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Trainer Art Sherman Plans To Retire At Year’s End

Trainer Art Sherman told bloodhorse.com this week that he plans to retire at the end of 2021, so as to spend more time traveling with his wife and visiting their children and grandchildren. Sherman is best known for his handling of champion California Chrome, whose major victories include the 2014 Kentucky Derby and Preakness and 2016 Dubai World Cup.

Sherman, 84, currently trains a son of California Chrome named Chasing Alchemy for a partnership that includes a group of the horse's fans, the “Chromies.”

“About eight women own about 10 percent of him,” Sherman told bloodhorse.com. “They're all Chromies, and they have a lot of fun. They meet all the time. Every Saturday they're at the barn. Chrome is such a popular horse. I still get all kinds of letters. He's been a people's horse.”

The horses Sherman trains will likely head to the stables of his sons, Steve in Northern California and Alan in Kentucky.

Sherman served as an exercise rider and a jockey prior to his training career. Among the highlights were his time spent galloping the great California-bred Swaps for trainer Mesh Tenney, and accompanying the horse to Louisville when he won the 1955 Kentucky Derby.

Sherman has saddled the winners of 2,261 races in his career, including multiple Grade 1 winners: Siren Lure, Ultra Blend, Haimish Hy, and Lang Field.

Fort Erie Track Announcer Frank Salive Retiring

Frank Salive, Fort Erie's track announcer, is retiring from his commanding post in the announcer's booth at the border oval on Tuesday. Salive has been the voice of horse racing for over three decades, calling races at several thoroughbred and harness tracks including Fort Erie Race Track, Woodbine, Western Fair, and Pompano Park.

In the mid-70s, the Leamington native was a star junior goalie for the Peterborough Petes. After hanging up his skates, he seamlessly transitioned into the world of mainstream sports broadcasting, working for various networks including CTV, CBC as well as TSN. In 1976, at the age of 21, Salive's first network assignment was covering five events a day at the Montreal Summer Olympics for CTV.

In 1990 he stepped into the world of horse racing at Woodbine Racetrack. Salive worked at Woodbine for a decade and a half before heading west to London, Ontario to call races at Western Fair for four years from 2005 to 2009. His next venture would be Pompano Park in Florida where his voiced filled the atmosphere and racing apron until 2012. As he developed his craft calling races, Salive credits several announcers that impacted his career in the announcer's booth.

“I would say Stan Bergstein was a foundation announcer that I really patterned myself after for harness racing. Certainly, Dan Loiselle (thoroughbred racing) helped me a lot in my years at Woodbine. I went a lot by his example – to transform a race from just the look of horses going on an oval into a little bit of a story,” said Salive.

In 2016, the venerable track announcer landed his feet at Fort Erie Race Track. He's called the border oval home for the last six racing seasons.

Narrating a fleet of horses as they move from gate to wire jockeying for top spot might seem like a fairly straightforward task, but Salive knows there's a lot more to it than that.

“You really don't know how your body and mind are going to react, but its kind counterintuitive to the crowd. The crowd is excited, and they are all cheering, and you have to be exactly the opposite. Before The Prince of Wales – a live national tv broadcast, you challenge yourself on how far you can slow down your heart rate and breathing because you can't be out of control with excitement from gate to wire. You have to build it up to the finish. So, it's different than being in the crowd as a race fan, you have to go the opposite direction and stay calm.”

Asked to recall career highlights at the border oval, the track announcer is quick to respond.

“I came from a strong Standardbred past so to get to cross over and do six of the Canadian Triple Crown races in my tenure here.”

To date, Salive has called close to 200,000 races during his illustrious career. Salive will call his last card at Fort Erie Race Track this afternoon.

The post Fort Erie Track Announcer Frank Salive Retiring appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Australian Study: Why Do Thoroughbreds Retire?

A new study out of Australia has found that 17 percent of 37,750 racehorses retired during the 2017-18 racing season there left the track because of poor performance or at their owner's request. In addition, the study found that 2.1 percent of racehorses that left racing during that timeframe died.

Dr. Kshitiz Shrestha of the University of Melbourne and a research team emailed a questionnaire to the last registered trainers of a sample of the 2,509 Thoroughbreds listed as “inactive” in that timeframe. An “inactive” horse is one that has not worked or raced in the last six months of the racing season, or those horses that were recorded as inactive by Racing Australia.

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In total, 1,750 responses were received. Of those, 43 percent had only temporarily left racing; those horses raced the following year. One-third of the retirements were because of injuries, predominantly tendon or ligament issues.

The study determined that the median age of the 780 horses that were retired was 5 years. Females were 1.2 times more likely to be retired than males, but male horses were more likely to become riding horses than females, many of which went on to breed.

The scientists also found that 90 of the 96 horses that died did so because of injury or illness; 54 percent of the horses had experienced an injury while exercising — 24 of them while racing and 19 while training. The other 6 were injured while participating in a trial.

The researchers note that their findings are consistent with previous Australian and New Zealand studies that report that most racehorse retirements are voluntary in nature because of poor performance or owner request.

They note that the decision to retire is based on an accumulation of factors, including performance. The median age of retirement shows that most horses are not forced to retire because of an injury. This information can be used as a benchmark to evaluate programs designed to track Thoroughbreds as they leave racing.

Read the study here.

Trainer Neil Howard Plans Transition To Assistant For Shug McGaughey

Trainer Neil Howard, a mainstay on the Kentucky Thoroughbred circuit for nearly four decades, told the Daily Racing Form he plans to disband his stable and take a role as assistant for Hall of Famer Shug McGaughey.

“This is a business of change,” Howard, 72, told DRF. The last year or two, I'd been thinking of doing something like this. Shug recently presented me with this opportunity and I took it. That's the long and short of it.”

Howard is best known for his conditioning of Horse of the Year Mineshaft, as well as Preakness winner and Derby runner-up Summer Squall. Over his 42-year training career, Howard saddled 1,256 winners from 6,934 starters, including 186 stakes races (85 graded). Howard was also the private trainer for Lane's End Farm from 1983 through the late 2000s, when Farish began employing multiple trainers, including McGaughey.

Howard plans to make the transition over the next several weeks.