The championship season of Graham Motion-trained Main Sequence revealed the toughness of the horse and the love and care he had along the way. Flaxman Holdings' homebred shipped from England to the United States in January 2014 for his 5-year-old campaign and within days was found to have pneumonia.
"Antibiotics, ultrasounds and science helped stop the pneumonia -- as did a little TLC," Joe Clancy reported. The chestnut gelding, described as "a gentleman" throughout his treatment, spent time at a clinic in New York before making his way to Motion's Fair Hill, Md., base a month later.
Main Sequence was back under tack in early March, won Monmouth Park's United Nations-G1 in July, and ran his record to four Grade 1 wins from four starts, concluding with the Breeders' Cup Turf-G1 at Santa Anita. A finalist for Horse of the Year, he earned honors as champion older horse and champion grass horse.
Owner/operator Greenwood ACRA announced New Jersey's Atlantic City Race Course was closing permanently, effective Jan. 16. The decision was "due to continuous business decline in the industry, the current regional economic climate and the absence of alternative revenue opportunities," said Greenwood ACRA president Joe Wilson in a press release. The news marked the end of an era for one of the region's most celebrated tracks.
Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred editor Joe Clancy won the 2014 Eclipse Award for news writing for his article "Horse of a Lifetime," covering the Preakness Stakes, which focused on the connections of California Chrome, in particular trainer Art Sherman, their march through the Triple Crown and victory in the Preakness two weeks after taking the Kentucky Derby. It was Clancy's first Eclipse, and the fifth earned by a Maryland Horse Breeders Association publication -- three for writing and two for photography.
In the last decade, three more have been won: Sandra McKee for feature/commentary in 2021; Tom Law, news/enterprise, 2022; and most recently, Scott Serio for his photograph of Skippylongstocking winning the Charles Town Classic that appeared in last October's issue (see the editorial on page 28).
Down Town Allen, with her namesake Allen Casey in a leadline class, won the "Top Moment of 2014" online poll in a landslide. Finishing second was "Steve Coburn visits California Chrome's grandsire Not For Love at Northview."
