Thoroughbred Makeover | Horse Racing Free Tips

RRP’s Makeover Marketplace Expands to Include Prospects

The Retired Racehorse Project (RRP) has expanded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) Makeover Marketplace catalogue to include adoptable Thoroughbred Makeover prospects eligible for the 2022 competition. The catalogue also will continue to feature sport horse prospects who are offered for sale by their trainers at the conclusion of the Makeover process.

The expanded catalog is expected to include hundreds of transitioned and restarted Thoroughbreds, most of which will compete at the 2020-21 Thoroughbred Makeover this October at the Kentucky Horse Park. Up to 100 off-track prospects from non-profit organizations will be listed as well, all of which will be 2022 Makeover-eligible.

“The ASPCA Makeover Marketplace is a premier horse shopping and adoption opportunity for equestrians looking for well-started sport horse prospects,” said executive director Jen Roytz. “The Makeover provides the ultimate venue to browse multiple prospects listed in the catalog, watch them perform in competition, ride prospects, and have horses vetted on-site.”

Makeover graduates have traditionally undergone extensive preparation for the event, with former graduates having gone on to successful careers in eventing, hunter/jumper, field hunter, western performance, pleasure, and trail riding.

The catalogue will be printed as an insert in the fall issue of the RRP's Off-Track Thoroughbred Magazine, with a digital catalogue available at TBMakeover.org after August 15. Listing organizations must pre-register by July 10; horse registration will open July 15.

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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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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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Thoroughbred Makeover Diaries Presented By Excel Equine: The Next Generation Sees Aftercare As The Future, Not A Charity

Heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, who was born and raised in Louisville, changed boxing, as well as society at large. Quarterback Johnny Unitas, who played college football at the University of Louisville, was the architect of the two-minute drill. German immigrant J. Frederick Hillerich pioneered the modern baseball bat and founded Louisville Slugger. In horse racing, there's the Kentucky Derby and Churchill Downs.

Two miles from Churchill Downs is the University of Louisville College of Business, and that's where horse racing can find some of the answers the sport desperately needs to keep it relevant and thriving in the 21st Century.

I was the guest speaker at the EQIN 304: Equine Marketing class that is part of the College of Business's Equine Industry Program on March 17. Although I was there to answer questions about the horse racing and aftercare industries, as well as about my broadcasting and riding, it was the students asking me the questions that I believe have the answers.

Before I even spoke to the class, I had a good feeling that I would learn as much from them as they would learn from me. University of Louisville offers the only undergraduate equine program in the world that is part of an Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accredited business school.

Sarah Memmi, who teaches the equine marketing class and contacted me about being a guest speaker, has a sure-thing exacta box of qualifications as an assistant professor of marketing combined with a background working with horses.

During the week before I joined the class, Memmi sent me a list of questions that the students created as the basis for our discussion. The very first on the list: “How do you see the industry moving forward from outside pressures other than 'We love our horses'? How important would a national campaign be?” I could tell we were going to get right to it.

I enjoyed our discussion, but what I found even more valuable was learning about the semester projects the students were in the process of creating. Although she said she could have chosen other topics, Memmi chose aftercare as the focus of EQIN 304.

“Number one, aftercare is an important ethical issue in racing, and anyone that is going into this industry as a career needs, not only to be aware of it, but to understand it,” Memmi said. “It's also important to marketing the sport of racing.”

In the same way that the development of racehorses doesn't start when they arrive at a racetrack because breeding and raising yearlings is an integral part the sport, horse racing is starting to embrace that it also doesn't end when they leave the track.

“Aftercare is not charity; it is part of the life cycle process of a Thoroughbred,” said Jen Roytz, the executive director of the Retired Racehorse Project, who also spoke to EQIN 304. “They can't race forever, so they need to have a purpose after racing, and they need to have a value associated with that purpose, whether it's breeding, sporthorse, or recreational.”

That first question that I was presented with about moving the industry forward is something the students began to answer through their Marketing Plan Project Assignment.

Madison Jackson and Reagan Mestre thought of a “Trainer Aftercare Awareness Certification” that incorporates aftercare awareness into the licensing process for trainers at the state level.

“Many times, racehorse trainers are not aware of the ways to properly rehome a Thoroughbred after its career, nor are they aware of the vital role they play in this process,” they wrote.

Sean Collins and Davis Klein proposed “CK Aftercare” in order “to promote aftercare awareness and education in low-tier and low-income tracks within the United States.”

Alyssa Carinder, a 2021 graduate of the University of Louisville, is launching her career as Farm/Development Manager at the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation's sanctuary farm at Chestnut Hall in Prospect, Kentucky. At UofL, Carinder double-majored in Equine Business and Marketing and competed on the hunt seat team.
Photo courtesy of Sarah Memmi/UofL Equine Industry Program

“This issue has come to light in recent times where trainers and owners have had a 'one more race' mentality instead of retiring their horse,” they wrote, adding, “We will create an on-track presence and form personal connections with both the horseman on the track and the different local organizations that may take the horses when their racing careers are over. These personal connections will help educate horsemen on the different options and create trust with our organization.”

But because aftercare must address the range of horses coming off the track, Adrianna Lynch and Emily Charnota proposed that prominent auction houses such as Keeneland and Fasig-Tipton could create a “select sale” that would promote higher-end Thoroughbred sporthorses.

“Aftercare is really complicated and fairly new, so that means you have a lot of room to innovate,” Memmi said. “I was really impressed with the work that they did. They came up with some really interesting ideas, and looking back on it, what I'm happy with is that the future leaders in the industry are getting this ethical piece of the sport. They're into it because they care about horses. They want to do right by the horses.”

The month of May has brought many issues in horse racing into the mainstream. Trainer Bob Baffert gave enough material to the writers of Saturday Night Live to make a mockery of himself and the sport. Then, one day later, Michael Blowen of Old Friends gave enough material to the writers of CBS Sunday Morning to show how moving aftercare can be.

With Churchill Downs suspending Baffert, the city of Louisville may not be as welcoming a place to him as it once was. But, with the growth of the University of Louisville's Equine Industry Program, including the addition in the fall of a graduate program connected to an MBA, the city is welcoming some bright minds and future leaders that can revolutionize horse racing if they're given the chance.

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