The photo captions write themselves: “Find someone who looks at you the way Gail Thayer looks at Preemptive Strike.”
Cliché as it seems, the story of the 26-year-old gelding is the stuff of dreams. After two unremarkable starts on the flat as a 2-year-old for breeder/owner Klo Carroll, the son of Roanoke and the Far North mare Mirkwood ended up at Merefield, the 36-acre Unionville, Pa., farm owned by Gail and husband Dixon Thayer.
The Thayers met in 1973 while students at the University of Pennsylvania. Both were Philadelphia-area natives, and Dixon started foxhunting after meeting Gail. Post-graduation, Gail worked in the fashion industry and Dixon became an executive with Scott Paper. During his tenure there, the Thayers lived in Mexico City and Paris, returning to Pennsylvania with their two young sons in 1994.
“We looked at each other and decided it was time to see if we could afford to buy a farm in the Unionville area,” Gail said. “We purchased this place in 1995 and called it Merefield, because it was merely a field when we bought it.”
Active members of the Cheshire Foxhounds, their indoctrination into jump racing was organic.
“We’d go to the races at Radnor, Cheshire, but we came into racing so ass-backwards; we didn’t know anything about anything,” Gail said. “So we became Polaris Stable. Polaris being the north star; the star that you would follow.”
Their first venture, a timber horse named Clearly Special, lost all three starts. Next came Preemptive Strike, who took the family on a journey through 39 starts over jumps from his 4-year-old season in 2002 until his retirement at 12 in 2010.
Trained first by the late Paul Rowland and then by Sanna Neilson, Preemptive Strike proved a juggernaut from the beginning. Ridden most frequently by Jody Petty and Robbie Walsh, in addition to Paddy Young, the chestnut regularly faced steeplechasing’s heaviest hitters of the time – McDynamo, Sur La Tete, Hirapour (Ire), Slip Away, Good Night Shirt, Mixed Up and others.
Preemptive Strike broke his maiden with Petty at Saratoga’s Open House in July 2002. His first stakes score came at Florida’s Little Everglades meet with Walsh in March 2004, kicking off a season that stamped him as an Eclipse Award finalist. In addition to the Little Everglades, Walsh and Preemptive Strike also won the Carolina Cup at Camden, S.C., and the Appleton Stakes at Far Hills, N.J. He earned the title of Maryland-bred champion steeplechaser.
They parlayed that success into 2005, winning the Georgia Cup at Atlanta in April. For Walsh, their most memorable collaboration took place at the Meadowlands in October 2005.
After riding in Virginia that day, Walsh boarded a private plane to New Jersey to ride Preemptive Strike in the featured Somerset Medical Center Handicap.
“It was a Grade 2 under the lights,” Walsh said. “We were 30 lengths clear after the first six hurdles. After about 6 furlongs, he took a deep breath and relaxed, and I just sat there and let him rock. He led the whole way and beat [three-time champion] McDynamo by 5 lengths. I got back on the plane and flew home to Virginia after the race.
“Preemptive Strike was a proper keen horse; a front-running lunatic,” Walsh said. “And he put me on a different level as a rider.”
After missing the 2006 season, Preemptive Strike returned in 2007 with trainer Sanna Neilson and eventually was reunited with Petty.
“He was one of the most competitive horses I ever sat on in my life,” Petty said. “He was out there for one reason – and that was to win. But he was really neat because when he would run well and finish second, it didn’t mess with his mind. He’d go out there and run exactly the same way next time. He was like, ‘Ehh – so they beat me last time. Watch this time.’ ”
Petty never won another race on the horse. Preemptive Strike’s final score came in the Imperial Cup at Aiken in March 2008. Petty was injured earlier on the card, and Carl Rafter filled in.
“When I tell people this, they’re a little mind-blown,” Petty said, “But I think Robbie rode him better than I did. He actually got along better with that horse at the time. And then once I watched Robbie ride him, later in life when I rode him again it made me ride him better. My riding style and Robbie’s were completely different. I had a hard time sitting still except on Preemptive Strike – on that, I sat still.”
Walsh and Petty both emphasized the same essential truth – there was no arguing with Preemptive Strike. It was his opinion, his way, and there was no point starting a fight you’d never win.
According to Petty, some of the gelding’s best performances were seconds in major stakes. In November 2008, Preemptive Strike set the pace in the 2 3⁄4-mile Colonial Cup and led over the last fence before losing a stretch battle to fellow Maryland-bred, eventual champion and future Hall of Famer Good Night Shirt by a neck. They clashed again the following March, in the Carolina Cup going 2 1⁄4 miles. Once more, Preemptive Strike settled for second.
“That’s about as close as anyone ever got to Good Night Shirt,” Petty said. “And Preemptive Strike was 11 at the time. There was no bigger heart than his. There are not a lot of horses like him.”
Though he never won a Grade 1, Preemptive Strike finished second in six – to champions Hirapour, Mixed Up, Good Night Shirt and Slip Away.
Preemptive Strike furnished the Thayers’ home with plenty of silver, photographs and artwork, including an oil painting by Booth Malone of Preemptive Strike and Walsh at Springdale Race Course. It’s a casual pose with the horse at a walk, head turned toward the artist, and Walsh in jeans and a polo shirt. The expression on the gelding’s face is the same easily recognized today. Confident, strong, oozing a compelling presence that commands attention.
“It’s been a love affair,” Gail Thayer said more than once. “I had this conversation with [photographer] Tod Marks at one point. I said I needed a photo of him in the paddock. Tod said, ‘But he didn’t win.’ I said I didn’t care; it was a family experience. I always said to the jockeys, ‘Just bring him back in one piece. I don’t care about anything else.’
Gail told of the time that the horse contracted shipping fever on the way home from Atlanta, requiring a lengthy layoff. A high fever caused a hoof problem that took several months to clear.
“All the heat went down into that foot,” said Gail. “We changed the bandages twice a day, and he couldn’t do anything. Toward the last few months, he could go out and hand-walk. But it was not easy. He was not a patient patient.”
Joy far outweighed worry over the past 23 years, as special memories attest. A trip to Los Angeles for the 2004 Eclipse Awards in January 2005 was surreal. The Thayers sat with another party from Pennsylvania – Roy and Pat Chapman and the Smarty Jones camp.
“We had known him since I was a teenager because we foxhunted together,” Gail said of Roy Chapman. “So even though we didn’t win the Eclipse Award, and we didn’t expect to win, it was an experience we otherwise would never have had.”
Gail laughs when remembering her preparations for that evening. With Dixon’s encouragement, she decided to treat herself to hair and makeup appointments at the salon in the Beverly Hills Hotel.
“The lady doing my makeup kept giggling with her friends. I asked if I had spinach in my teeth or something. She said ‘No, it’s just so funny. When we do hair and makeup for the Academy Awards and all these other things, everyone is always talking about themselves or other people. But all you ladies talk about are your horses. What shoes they had on, the way they ran.’ She said, ‘We just can’t get over the fact that that is important to you.’ ”
Preemptive Strike’s final race was the Colonial Cup-G1 in November 2010. After setting the pace for 2 miles, he finished second to Slip Away, whose performance that day was a tour de force 25 ¾-length win. Preemptive Strike headed home to Merefield with a record of 41-8-13-7 and $494,398 to his credit.
“After he retired, we gave him about a year off,” Gail said. “Then I decided I was going to ride him. It wasn’t a big mistake as long as we walked. And I was always with someone. But the second he took even one trot step, he thought that meant he could gallop. I was thinking I was so cool, riding Strike. We have these little logs in our top field back from when my boys were little. They’d ride their ponies and hop over those logs. So I thought, ‘I wonder what it’s like to jump him, now that he’s retired.’ I walked him up to the log, he took one trot stride and launched long like he did when he was racing. I got left so bad, and never did it again. . . I had a whole new respect for jump riders after that. I had no clue what that feeling was, the way he jumped. And I know other horses don’t jump like that.”
