Francisco Torres. The name might not ring an immediate bell, but anyone who has visited Northview Stallion Station will recognize the face. Torres, stallion manager at Northview’s flagship Chesapeake City, Md., location, is usually the man on the end of the shank when the stallions are paraded for inspection.
It’s what he doesn’t do that makes him memorable.
As the winner’s circle filled up with well-wishers after Grams Racing Stable’s Runnin’toluvya captured the $300,000 West Virginia Breeders Classic for state-bred 3-year-olds and up in front-running style, it appeared as though trainer Tim Grams wasn’t going to join the celebration, but he ended up taking the long way back.
The Maryland Million never disappoints. Every year, since its founding in 1986, the state’s signature day of Thoroughbred racing – sorry Preakness – delivers something. There can be poignancy, magic, a few tears, redemption, rookie success, long-overdue wins and everything in between.
Bobby Lillis may be physically small, as he measures just 60 inches. But he stands tall and, like Secretariat, he has an outsized heart.
Most days, he sits at his aging desk in a cramped office inside the building that houses the backstretch cafeteria at Laurel Park. He has two titles – executive director of the Maryland Horsemen’s Assistance Foundation (MHAF) and director of benefits for the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association (MTHA) – and his door is always open.
After 30 years of military service that included two overseas deployments, Gail Watts returned to civilian life – an unfamiliar, less regimented life – and discovered she needed help getting back to who she was.
Strong and willing in the military, Watts engaged civilian life with an array of new emotions that left her tired and miffed. When Veterans Affairs doctors and medications failed to help, she agreed in 2015 to participate in a nascent therapy program called Saratoga WarHorse, a nonprofit venture established in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
Long after training hours the day before the 143rd Preakness Stakes-G1, Bob Baffert kicked around Pimlico Race Course. His horses ate hay or dozed in the stakes barn, his staffers attended to their duties, he’d done his interviews and was – for a Hall of Fame trainer who has made the Triple Crown his personal playground for the better part of 20 years – briefly alone without much purpose.
He chatted with fellow Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas for a while, stepped in and out of the stakes barn to avoid intermittent rain that settled into the Baltimore area for what seemed like weeks and chit-chatted with various members of the press corps lingering around, digging for details or making up for lost time.
Twenty-two times Senior Senator sized up a timber fence at the Maryland Hunt Cup. His eyes saw it first, then his ears – instantly flicked forward. The signals went to his feet, his knees, shoulders, those long muscles across his back, his stifles, gaskins, hocks and he was up and over and galloping off to the next one.
Behind him, eight foes tried to do the same. And mostly failed.
Why Timonium? Hey, it’s a question. Especially when you start to think about most of the other venues for North America’s public Thoroughbred auctions – Lexington, Saratoga, Ocala, Gulfstream Park, Del Mar and so on.
Good old Timonium would not win anyone’s glitz and glamour contest, nor would the sales pavilion next to a McDonald’s capture the imagination of an equine artist or resident historian. But, there it is – as important a cog in the Thoroughbred sales engine as the Humphrey S. Finney pavilion, Newtown Paddocks or that weathervane atop the Keeneland pavilion. Never is that more evident than in May, when the 2-year-olds arrive. Fasig-Tipton’s Midlantic sale runs May 21-22, with public workouts May 15-17. The catalog includes 600 horses, up 25 over last year and pretty much the maximum for the barn area and racetrack.
PO Box 427
Timonium, MD 21093
410-252-2100
