Thoroughbred Logic, Presented by Kentucky Performance Products: The Muddled-Middle of the Backside

“[T] reality of the range of track experiences converges somewhere … in that messy, muddled middle, where longer narratives seem to do a better job painting a more accurate picture than pithy quips or stereotypes.”

Welcome to the next installment of Thoroughbred Logic. In this weekly series, Anthropologist and trainer Aubrey Graham, of Kivu Sport Horses, offers insight and training experience when it comes to working with Thoroughbreds (although much will apply to all breeds). This week ride along as Aubrey shares her logic on the reality of the backside of the track.

Yesterday, I headed out before dawn and drove down to Laurel Park Race Track in Maryland. The trip itself is an annoying adventure that includes my brakes smoking on the first attempt to get there and a frustrating retreat, rebuild, and try again. Fine. That’s trucks (and my luck). But that’s not the story today.

In recent months I have been eyebrow deep in the production of a book about retraining Thoroughbreds (stay tuned — we’re hoping it comes out in late fall/early winter this year). In the first few chapters, I try to connect the experiences of their upbringing and the track to the knowledge set and physical conditions they carry with them when entering their second careers. And every time I step on a track’s backside, I’m learning, nuancing, and adding to it. This is basic Anthropology. I work on one side of the industry (rehoming) and can’t help but ethnographically approach all the new-to-me data that comes from the parts I know less well — the breeding farms, tracks, aftercare and so on.

In a recent edit, I realized that in trying to paint a picture of American Thoroughbred racing, I’m also fighting the well worn stereotype that tracks are terrible and that Thoroughbreds all are rescues. Look, when someone says, “I rescued my horse from the track,” it not only comes off like nails down the chalkboard, but also speaks to the ignorance (willful or otherwise) about racing and the often significant efforts of these trainers to keep horses happy, sound, and comfortable in a job they were purpose-bred to do.

So many trainers take exceptional care of their horses at the track. Dana Saul who runs her horses at Finger Lakes and Saratoga makes an excellent example. Photo by author.

But in writing and editing what I have of that chapter about the backside, I may have accidentally over-focused on the positive, dialed-in programs (yes, there are tons of those) and glanced past some of the remaining rougher parts and struggling operations where the horses maybe aren’t quite thriving. Most race stables take care of their horses, but that care ranges drastically. On the opposite side of the spectrum from those shiny, fit, healthy runners, there are stables of dull-coated Thoroughbreds whose feet are a disaster and whose hips make Kate Moss-era models jealous. Are they “rescues” if we sporthorse people buy them like that? I honestly don’t know.

Maybe.

Catan (Kingdom Force) came in quite thin and a bit ragged, but quickly packed on the pounds. This photo was about two weeks and about a hundred pounds post arrival. Was he a rescue when Larissa Lafebure bought him from the track? Boney frame and all, I don’t think it is that uncomplicated of a tale. Photo by Lily Drew.

So depending on which operation you look at down the shedrow, it’s not always pretty. And it is equally not always (I’d wager, rarely) ill-intentioned. Hell, sometimes it is their caretaker’s love for those horses and inability to part with them that lands them in the rough spot in the first place. And that complexity is important, regardless of how hard it has been to include in a book that has a fixed word count and must necessarily hustle through the informative pages on the track to get to the retraining section. But as an anthropologist, somewhere entangled in the middle of any hard-to-reconcile dichotomy is where I have always felt we get closest to reality. Here, that means a more complete picture sits somewhere messily strewn between the ideas of the good and the bad, the wealth and the struggle, the quality care versus seeming neglect, the money and the heart.

The trip to Laurel knocked me upside the head with this yesterday. I suppose this article is my way of processing it and justifying the poor business decisions that resulted.

I pulled through the stable gate and onto Laurel’s backside after morning training had finished. From the gate, I wound my way back past over 30 barns of all shapes and sizes. The roads were rough and the speed bumps some form of concocted asphalt evil, but the requisite crawl gave me a chance to look around. Racing banners hung proudly next to broken exterior paneling on the barns. Efforts at keeping nice horses in tidy spaces clashed with the industrial blue of the backside and the wear and tear of years of young horse antics and the weather.

I don’t judge books by their covers. If I did, I’d be in trouble. I run an often-chaotic operation in too small of a space with not enough help to keep things particularly tidy. But I do judge — and expect to be judged by — the horses. If they are fat, happy, shiny, and quiet, I don’t care if there is hay strewn in the aisle or if that pile of blankets has been sorted, folded and properly put away. I let the horses speak for the horsemanship.

Between the dogs, the horses, and the very compact barn, it is always a circus over here. Photo by author.

In barn 33, two of my recently made friends run their operation. I rocked up to their stable around lunchtime and Marco was filling tubes of sucralfate for each horse in their string to take before they ate. The grain that was neatly stacked in a critter-proof corner was the top notch Hallway Feeds type and each horse was heaped likely 8 pounds more-or-less, with dinner filled into lidded buckets to be dumped in the evening. The horses were clean and social, fit and healthy. The stalls were being second-time picked through, stable sheets tossed on due to the incoming cold and damp.

Feeding time. Photo by author.

Generally speaking, the operation was photogenic. And it is the type of race stable I like to talk about when met with that “the track is awful” conversation. Gina and Marco’s horses receive the care that keeps them happy, fit, and sound, and they retire while still sound and able to take on a second career. In short, their operation is responsible, and the whole thing looks the part. Is it exuberant and fancy? Of course not. But it is practical and absolutely succeeding in doing right by the horses.

Gina and Marco’s racing operation at Laurel. Photo by author.

They don’t have any runners retiring just yet this season, but it was good to take a look at their string. And now I’m excited for both the colts by Copper Bullet (More than Ready) and Salomini (Curlin) to have great careers and then head my way when they’re done running. But I hadn’t trekked the hours south for them. Gina walked me to an adjacent barn to meet the two who horses who needed to get off the backside ASAP. One older pony horse with the hard-to-find Dance with Ravens dominant in his pedigree had ensured I hooked up the trailer and made the trip.

The contrast was sizable. The young woman running this small operation was moving, and her horses had to go. She noted that the farrier wouldn’t come and never got it right anyway so she did their feet herself, leaving feet barefoot and toes long because otherwise they go sore on the paved paths to and from the track. I watched as one nosed through the straw in the stall hunting for something to eat. They were thin and a bit dull coated, but not terrible. The injuries both horses carried had been rehabbed, yet their longer-term soundness was still in question. Her neighbor had taken over one of her stalls; The evicted equipment spilled into the aisle. (Usually stalls are assigned on the backside, so there’s absolutely more story to be told there.) Rats the size of rabbits hopped by theatrically as if to punctuate the image. (I have well-fed rodents and lazy barn cats, too, so I don’t really judge there, but still…).

One big horse — a five-year-old Uncle Mo kiddo — is a tough case. If I take the story at face value, she thought a bigger trainer she had ponied for was being nice. He gave her the leggy then-four-year-old last year. She didn’t realize how bad off he was until he landed in her stall — far skinnier than he is now, in need of surgery for knee chips, and dealing with a suspensory that was perhaps not properly rehabbed. She didn’t bemoan his existence in her string, just tried to do right by him. She sent him to surgery and let him lay up. Now she’s trying to figure out finances and next steps.

Mo Lucky loaded up and headed home to Kivu. Photo by author.

I have had a handful of horses who have retired for knee chips through the barn. Many of them had surgery paid post-retirement by their owners before rehoming. In this case, instead of being aided and rehomed, Mo Lucky had been passed down the line to become someone else’s problem… her problem. That irks me.

Despite the rough surface of the operation, she clearly loves these horses. She scraped the money together and got the knee chip surgery done. She had her maternity photos taken with Edify, the Dance With Ravens, who helped her build her ponying career on the backside. He had healed a broken sesamoid and had come back to work sound. Those fractures don’t bug me too much when they heal fine. Usually there’s a career in there all the same. But the ankle is pretty gnarly, and none of this had been discussed before I made a 12-hour round trip to Maryland. Fantastic.

Scooter (Star of the Beast) was retired from racing and had knee chips removed by his racing contacts before being responsibly rehomed. He came to us a bit weedy and in need of weight, but he’s packing on the pounds and being a good toddler. Photo by Lily Drew.

I stood there, looking at these two dusty, less-than-perfect specimens and weighed the options. I don’t need more projects — and I certainly don’t need more horses that are hard to sell. I already have a barn full of misfit toys. Hell, they’re my speed and always fill my stalls. But I wasn’t sure how to walk away. She was headed out to join her boyfriend in the midwest and restart her life as she tries to get her jockey license. The horses had become well-beloved shackles. They had a timeline of sorts. And while there are lots of other saps like me out there, I had no idea what situation these horses would fall into if I drove out with an empty trailer.

As she held back tears and led the Dance with Ravens, I walked beside the knee-chip-suspensory kiddo with flippers for feet to the trailer. And down the aisle they went, past the other barns and their range of fine horses to fit, shiny, runners. It hit me then, just how bad I am at my job. I rehome Thoroughbreds full time. There is no trust fund or backup job. Yes, I also train them for others and do consignment to stay afloat. But the main way you survive in this industry is by filling your stalls with the nicest, fanciest, soundest, flashiest of the racing-retirees and turning them around within a few weeks. And in loading the two rough-around-all-the-edges horses from the well-meaning-but-probably-stretched-beyond her means young mother/jockey-to-be into the rig, it’s clear that what is good for business isn’t what I’m good at doing.

So, circling back around here, despite how I want to fight the race-rescue stereotype, the realities of the backside aren’t solely the quality barns getting it right. And equally, the realities of the backside are not just the thin horses asked to do more than they can. I wish the laudable parts of the track were the entire story. But the truth lies somewhere muddled in the middle.

Pint (King Swansboro) was the first horse from Gina’s barn that I took in. One eye and all, he might not be perfect, but he was responsibly run, retired and now has a heck of a life learning to be a jumper at one of the fanciest barns in central New York. Photo courtesy of Gina Peri.

So are these two new big bay horses rescues? I don’t think so. I didn’t step in before the meat truck arrived (and it no longer happens quite like that, anyway). There’s no cape. There’s just my dumb conscience and the reality that it may take a few sound, healthy ones from the stables like those to their left and right to be able to offset the cost of their care and vet bills. And in so doing, the reality of the range of track experiences converges somewhere exactly in that messy, muddled middle, where longer narratives seem to do a better job painting a more accurate picture than pithy quips or stereotypes. (AKA sorry for so many words)

So go ride folks. I’m off to head to the barn to feed and assess just how irresponsible but hopefully positive this two-horse decision might have been.

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