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Noble Indy Fell From the Kentucky Derby To Racing In Puerto Rico, But A Good Samaritan Came To His Rescue

Fred Hart didn't own, train or breed Noble Indy (Take Charge Indy), the winner of the 2018 GII Louisiana Derby and the seventh-place finisher in that year's GI Kentucky Derby. But he did have a connection. An owner and breeder of modest means, he owned Noble Indy's dam, Noble Maz (Storm Boot), buying her for $9,000 at the 2007 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic October Yearling Sale. He would later lose her in a $25,000 claimer, which turned out to be her last race.

But even that minor role in the career of Noble Indy, who was bred by WinStar Farm, turned Hart into his biggest fan. He visited him at WinStar as a baby, went to as many of his races as he possibly could and spent time at Todd Pletcher's barn at Palm Beach Downs when the horse was in Florida.

“I owned the mother of Noble Indy and I bought her for $9,000 and she went on to earn $327,000,” Hart said. “She's my one claim to fame in racing.”

Noble Indy broke his maiden for WinStar at first asking and thereafter raced for the partnership of WinStar and Mike Repole and looked like a nice prospect from the start. He added a Gulfstream allowance to his debut win, then finished third in the GII Risen Star S., his final prep for the Louisiana Derby. After the Kentucky Derby, he was never again the same. He lost nine straight until winning a 2019 allowance race at Belmont for Repole, who had earlier bought out WinStar.

It was clear he was no longer a stakes-caliber horse and he struggled to even win allowance races. Noble Indy wound up in a $35,000 claimer at Gulfstream on Feb. 24, 2021. He was claimed by Saffie Joseph, Jr. who didn't fare much better than Pletcher. On Feb. 10, 2022, Joseph lost him to trainer Gustavo Delgado. Four starts later, all of them defeats, he was on his way to Camarero in Puerto Rico, the lowest rung on the racing ladder and a perilous place for horses nearing the end of their careers.

“At some point his ability went south,” Hart said. “The next thing I new he was back in again for $35,000 and it wasn't long after that he was in Puerto Rico. The purses are terrible there. Why any person would ever send a horse to Puerto Rico is beyond me.”

Hart reached out to Kelley Stobie, the co-founder of Caribbean Thoroughbred Aftercare Inc. He wanted to bring Noble Indy home.

The problem was that the new owner, Skull Stable PR, wanted $35,000 for the horse, way more than he was worth at that point. Stobie told Hart the best thing to do was to be patient and wait to see if the price would come down.

“Once the horse came to Puerto Rico, a lot of people contacted us,” Stobie said. “My thought was that if you didn't want to see the horse come to Puerto Rico, why didn't someone claim him when they had the chance at Gulfstream Park? When that didn't happen, everyone saw this as my problem. The only person that was really nice to me and understood my situation was Fred. We are in dire straits down here financially. Everyone looks at what's going on down here and figures it's not their problem. Fred was the only one who appreciated how hard it is down here. He wasn't breathing down my neck saying 'you've got to get this horse back.' Fred was really humble and understood the situation.”

Noble Indy made five starts in Puerto Rico, losing every time. He did run second and third but finished sixth, beaten 10 lengths in what has turned out to be his last race, an $11,000 allowance on Feb. 10 of this year.

Hart and Stobie tried again and the owner was still asking for $35,000. Eventually the price got down to $10,000, still too much as Harty and Stobie saw it for a horse who had little to no value anymore as a race horse. As Hart understands it, Noble Indy then had some screws inserted in his left front ankle in last-ditch effort to return him to form. When that didn't work out, Skull Stable finally relented and agreed to give him away for free.

Hart was ecstatic.

“I became sentimentally attached to this horse and was afraid harm would come to him if he stayed in Puerto Rico,” Hart said. “I just wanted to get him out of there. That's who I am. I get sentimentally involved with something. It's terrible what can happen to these horses. If I didn't get involved, I thought no one would. I was worried this horse would end up dead. This is a success story because this horse is getting out of Puerto Rico alive.”

Noble Indy, who, somewhere along the way was gelded, remains in Puerto Rico with Caribbean Thoroughbred Aftercare Inc. The intention is to send him to Old Friends in Georgetown, Kentucky. Before he can come to the U.S., Stobie needs to figure out the quarantine requirements and how to pay for the cost of transporting him back to the U.S. Repole solved that issue Monday, as he told the TDN that he would personally cover those expenses.

“The horse has problems but nothing that will prevent him from living out a nice life on the retirement farm,” Hart said. “There's going to be a good ending to the story.”

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Caribbean Thoroughbred Aftercare Faces Unsure Future, Seeks Community Help

The future of Caribbean Thoroughbred Aftercare is up in the air as the non-profit organization faces an unprecedented increase in both rehab cases and operating expenses.

“Responsible aftercare is an imperative duty of the racing industry–one that cannot be overlooked or ignored,” said CTA Adoption Coordinator Chrissy Laughlin. “As they profit from breeding and bringing these magnificent horses to Puerto Rico, it is incumbent upon the industry to step up and provide the essential funding for their lifelong well-being and care. Embracing this responsibility with unwavering dedication will ensure a brighter future for these incredible athletes who have given their all on the racetrack.”

The CTA, which has seen a decline in on-island adoptions, has struggled to place horses in suitable homes. So much so that they are unable to accept any additional horses as of Aug. 1 due to “depleted funds for quarantine and transportation.”

Those interested in assisting the CTA can find more information here.

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Week In Review: Racing On Christmas A Thing of the Past, But Legend Lives On

The annual Dec. 26 start of the Santa Anita season has a natural, anticipatory, turn-the-page vibe to it. But this mark-your-calendar Opening Day mainstay hasn't always been a post-holiday tradition. Although Santa Anita has kicked off its winter/spring meet on the day after Christmas every year since 1977, the track originally opened in 1934 on Christmas Day itself, and did so for the first four years of its existence.

“Filmdom entirely forgot its world of make-believe to migrate to the Santa Anita track yesterday for the renewal of horse racing in Los Angeles,” the Los Angeles Times gushed when reporting on the huge turnout of Hollywood movie stars and celebrities when Santa Anita held its first-ever races on Dec. 25, 1934.

“They rubbed elbows with Angelinos and society folk, and jostled through the crowd of 30,000 spectators to get a hot dog or place a bet, and joined in the cheer that swept over the giant racing plant as the horses left the barrier for the first race,” the front-page spread stated.

History tells us that way back when, Santa Anita wasn't alone in racing on Christmas Day.

Thumb through chart books and old newspaper clippings, and you'll get a flavor of when Christmas in North America was more of a social holiday than a commercial one; when going to the races on Dec. 25 was a festive outing centered on celebrating with friends and strangers alike.

As far back as the 1880s and early into the 20th Century, Christmas Day racing was routine at major warm-weather North American venues such as Oakland, California; Havana, Cuba; Juarez and Tijuana in Mexico, plus at other, long-gone Thoroughbred outposts like Jefferson in Louisiana and Savannah, Georgia.

There is even evidence that “outlaw” Thoroughbred tracks in bone-chilling climes like New Jersey, Illinois, and Missouri raced on Christmas through roughly 1900, purely because people would turn out to bet on the low-level unsanctioned racing those venues offered. Action, after all, was action.

By 1938 though, Santa Anita opted to switch off of Christmas Day racing in favor of opening on New Year's Eve. That experiment didn't last, and for the better part of the next 15 seasons or so, the SoCal track's start date fluctuated within the last week of December depending on how the calendar fell.

The first Dec. 26 Santa Anita opener was not until 1949, according to a retrospective the Los Angeles Times ran in 2012: “Since 1952, the day after Christmas has been Santa Anita's opening day in all but five seasons, and all seasons since 1977. Now to open any other day would seem sacrilegious.”

The Fair Grounds in New Orleans and Tropical Park in Florida were the two main tracks on the continent that continued to card Christmas Day racing through the middle of the 20th Century.

Eventually, Florida's tracks became the only torch-carriers for Christmas Day racing in America. Calder Race Course embraced the tradition after Tropical closed in 1972, and Hialeah Park even briefly gave it a go when it reopened from closure in 1991.

Yes, Virginia, There Is…

The now-defunct Calder also often raced on Christmas Eve, too. The finale on Dec. 24, 1992, was a $7,500 claimer in which an aptly named mare called Silent Knight got pounded in the betting to 7-5 favoritism. She won, of course. The margin was a nose (presumably red).

You'd think Silent Knight's victory might go down in history as the all-time holiday hunch play.

It isn't.

That distinction belongs to a 9-year-old Canadian-bred named Santa Claus, who romped home first in a Christmas Eve claimer at the Fair Grounds in 1976, delivering a $7.20 win mutuel to his merry backers.

After arriving in the paddock with his tail tied in red and white ribbons and a festive stocking cap perched atop his head, Santa Claus trailed until the final turn in a 1 1/16 miles route race, then rushed up the rail with a flourish turning for home.

“Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus…” the track announcer began crooning, with the crowd laughing and joining in to sing the carol, according to the Associated Press account of the race.

The Grinch Known as Simulcasting…

You can bet that Hall-of-Fame jockey Mike Smith remembers the Christmas Day he spent at Calder in 1993.

Smith, 28 at the time and just emerging as a top New York-based rider, flew to Florida because he had a chance to tie Pat Day's then-record of 60 stakes wins in a calendar year. Smith caught a big break when the holiday feature, the Tropical Park Oaks, got split into two divisions at entry time. He landed on the two favorites-and in the winner's circle-with both mounts.

“Someone up there must be looking out for me, and these horses must know,” Smith said after the wins.

Five days later, back at Aqueduct, Smith would win his 61st stakes of the year, giving him sole possession of the record (which has since been Scrooged by several other riders). The feat helped him earn his first Eclipse Award as the nation's outstanding jockey.

The following year, the 1994 Christmas Day program at Calder would turn out to be its last.

While the holiday cards were considered decent on-track days in terms of attendance and handle (6,473 people turned out to bet $925,632 on-track in 1994), by 1995 Calder management decided that it would rather forego racing on the holiday to be open the day after, when more off-track betting parlors and simulcast tracks nationwide would be open to import the signal.

Today, Camarero Race Track in Puerto Rico is the only North American track with regular racing on Christmas Day.

At all the stateside venues, not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse.

Yet it turned out that a sizable chunk of customers cried “Humbug!” when Calder pulled the plug on Christmas Day racing.

As Calder president Ken Dunn told the Miami Herald in 1995, for many people, the racetrack was a refuge (fast-forward to 2022: it still is). Particularly for the elderly who might not have family, going racing was a way to fill the hours.

Plus, Dunn added, “There are a lot of people who don't celebrate Christmas.”

Dunn's predecessor, the late Kenny Noe, who oversaw Calder during its decades-long run of holiday racing, told the Herald in that same article he had a different theory about why Christmas was so popular with racegoers.

“A lot of men would show up at the track and tell me their wives had told them to get the hell out of the house but be home by 4 o'clock for dinner,” said Noe, an old-school track exec who was never one to mince words.

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City of Light Represented By First Two Winners

About 24 hours before Lane's End Farm's City of Light (Quality Road–Paris Notion, by Dehere) celebrated his first American winner in the form of Ellis Park second-time starter Roja Ligera, the first-crop stallion was represented by his first winner when the colt City of Knowledge raced away to graduate by daylight in a 5 1/2-furlong allowance over a sloppy strip at Hipodromo Camarero outside of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Saturday, July 30.

Sent off the 4-5 second choice in a field of six, the $100,000 Keeneland September yearling and $32,000 OBS March breezer won the break and was soon clear beneath leading jockey Juan Carlos Diaz through an opening quarter-mile in :23.24. Opening up on his rivals on the turn, the dark bay carried a five-length advantage into the final eighth of a mile and went on to best favored Husky Driver (Outwork) by a handy 5 3/4 lengths. The final time was 1:04.71 (see below, SC 3).

Bred in Kentucky by Betz/B & K Canetti/J Betz/D J Stables/Graves/GTL, City of Knowledge is the first foal out of three-time winner and $174,425 earner Mo Knows (Uncle Mo), a half-sister to GSW & GISP Payton d'Oro, who was acquired by Bill Betz's Betz Thoroughbreds for $285,000 with the colt in utero at the 2019 Keeneland November Sale. Mo Knows is also the dam of a yearling colt by American Pharoah and a colt foal by Justify.

Roja Ligera made it a weekend double for City of Light when running out a 1 1/4-length winner of a sloppy Ellis maiden July 31. The bay filly took some nibbles at 9-1 for her July 1 debut at Churchill, but bombed the start and finished well-beaten.

Spectacular in winning the GI Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile and GI Pegasus World Cup Invitational S., City of Light is the sire of 101 foals of racing age and stood the most recent breeding season for $60,000 at Lane's End.

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