Scott Jordan | Horse Racing Free Tips

Jordan Dismissed As Head Starter At Keeneland

Scott Jordan, head starter at Churchill Downs, Ellis Park and Kentucky Downs, has been dismissed from that same position at Keeneland.

Officials at the Lexington, Ky., racetrack and auction company confirmed Jordan's dismissal but did not specify a reason. The following statement from Keeneland president and CEO Shannon Arvin was issued on Friday: ”We aren't in a position to respond with the details of this situation, but we will say that, in every respect, Keeneland is committed to integrity.”

Jordan became head starter at Keeneland for the 2019 fall meet after the death of longtime starter Robert “Spec” Alexander, 80, earlier in the year. Son of trainer Rick Jordan, Scott Jordan was an exercise rider in Ohio before joining the starting gate crew at Beulah Park and old River Downs at the age of 19, then moving to the Kentucky tracks. Jordan has been head starter at Churchill Downs since 2006.

News of Jordan's departure was circulated on Friday morning in an anonymous email sent to media outlets and horsemen that was critical of the move by Keeneland.

“The summer before Scott Jordan started, Keeneland gate schooling had deteriorated into a state of chaos,” a portion of the email states. “Multiple people and horses had accidents due to negligence and impatience. Staffing was a very serious issue. Without the proper amount of staff it is impossible to do any job well. It is especially difficult to teach young races horses what they need to learn in order to have successful futures. The staffing issue was quickly resolved by Mr. Jordan because people want to work with and for him. He is not only respected by the trainers but he is respected by gate crew throughout the country. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have a true horseman in charge of the starting gate. Someone with years of equine handling experience and doing that specific job. Especially at a facility like Keeneland where so many young horses build their foundations, a bad experience as a young racehorse can affect him for the rest of his life. It is damaging to the industry.

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“Having the same starter at every Kentucky track has made an unimaginable difference,” the email continued. “Having Mr. Jordan associated with Keeneland, where many of us spend millions of dollars, has made an unimaginable difference.”

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Tom’s D’Etat And The Stud Deal That Could Have Changed Everything

Tom's d'Etat was one of three horses that stepped off the van at the WinStar Farm stallion complex on Sunday morning, less than 24 hours after each ran in the Breeders' Cup Classic at Keeneland just a few miles away.

For his two fellow passengers, a future at WinStar Farm was practically guaranteed as soon as they jumped through the proper hoops to warrant a stud career. Improbable and Global Campaign, second and third respectively in the Classic, both had run under the WinStar colors, so standing at the farm was the next logical step. For Tom's d'Etat, a future at WinStar marks an incredible reversal of fortune from one that could have seen him begin his stud career in relative obscurity.

Looking back at his full body of work, a major Kentucky farm seems like a logical destination for Tom's d'Etat. An earner of more than $1.7 million, he established himself as one of the top runners of the older male division in 2020, and he carried over the momentum from a win in the Grade 1 Clark Stakes last year. Being what will likely be the final top-level son by his late sire Smart Strike to enter stud certainly doesn't hurt, either, joining the likes of Curlin, English Channel, Lookin At Lucky, and Dominus among Kentucky's stallion ranks.

In the summer of 2017, Tom's d'Etat was none of those things, besides a son of Smart Strike. He was a dependable 4-year-old allowance-level runner for the Benson family's G M B Racing and trainer Al Stall, Jr., but after missing his juvenile season due to injury and needing a few tries to break his maiden in the fall of his 3-year-old campaign, a future as a serious Kentucky stallion prospect seemed like a pipe dream.

Tom's d'Etat was trending in the right direction during that year's Saratoga meet, and he was being pointed toward the G1 Woodward Stakes after winning an optional claiming race by nine lengths.

That optional claimer would be the final race of Tom's d'Etat's 2017 campaign. An emerging cannon bone fracture derailed a planned graded stakes debut in the G1 Woodward Stakes, and he went dormant for 15 months after having two screws put in his right front leg.

When his future as an on-track competitor was still murky, Stall and his team wanted to make sure their well-blooded loyal soldier had a future lined up for him after the races.

“There was a time when I was going to give him to the starter at Churchill and Keeneland, Scott Jordan, who has a farm in Indiana [Breakway Farm in Dillsboro, Ind.] – give him to him – and he said, 'I'll hustle up some mares. We don't have any Smart Strike blood in Indiana,'” Stall said. “Then, for whatever reason, everything started staying together on him, and he finally got to prove the kind of talent we always thought he was.”

He'd have been a solid addition to the Breakway Farm roster, but far from its most proven member on the racetrack. In 2020, Grade 1 winners Calculator and Turbo Compressor, Grade 3 winner Charming Kitten, and Grade 1-placed Greeley's Conquest resided in their stud barn.

Tara Mathias, manager of Breakway Farm and Jordan's daughter, said the arrangement never got further than conversations as a contingency plan if Tom's d'Etat couldn't make it back from his injury, and ink was never put to paper over it. There were no hard feelings when the horse went on to achieve what he did and move higher up ladder as a stallion prospect, though having a horse with Grade 1 talent in him slip away from the farm's grasp was a downer.

“Al's exercise rider at the time said he was a really nice horse, and was probably going to retire, and he'd be a good fit in Indiana,” Mathias said, “Then, he just kept winning and winning, and got better and better. They just didn't know how he was going to come back from it, and he didn't have enough under his belt to make him a huge hit in Kentucky. He'd be big in our small pond.”

Normally, a layoff of that duration is enough to retire an older horse, but Tom's d'Etat rewarded the patience of his connections by retaining his up-and-coming form when he returned. Horse racing is a sport full of diverging paths, and the decision to keep Tom's d'Etat in training ultimately created a seven-figure swing in on-track earnings, with the added ripple effects tied to all the graded black type that would have gone to someone else, the money spent and earned in a major Kentucky stud deal, and all the mares he will see in 2021 and beyond.

Tom's d'Etat raced twice at five, culminating in his first stakes triumph in the Tenacious Stakes at the Fair Grounds. He was overmatched in his first try against graded stakes competition in the G1 Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes, but he came back after a spring freshening to finish second in the G2 Alysheba Stakes and third in the G2 Stephen Foster Stakes.

From that point on, Tom's d'Etat was in the mix against the best in his division – often as the oldest horse in the field. He finished his 6-year-old campaign with victories in the G2 Fayette Stakes and G1 Clark Stakes, then he racked up wins this year in the Oaklawn Mile Stakes and G2 Stephen Foster Stakes this year at age seven.

In July, following his 4 1/4-length Stephen Foster victory, WinStar Farm revealed it had secured Tom's d'Etat's breeding rights when he retired to stud. From a horse that was perhaps one relapsed injury away from going to stud as a giveaway, Tom's d'Etat had become a blue-chip prospect recruited by one of Kentucky's top stallion operations.

Tom's d'Etat came up empty in his swan song, finishing out of the money in the Breeders' Cup Classic, but Stall said there was never a doubt that he belonged in the race, and amongst the best in his division.

“I'm very, very biased, but I thought he was the best looking horse in the field in the Classic,” he said. “He was moving really well. I just think those two races this summer back-to-back, the Foster and the Whitney, maybe were just enough for him at this age. That would just be my guess, because he was giving us every indication he was going fine, but he's a smart old boy, and maybe that was one of the contributing factors.”

So now, three years after his future looked to be in Indiana, Tom's d'Etat could realistically fit nearly half the Hoosier State's broodmare population into his projected debut book at stud. He'll stand for $17,500 in his debut season, and in addition to his graded-level success, WinStar Farm's Elliott Walden was quick to note that he's got a stallion's family under him.

“Being by Smart Strike, from the family of Candy Ride, that's two proven stallions,” Walden said. “He moves with a very lengthy stride, full of quality. He has the length of a Candy Ride, Smart Strike kind of look to him; similar to Lookin At Lucky, just a long, two-turn type horse.”

Plenty of words have been written at this point about the “win now” mentality of the commercial stallion market, and a prospect that didn't race at two and didn't win until the fall of his 3-year-old season might give some pause about what kind of precociousness Tom's d'Etat may or may not pass on to his foals.

Stall said the horse's slow start was more about bad luck and bad timing than him not being ready for the races.

“He would have have probably broken his maiden in his second start during the Keeneland fall meet, like Blame did as a 2-year-old,” Stall said, projecting his talent had he stayed healthy. “I just breezed him one day at Churchill Downs, and everything was fine with him, then something just flaked off and cost us a year. It wasn't like he was some big horse that didn't know what he was doing. A few things just started adding up. It wouldn't surprise me if he got a typier, smaller horse that would be a decent fall 2-year-old. That's the fun of it. It takes a bit of patience, but that's okay.”

Sunday's transition from the racetrack to the stud barn was a familiar one for Stall, who sent Blame on a van from Churchill Downs to Claiborne Farm ten years earlier after the colt shocked the world to best Zenyatta and win the Breeders' Cup Classic.

In the time between, Stall said he has been fascinated seeing what types of mares worked and didn't work when matched with Blame. Now, he's got another stallion to watch and theorize on matings, and based on the page under Tom's d'Etat and the multi-surface success of Smart Strike, he has at least one outside-the-box idea before the breeding season begins.

“Theoretically, there should be some grass there, even though we tried him on grass, and he did literally everything but stop and graze the day we ran him on it,” he said. “Blame's a good grass sire and he never set foot on the grass.”

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Left At The Gate: Kentucky Downs Race Called ‘No Contest’

The fifth race on Monday's opening-day program at Kentucky Downs in Franklin, Ky., was declared “no contest” by stewards after the starting gate opened before the final two horses in the 12-horse field were loaded.

Mechanicville, the No. 6 horse, and No. 12 Catman were standing behind the gate for the one-mile maiden special weight race when the stalls opened. Several other runners in the field were unprepared for the start.

Daily Racing Form reported that the incident was described by track spokesperson Jennie Rees as a result of “mechanical” failure rather than human error by starter Scott Jordan.

Royal Prince, the betting favorite at the close of betting, was first across the finish for trainer Brad Cox and jockey Shaun Bridgmohan, but after a lengthy inquiry the announcement was made that the race would not count.

All wagers were refunded.

According to Daily Racing Form, Kentucky Downs issued the following statement: “Owners of 12 horses in today's 5th to receive $5,000 from purse account; every jockey $500 after apparent gate malfunction forced race to be declared No Contest. Track working on opportunity for horses to run back at meet if connections choose.”

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This Year’s Derby Features A New 20-Stall Starting Gate, But Is It A Safe One For Assistant Starters?

Assistant starters are unsung heroes of horse racing. They risk their lives a dozen times each race day to ensure every horse has a good, fair, safe, and unbiased start. On a good day when all goes well, fans might see these daring men for one or two minutes before each race as they load horses in the gate and then perch beside them inside the gate while waiting for the bell to ring and the gates to spring open.

The job is arguably the most dangerous in horse racing, after that of the jockey. According to a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2000, 35% of all injuries to jockeys took place as horses enter, stand in, or leave the starting gate.

“It's as dangerous as any job on the racetrack,” said Scott Jordan, who became the starter for Churchill Downs in 2006 after years as an assistant starter. “You're trapped in there with a 1,200-pound horse in a four and a half-foot hole. It's just like being in a two-horse trailer, up by the horse's head.”

Jordan and his crew liken the job of assistant starter to the captain of a ship — they are the last to bail out when trouble explodes, and we've all seen that happen. Anxious horses can rear or flip, and often set off a chain reaction from others around them.

“You get the rider off [the horse] first, and then second you get the horse out of there. The third thing is you get those riders beside him out of there,” Jordan said. “All the riders are first. That's our first main objective, so no human gets hurt. Then we get all the horses out of there so no horses get hurt. Then my assistant starters are the last ones to leave.”

Caleb Hayes has been an assistant starter on Jordan's crew for many years. Additionally, in 2019 he accepted the head starter's job at Turfway Park in northern Kentucky. Hayes said a lot more is involved with the assistant starter's job than it appears.

“I'm looking at, is the horse comfortable, is the horse standing properly, is he ready. … So when the gates do open, those first two steps are going to go without an issue,” he said. “…So I want to make sure all four feet are standing squarely, that he's looking straight down the racetrack. And then while you're doing that, you also need to make sure that that jock has his feet in the irons, that he has hold of his reins, his goggles are down, and he knows that we're getting ready to go.”

All this is done while the assistant starter balances on a pontoon, a ledge attached to the partition between stalls, about six inches wide on most starting gates in North America. Assistant starters in Europe and Australia, called “handlers,” don't remain in the stall with the horse. They load it and immediately duck out through an open section in the front door.

The Grade 1 Kentucky Derby is the only leg of the Triple Crown in which more than 14 horses compete. The traditional United Puett starting gate has 14 stalls, so in recent years Churchill has added an auxiliary starting gate to the United Puett to accommodate the the field, which may include as many as 20 horses. This year Churchill will use a new 20-stall starting gate, custom designed by Australian company Steriline Racing. The pontoon on the new gate is about three and a half inches wide, hardly wide enough to accommodate an assistant starter.

Getting the new gate ready for this year's Kentucky Derby has been a challenge. Steriline shipped the pieces and parts to Churchill Downs, but when it came time for the Australian engineers to fly to Louisville to assemble it, COVID-19 travel restrictions prohibited them from making the trip. The task fell on two maintenance workers on Churchill's payroll, a welder and a carpenter. Ed Berger, an outside salesman and consultant for Louisville supply shop Duke's A&W Enterprises, helped chase down missing parts and offer advice. Berger and his brother originally founded Duke's.

“It's kind of interesting, the whole situation,” Berger said. “Those two guys, and they would have some different helpers with them, but they were working via the phone with the engineer over in Australia, the engineer or technical support person available to them, and there were quite a few times when I went over there and this guy was FaceTiming them and showing them pictures: 'OK, how does this go together?' … I would sit there and watch. They were FaceTiming this fellow and they'd hold it up there, and he'd have to look at something and he would tell them, 'No, no. You have to put it on this-a-way or that way. There's quite a few integral parts that are on that starting gate. I found it quite amazing for what little bit I observed.”

One problem the maintenance men won't be able to solve is the narrower pontoons where the assistant starters will have to stand.

“They still have room to stand in there, but not as much,” Jordan said. “…If we have to make some modifications and do some stuff to make it more comfortable, I'm going to put my guys into the best situation I can put them in. I'm not going to put them in a vulnerable spot.”

Jordan hoped to test the Steriline gate during morning training on Aug. 24, but two of his crew tested positive for COVID-19, so the test was rescheduled for Aug. 26. As of publication time, this writer had no response from Churchill Downs as to whether that test went forward as scheduled or the results if it did. Jordan also said the Steriline was expected to be used in a race on opening day, Sept. 1. That leaves just four days until the Kentucky Derby to solve any problems that come to light.

“The first day of the meet, the racing secretary has actually written me a 1 1/4-mile race so I can take it out there and use it,” Jordan said. “Even if there are only ten horses in it, I'm going to take that gate out there and use it so the first time it's out on the racetrack and used isn't going to be for the Derby.”

Padding on the new starting gate also is a question. Churchill Downs's press release on Feb. 3 said, “All starting gates at Churchill Downs are outfitted with high-quality foam padding from Best Pad™, a leading innovator of safety products for the horse racing industry that protect both jockeys and horses from injury. This seamless padding is applied to all metal surfaces of the starting gate, including front and rear poles, face plates, handrails, superstructure, and pontoons.”

“Best Pad did not pad the Steriline gate,” said Dr. Philip Shrimpton, president of Best Pad and the innovator behind the unique padding used on Churchill's other gates.

It remains unclear which parts of the 20-horse gate will be padded for Derby Day. Removing or opting not to put the padding on the walls of the Steriline gate would make the pontoons an inch wider, but to Hayes, the choice between more padding or more space is a tricky one.

“The only thing that we can really do is remove some padding, because [the gate] is already made, so the height, the weight, the width—everything is already made up,” he said. “So when they add padding, it's going to take away just an inch because of padding. So if we can get rid of that padding, it gives us that inch back, so that's kind of where we're in a Catch-22 — we're going to get rid of padding to get more room, or do we want less room and more padding. I've opted for more room, if I have a vote.”

The gate crew hopes to be able to practice on the Steriline gate an ample number of times to get accustomed to it before the Kentucky Derby.

“When I go in there, I'm just going to try to find a comfortable spot for me to be in,” Hayes said. “It's a small area, and we're talking a grown man, a horse, and a jockey are all trying to fit in this tight little area. So a little bit of my job is even just staying out of the way. … Like I said, I'm a big guy, so when I'm in there, when they leave, the last thing I want is for my body to be in the way of the jock or the horse. It's kind of a tight-rope act.”

When asked his opinion of the new gate, Jordan said simply, “Well, we bought it.”

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