Ex-jock stands by her ‘comeback’ horse
Six years after a middle-aged jockey came out of retirement to pilot a luckless racehorse on a comeback career that seemed impossible— naysayers claimed neither horse nor rider had it in them anymore— Jackie Acksel and the statuesque Thoroughbred Smalltownman still light up the racetrack. The pair, who won $200,000 together before the horse was claimed away, have been inseparable since Acksel tracked down and claimed him back in September of 2013. “Smalltown just really touched my heart, and is now part of my family,” says Acksel, who works as a race trainer in New Jersey and Florida. And wherever […]
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In tribute to her warhorse, 2 others find a home
As the sun set on their modest old barn, racing warhorse Sing Me Back Home turned his face toward the woman who loved him. And though cancerous tumors had pushed his once finely sculpted head into a battlefield of lumps, Christina Sawelsky reached up and pulled him close. Holding his muzzle with her right hand, she leaned in and kissed his eye, thanking him for being such a good friend to her these past five years, and wishing him Godspeed. Sing Me Back Home Sire: Homebuilder Dam: Pocket Tunes, by Tunerup Foal date: Feb. 24, 1998 Earnings: $619, 541 in […]
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A gelding saved in agonizing decision at auction
It was down to the dark gelding or the barren broodmare; she could only take one. Knowing that whoever she passed over would most likely meet a horrific end in the slaughterhouse, Beverly Strauss of MidAtlantic Horse Rescue agonized between the two horses at the New Holland auction on a hot July day in 2006. In the end, and with a breaking heart, she chose the gelding. Relatively young at age nine, the off-track Thoroughbred who previously raced under the Jockey Club name Pardner, a son of wining racehorse Deputy Minister, was squeezed onto a trailer heading for the safe haven […]
