siblings are brought into the barn each morning for breakfast and grooming. Then they “just hang out” in their stalls until being turned back out in mid-afternoon after an early dinner. This is their routine unless extreme weather such as an ice storm keeps them stabled.

“They like to be outside,” LoPresti said. “Cold weather doesn't bother them. They grow a good winter coats. The more time horses are outside, the better off they are.”

LoPresti said he offered them blankets but they were intent on pulling them off each other.

Describing himself as semi-retired, LoPresti will be spending more time with “the Dans” this winter while he concentrates on breaking yearlings instead of commuting to Keeneland where he trained racehorses year-round for the past two decades.

“I enjoy the young horses and taking care of the farm,” he said. “And there is much less pressure.”

A photo of Wise Dan winning the Firecracker H. won the 2013 Eclipse Award for Photography. Photo was taken by Jamie Radosevich-Hernandez

Looking back

Wise Dan was a fan favorite for countless reasons including his somewhat humble beginnings, longevity at the highest level, the loyalty between LoPresti and Fink and their horse of a lifetime, and Wise Dan's remarkable comeback.

Fink owned and bred Thoroughbreds for more than half his life with considerable success before Wise Dan and his elder brother came to him through sentimentality and incredible good fortune. As Fink downsized his Thoroughbred holdings, he was unwilling to part with just one of his horses because she was named for his granddaughter. So he kept the somewhat ordinary mare and bred her to Kentucky stallions with moderate breeding fees.

The results have been astounding. In addition to Wise Dan and Successful Dan, Lisa Danielle has produced six runners that earned nearly $200,000 each at the track including stakes winner Our Royal Dancer and G2-placed Enchanting Lisa.

As a racer, Wise Dan was particularly popular at Keeneland, where he is the only horse to win seven stakes races. His status as a local hero was maximized because he was a year-round Lexington residence. Except for trips for stakes engagements, Wise Dan was housed at Keeneland or Forest Lane. When he took his show on the road, he made the locals proud with triumphs at Santa Anita in two Breeders' Cups and at Woodbine in two renewals of the Woodbine Mile.

Of all his accomplishments and fond memories, the one LoPresti thinks of first when looking back on Wise Dan's career was his score in Saratoga's Bernard Baruch Handicap in the summer of 2014. Just three months earlier, Wise Dan underwent emergency colic surgery. His recovery is testament to his greatness.

“I had a lump in my throat because horses usually don't come back to that level the way he did,” LoPresti said. “I was very fortunate. I was just a little trainer with 15 or 20 horses. I never thought that doing things the way I did — not traveling, not having multiple divisions, turning horses out for winter — that I would ever have a horse like Wise Dan. It was just amazing.”

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Thoroughbred Makeover Diaries Presented By Excel Equine: Horowitz Learns That In Eventing, Winning Isn’t Everything

“For when the one Great Scorer comes to write against your name,

He marks—not that you won or lost—but how you played the Game.”

—Grantland Rice, sportswriter, in “Alumnus Football”

 

“Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing.”

—Vince Lombardi, NFL coach

Grantland Rice is a major reason why sports are such a big deal in the United States. His syndicated column, “The Sportlight,” described by Britannica as “the most influential of its day,” anointed some of sport's greatest legends. It helped college and professional sports tug at America's heartstrings during the Roaring 1920s, and a nation of sports fans has never second-guessed its devotion since.

Rice created the “Four Horsemen” of Notre Dame and the “Galloping Ghost” of Red Grange—monikers still steeped in lore 100 years later and so influential that I once embarrassingly asked my high school English literature teacher how was it possible for there to be “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” in the New Testament when I thought Grantland Rice coined the term.

Not only did Grantland Rice write and broadcast sports, but he also gave advice about how it should be played. It's “not that you won or lost—but how you played the Game,” he wrote in his oft-quoted 1908 poem “Alumnus Football.”

Yet, as much as I admired Rice—again, I instinctively believed he was also the author of the Book of Revelation—I thought his advice about “how you played the Game” was a bunch of crap.

That's because Vince Lombardi, the coach of the NFL's Green Bay Packers who was so influential that the trophy awarded to the winners of the Super Bowl is named in his honor, came along about five decades later and said, “Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing.”

That's what the goal of sports has come to be about. There are similar phrases that roll off the tongue.

“Second place is the first loser.”

“No one remembers who finished second.”

“Nice guys finish last.”

And so on.

I started competing in the equestrian sport of eventing in 2018 at the age of 33 with my sights set on winning ribbons. Never mind that I had only been riding for three years on my journey from announcer to rider. Never mind that my first horse, the 2013 chestnut mare Sorority Girl (JC: Grand Moony) that I used to announce at Arapahoe Park, had never competed in a recognized event either, although she had performed well in freestyle and show jumpers at the 2017 Retired Racehorse Project Thoroughbred Makeover with my trainer and wife, Ashley Horowitz.

Our first recognized event was the 2018 Spring Gulch Horse Trials in Colorado at the Beginner Novice level of 2-feet-7. I also announced the show and would take a break from announcing for our dressage, stadium jumping, and cross country rounds.

I made it through all three phases, which eventers treat as a significant achievement given the number of obstacles that have the potential to eliminate a competitor. I even managed to place 12th of 21 in my division. So, I honestly thought that the ribbons would start to come — no, they would have to come for me to prove my worth in my new sport.

The ribbons did not come. I found a variety of ways to be eliminated from my next few shows. We were eliminated for too many refusals at cross country jumps at our next recognized event, the 2018 Round Top Horse Trials in Colorado. Then, I fell at the ditch on the cross country course at the 2018 Event at Archer in Wyoming.

A disagreement about a ditch at the 2018 Archer event resulted in Horowitz and Sorority Girl parting company

And then came the coup de grâce at the Spring Gulch Horse Trials in May 2019 when Sorority Girl put on the brakes during our dressage test, refused to move despite my kicking her to go forward, and backed out of the dressage arena. Adding insult to injury, she kicked over the “A” block for good measure.

I thought these results made me an outcast, but the eventing community, especially in our area, is incredibly supportive.

“Everyone has been there before,” Ashley said. “This is how you learn.”

Things then started to click for Sorority Girl and me. We had our best dressage test to date at the 2019 Round Top Horse Trials and didn't add any penalties on cross country or in stadium jumping to finish on our dressage score in sixth place out of 18 at Beginner Novice. That earned us earn our first ribbon. I realized that going through the challenges of being eliminated the year before made this achievement more rewarding than if it had all just happened perfectly as I scripted in my head.

We ribboned again at our next show, a return to Spring Gulch where the announcer filling in while I competed made sure to remind the crowd, “Hey, everybody, fingers crossed Jonathan and Moo stay in the arena.” One of the dressage judges, whom I knew through my role of announcing the show as well, told me that she caught glimpses of my dressage test from the other arena while judging a rider in her arena to see what fireworks there might be in my test.

So, lesson learned, right? I appreciated how my failures made my successes more rewarding and embraced the importance of both Grantland Rice's “how you played the game” and Vince Lombardi's “winning.”

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

Just as things were starting to click for Sorority Girl and me, I started retraining a Thoroughbred straight off the track, the young 2016 bay filly Cubbie Girl North, who has provided me with a roller coaster ride that I've been chronicling during a roller coaster 2020 in this “Thoroughbred Makeover Diaries” series.

Looking back on our first year of retraining, I realize it would have been absurd to think that “winning” should be on the table immediately given that Cubbie was completely new to eventing and I was still learning. While I appreciated some of the moments where we would click, I wasn't appreciating the end result.

Things came to a head at Spring Gulch in August when we finished with an improved score, but I was sour about the mistakes a green-horse-with-green-rider combination are inevitably going to make. Instead of seeing the progress, I saw the failure — even though nearly everyone that has followed our journey has been encouraging.

Ashley sternly and tactfully told me that I was entirely missing the point of eventing and that if I continued to be this way at shows that I could get someone else to coach me at them.

That's when I made the biggest change and the most progress in my three years of competing. It didn't come from adjusting how I rode or what equipment I used or anything physical between me and my horses. It came from embracing what the sport is all about and why the people that compete are so attracted to it. It came from putting more of an emphasis on how I played the game over winning the game.

I started changing my focus to how much fun it was to travel to shows, especially if I was also announcing, and on how rewarding it was to spend time doing what I love with the horses and people that mean so much to me, especially on the adrenaline-inducing cross country courses.

This all took the pressure off winning, but, frankly, winning is incredibly elusive in eventing. The sport requires nearly flawless dressage, cross country, and stadium jumping rounds where one missed movement or one dropped rail can knock a competitor down the standings. At the USEF CCI4*-L Eventing National Championship — the highest level offered in the United States this year — held at Tryon, N.C., this month, a rail that fell on the very final fence knocked leader Elisabeth Halliday-Sharp and Deniro Z from first to fifth.

With a new outlook on the sport, I did manage some good results. Sorority Girl and I finished on our dressage score in seventh of 16 at Beginner Novice at The Event at Archer in August. Then, we moved up to the Novice level of 2-feet-11 and again finish on our dressage in sixth of 18 at The Event at Archer in September.

Horowitz and Cubbie go through the water at the Event at Archer

However, the “result” I'm most proud of came during the first time I've traveled a long distance for a show to the Windermere Run Horse Trials in Missouri a month ago. That was also the first time that I've competed two horses at a recognized event—perhaps because it was the first time in more than a year that I wasn't also announcing.

Needless to say, we didn't get the “results” as Lombardi would have liked.

About two minutes before Cubbie and I were scheduled to enter the dressage arena for our Beginner Novice test, Ashley asked me to try to take up more contact on the reins during our warmup. Three days prior, Cubbie told me exactly how she felt about contact on the reins when she ran me into the walls of the arena on our farm. So now at our final show together for the season, she planted her feet and decided not to move.

“Don't do anything,” Ashley said. “Just go in and get through the test.”

We pulled off the second-worst dressage score in the entire competition across all levels. The dressage scribe, a friend that had traveled with us from Colorado and was volunteering at the show, told me that the judge, whom I also knew from announcing at previous shows she's worked at, turned to her during my test and said, “I thought Jonathan was a better rider than this.”

It's true. I did no actual riding because I really had no other option if I was going to finish the test. We even scored a 1.0 out of 10 for one of our movements that I knew Cubbie and I were doing wrong but knew she would not allow me to correct. However, after this glorious performance, we had clear cross country and stadium jumping rounds because Cubbie likes to jump and I could effectively manage her crappy attitude for those disciplines.

Sorority Girl and I competed at Novice at Windermere and had a good dressage test for where we're at, as well as a clear stadium jumping round. However, we had two refusals during the last three jumps on cross country.

“I need five minutes, and then I'll be good,” I told Ashley when I came off course, determined to appreciate what went positively and not dwell on what went negatively.

“That's fair,” Ashley responded.

What I ultimately took away was how this was a learning opportunity. I had slowed our tempo at the end of the course because I was worried about getting speed faults. Sorority Girl took my cue and backed off, so she, understandably, wasn't as bold as she had been for the first three-quarters of the course. For those keeping score, we ended up last of 13 in our division.

We fixed this the next month at the Texas Rose Horse Park Fall Horse Trials and went clear on cross country with a more consistent pace that helped my mare gain more confidence as we progressed through the course. I had my best finish ever at any event, placing fifth of 11 at Novice and, unexpectedly but happily, taking home a large pink ribbon.

Travel to events can be hundreds of miles, and there's a significant cost when you add up transportation, lodging for people and horses, entry fees, and more. The time actually spent competing across all three disciplines of an event is a total of about 10 minutes. However, there's so much more—the experience, the camaraderie, the bond we get to have with these special animals through the moments that click and the moments that frustrate—that make eventers so addicted to the game.

After three years and 12 recognized events, I'm glad that I've finally learned how to play the game.

The post Thoroughbred Makeover Diaries Presented By Excel Equine: Horowitz Learns That In Eventing, Winning Isn’t Everything appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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OTTB United App Available

OTTB United, a mobile app that unites sellers, buyers, and shippers of Thoroughbred ex-racehorses and gives back to the Thoroughbred placement community was released by the Retired Racehorse Project and OTTB United Tuesday.

The app is also designed to give back to the Thoroughbred placement community: a portion of the premium subscription fee is donated to the Retired Racehorse Project. Subscribers can select from a list of aftercare organizations and for-profit resellers to receive an additional contribution.

“We are so fortunate to partner with the Retired Racehorse Project,” says OTTB United founder Amy Rubin. “The organization’s mission is at the center of everything we want to achieve, and helping off-the-track Thoroughbreds is our number-one goal. The Retired Racehorse Project has strengthened the Thoroughbred community, and it’s our hope that the OTTB United app produced in partnership will unite that community on one platform.”

OTTB United is free to download from Google Play and the App Store. A premium subscription is $4.99 monthly. The app is available in the US and Canada.

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Thoroughbred Aftercare Summit: Understanding OTTB Behavior And Equine Learning Key To Success

As anyone who has trained a horse knows, physical conditioning is only part of the equation — the mental side of an athlete's development can be just as critical to their career trajectory, if not more so. A recent virtual session of the Thoroughbred Aftercare Summit tackled questions surrounding learning theory and behavior in horses, and examined the way our understanding of equine learning can apply to retraining off-track Thoroughbreds (OTTBs).

Our academic understanding of the way horses learn doesn't always mesh with traditional training methods, according to Dr. Robin Foster, certified behavior consultant and research professor at the University of Puget Sound and Dr. Camie Heleski, equine lecturer at the University of Kentucky.

To understand the differences, it's important to know the basics of learning theory. Learning theory refers to the way an organism, from slugs to humans and anything in between, navigates its environment by creating associations between its behavior and its environment. Generally, different species are thought to have different capacities for learning and cognition based on academic research. On a basic level, an organism may learn from positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, or punishment. Reinforcement, whether positive or negative, is designed to increase the frequency of a behavior, while punishment is designed to decrease the frequency of a behavior. The term positive reinforcement describes the addition of something the animal wants — in a horse's case, a treat or a scratch on the face or withers, as a reward for a desired response. Negative reinforcement refers to the removal of something the horse doesn't want.

“In the horse industry, we don't use positive reinforcement enough,” said Heleski. “Negative reinforcement is mainly what we use for traditional training. We squeeze the horse with our legs, applying pressure. The horse moves forward, we remove the pressure.”

Of those three choices, horses (and lots of other species) are shown to learn best through positive reinforcement. Punishment is commonly employed with horses, but isn't actually the most effective way to teach them.

“This is not only true with horses but it is perhaps especially true with horses — when horses do something that is unwanted, maybe it's unsafe, it's not a behavior we're looking for, it's annoying — it draws our attention,” said Foster. “I can't tell you how many people will say, 'I just want to stop that behavior.' It we want to decrease a behavior we don't want, we punish it. But there are better alternatives because punishment itself does not provide any alternative for the horse. It's really important to focus more on the behavior you want the horse to do ad make sure you reinforce that.”

It's easy to think punishment is effective, because it often generates a quick response, but Foster said it's rarely a permanent one. Because the horse hasn't been shown what the handler does want, it's likely the horse will repeat the undesired behavior eventually. This is especially problematic with Thoroughbreds, who Heleski and Foster agree are more sensitive to perceived threats and are therefore sensitive to punishment or reinforcement.

Heleski said she tends to encounter a bias against positive reinforcement in much of the equestrian world because many trainers are averse to giving horses frequent treats. The concern for many is the horse will come to expect food, and become mouthy or pushy in search of it. Most experts suggest handlers ignore pushy behavior and focus on rewards in specific instances where a horse is exhibiting desired behavior — keeping in mind that sometimes, the desired behavior is the absence of something, like kicking out or pawing in a grooming stall. Some horses are especially reactive to treats and will get excitable, searching for the food or trying to guess what their handler wants from them (which, at the start of positive reinforcement training, may be unclear to them). In those cases, Heleski suggests putting a gate or stall door between the horse and handler at first, or dispensing treats into a pan on the ground rather than feeding by hand.

If handlers are really concerned about “mugging” for treats, Heleski said research shows scratching on a horse's withers is a hugely impactful positive reinforcement. The attention, which mirrors mutual grooming, has been shown to decrease heart rate. Foals are also well known to enjoy scratches to their foreheads or the undersides of their necks.

One question Heleski and Foster are asked often is what to do about stereotypic behaviors like cribbing and weaving, which seem to be a focus for some horses no matter what type of reinforcement or punishment is used to stop them. Foster explained that although it may not feel this way, horses aren't doing these things to frustrate the humans around them.

“These repetitive behaviors that bother us — and they really bother people — they are very soothing to horses,” said Foster.

On a biochemical level, many of those behaviors have been shown to provide an enormous stress relief for the horse. It's a coping mechanism for anxiety about something around them. If the horse isn't doing significant harm to themselves, Foster suggested, it may be better to let these things ride. Otherwise, you're trying to take away a coping mechanism that could be very important to the horse, probably without providing alternate stress relief.

The good news for OTTB owners is not only that Thoroughbreds are known as a breed to be quick learners, but they also come off the track knowing a lot already. The racetrack routine includes lots of different stimuli that a horse wouldn't necessarily get in a riding barn.

“If I were to adopt a 3-year-old of another breed, most of the time they would not have had anywhere near the number of experiences that a 3-year-old Thoroughbred has had,” said Heleski. “I think that's a huge selling point to adopting these horses.”

Catch a full replay of the seminar below.

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