retired racehorse project | Horse Racing Free Tips

RRP to Host T.I.P. Barrel Racing Champs

The Retired Racehorse Project (RRP) and The Jockey Club Thoroughbred Incentive Program (T.I.P.) will hold the inaugural T.I.P. Barrel Racing Championships at the Thoroughbred Makeover and National Symposium this October at the Kentucky Horse Park. The annual T.I.P. Championships features competition in disciplines including hunters, jumpers, English pleasure, Western pleasure, and classical and Western dressage. The 2021 T.I.P. Barrel Racing Championships will feature prize money and additional prizes for the top horses.

“Thoroughbreds have made their presence known in recent years in Western disciplines, particularly barrel racing, so we are happy to be able to showcase yet another area in which these horses excel through the inaugural T.I.P. Barrel Racing Championships,” said Kristin Werner, senior counsel for The Jockey Club and administrator of T.I.P. “Hosting this event in conjunction with the Thoroughbred Makeover will provide the deserved spotlight for these Thoroughbreds that are excelling in careers that may not be typically associated with the breed and will allow us to potentially grow the Championships in future years if there is enough interest from barrel racing participants.”

Click here for more information about the T.I.P. Barrel Racing Championships.

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Retired Racehorse Project To Host The Jockey Club Thoroughbred Incentive Program Barrel Racing Championships

The Retired Racehorse Project (RRP) and The Jockey Club Thoroughbred Incentive Program (T.I.P.) jointly announced today that the inaugural T.I.P. Barrel Racing Championships will be hosted at the RRP's flagship event, the Thoroughbred Makeover and National Symposium, this October at the Kentucky Horse Park.

T.I.P. was created to encourage the retraining of Thoroughbreds into other disciplines upon completion of careers in racing or breeding. The annual T.I.P. Championships features competition in a variety of disciplines, including hunters, jumpers, English pleasure, Western pleasure, and classical and Western dressage. T.I.P. champions in eventing are determined at the American Eventing Championships held each year. The 2021 T.I.P. Barrel Racing Championships will be the first time a championship event has been offered in the discipline. The event will feature thousands in prize money and additional prizes for the top horses.

Featuring competition in 10 different disciplines for recently retired racehorses and over $135,000 in prize money each year, the Thoroughbred Makeover (Makeover) and National Symposium, presented by Thoroughbred Charities of America, is the largest and most lucrative retraining competition in the world. This year, the event will feature two competition years, including horses from the postponed 2020 event as well as 2021-eligible horses. Makeover entries in the Barrel Racing discipline will have the option to cross-enter the T.I.P. Barrel Racing Championships and roll their time from their Makeover runs into the championship standings.

The T.I.P. Barrel Racing Championships will be sponsored by The Western Thoroughbred, a grassroots organization that recognizes the contributions of the Thoroughbred to the Western horse industry and celebrates the achievements of Thoroughbreds in Western sports. The Western Thoroughbred's founder, Katelin Bradley, is serving as organizer and steward of the event, and The Western Thoroughbred will be sponsoring buckles for average round winners.

“I am honored to help T.I.P. and the Retired Racehorse Project in organizing and hosting the inaugural T.I.P. Barrel Racing Championships,” said Bradley. “This event will be the biggest all-Thoroughbred barrel race in the country. We hope to attract open competitors and encourage Thoroughbred Makeover trainers to participate as well. It should be an excellent showcase of what these horses are capable of achieving in all levels of barrel racing!”

Entries for the T.I.P. Barrel Racing Championships will be open to qualified and declared Thoroughbreds in August. Thoroughbred Makeover Barrel Racing entrants for 2020 and 2021 will have the option to cross-enter at the time that they make their Final Entry to the Makeover. Outside non-Makeover participants for this inaugural event will be invited to enter, with preference given to horses that were declared for the barrel championships by the early declaration deadline of June 30, 2021. All participants will need a T.I.P. number to enter.

“We're excited for the opportunity to partner with T.I.P. and the Western Thoroughbred in this way,” said the RRP's managing director Kirsten Green. “The work of our three organizations is so closely aligned and we're happy to come together to offer more recognition to those who are blazing a path for OTTBs to become more of a staple in Western show pens. Katelin and the Western Thoroughbred Ambassadors have contributed heavily to improving the level of competition we offer for our Western Makeover disciplines and we're grateful for her assistance organizing this special event.”

More information about the T.I.P. Barrel Racing Championships can be found here.

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The Blueberry Bulletin Presented By Equine Equipment: For Young OTTBs, The Only Constant Is Change

This is the second installment in our monthly column from editor-in-chief Natalie Voss following her journey with her 2021 Thoroughbred Makeover hopeful Underscore, fondly known as Blueberry. Read the first in this series here and learn Blueberry's origin story and the author's long-running bond with this gelding and his family here. You can find Blueberry's Facebook page here.

I spent a lot of time this winter staring at my new OTTB grazing in the field with a furrowed brow, trying to decide how I felt about his appearance. (Fortunately, Blueberry is the type of horse who easily tunes out distractions and grew used to me squinting at him with my head tilted to one side.) I can never decide if he's just a hair lighter than I want him to be or if the only real problem is that I'm too used to looking at my draft cross mare.

He has been easier to keep weight on than I would have guessed when I got him in late November, and he kept his slick coat and topline until just about January. In February, we got several rounds of ice, snow, and frigid temperatures and whatever muscle he had at the track evaporated as he was outside 24/7 and not yet under saddle. He was never thin exactly; just, as I kept telling my husband, “ratty.” He grew a scraggly, thin winter coat which also added to his somewhat bedraggled aura. We'd pulled his shoes in an effort to toughen his soles, and every time he'd take a short step over the driveway after a trim, I'd flinch even though he'd walk, trot and gallop around his paddock soundly.

Still, he was happy enough, bright-eyed, ate and drank plenty, and plodded along for our walks up and down the hilly paddock lanes. I knew, logically, he was healthy and doing well for a horse who had gone from the track to turnout at the start of a Kentucky winter. What I discovered during this period though, was that I was uncomfortable with the “ugly duckling” phase.

Blueberry encounters a crossrail on his first day at the new farm, early April

I am fortunate to have an OTTB expert in our trainer, Stephanie Calendrillo. She trains and resells off-track horses and will be headed to her third Thoroughbred Makeover this year with eventing star Dispatcher. Most of her clients' horses are also OTTBs, so she's used to managing the transition from track to arena. Don't worry about this, she told me. It's normal for a horse's body to change when he goes from track to pasture, but it'll change again when he begins under-saddle work, and it'll happen so quickly it will surprise you.

A lot of my writing on the Paulick Report is in our Horse Care section, where we try to educate readers about veterinary and management topics. Often, time is a key component to healing an injury, managing a chronic condition, or improving a horse's fitness. The unspoken aspect of this of course is that a horse isn't going to look perfect every day of their lives. As long as you're making progress toward your goal and are using good, expert guidance, an ugly duckling phase is unavoidable. Until I had Blueberry, I hadn't thought about that before. My draft mare was quite a challenge in her early days, but her issues were more behavioral than they ever were aesthetic because she has feet like hickory, is impervious to foolish outside influences like pathogens, and gets fat on air. I spend more time trying to get weight off her than on, and while she's always been round, no one has ever worried about whether she was being looked after. All I could think, looking at Blueberry's somewhat hollowed-out neck in March was, 'If I saw that horse, I'd wonder a little bit about what was going on there.'

After we moved him to Stephanie's main facility in April and began more intensive ground and under-saddle work, we were surprised at how quickly he became stronger, how fast he built up fitness at the trot and later, the canter. We added protein and rice bran oil to his diet to help him keep up with his new workload and improve his coat and skin. When he didn't shed his winter coat (even in late April) I finally had him clipped about two weeks into his new workout plan and lo, there was a slight topline there. We added front shoes, and when he'd still have the odd tender day, we added pads and his feet are growing quick and strong.

Blueberry in late May, under saddle during a schooling session at the Kentucky Horse Park

Then the spring rains came, and with them, some rain rot. I tried a little of this and that, over-the-counter lotions and soaps mainly. Then there were the hives, tiny little ones that didn't seem to itch or hurt, but which blanketed his neck and shoulders, then his back, then his rump and legs. We tried corticosteroids and antihistamines and the hives gave way to little crusty bumps like rain rot from hell. I tried new over-the-counter lotions, and it didn't seem to yield. He looked a mess, but at least a reasonably athletic mess. At last, we found the solution – baby oil to soften the scabs, which are now nearly gone, and a diluted alcohol solution on healed areas where water from baths and thunderstorms will drip, encouraging bacteria to fester (down the legs, down the rump and sides). A slick summer coat is growing in, a shiny, brilliant reddish brown – a tribute to his mother.

Even though he's improving now, I know this is a step on the journey. Stephanie tells me that OTTBs often spend a full year sometimes adjusting to new diets, routines, pasture compositions, weather, working different muscles from what they did on the track. It's not that they aren't healthy or functional during that time, just that they're going to change. He's starting to fill out into the horse I hoped I'd have one day, but I know these journeys aren't always linear. He may encounter some new need or struggle at some stage, and I now feel I can treat it as a learning process – and remember to be patient with us both.

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Ashleyluvswater: Cal-Bred Takes on East Coast Mountainside

Ashleyluvssugar (Game Plan), a five-time Grade II-winning 10-year-old gelding, made a splash- quite literally- on social media this week in a post from After the Finish Line, where he was seen taking an enthusiastic wade through a stream in the North Carolina mountains.

The fan-favorite California-bred is now owned by Allie Conrad, who has worked with hundreds of ex-racehorses over the years, but said this one is truly one of a kind.

“This was his first off-the-farm trip where we took him camping up in the mountains,” Conrad shared. “I took him down to the river and he was unsure. What wasn't shown in the video was that I hopped down and kind of boulder hopped about 10 feet out so I wouldn't get wet but he would understand that he could follow me into the river. Well he took it quite literally and leaped onto the boulder with me, knocking me into the river. He looked like an elephant on a ball standing on this rock looking at me in the river like, 'Okay I'm here, now what?'”

(Video footage courtesy After the Finish Line and Allie Conrad )

A homebred for Sharon Alesia, Bran Jam Stable and Ciaglia Racing, Ashleyluvssugar raced 38 times over eight years for trainer Peter Eurton. He collected five Grade II wins, including two editions of the Charles Wittingham S. and also ran fifth in the 2016 GI Breeders' Cup Turf. He retired last spring with earnings of over $1.4 million as his trainer's second-highest earner.

When given the opportunity, Conrad jumped at the chance to take on the bay gelding.

“I have a huge fan-girl crush on stakes horses,” she said. “They have an arrogance and a confidence that I just love. A lot of people don't know how to deal with them because they can be very opinionated. Even to get their feet or teeth done, they're like, 'I don't know who you think you are but I won [x or y] race.' They know they're fancy. When he ran his last race and it was clear he wasn't loving it anymore, he came to me clean-legged, perfectly happy and in beautiful condition.”

Conrad has had her hands on her fair share of retired racehorses as the executive director of the aftercare organization CANTER Mid Atlantic for 20 years. When she retired stepped away years ago, she made it her goal to branch out with her own off-track Thoroughbreds.

“I decided to live by the motto that life is short, go do the things that bring you joy,” she shared.

During her time with CANTER, Conrad met Dawn Mellen, the President and Founder of After the Finish Line and an active member of her family's Bran Jam Stable.

“Her family is the gold standard for taking care of their racehorses,” Conrad said. “She would reach out to me asking about a horse they had owned as a yearling that was now running at the bottom at Laurel or Charles Town or wherever, seeing if I could go check up on them. In doing that, we ended up taking six of her family's horses that they hadn't owned for years, but they would provide for all expenses until we could re-home them.”

Three years ago Mellen called Conrad to let her know that it was time for their dual Grade III winner Bettys Bambino (Unusual Heat) to retire. Conrad was confused as to how Mellen wanted her to help.

“I was in North Carolina and he was in California. But she asked me very bluntly why I always commented on Betty's videos on social media and I said there was something about him that just spoke to my soul. She said her family had discussed it and they wanted me to own him. I was so honored. They shipped him here and soon after, started talking to me about Ashleyluvssugar.”

'Sugar' arrived in North Carlina last year, but Conrad said it took some time for him to learn to relax in his new environment.

“One thing about stakes horses is that they're so used to their routine and the hustle and bustle of shipping, racing and adoring fans,” she explained. “They feed off of it and can get depressed when they come into a quieter environment. They've gone from training hard every day to essentially doing nothing so it can be a little bit of a challenge, but I just happen to love that challenge.”

After about 10 months of reassurance from his new owner, Sugar began settling into his new job description.

“He finally started to look to me for guidance when he was questioning things,” Conrad said. “It goes back to that stakes-horse mindset where he's like, 'I don't need you. I know my job.' But he finally took a breath and realized I would make the decisions for him.”

“I would call this horse cheeky and brilliant,” Conrad added of his personality. “He's got a sense of humor and is really expressive with his feet. We call him Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance. He slings his legs up in the air every time you ask him to do something. Some people would think he was being aggressive, but it has to do with the fact that he does everything with enthusiasm. You ask him to do something and he does it times 100.”

Conrad said that she has plans to take Sugar to this year's Retired Racehorse Project's Thoroughbred Makeover in October. There he will be competing for the Georgia B. Ridder Foundation's $2,500 Top-Placed Cal-Bred Award.

Ashleyluvssugar takes the 2017 GII Charles Whittingham Stakes. | Benoit

“I will probably lean him towards something non-traditional,” Conrad said. “With him being so quick and athletic, I needed a Western saddle with him so I'll probably be aiming him for some of the Western disciplines. He may tell me something different, but we don't have to decide for a few months. If you teach him something, he owns it. A quiet brain is a trainable brain, and so I can basically teach him anything now that his brain is quiet enough to be taught.”

While she's not sure in what area Sugar will end up excelling, she knows he has all the potential to be a success.

“He is a very different-brained horse,” she said. “I wouldn't say he will be my last Thoroughbred, but I'm pretty sure the universe sent me the most complicated re-training project. He's not difficult, he's just weird and funny and I love it.”

Ashleyluvssugar has been a very different pupil than Conrad's other Peter Eurton trainee.

Pennmarydel, a full brother to 2006 GI Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, romps with his long-eared friends Nigel Herringbone Bigglesworth III (center) and Reginald Striebling Cumberbatch (right). | Sarah Andrew

“Bettys Bambino is the polar opposite. With him, everything is very serious. There's no joking, no laughing, he does his job and does it well. I call him a once-in-a-lifetime horse. He's unbelievably quiet and steady. My niece will come and ride little walk-trot lessons. He and I have gotten into mountain riding. We go all over the East Coast riding up and down mountains. We go camping, we gallop on beaches and trail ride every day.”

Conrad has a trip planned next year to take Bettys Bambino out west to ride in the mountains of Utah, Montana and Wyoming.

“Sugar will probably come along too,” she said. “My two little racehorses and I are going to show up some Quarter Horses and run up the mountains faster than anybody else.”

The horsewoman has gathered quite the collection of racing characters in her barn.

“Having both Bettys Bambino and Ashleyluvssugar in my barn is an absolute treasure and a joy. They go out with their best friend Pennmarydel (Dynaformer), who is Barbaro's full brother. He didn't have the racing success but he has the bloodlines and knows he's fancy. I've got a bunch of big egos in my barn, but they match with my own so it works just fine.”

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