Wild Ride: The Rise and Tragic Fall of Calumet Farm, Inc., America's Premier Racing Dynasty
480
Wild Ride: The Rise and Tragic Fall of Calumet Farm, Inc., America's Premier Racing Dynasty
480eBook
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Overview
A Gritty Chronicle of the Horse Racing Empire
With an exploration of the tumultuous world of thoroughbred horse racing, Wild Ride presents an unforgettable narrative that’s as thrilling as the sport itself. This award-winning masterpiece tells the heartbreaking story of the rise and subsequent ruin of one of the legends of horse racing–Calumet Farm.
Once synonymous with unmatched excellence, Calumet Farm was the monument of the American thoroughbred industry, spawning myriad superstar racers over the years. Its decline, however, symbolized the end of a glamorous epoch and the birth of a high-stakes industry fraught with financial intrigues and undesired scandals.
Written with an investigative enthusiasm, Wild Ride takes you on a roller-coaster journey across four generations, juxtaposing the glittery past of the racing industry with its modern era, underpinned by contentious deal-making and industry maneuvers.
As the horse racing spectacle gets wrapped in an unforgiving world of business, the legendary Calumet's demise serves as a stirring metaphor for a fortune lost amidst chaos.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429995085 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Holt, Henry & Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 10/12/2010 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 480 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
In the vast farmlands of the Bluegrass, night brings a deep and layered darkness that hovers over the land like a heavy fog. Faraway lights on rafters and spires appear closer than they are. Sounds, echoing from distant barns, are difficult to discern and seem to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. The backfiring of a pickup might be mistaken for a gunshot; the simple creaking of a barn door could be confused with an animal's cry.
Alton Stone was accustomed to the terrain of a rural night and felt a certain comfort in the darkness. He had nothing to fear because in his years as a groom and even in his childhood on a farm in western Kentucky, nothing frightening had ever happened. His nerves were solid and his country instincts went well beyond his four years on the job. If there had been a sound that night that could have warned him, he would have known what to do.
But the darkness may have played a trick on Stone. There was nothing extraordinary that he could recall hearing, and no one else would ever come forward to report the wild, unnerving cries that must have emanated from the stallion barn at some point that night. No one would ever say they had heard the first bone crack.
It was a chilly night in mid-November of 1990, and Stone, a groom at Calumet Farm, was filling in for his friend Cowboy Kipp, the regular night watchman. From 6:00 P.M. to 6:00 A.M. he was to drive from barn to barn across the rolling acreage, checking on the welfare of two hundred thoroughbred horses, filling their water buckets, and dropping straw into their stalls. Stone remembered driving his red Ford Bronco slowly and without distraction along narrow, asphalt roads, the truck's headlights punching holes in the darkness ahead.
The routine was menial, but for the young Kentucky native it seemed as much a privilege as a job. Stone was raised on the legends of Whirlaway and Citation, two of Calumet's many Kentucky Derby winners. Just as a boy growing up in New York might know the batting averages of legendary Yankees, boys in the Bluegrass knew the victories, pedigrees, and earnings of the champions who had thrived on Calumet's nine hundred acres over the past sixty years.
There was something reassuring about Calumet, as if its miles and miles of white fences were a monument to some high ideal. No single racing stable had ever won more accolades and trophies. For half a century, Calumet had been the standard by which all achievements were measured in the thoroughbred racing industry. It was the reason the American thoroughbred had become the most sought-after horse in the world.
Just a glimpse of the farm was like a journey to another era, to the 1940s or 1950s, Calumet's glory years and a simpler time in America. The sight of foals and mares grazing in emerald fields between white barns and pristine fences spelled innocence. In the womb of Calumet, adages about a brighter tomorrow always seemed plausible.
Calumet was all about cycles of life. Generations of horses born on the farm were trained there to race. When they retired, they grazed in pastures adjacent to the ones where they had learned to walk at their mother's side and where their offspring would soon take their first wobbly steps. And when they died, they were buried alongside their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters at the Calumet cemetery.
Stone felt a burst of pride each day when he tipped his hat to the man in the white frame guardhouse at the farm's main entrance. As massive red iron gates inched open and a long avenue of towering sycamores filled his vision, the soft-spoken, blue-eyed groom had a feeling that he was part of something truly great.
And so when Cowboy Kipp told Stone he wanted to take the night off, on Tuesday, November 13, 1990, Stone, though on vacation, agreed to work the shift. The rounds of the night shift required nearly two hours to complete, but every half hour no matter where the groom might be, he was instructed to circle back to the stallion barn. Part of the routine, too, was a break for twenty minutes or so around 9:30 P.M.
On schedule, Stone, after checking the stallion barn at 9:30, steered his Bronco toward a small white building with bright red trim that served as a canteen for the farm's one hundred workers. Inside he chatted with the only other guard on duty that night, a private security officer hired to patrol the perimeter of the vast farm. It must have been about 9:50 P.M., Stone would later say, that he felt a sudden pang in the pit of his stomach, a feeling of panic unfamiliar to him and that he has never quite been able to describe. All he knew at that moment was that he had to go back to the stallion barn.
Abruptly, Stone turned away from his colleague, left the canteen, jumped into the Bronco, and barreled down the winding roads, all the while trying to block out thoughts of Alydar, the thoroughbred industry's preeminent stallion and Calumet's number one money-maker.
Not only was this not Stone's normal job, but guarding the stallions had only recently been added to Cowboy Kipp's duties. In past years the farm had always employed one night guard whose only duty was to oversee the stallions, especially Alydar, who was worth more than the farm itself. For reasons unknown to Stone, Calumet president J. T. Lundy had eliminated the $7.50-an-hour job.
It was a move that puzzled Stone and others who knew the stories of Lundy's obsession with security in past years, especially regarding Alydar. Back in 1983, Lundy had realized that it was possible for a sniper, with the help of a scope on a high-powered rifle, to stand at one particular spot on the balcony of the Eldorado Motel, down the road from the farm, and send a bullet over rolling fields and white fences into Alydar's beautiful head. Lundy moved Alydar to a paddock that was out of the path of destruction.
Around that time, too, the farm was getting letters with words cut out of newspapers and pasted together into such chilling messages as "Your prize horses will be shot" and "We'll start shooting horses," unless the farm handed over $500,000. The FBI eventually apprehended a young woman who worked at a local furniture factory, along with her alleged accomplice, a laid-off truck driver.
After that scare Lundy hired two former soldiers of fortune from eastern Kentucky to guard the farm. They'd worked for some years as strikebreakers in coal country and before that had toured the world looking for trouble that paid well. With pistols strapped to their ankles and shotguns above the dashboard, the men spent their nights touring the farm as if it were a war camp. They'd crouch in bushes, perch in trees, and sometimes linger for hours outside the stallion barn listening for sounds that signaled trouble.
But they were long gone. On this night, it was all Stone's responsibility. The more he thought about the sparse security that November night, the harder he pressed his foot against the accelerator. Farms less prestigious than Calumet had security systems with video monitors in the corridors of stallion complexes and sometimes even in the stalls. Calumet did not. How could Stone or anyone else be expected to guard fifteen barns across hundreds of acres of pastureland and many miles of roads?
To reassure himself, Stone tried to remember how the stallion barn had looked when he had checked on things at the beginning of his shift. Except for a few snorts and the muffled clopping of horseshoes against straw-covered cement floors, the barn had been quiet. Everyone was accounted for: Alydar, in the far stall once occupied by Derby winner Tim Tam; Secreto, valued by one appraiser in 1988 at $75 million; Triple Crown winner Affirmed; Criminal Type, who would soon receive the horse industry's version of an Oscar, the 1990 Horse of the Year award; and four other prized stallions, collectively appraised at $16 million or more.
But Stone couldn't recall seeing or hearing anything unusual. And as he drove up to the barn, he began to wonder whether the extent of his responsibilities that night had given him a case of the jitters.
Getting out of the truck, he pulled open one of the thick, doublewide doors at the end of the barn. He stepped into the warm air, hardly smelling the familiar mix of manure and straw, then walked briskly down a wide red-painted corridor between the stalls and brass nameplates of the champions of the sport. As he looked intently between the bars of the stall windows, into the dimly lit, oak-paneled stalls on both sides of the hall, he heard a faint nickering, a moaning sound that seemed almost human. It was Alydar's stall, the last one on the left, that he anxiously sought. When he reached it and peered through the bars, he saw the source of the eerie sound.
To Stone's horror, the chestnut stallion was nearly black with sweat, his flanks heaving and trembling. In the dim light, he could see Alydar's eyes, white with fear. For long seconds Stone stared, his feet unable to move, as if the horse's eyes were transmitting a paralyzing fear.
Stone snapped himself out of the trance, snatched the two-way radio from his belt, and summoned his boss, Sandy Hatfield.
Hatfield lived only a few hundred yards from the stallion barn. Like most horsemen, she was in bed by 9:30 P.M. and up, at the latest, by 5:00 A.M. It was after 10:00 P.M. by now. From her bed, she spoke into the radio, "What is it, Stonie?"
"It's Aly."
Stone's first instinct, as he would later tell an investigator, was that Alydar was suffering from colic, a painful buildup of gases in the intestinal tract. But he said nothing more to Hatfield. He knew the farm's concerns about privacy and that the local newspapers monitored the twoway radios. Both employees had been told never to talk about sensitive issues on the airwaves. Alydar, no matter what he did, was front-page news in the Bluegrass and on sports pages worldwide. Hatfield asked no questions. She knew that a late-night call on a farm, except during foaling season, could only mean trouble. She said simply, "I'll be right there."
After calling the farm's resident veterinarian, Lynda Rhodes, Stone picked up some carrots from a bag in the corridor and rushed back to Alydar's stall, hoping he hadn't overreacted. He unlatched a brass hook, slid the heavy oak door to the side, and stepped into the sixteen-by-eighteen-foot stall.
Alydar, magnificent even now in his stillness and fear, seemed so alone. Gingerly, the groom approached with his offering of carrots, moving close enough to gently snap a leather shank to the halter. The horse tugged at the strap and glared down at Stone with the look of a conquered king. But instead of kicking his way out of Stone's grip and reclaiming his power, he stared once again into Stone's eyes, which were now stinging with tears and sweat. Alydar allowed the groom to stroke his wet and tangled mane. As Stone felt Alydar's trust, he looked away and, for the first time, spotted specks of dark blood in the straw beneath the horse's hooves. Searching for the source of the dripping blood, Stone saw reason for fear and panic.
Alydar was holding his right rear leg off the ground, the last eight inches or so dangling loosely and a sliver of white bone showing through the dark skin. Several inches of skin lay open on the front of the leg, torn by the jagged edge of the broken bone. It appeared that the lowest portion of Alydar's leg was hanging by tendons alone.
When Hatfield and Rhodes arrived, they told Stone he looked as if he'd seen a ghost. But they too were stunned by what they saw as they entered the stall, now filled with steam from the horse's profuse sweating. They resisted talking about the whys or hows of Alydar's predicament. There was no time to ask questions now. Rhodes, a quiet, efficient woman in her early thirties, pulled a syringe from her bag and injected a powerful painkiller into the horse's jugular vein. She then made two calls: one to the farm's chief vet, William Baker, who lived in another county, and the other to Lundy, the Calumet president. Shuddering at the thought of what lay ahead, she asked Lundy to call the insurance agents.
For now, Rhodes knew the greatest challenge was Alydar himself. Fractious and prone to tantrums, the horse had a reputation for hating vets, even when he wasn't hurt. During a routine checkup, he'd swing his head back and forth and sometimes rear up and kick. If he didn't like something he saw or heard, he'd just pull away and leave, like a celebrity accustomed to his own way. But with an injury like this, rearing up or running off could cause his death.
Alydar's temperament hadn't always been so unpredictable. In 1978, before one of the Triple Crown races, one Alydar groom told a sportswriter, "Alydar doesn't seem excited by events. ... He's a low-key horse. Whatever you ask him to do, he'll go on and do it."
Alydar's longtime trainer John Veitch described the horse's temperament as "ideal, good around the barn. ... He wasn't like a kid's saddlehorse or pony, as he was a stallion, but he wasn't difficult." Veitch, who was with the horse every day from 1976 to 1982, used words like "endearing" and "affectionate" to describe the horse. He said Alydar had the best memory he'd ever witnessed in a horse.
"It's like Alydar memorized the sound of your footsteps and the rhythm of your walk," Veitch said. "When he heard a familiar walk, he'd press his head against the window of his stall and snort a sort of welcome. If he didn't recognize the rhythm, he wouldn't bother moving. He was like a friend to me."
But by the mid-1980s, Alydar had the reputation among grooms and vets as a difficult horse determined to get his own way no matter what. Though always spirited and feisty, his personality now had a nasty edge. Every six weeks or so, he'd suddenly throw a fit in his stall, pawing at the stall door or wall, nickering and snorting until he got the attention he felt he deserved. He'd paw and paw with his front hooves or run around the stall as if it were a track, until a groom or the guard who watched the stallion barn would come by and feed him a carrot or two, reminding him that he was still the great Alydar whose racing career no one could ever forget and whose semen was now as prized a commodity as gold or oil.
By most accounts, he seemed bedeviled by something out of his control, but nobody could ever figure out what. A few had the theory that his good nature and charm in past years might have been exaggerated in the effort to create a media superstar. Others said horses sometimes get cranky and aggressive after they retire from the track and start their careers as studs. Still others — mostly critics of Lundy's management practices — were apt to say the horse's temperament was ruined through overbreeding.
As if wallowing in vicarious pleasure, horsemen could talk for hours about the pros and cons of Alydar's hectic sex life. To be kept in a continual state of excitement could cause behavioral problems for an already high-strung animal like a thoroughbred horse, they surmised. Burnout was also a possibility. While stallions normally enjoy their work, there were limits beyond which even the most dynamic studs would lose interest. Lack of exercise was another theory. "Aly was spending too much time breeding and not enough outside running around, not enough exercise," one groom believed.
Alydar was a stud who earned his keep and supported the comfortable lifestyle of several individuals by inseminating dozens of mares each year in the hope of producing sensational racehorses. Alydar's genes and his sexual performance were critical factors in Calumet's prosperity, for the big money in the horse industry during the 1980s was made in the breeding shed, not at the racetrack. Alydar, who had been appraised at values ranging from $40 million to $200 million, appeared to be raking in the cash.
Lundy had sold twenty or so lifetime breeding rights to Alydar for as much as $2.5 million each. Such rights entitled the buyer to breed one mare each year to the stallion and one additional mare every other year during the stallion's life. Usually, pricey stallions like Alydar are owned by a syndicate of forty shareholders, who have the right to breed once a year for every share they own. A share also gives them the authority, through a syndicate agreement and an annual syndicate meeting, to make decisions about the stallion's stud career, such as whether or not he will be bred to more than the shareholders' forty mares, and if so, how many.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Wild Ride"
by .
Copyright © 1995 Ann Hagedorn Auerbach.
Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Part I: Mystery,
Part II: Dynasty,
Part III: King of Calumet,
Part IV: Frenzy,
Part V: Phoenix,
Afterword,
Photography Insert,
Acknowledgments,
Notes,
Index,
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