Stories about your favorite retired racehorses. For archived stories, click here.
The Jockey Club recognizes him as High Spirited. Racegoers at Mid-Atlantic tracks in 2006-07 probably wouldn’t recognize him at all. But in the realm of interscholastic polo, he’s instantly recognized as “Cholo” –
Chicano/Latino slang for gangster. His is a feel-good story. Call it rehabilitation, redemption, rebirth. But above all, call it what it is: the remarkable truth.
Betty McCue was window shopping. Picking up a retired Thoroughbred from the Laurel Park barn of her friend Hugh McMahon, McCue customarily glanced in the stalls to see what else might be waiting in the wings. McMahon was assistant at that time to leading Mid-Atlantic trainer Scott Lake. McCue, owner and operator – with her sister, Evelyn Hughes Martin – of White Hall, Md.-based EHM Stables, was always on the lookout for suitable candidates as lesson and show prospects for her students.
“I went to ride him the other day, and when I went out to catch him, he and the other horse were rearing up, striking at one another, running around like they were yearlings. He’s 16 now, but don’t tell him that. He still thinks he is a racehorse. He’s not lacking in confidence.”
“He” is Class Bopper. She is Remy Winants, and nothing about that scene surprised her.
In the autumn of 2000, 2-year-old Your Out was posing for win photos at Mid-Atlantic racetracks. Eugene Ford’s homebred filly by Country Life Farm’s Allen’s Prospect from the Fast Play mare Our Friend Hidayet was brilliant in her freshman season. She followed up her winning Delaware Park debut with three stakes wins at Laurel Park – the Maryland Million Lassie, Heavenly Cause and Maryland Juvenile Filly Championship. The success made her that year’s Maryland-bred 2-year-old filly champion.
His story certainly wasn’t written on the racetrack. He made one career start at Remington Park in 2001, finished a dismal 11th and earned $62. What he accomplished – and the many lives he touched – in the years since made Chama the horse of a lifetime for several people.
In 2005, flat trainer Dale Romans unknowingly set into motion a chain of events that led to one of the greatest accomplishments of late steeplechase trainer Tom Voss’ career. And it all began with a horse Romans didn’t like.
The last thing one would expect to find amidst a bustling retail metropolis is a Thoroughbred nursery. But tucked behind a row of evergreens on the busiest stretch of asphalt in Clementon, N.J., is exactly that.
In the summer of 2019, Jamie Wyeth formulated a plan to honor his late wife, Phyllis Mills Wyeth, at their Point Lookout Farm in Pennsylvania. For Phyllis, breeder and owner of Belmont Stakes winner and now top stallion Union Rags, Thoroughbreds were a lifelong passion.
