Twenty-four hours after talking up his new stallion Wicked Strong and the possibilities of big crops of Kentucky-sired racehorses coming along to bolster interest, Dr. Bill Solomon made a phone call.
“How about that?”
Rodney Eckenrode considers Equistar Training and Breeding a work in progress.
The full-service operation in the southeastern Pennsylvania township of Annville not far from Penn National Race Course opened its doors in 2004 and heads into the 2021 breeding season as one of the Keystone State’s top stud farms. Equistar stands five stallions, including Pennsylvania legend Smarty Jones, and offers a multitude of services from foaling and boarding to breaking, training and layups.
The unraced Imagining 2-year-old in the barn trained so well last fall that trainer Butch Reid called Grace Merryman at Anchor and Hope Farm. “Have I got good news for you,” Reid said. “This horse can run. Don’t give up on that stallion.”
Kenny McPeek held the hose in one hand, the shank in the other. Water splished and splashed this way and that. As her trainer talked and unwrapped mint after mint, Swiss Skydiver just stood there, like a lead pony, somebody’s foxhunter, maybe a veteran turf horse trying to make one more start before the autumn weather went the wrong way.
Two minutes to post in the Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash Stakes-G3 on Preakness Day at Pimlico and Damon Dilodovico is busy, really busy. A military honor guard is coming through the paddock with the Woodlawn Vase – one of the most valuable trophies in sports with an estimated replacement value of $4 million – and Dilodovico is at least partly responsible for the timing of the live television show going out to millions. He gets instructions through an earpiece, relays updates through a microphone. The honor guard, and the 30-pound trophy are early. Dilodovico tells them to wait, organizes a table (a grateful soldier shakes out his arms) and lets his bosses know it’s all under control.
Everything is different. If 2020 had a theme – in racing, the country, the world, life in general – that would be it. Going to the grocery store requires a face mask and hand sanitizer. School parking lots became drive-through virus-testing facilities. The NBA played its playoff games at Disney World. The World Series followed a 60-game baseball season.
The Preakness will forever be the most famous Thoroughbred race in Maryland, but if you’re looking to find Maryland’s Day at the Races you’d be wise to wait until autumn. The Maryland Million – with its crowded outdoor spaces, crisp air, free hats, overflowing hospitality tents and competitive (if humbler) horses – stands up as the signature day for an industry that dates to the state’s earliest days.
From an outside perspective, Wet Your Whistle’s victory in the Karl Boyes Stakes at Presque Isle Downs Aug. 17 was just another triumph. Another stakes win, another $45,000 added to his earnings and another return to the winner’s circle for owner David Palmer and trainer Mike Trombetta. If anyone noticed the nearly 11-month gap between his final start last season and his return as a 5-year-old, they probably shrugged it off as another effect of the coronavirus pandemic.
Columbia, Md., a planned community conceived, designed and developed by James W. Rouse in the 1960s, occupies land that belonged to another man with a dream.
Walter Edgar’s passion, equally shared by his wife Margaret, was to build a Thoroughbred breeding operation with an emphasis on quality.
