Race trainers team up to help a Scat Daddy son
A four-year-old son of Scat Daddy, injured in a race last September, has found a path through troubled times with the help of his race trainer and former assistant race trainer. In the weird way that bad fortune can turn to good, Mr. Discreet blew a tendon at Parx Racing last September as the entire track was placed under quarantine for an outbreak of the equineherpes virus. Returned to his shedrow stall to wait out the quarantine, which prevented horses from entering or exiting the track, the flashy chestnut was carefully rehabbed by trainer Robert Reid, while the handsome horse’s […]
Once destined for slaughter, Grace flourishes
What saved the delicate mare from the slaughterhouse 14 years ago was a combination of little things, really. First there was Kim Gatto’s ability to see past the Thoroughbred’s nicked, dull coat to envision her at her best; she saw a beauty beneath the shabby exterior of a horse who stood quietly with 30 others at the Pennsylvania auction house. “I could see that she was really pretty underneath,” Gatto recalls. “She was really petite and delicate.” And the next small thing— the money that would determine who purchased the horse—came down to the price of an inexpensive lunch. Ten […]
Millionaire racehorse, 14, trains to be show horse
A Sovereign Award-winning champion racehorse, who earned $1.7 million on the tracks of Canada before retiring to pasture for five years, has just returned to the limelight with long hair and a willing attitude to take on the challenge of a show career. In January, the manager of a horse farm where the racing champ had retired turned over True Metropolitan, 14, to Ontario horsemen Robin Hannah-Carlton and her mother Marilyn Lee. The women were chosen to guide the strapping 17-hand gelding into a new career by caretakers who wanted the best for the 2008 Eclipse Stakes winner, had followed […]