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Guelph and Padge Whelan (left) soared over the last fence of the $75,000 hurdle stakes at Palm Beach on their way to the win over Dr. Bloomer and Robert Walsh (right). |
Guelph ran her last race with all the fire and athleticism she has shown throughout her racing career, besting
the boys in the running of the $75,000 hurdle stakes at the inaugural Palm Beach Fall Steeplechase, Nov. 29 in Wellington, Fla.
The last meet of the season, Palm Beach drew a nice group of starters for four of their five races, but the feature scratched down to just four hearty stakes horses. Among them, Calvin Houghland’s recent winner Dr. Bloomer (Robert Walsh), William Pape’s Baby League (Danielle Hodsdon) and EMO Stable’s Orison (Matt McCarron).
| McCarron Makes A Tough Decision The last race of the season proved to be mightily unlucky for one jockey. Matt McCarron popped off of Orison when the horse stumbled over a fence on the final turn. The 37-year-old jockey sustained multiple injuries in the fall. Along with several broken ribs, a fractured scapula, a broken collarbone he damaged his C6 and C7 cervical vertebrae and underwent spinal surgery the week after the race at Jacksonville Memorial Hospital at the University of Miami (Fla.) to fuse his vertebrae and to put a rod in for support. McCarron—who first burst onto the steeplechase scene in 1992—is the nephew of Hall of Fame flat jockey Chris McCarron. In 2003 and 2004, McCarron was the National Steeplechase Association leading jockey, but after many great years and several accidents, McCarron has decided it is time to stop riding. “I am hanging it up,” McCarron said. “It’s time. I am lucky, except that it’s really painful right now; I have total movement of my arms and legs. It could have been so much worse.” He added about the fall, “I am not sure exactly what happened. It was really late in the day by the time we ran the feature. There were some odd shadows across the fences and a lot of glare. Some people said he stood far off, others said he didn’t pick up his feet and chested the fence. But they all said he moved the whole fence about 3 feet in the process.” McCarron, who has been riding mostly for trainer Doug Fout for the past several years, hasn’t decided what a life of not riding horses at speed over fences is going to entail. He has a day job in livestock insurance and has not ruled out going the training route that so many of his other retired colleagues have chosen. Fout, who is also a former jump jockey, isn’t so sure he’s really done. “He says he’s retiring,” Fout said. “I don’t know, it’s awfully hard to get it out of your system. I think he may be back. It’s such a shame the year has to end this way for him. He said the horse was running the best he has all year.” One bright spot earlier in McCarron’s day was a win for trainer Dave Washer with Daniel Geitner’s Roseland in the $25,000 maiden hurdle for fillies and mares. ADVERTISEMENT“She was brilliant and a phenomenal jumper,” McCarron said. “We weren’t going too terribly fast, and we let Richard Boucher’s filly [Complete Ray], who was a bit keen, take the lead, so we sat about third. But we flew the last, and I think it shocked Dave a little with how much turn of foot she had in the stretch.” |
As she has done in all of her races this year, Guelph left the start with authority and never looked back. By the wire she was all alone and more than 6 lengths ahead of Dr. Bloomer. Baby League placed third. “We never saw another horse,” Whelan said. “She went all out in front. Dr. Bloomer was on my heels, but he could never get to her.”
Owned by The Fields Stable and trained by Tom Voss, Guelph’s win makes her the winner of the Northview Filly/
Mare Championship, an honor she also held in 2005. Voss officially retired her after the win, and she trots off with $123,424 in 2008 for her four victories in six starts.
Along with a championship trophy, Guelph is now entitled to a free cover at the Northview Stallion Station, which
features the studs Dance With Ravens, Deputy Storm, Domestic Dispute, Great Notion, Lion Hearted, Love Of Money, Medallist, Not For Love, Two Punch and Waquoit.
The 7-year-old chestnut daughter of Sky Classic has had several riders this season after her stable jockey Whelan broke his ankle in a fall in May. Whelan was astounded at her grit.
“She jumped great,” Whelan said. “She deserves the championship and to be retired.”
Bred by the trainer’s wife Mimi Voss, Guelph made an impression on anyone who has handled her. Though she might be little, she has always been full of spit and vinegar, sometimes a little too much, as she can get very nervous before a race.
Steeplechase jockey William Santoro’s day job is breaking babies and getting them ready for the track, steeplechasing or the show ring at his Monkton facility, Prospect Stables. He said Guelph was one 2-year-old that he’ll never forget.
“Guelph was absolutely a stand out,” Santoro said. “She was very athletic from the get-go. She’s very quick and would just make a move that was indefensible. She found numerous ways to put me back on my own two feet.
She was very good at it. I am just tickled about the way she turned out. She really has done well.”
Moving Up
Earlier in the day, Whelan sat on another winner for Voss with Slip Away in the $25,000 starter allowance hurdle.
Owned by flat track winner Kenneth Ramsey, the flashy gray 5-year-old son of Skip Away dispatched the five other starters, easily winning by a stride over Cradle Will Rock (Hodsdon).
| Looking Ahead This is not the first time the Palm Beach Polo Club in Wellington, Fla., has hosted a steeplechase, but according to officials, there have been some improvements to the venue since the last meet in 1985. “The course is vastly different,” said Bill Gallo, the National Steeplechasing Association’s director of racing. “Back in the 1980s, much of the course was not that raceable. Now it’s so much better planned. It’s about 9⁄10 of a mile, and they have banked the turns and added rails. They spent a great deal of money on it. Having an inside and an outside rail alone is about $100,000.” Winning jockeys Xavier Aizpuru and Padge Whelan were impressed. “I thought they did a supurb job with the meet,” Aizpuru said. “It was a first-class effort.” Gallo said that the location also helps. “The horse com- ADVERTISEMENTGallo said even though they have not made any official announcements, the Palm Beach officials are mulling over the idea of including a spring meet at their new venue. Although the year in steeplechasing has seen its share of setbacks—including losing the $150,000 race at Keeneland (Ky.), the ongoing battle of sanctioning between Florida’s Little Everglades and North Carolina’s Queens Cup meets—Gallo was pleased with the overall 2008 NSA season. He said they had recorded more than $5.3 million in purses this year and added a few new meets to the list. In addition, they implemented a new drug-testing rule to their existing plan to now include steroids. The NSA spends about $60,000 on drug testing every year and Gallo said so far they have had no drug positives. There are no plans to test the jockeys. Gallo said they are already thinking about 2009, and possible new venues include the Charles Town track in West Virginia and Tanglewood in Winston-Salem, N.C. And just this fall the NSA started a new streaming video link from Hunt Country Productions through the official NSA site for race-goers who are unable to travel to meets that are not pari-mutuel. “So far it has worked well,” Gallo said. “We tried it for Colonial Cup [S.C.] and for Palm Beach and the quality was really good. We hope to do this for more meets next year.” |
“He’s been a good servant, especially in his last two runs,” Whelan said. “He’s a lovely sort of horse, jumps
around, gets the distance and stays. It will be interesting to see how he does next year.”
This is Whelan’s first year on the U.S. steeplechase circuit. The 29-year-old Irishman came over after his friend
and fellow jockey Calvin McCormack told him about racing in the United States. Whelan finishes up the year in
a three-way tie for second on the NSA leading rider board. Out of 52 starts, he won 14 races, had 14 seconds and six
third-placed finishes. He finished up 2008 making $491,478 for his horse’s owners.
Whelan said riding across the pond has taken a bit of getting used to, but he has enjoyed it. “It would have been a fairytale ending if I had not messed up my ankle,” Whelan said. “Mr. Voss has a great string of horses and it has been wonderful riding for him. Yeah, riding in America is a little different. I liken it to learning to drive on the other side of the road. Once you get it, it’s not so hard.”
Well Sought
Jockey Xavier Aizpuru clinched the leading jockey award several race meets ago, but he didn’t ease up at Palm
Beach and he found himself notching his 22nd win in the $25,000 Sport of Kings maiden hurdle with Arcadia Stable’s Seeking No More.
Seeking No More first made people sit up and notice on Belmont Stakes day, June 7, when he was second in a $57,000 maiden special flat race on the turf. He went on to race over hurdles this summer but had not really flourished.
“He’s a cool horse,” Aizpuru said. “We have been waiting all year for him to break his maiden. I am glad he finally did in the last race of the year.”
Seeking No More’s win makes Jack Fisher the NSA top trainer in the races-won category. He was neck-and-neck with Voss for the last several meets, but he managed to eek by with 26 wins this year to the 25 Voss has. Jonathan Sheppard, who started out the year very strong, finished up the season a distant third with 16 victories.
This just adds to Fisher’s other title, trainer with the most money, at $1,156,907. No other trainer until now has hit the million-dollar mark in a single year. But he will have to wait until January to find out whether or not his best performer—Harold “Sonny” Via’s Good Night Shirt, the 2008 NSA steeplechase horse of the year—receives his expected second Eclipse Award.
Sarah Libbey Greenhalgh
