Known for an easy, welcoming smile that his distinctive handlebar moustache could never conceal and an ever-present glint in his eye, Foley worked for more than three decades as an in-demand exercise rider after his jockey career ended. He also took a job as a valet on the New England circuit, and parlayed that gig into various racing official positions in the Suffolk Downs jockeys' room that he held until the East Boston oval ran its final races in 2019.

The combination of being a local kid with a reputation for aggressively riding claimers of dubious soundness endeared him to the hardscrabble Suffolk railbirds.

Growing up in the nearby Day Square neighborhood only a couple of furlongs from the track, “Fast Freddie” graduated from East Boston High and landed a job as a construction laborer before getting a late start in the saddle in his mid-20s. He used to laugh when recounting how he grew up right down the street from the track, yet never once attended the races until some buddies in an amateur hockey league suggested his lithe, 5'4″ 115-pound frame would suit him better to horsebacking than body checking.

“I used to go past Suffolk all the time, and I never realized what it really is–a city within a city,” Foley said in a 1983 press profile. “But once I went, I knew this is what I wanted. Once racing gets in your blood, forget it.”

So Foley quit his job and took a forty dollars-a-week gig as a stablehand in the 1970s. Even though the backstretch meant a cut in salary, he looked at the opportunity as “going to school and getting paid for it.”

Four years later, he finally got a leg up as an apprentice rider. But Foley was so raw and unpolished that he couldn't secure an agent to book his mounts.

His “bugboy” allowance lasted an unusually long three years (an apprenticeship in Massachusetts expires one year after a jockey's fifth win). It  might have lasted longer had Foley  not resorted to drastic measures to kick-start the process.

Two years into his apprentice period, at age 27, Foley decided to launch a gung-ho assault on the dangerous Massachusetts county fairs circuit. He said his logic in going all-out on the perilous half-milers during the summer and fall meets at Marshfield, Northampton and Great Barrington fairs was to make trainers think, “If this kid can ride these sore, old horses, we'll put him on some at Suffolk.”

The plan worked–sort of. In 1982, Freddie won the Great Barrington riding title. But a Boston Globe write-up the following season serves as the only documentation of his most remarkable riding feat: After winning four races one day on the Marshfield half-miler, Foley got dropped on his head by a subsequent mount while careening through the hairpin turn.

The next day he was still groggy, but insisted on riding at Suffolk because he had a rare opportunity to pilot a “live”  horse named Royal Wedding. Then he had six more mounts at Marshfield that same afternoon. (This was an era of such abundant racing in New England that on some summer Fridays in the 80s, Suffolk ran in the mornings, Marshfield afternoons, and Rockingham Park at night. There are now no tracks operating in the region.)

“I got to the quarter pole on Royal Wedding, and my neck and shoulders were so sore from the Marshfield spill I couldn't move,” Foley told the Globe. “But the horse was still in contention, so I kept going.”

Royal Wedding won, igniting the tote board to the tune of $17.80. But it was Foley who paid the price. “I couldn't even pull the horse up, the outriders had to catch me. I couldn't even unsaddle. The stewards at Marshfield took me off my mounts there.”

Yet Foley concluded the interview in characteristically upbeat fashion: “I'll keep hustling,” he said, “because I don't know any rich people.”

Foley remained a long-shot specialist, good for 30 to 40 wins a year through the middle 80s. But injuries, illness and bad timing took their toll. In 1987, he flipped his car on a patch of ice and spent a week in an intensive care unit, where he was treated for a punctured lung and had his spleen removed. Shortly thereafter, Suffolk closed for two years. After the track reopened in 1992, open-heart surgery kept Foley off horses for longer than he liked.

Bowing to practicality, Foley traded his jockey license for a weekly paycheck. He settled in as a valet, and if he had any regrets about being forced into a less glamorous career switch, he didn't voice them publicly. Instead, he toned down his run-and-gun horsebacking style to better suit morning training, and was soon considered one of the most accomplished workout riders on the circuit because of his reliability, deft hands, patience with young horses, and level-headed demeanor.

Suffolk Downs | Chip Bott

I vividly recall a conversation I had with Foley in the spring of 2000. Then 45 years old, Foley was in better shape than most racetrackers half his age. In addition to being a sought-after exercise rider, he kept fit by skiing and playing ice hockey, and was content to relax while fishing from his home's front porch alongside a quiet little pond up in New Hampshire.

At that time, Foley had not ridden in a race for 11 years. But he had started allowing himself the luxury of dreaming about the adrenaline rush of winning. When I ran into him that morning in front of the Suffolk Downs backstretch kitchen 23 years ago, Freddie was zipping from one riding engagement to another, flak jacket swinging cavalierly from his sinewy frame, battle-scarred riding helmet in hand. He told me, with his characteristic big grin, that what he really wanted to do, more than anything else, was to be a jockey again–but only for one more race.

Foley had been working out a maiden who had drawn rave reviews from clockers as a well-meant runner who would score first time off a layoff. Foley had previously schooled the colt's brother, a stakes winner. “I've been working him like this,” he enthused, jamming his fists together and pulling them close to his chest, the universal symbol for a horse hard held. “He's going to win. And I want to ride him.”

Foley didn't have grand, unrealistic aspirations. He fully intended to ride just once, on that one horse, for that one race. Foley had actually won the last race he rode back in 1989. But one more time, he wanted to go out a winner. The trainer told Foley she was all for it, and would even pay his license fee and vouch for him in front of the stewards.

When I next saw Foley a week later, I was shocked to hear his request for a jockey license had been flat-out denied. Apparently, the stewards nixed the idea for the one-time comeback because of his history of heart trouble. Their stated reason was that they feared being responsible if he suffered cardiac complications during the few minutes he'd be out on the racetrack.

Foley pointed out that his heart doctor had long ago cleared him to participate in any activity he wanted; that he was one of the fastest skaters on the Suffolk pickup hockey team, and that he already possessed a license–issued by those very same stewards–to exercise horses during morning training.

“They asked me for a reason, and I said because I thought it would be fun, that I wanted to ride one more time in my life,” Foley told me.

“Then the stewards told me that racing wasn't supposed to be 'fun,'” Foley added, a touch incredulously.

“'Fun,' they said, 'isn't the reason we're all here.'”

Although crestfallen, Foley not only hid his disappointment, but refused to bad-mouth the stewards or criticize their decision, taking the high road.

Yet he proved those officials wrong in the long run: Yes, racing is all about fun.

Fun–or at least the tantalizing possibility of it–is the very reason we're all here.

f you were lucky enough to hang around Freddie Foley on the backstretch or in the jockeys' room, there was no denying it.

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“He's stayed relatively sound all these years,” trainer Karl Grusmark said. “We've had some issues with quarter cracks that pop up once in a while, but other than that he's been a very healthy horse.”

With there being no racing in Massachusetts, the state's breeding program is verging on extinction. In 2013, the year Dr Blarney was born, the Massachusetts foal crop consisted of 41 horses. In 2021, the latest year available through The Jockey Club Fact Book, that number was seven. In 2022, only one mare was bred in the state.

Dr Blarney is one of only five horses bred in Massachusetts who have raced this year.

But the breeding program could always depend on Dr Blarney for some needed doses of spirit-lifting good news. Bred by his owner, Joseph DiRico, he broke his maiden in his first start, a July 12, 2015 $30,000 maiden claimer at Monmouth for then trainer Thomas McCooey. He lost his next two, including a start in the Tyro S. at Monmouth, but soon found his element. McCooey shipped him to Suffolk Downs to take on fellow Mass-breds in the Norman Hall S. He won by 10 that day, the first of 15 state-bred stakes he would win from 16 tries. His only loss against Massachusetts-breds came in a grass race.

He ran in his last Mass-bred race in 2020, a year after Suffolk Downs closed down for good. Fort Erie offered some races for Massachusetts-breds and it was there that Dr Blarney won the Rise Jim S. for the fourth time. From there, he had to run exclusively against open company and he has held his own. He's won six more times, including a win against open stakes company in the 2020 Last Dance S. at Fort Erie, his second stakes win against open company. He also won the Governor's Day H. in 2018 at Delaware Park.

With the win this week at Finger Lakes, he upped his career record to 27-for-44 with earnings of $787,393. That doesn't include the $181,338 he's taken home in Mass-bred incentives and awards.

“It's like having an ATM machine in the shedrow,” said Grusmark, who took over the training of Dr Blarney from McCooey at the start of the 2017 season. “When he's right, he can compete. We won a stakes race at Delaware Park with him and we've run him at a lot of tracks. He's better against Mass-breds because of the competition, but he's a quality horse. He's a good honest horse that can win against good horses.”

Dr Blarney's best year earnings-wise was 2018, when he earned $188,570, but much of that was made beating up on inferior competition in state-bred races. He's made just $22,175 so far this year from three starts, but Grusmark believes there is plenty left.

“I think right now he's as good as he's been in a couple of years,” he said.

DiRico attributes Dr Blarney's longevity to how he's been handled throughout his career.

“Every winter we send him to a training center in South Carolina for three, three-and-a-half months,” he said. “Not racing during the winters has helped. He's also been racing in a lot of Massachusetts-bred races and in those races he really didn't have to extend himself. We've taken good care of him.”

So while it appears that Dr Blarney could keep going for a while, that's not the plan. With his win Monday, he passed Ask Queenie to become the leading all time Mass-bred money earner. But there's one more goal that DiRico wants to accomplish. Dr Blarney is tied with Ask Queenie and Rise Jim for most career wins ever by a Mass-bred at 27. Rise Jim is arguably the best Mass-bred ever and is a back-to-back winner of the Tom Fool S., winning the race in 1992 when it was a Grade II and again when it was a Grade III. A 28th win by Dr Blarney would mean that he had nothing else to prove.

“Mr. DiRico would be thrilled to see him become the leading Mass-bred winner of all time,” Grusmark said.

Grusmark said that Dr Blarney will likely be retired after his next win and that, win or lose, he will not race as an 11-year-old.

DiRico is already searching around to find a home for his gelding following his last race. He said one option is to give him Jessica Paquette, the announcer at Parx who worked at Suffolk in a number of roles before that track closed. She has offered him a home.

In the meantime, DiRico is making plans to say goodbye to a horse that has been so good to him.

“Since he's been stabled at Finger Lakes, I don't really get much of a chance to see him,” DiRico said. “I have a house at Saratoga for the summer and this year when I go up there I'm going to make sure that I go to Finger Lakes and see him and feed him carrots. When he's retired, I'll have to deal with that when the time comes. He's been very special.”

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Over an extended mile of turf, a 5-year-old daughter of Big Brown overtook Queen Caroline (Blame) in the stretch before going clear by 1 3/4 lengths. On her 16th start, it was an overdue black-type success for Puca, who had in younger days started one of the favorites for the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies and also (after running second in the GII Gazelle S.) been deemed worth a crack at the GI Kentucky Oaks.

Having meanwhile added the fourth stakes prize of her own career, Queen Caroline followed Puca to a graded stakes at Belmont the following month. Against this stiffer competition, however, neither was able to land a blow. A few days later Puca was sold at Keeneland, to Thomas Clark for $275,000, and subsequently booked to the rookie Gun Runner; while Queen Caroline, a year her junior, persevered for one more campaign before being retired and sent to Violence.

Puca elevated her value pretty steeply when sold a second time, carrying her Gun Runner foal, to Grandview Equine for $475,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Fall Mixed Sale of 2018. She was a beautiful, black-type mare and her page was decorated by half-brother Finnegans Wake (Powerscourt {GB}) as winner of the GI Woodford Reserve Turf Classic.

Once she had safely delivered a filly, Puca's new owners utilized a share in Good Magic for her next cover, which encounter produced a colt on 18 April 2020. That September, they offered her Gun Runner filly at Keeneland, but she failed to meet her reserve and was retained at $70,000. Sent into training with Kenny McPeek and named Gunning, she has won three of seven starts and earned a second black-type podium just a few days ago.

Queen Caroline's date with Violence had meanwhile resulted in a 3 February colt, sold to Silver Hill Farm at Keeneland that November for $80,000. He proved a pretty marginal pinhook, realizing $110,000 from Repole Stable & St. Elias, deep in the following September Sale.

Puca's Good Magic colt had made $235,000 earlier in the same auction, sold through Runnymede Farm–where he had been foaled and raised–to New Team. He, too, was just a solid pinhook through the next cycle, getting to $290,000 when sold through Sequel Bloodstock to Ogma Investments at Timonium.

As you will doubtless have recognized by now, if you didn't already know, the 1-2 in the Steve Pini Memorial have meanwhile become celebrated as the respective dams of Mage (by Good Magic out of Puca) and Forte (by Violence out of Queen Caroline). The two sons reversed their mothers' Suffolk Downs form in the GI Florida Derby, but a rather wild move on the much less experienced Mage had convinced many that he could progress past the champion juvenile in the GI Kentucky Derby.

That subplot, of course, has been deferred after the 11th hour withdrawal of Forte. But even the first Saturday in May is only one leg of an epic journey. Mike Repole can comfort himself that Uncle Mo, another champion juvenile in his silks scratched late from the Derby, has amply redressed that disappointment in his stud career. And doubtless those associated with Good Magic feel rather less aggrieved about bumping into a Triple Crown winner in his own Derby, now that he has retrieved the top of their class in the sires' table–whether by cumulative earnings, or in the second-crop championship.

Both Good Magic and Justify contested a gripping freshman title last year, every cent counting for much of the campaign, but in the end Bolt d'Oro made his numerical advantage tell, with $2,815,623 banked by 80 starters, over Good Magic ($2,533,414 from 65) and Justify ($2,478,038 from 71). (It is only fair, at this point, to stress again the excellent yield-per-starter achieved from smaller books and fees by the likes of Army Mule, Girvin and Oscar Performance.)

Of the trio, however, it was Good Magic who was first to the Grade I breakthrough with Blazing Sevens in the Champagne S.; and now he has added the Derby itself. In the process, he becomes a poster boy for the commercial inundation of new stallions–albeit their collective books are such that elite success, somewhere among each intake, should really be considered not just imperative, but inevitable. Those that don't take their big chance soon find themselves swirling round the plug-hole, and even coming up with Always Dreaming from his debut crop couldn't prevent the export of Bodemeister to Turkey. As things stand, however, Good Magic appears to be laying down some patently sustainable foundations.

Just getting into contention for the freshman title, after all, had suggested that he is replicating an unusual precocity by the standards of his sire Curlin. Having run second in a Saratoga maiden and again when fast-tracked to the Champagne, Good Magic claimed a unique distinction in breaking his maiden in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile. He duly consolidated at three, winning the GII Toyota Blue Grass S. and GI betfair.com Haskell S. besides seeing off all bar Justify at Churchill. Though he backpedalled off the stage in the GI Runhappy Travers S., he had banked just shy of $3 million across nine starts.

Coming under the inspired management of John Sikura and his team at Hill 'n' Dale, at an opening fee of $35,000, Good Magic faced the same challenge/opportunity as the likes of Vino Rosso, Connect, Global Campaign and Known Agenda: namely, to volunteer himself as the premier heir to their sire. Though Curlin has now had consecutive sons produce a Derby winner at the first attempt, that admirable creature Keen Ice has undeniably struggled for commercial recognition. So while Curlin remains lord of the manor at Hill 'n' Dale, he's approaching the evening of a great career at 19 and for now the succession appears wide open. The outlying speed of Cody's Wish will obviously make him an interesting pretender to the crown, as we saw again on the Derby undercard. But Good Magic is positioning himself pretty formidably, his fee having already turned round to $50,000 (from $30,000) after the endeavors of his debut crop.

Besides two elite scorers, that crop has included a second Derby runner in GIII Sham S. scorer Reincarnate; plus winners of the GII Sorrento S, GII Remsen S. and GIII Iroquois S. And while Bolt d'Oro was the only one of three freshman title protagonists actually to elevate the yearling average of his second crop, Good Magic again excelled relative to conception fee. The 94 processed from his first crop (110 offered) had averaged $151,708; while last year 74 yearlings sold (87 offered) at $130,250. If his third book suffered the customary slide, it remained more than respectable at 92 mares and he will now surely be back on the way up.

When retired to stud, Good Magic's racetrack credentials were backed up by a physique that had as a yearling secured a seven-figure Keeneland September docket from E5 Racing. His breeders at Stonestreet then struck a deal to stay aboard. His granddam, after all, had been one of the first building blocks in their program: Magical Flash, a daughter of distaff legend Miswaki purchased for $140,000 at the Keeneland November Sale of 2004. She was rising 15 at the time, but channelled speed, class and also precocity. Her half-sister Magical Maiden (Lord Avie) had won a Grade I at two, as did Magical Maiden's daughter Miss Houdini (Belong To Me). Since then, moreover, Miss Houdini had added fresh luster to the family by producing champion female sprinter Ce Ce (Elusive Quality).

Magical Flash (who ended up producing no fewer than 14 winners, including a graded stakes winner on turf by Chester House) similarly brought to the surface some of the genes that appear to have contributed to the sharpening of Good Magic. For instance, a daughter by Smarty Jones was group-placed in France over just five furlongs; while another, by the sturdy influence Prized, managed to produce an Exchange Rate colt fast enough at two to win the GIII Bashford Manor over six furlongs.

Magical Flash's daughter by Hard Spun, Glinda The Good, won two stakes and was also placed at two in the GIII Pocahontas S. And it was her mating with Stonestreet's dual Horse of the Year that produced Good Magic.

In fairness, Hard Spun has proved a vital late conduit (and remains an outstandingly well-priced one) to the breed-shaping Danzig. So who knows, maybe Good Magic's damsire–himself a Derby runner-up–contributed much to the thwarting of his own son, Two Phil's, last Saturday!

Danzig's presence behind Good Magic's damsire is one of the obvious pegs to the mating that produced Mage, in that he recurs on the bottom half of the pedigree through his grandson Big Brown, the sire of Puca. Danzig's replication in the fourth generation is matched by another ubiquitous modern influence, Mr. Prospector. His grandson Curlin sired Good Magic, while one of his rather less potent sons, Silver Ghost, is responsible for Puca's dam Boat's Ghost. (Mr. P. is further represented by his son Miswaki, don't forget, as sire of Magical Flash.)

The overall seeding of the maternal family is less familiar, admittedly, Big Brown and Silver Ghost being followed by Summer Squall and a forgotten son of Raise A Native, Native Royalty. It's an old American line that eventually takes in some Greentree royalty, notably a 10th dam who was half-sister to 1931 Derby and Belmont winner Twenty Grand.

By now all that stuff is obviously quite attenuated, and Puca's dam–stakes-placed in a light career and dam, as noted, of a Grade I winner on turf–was actually sold (in foal to Raging Bull {Fr}) at Keeneland only this January at the age of 19. I'm pleased, but unsurprised, to see that this indignity was relieved, at just $17,000, by that exemplary farm Nursery Place. If they can just get a filly out of the venerable lady, they'll have a half-sister to the dam of a Derby winner.

As for the people who have Puca herself, well, we visited Robert Clay to hear about Grandview Equine's program just before the Derby. The founder of Three Chimneys candidly acknowledges Mage as rather a windfall. Along with various partners, and with the counsel of Solis/Litt, he bought Puca to support a portfolio that included some Good Magic shares. The principal objective, however, had been to develop yearling colts with stallion potential. They achieved just that with Olympiad, but must now feel very relieved that Puca's date with that horse did not come off, meaning that she instead returned to Good Magic. Moreover the failure to meet her reserve of Mage's half-sister, Gunning, has now turned into another wonderful stroke of luck.

As and when Mage proceeds to stud, incidentally, I think he might repay European attention. We noted how Good Magic's granddam produced some pretty smart turf performers, while his grandsire Smart Strike and damsire Hard Spun have both proved flexible influences. More proximately, however, don't forget Puca's switch to become a stakes scorer on grass; nor that her sire Big Brown started his own career on that surface.

In the meantime, let's hope that Mage's delayed rematch with Forte will eventually put some sunshine back into the headlines. True, it's poignant that the “prequel” takes us to another depressing tale, in the closure of Suffolk Downs. But there are doubtless plenty who, in missing their sport in Massachusetts, in particular miss Stephen J. Pini after his premature loss in 2015. Pini, his father and grandfather had between them worked at Suffolk Downs every day since it opened in 1935. It's nice, then, that a race contested in his memory should now have been rendered so significant by the protagonists' sons.

But then this is a game full of concentric fortunes. Here was Rick Dutrow, for instance, saddling his first starter (and winner) in 10 years on the very day that his own Derby winner, Big Brown, became damsire of another one. (And if we think this was a tough Derby day, just scroll back to that one…)

Puca was co-bred by Paul Pompa, Jr. in support of Big Brown, the horse he had bought and then raced in partnership, as he tried to make his way at stud. Then she, in turn, was deployed by Clay and his partners on their stake in another young stallion. And now the daughter of a Derby winner who confounded nearly all precedent, having made just three starts beforehand, has produced another to do exactly the same.

There's no formula, no wand to be waved. But sometimes things just seem to work as if by “Magic.”

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Paul Umbrello, the Executive Director for the New England Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association and a member of the board of directors for the Massachusetts Thoroughbred Breeders Association says that their goal is to ensure that they not only let the cat out of the bag, but also do their best to keep an industry alive that was once the richest racing region in the country.

Dorchester, Massachusetts native Chris McCarron once said that when he was young, there were 17 different racetracks in the New England region, from Suffolk to Rockingham to the Three-County Fairs. My parents hit them all, and would tell us tales about seeing Decathlon run at Narragansett, or how they kept a $5 show parlay going for six months at Lincoln Downs. But now, since the sale and final closure of Suffolk Downs in 2019, that rich vein of racing has all but dried up.

If the MTBA has anything to say about it, that will change.

Thanks to a revenue stream from gaming in the state, the MTBA continues to be funded, and the organization has done a good job convincing legislators that this once-viable industry deserves another chance to be so again.

Attempts to build a new track in Massachusetts have so far faced an uphill fight-requiring a two-thirds-majority approval in towns where they would be built-and none of these objectives have succeeded so far. But people like Umbrello are determined to make it happen, and it's important to note that anyone who does build a track will also be given a sports-betting license, thanks to legislative efforts from the horsemen.

“We are still actively looking and hoping to find land to bring Thoroughbred racing back,” said Umbrello. “Obviously, that will help our Massachusetts breeding farms, and our Massachusetts breeding program. But of all of the states, it's probably the most challenging,” he said, adding that the price of land in the state, the scarcity of large parcels of land near metropolitan centers, and the two-thirds vote had hampered efforts thus far. This January, the most recent proposal failed in the town of Hardwick, just west of Worcester.

So if there are no tracks, and no races restricted to Mass-breds, exactly what is it that the breeding fund is funding?

The program, which Umbrello calls the best in the country, offers bonuses to Massachusetts-breds who finish first, second or third at any racetrack in North America.

Here's how it works:

*A supplemental incentive of $10,000 is be added to the purse of any unrestricted race in which a Mass-bred horse is entered at a licensed pari-mutuel race meeting authorized by the state racing commission.

*This supplemental incentive will be distributed as follows: 60%, 20%, 10%, 5%, 3% and 2% to the first six finishers.

*Additionally, breeders (25%), owners (10%), stallion owners (15%), and `developers' (the horse's first owner of record, 20%) earn awards based on the race's purse, on top of any money they might win in the race. That developer award protects people who go through the trouble of breeding a Mass-bred only to see it claimed away because of the incentives.

Becoming a Mass-bred is fairly easy.

Bring your in-foal more to the state by Oct. 15, and the foal born the subsequent year will be a registered Mass-bred. Or, bring a mare in at the beginning of the year, have her drop the foal in Massachusetts, and breed back to a Massachusetts stallion. To become a Massachusetts stallion, bring him to the state by Feb. 1 of the breeding year to cover mares.

The MTBA is also advancing an accredited program they call a “dual-citizenship concept,” which means that if your horse spends at least three months on a Massachusetts farm, he can pair with the state in which he was registered to gain an additional 30% of purses.

To show how this money can add up, they point to the Mass-bred poster child Dr. Blarney (Dublin), a 10-year-old gelding with 26 victories, lifetime earnings of $765,218, plus an additional $175,978 in Mass-bred incentives and awards.

But at the end of the day, it's not so much about the individual awards, but about an attempt to save a rich heritage that, once lost for good, will never be able to be resurrected.

“Racing gives people the incentive to reinvest,” he said. “These incentives give people a reason to come in and breed. We're trying to get outsiders to come in and do that. It's the preservation of open space.”

It's also the preservation of a way of life. Horses arrived in Massachusetts between 1629 and 1635, and informal racing was so popular that they had to ban racing in the main streets of Plymouth in 1674 for the safety of the citizens. The first descendant of the Godolphin Arabian arrived in the state in 1756.

It was in this culture that Umbrello was raised. “We'd go to the fairs as a kid,” he said. “My cousins went on the rides. Guess what I did? At nine years old, I would go play the horses.”

Active investors are today still seeking to buy land in the state to build a track. The MTBA's breeding fund wants to keep the industry alive until then. “Farms are too valuable in Massachusetts,” said Umbrello, “but an accredited program should save these farms.”

With the money in the funds, and over $20 million already set aside for future purses, Umbrello asks a rhetorical question.

“Why not invest in Massachusetts? Why wouldn't you?”

*TDN Publisher Sue Finley is a registered Mass-bred.

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“The best thing we can all hope for in this sport is to leave the game a little bit better than it was when we found it,” she said. “I hope to set a good example and make the road easier for the generation coming behind us. If I can inspire one little girl who thinks this is possible for her and then comes and does it better than me then I'd be thrilled.”

Examples of females calling races are few and far between. Angela Hermann briefly held the job at Golden Gate Fields in 2016 after Michael Wrona left but was eventually replaced by Matt Dinerman. In the early sixties, Ann Elliott served as the announcer at Jefferson Downs in New Orleans for about four years. Nearly sixty years after Elliott's time at Jefferson, no other female had been hired as the full-time announcer at a U.S. track.

Paquette got into this by accident. In 2014, she was working in the marketing and publicity departments at Suffolk Down when regular announcer and TDN contributor T.D. Thornton couldn't get to the track because he was delayed by, of all things, a tornado. She was called upon to fill in. Thornton eventually made it to the track and Paquette went back to her other duties, which included serving as the track's simulcast host and paddock analyst.

She remained at Suffolk until 2019 when the track closed its doors for good. She felt lost.

“When Suffolk closed it was a huge existential crisis for me,” Paquette said. “Working in racing isn't just something I do, it is who I am. I didn't know what the future was going to look like.”

Paquette didn't mind traveling and would catch on as the simulcast analyst at Colonial Downs and Sam Houston.  At Sam Houston last summer, management allowed her to call some of the Quarter-Horse races. She estimates that she has called 50 races total.

“When I called the Quarter Horses at Sam Houston this past summer I had such a good time,” she said. “By the third day I started to feel less like I was filling in and more like it was something I really wanted to do. I was open to trying to find an announcing position somewhere. When it turned out that Chris was moving on my name came up and I said 'Why not? Let's talk.'”

She had the backing of Griffin, who has also been hired as the announcer at Monmouth Park.

“She knows what this means and it means a lot to many people,” Griffin said. “I'm looking forward to her getting into the booth and excited for her to make her debut Tuesday. We have a tremendous team at Parx and she will fit right in. It's great to see. It's time for some new voices in this sport. She is a professional through and through and can handle this. I'm very excited that she is getting this chance and like everyone else I am looking forward to it.”

Paquette said Griffin is among a group of male announcers who have taken her under their wing and encouraged her to seek an announcing job.

“Some of my closest friends in the industry are announcers,” she said. “Jason Beem is one of my best friends. Chris Griffin and I have become very close. They both were really encouraging. Of course, coming up through Suffolk Downs we have Larry Collmus and T.D. Thornton and they set the bar high. Frank Mirahmadi has been extremely encouraging and offered such helpful criticism since I got my feet wet with the Quarter Horses.”

Having had relatively little experience as an announcer, Paquette said she has been preparing by practicing calling races over television.

“It's not the same when it's not real because you don't get that stomach-throbbing sense of brief terror as the gates are about to open,” she said. “That's something you can't recreate.”

Will that “sense of brief terror” go away on Tuesday?

“I hope it doesn't because it's all about the excitement and the adrenaline involved with being part of the sport we love,” she said. “My standard anxiety level is probably a 7 ½ on a scale of 1 to 10. So I'm going to be excited and nervous. But that's a good thing.”

She looks back to that final day at Suffolk Downs and says she watched the last race ever run at the East Boston track from the roof and was crying. Never did she imagine what was to come.

“I've been very fortunate that horses and horse racing have brought me to places I never thought possible in life,” Paquette said. “For me this at this point in my career, I've had lot of fun in the paddock, talking about handicapping and racing. But this, the announcing job, is an opportunity do something where I get to be the only one. It's a real honor.”

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In fact, after more than a half-century of raising and racing Massachusetts-breds, the Kirby clan managed to outlast all Thoroughbred racing in their home region. That meant that even before Suffolk Downs ceased racing for good in 2019, the youngest trainer in the family had already been forced to hit the road and relocate to Parx in Pennsylvania to ply his trade.

The Claiming Crown likes to bill itself as the “blue-collar Breeders' Cup,” and that's a pretty fair analogy. But how many trainers at the national level are willing to make a 675-mile van ride in the trailer with their lone entrant for that event, like Kirby did with Hero Tiger (Hero of Order), the 4-1 winner of the $100,000 Ready's Rocket Express?

“I rode in the back. Just wanted to make sure he shipped good and everything,” Kirby told Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association (PTHA) video correspondent Dani Gibson post-win.

“Bobby Mosco's horse was on there, too,” Kirby added, referring to Out of Sorts (Dramedy), the 10-length victress of the $150,000 Tiara who completed a Parx-based double in a Claiming Crown otherwise swept by home-track Kentuckians.

“Everything went so smooth and the stars aligned. We just got so lucky,” Kirby said.

Perseverance and a horse-first work ethic honed by three generations didn't hurt either.

John T.'s grandfather, John F. Kirby, had always worked around horses growing up, and he began training Thoroughbreds in 1953, when racing in New England consisted of a robust circuit in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Maine, plus a summer and fall slate of regional county fairs.

Kirby started breeding Thoroughbreds at his Smokey Valley Farm in Dover in 1967, about a half-hour southwest of Suffolk Downs, and he had already built up a small band of broodmares by the time Massachusetts started earmarking money for state-bred purse incentives in 1972.

After training for outside clients for two-plus decades, the elder Kirby cut back to focus on his homegrown racing stock in 1975. When the Massachusetts-bred program expanded to include state-bred stakes in 1981, at least one Kirby-raised horse would win at least one of those stakes each year for a streak that lasted three decades.

The horses that carried the family's green-and-white shamrock silks were known for durability and soundness. One foal from Kirby's 1968 crop named Brik (“Kirb” backwards) won 23 races from 184 starts.

The family was hardy, too, and although not standings-toppers at Suffolk, they were widely respected for their horsemanship. In 1985, John F. Kirby said in a Boston Globe profile that between the farm and the track, the work schedule was “seven days a week, from dawn until exhaustion.”

Timothy Kirby, John T.'s father, began training in 1991 and still has a small stable at Parx. Patriarch John F. Kirby stopped training in 1999 and died in 2011. The once 40-acre family farm got downsized in pieces as the horses left the property and the bloodstock business in New England dried up and vanished.

The youngest Kirby recalled in a 2019 interview with the PTHA's Dick Jerardi how as a high schooler, he was often reprimanded for reading a Racing Form hidden inside his binder.

“If we had a horse racing, odds were that I would be at the track and not in the classroom,” John T. Kirby said.

But Kirby got schooled in other, more meaningful ways. Just as important as race results, he learned from his father and grandfather, was what happened after the finish.

“We always had Mass.-breds,” Kirby said in that PTHA write-up. “They treated us well. We mostly kept them when they were done and let them live out to their old age on the farm.”

On a raw, unseasonably snowy Saturday at Churchill that surely must have given Kirby flashbacks of the bygone, brutal days of winter racing at Suffolk, there was a moment at the head of the homestretch when it looked like Hero Tiger, despite being full of run, was going to get squeezed out of contention because a narrow gap that jockey Luis Saez had been aiming for turned into a wall of horseflesh before the 6-year-old gelding could punch through.

“Honestly, when that hole shut on him, I thought he lost his momentum. But Luis really rode him hard and got his momentum going again, and this horse just has the biggest heart–the biggest heart,” Kirby said, his voice momentarily cracking with emotion after the highest-profile win of his career.

With limited stock, Kirby has won 14 races from 98 starts this year, hitting the board at a 45% clip while competing primarily at Parx, Delaware and Penn National. But he's no stranger to New York, where he's won one race each at Saratoga and Belmont in 2021 and '22, the most recent victory being a 21-1 upset in June with a $45,000 claiming turfer who blitzed six furlongs in a swift 1:07.34.

Back on Sept. 4, Kirby dropped a $40,000 claim slip for Hero Tiger at the Spa on behalf of owner Gregg O'Donnell, and Saturday's claiming Crown win returned $56,000 on that investment.

Instead of taking credit, Kirby complimented his jockey in a post-race interview while brimming with enthusiasm about bigger and better things to come.

“The first horse we ever put [Saez] on, he won at Saratoga. And then earlier this year they [nearly] broke the track record at Belmont,” Kirby said. “So we're 3-for-5 with Luis, and this is just the beginning. We'll get him a lot more mounts.”

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“On behalf of the SSR ownership, we are pleased to have Mike take on this new role as we work toward implementing sports betting along with our simulcast wagering business,” said Richard Fields, one of Sterling Suffolk's principal owners.

“I'm excited about this opportunity to help lead Sterling Suffolk Racecourse into its next phase as a premier sports wagering company in Massachusetts,” said Buckley.

Buckley replaces Chip Tuttle, Sterling Suffolk's COO since 2007 who had been with the company since 1992.

“We're sorry to lose Chip after his many years of great service to the company,” said Joe O'Donnell, another of Sterling Suffolk's principal owners. “We're grateful for everything Chip has done to move Sterling Suffolk forward and help set the stage for our successes ahead.”

Tuttle said, “I've been affiliated with Sterling Suffolk Racecourse and Suffolk Downs for more than 30 years. It has been a big part of my professional life and I'm very appreciative of the opportunity the ownership gave me and for my time with the company. SSR is well positioned for future success and I look forward to helping Mike in his new role. It is the right time for me to focus more of my attention and resources on my other business interests.”

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“I am grateful for the women in the racing industry who have paved the way for my generation to work in so many different areas,” said Paquette. “My hope is that I can similarly help inspire young women who may want to be part of our sport.”

Paquette has previously called races at both Suffolk Downs and Sam Houston Race Park. Additionally, she has been a racing analyst at Colonial Downs Racetrack and Sam Houston and most recently worked as the Director of Communications for the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.

“We are thrilled to welcome Jessica to the Parx family,” said Joe Wilson, Chief Operating Officer for Parx Racing. “The high regard with which she is held in our industry along with a tremendous work ethic makes her the perfect person to usher in this new era for Parx.”

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Hardwick is located in the central part of the state, about 75 miles west of Boston. The track will be located at the site of the Great Meadowbrook Farm, a 360-acre spread which began as a dairy farm and has been used as an equestrian training center.

“We have to apply for a license by Sept. 30,” said Lou Raffetto, the former vice president of racing at Suffolk Downs and an advisor to the Commonwealth Group. “Quite honestly, as crazy as it sounds, I am hopeful we can race next year. The plan for next year would be to run two festival-style weekends in the fall, if we can pull everything together. This is very real.”

Suffolk Downs' days were numbered when track owners lost out on their bid to get a casino license. Because it needed to hold some form of live racing in order to maintain a simulcasting license, the track held short meets every year from 2015 to 2019. But with plans to develop the property ready to come to fruition, racing was halted after the 2019 mini-meet.

There have since been a number of efforts to find a new location to open a new racetrack in the state, but all were met with what were insurmountable road blocks. A proposed racetrack to be built in the town of Sturbridge was shot down by that town's voters. Plans to rebuild and re-open the Great Barrington Fair also couldn't get off the ground.

According to Raffetto, the Hardwick proposal will not have to go before the town's voters and that all that will be needed is a permit that can be issued by the town.

“We're very confident that is going to happen,” he said. “The principals and the architects had an excellent meeting with the planning board and the selectmen on Tuesday. What was really wonderful about it was that everybody was really supportive. In other towns in the past you'd go in there on the defensive. These people were asking the right questions and are very supportive of the program.”

The efforts to revitalize racing in Massachusetts got a much-needed shot in the arm when sports betting was legalized in the state earlier this year. Under the law, anyone holding a racing permit will be allowed to have a sports betting license. Commonwealth Equine, whose principals are former Suffolk owner Richard Fields and the husband-wife team of Armand and Robin Kalaidjian, do not plan to have on-site sports betting at the proposed track but can offer it online. The belief is that enough money can be made from sports betting to support a a new racetrack.

Another factor working in Commonwealth's favor is that there is an abundance of purse money sitting in abeyance waiting to be doled out. Even though it has been dormant for more than three years, the Thoroughbred industry in the state is still entitled to a share of the slot machine revenue generated at the Plainridge harness track. That pool has grown to about $22 million.

Raffetto estimated the purses will be about $750,000 a day and that maiden special weight races will for $75,000. With Kentucky Downs serving as a model, there will be turf racing only and it will be conducted over a track that will be one-mile in circumference with movable rails.

The tentative plan would be for the track to run four days in 2023, twice over the weekend of Sept. 9 and 10 and twice more over the weekend of Sept. 30-Oct. 1. The long-term goal will be to extend the meet, possibly to eight days a year, with a focus on fall dates. Raffetto said the plan is to build a small grandstand that can accommodate about 2,000 people and that an area on the apron will be cleared for additional fans.

“Our goal is to get 4,000, 5,000 people to come out and experience this,” Raffetto said. “I think that's realistic. We'll try to have some fun and give horsemen the opportunity to make some money. I think the horsemen will be very supportive of this.”

Plans for the facility extend beyond a race meet.

“When it comes to the horse, there will be a little bit of everything, racing, breeding and retirement” Raffetto said. “There will be areas dedicated to horse retirement. We're going to look into bringing in some mares and buying or leasing a stallion.”

With Suffolk's demise, the breeding industry in the state has all but disappeared. According to The Jockey Club, only two mares were bred in Massachusetts in 2021.

Other plans include opening a high-end restaurant at the facility and well as a bed-and-breakfast.

Raffetto said a name for the new track has not yet been chosen.

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“When it comes to the project, sports betting has been the catalyst all along because there has to be some sort or of revenue source,” said Lou Raffetto, the former vice president of racing at Suffolk Downs who is advising the group, which calls itself Commonwealth Racing. “We all understand it's not going to come from just racing itself. They are very serious about this and the intent will be that by October we need to apply for a racing license.”

Suffolk Downs' days were numbered in 2014 when the track lost out on a bid to get a casino license. It remained open over the next five years, running short meets that were a requirement to retain its simulcast license. In 2017, the property was sold to HYM Investment Group, which is in the process of converting the land into a mixed-use neighborhood that will include 10,000 housing units.

Without any realistic hope that a Massachusetts Thoroughbred track could cash in on a casino, the sport appeared to be dead in the state, where racing dates back to 1935 when Suffolk first ran. But the principals behind Commonwealth Racing, Armand Janjigian, his wife Robin, and former Suffolk Downs owner Richard Fields, believed they could make this work. While having a sports betting license may not be as a lucrative as operating a casino, it could prove to be enough to make operating a track in the state feasible.

Raffetto said the investors are well beyond the kicking-the-tires stage.

“I've been working for them for well over a year and this is nothing new,” he said. “If you had any idea how much money they have already spent on architects and engineers you'd shake your head and you'd see that they are very serious. They wouldn't be going down this road if they didn't think it was a good business decision. They understand there will be a lot of competition in the sports betting market but they've already spent a lot of money. That's how I know this isn't pie in the sky. They are a lot of smarter than I am and they know what they are doling when it comes to a running a business.”

Their task has been made easier by the fact that the state is holding on to about $22 million that is earmarked for Thoroughbred purses, meaning track owners, at least initially, may not have to contribute much to the purse account. Even though there has not been Thoroughbred racing in the state for more than three years, the industry still receives a cut from slot revenues from Plainridge Park, a Standardbred track. The money keeps piling up.

“The money is there to at least get things going,” Raffetto said. “I am imagining a meet where purses will be similar to what we had at Suffolk toward the end for the festivals. I think we could easily be giving out a half-million dollars each racing day.”

Massachusetts has not had Thoroughbred racing for more than three years | Horsephotos

Raffetto said the group has yet to decide where to build a track, but said two locations are under consideration, both in the western part of the state. Finding a municipality that will allow a racetrack to be built within its borders has been an issue. Commonwealth Racing thought it had found its home when putting forth a proposal to build a track in Sturbridge. Zoning changes were needed to approve an agriculture and zoning overlay district to move the project forward, but, last October, Sturbridge voters rejected a proposal that called for the building of a track and a community center.

“A month from now we will be ready to release the site,” Raffetto said. “We have found two places. Now it's matter of seeing what makes most sense. There are pros and cons to each one.”

The plan is to build a small facility that can comfortably hold 3,000 to 4,000 fans. Raffetto said building the track may cost about $60 million.

“A lot depends on the nature of the facility,” he said. “How big and ornate do you want the facility to be? Are you building permanent barns, are you bringing in barns that would be temporary structures set up just for the meet? If you are going to build a track from scratch, the building, the barns and everything else that goes with it, it probably would end up costing you $60 million for a simple structure. Does it mean that's what we will spend? It could be. Some of the estimates we've gotten have been greater than that. It really depends on the location. It could be $50 million, it could be $90 million. We want a first-class facility, don't get me wrong. But we want something that makes sense in this day and age.”

There is a glut of racing already operating in the Northeast and the horse population shrinks every year, which could make it hard for a new Massachusetts track to find enough horses to put on a show. With that in mind, Raffetto said the plan is to run a short meet, most likely in the fall. In addition, there will be just one racing surface–a grass course.

“Racing the way we knew it, with a track running for 100 or more days, well, the horse flesh is just not there to do that,” he said. “You have to keep it special. Those festival meets we did at Suffolk worked. We're trying to make this more of a festival-type thing rather than an everyday humdrum-type operation. We will have one course–a wide turf course where we can have two or three positions for the rail. Trainers want to run on the grass.”

As far as when the proposed track, which does not yet have a name, might open, Raffetto said it will happen “sooner than a lot of people might expect.” One possibility, he said, is that racing could get underway before the stands are built.

“It wouldn't be something like three years out,” he said. “Who knows? It could wind up being next year.”

Racing isn't expanding. It is contracting. Just last year alone the sport lost Arlington Park and Calder and several tracks are being kept alive only so that their owners can keep their casinos. Can a new track, far removed from a major city, one where the owners have no expectations of profiting from a casino, make it? It won't be easy, but in Massachusetts they appear ready to give it a try.

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