HERE'S TO MY LITTLE HERO

An essay by Kaitlin Haughey

I can’t exactly pinpoint when I fell in love with racing. Maybe it was when I saw owner’s children in the paddock at Saratoga, and wished I could be in their shoes. It could have been after my parents bought our very first horse, a cheap claimer named Marching Time, when I saw him in a dark stall in Laurel, MD and realized he was ours. Or maybe when we won our first race with a horse named Gypsy Outfit on a blistering spring day at Pimlico, the day I first tasted what being the best felt like. It could have been any of these.

Almost every moment that my family has gone through while trying to survive and thrive in this industry is etched into my memory; my mother sitting at the kitchen table designing our silks, choosing a stable name that would represent each of the three members of our family (PTK, Paula, Tom, and Kaitlin,) and the pouring of resources into a game that is sometimes unforgiving, if not downright cruel, to the people who love it most.

Horse racing is memorable because of its great moments, and the horses and people who help make them happen. It survives, however, because of the small moments. As I write this, in the midst of watching horses such as Rachel Alexandra make history, it is clear what small moment captured my heart. It came with the arrival of a gangly, plain, and awkward brown filly, which we named Andrea’s Pic.

Andrea had mediocre breeding at best. She was the result of a broodmare named Timely’s Pic, a horse my parents had claimed and had a great sentimental attachment to. In those days, and occasionally today, we did not keep horses strictly because of their ability. We kept them because we loved them and couldn’t imagine life without them. Timely was such a horse. My parents chose to breed her to Housebuster, a stallion based in Virginia at the time and stood for a measly $5,000. He was a brilliant racehorse who, like many, did not quite live up to the expectations set for him at stud.

The result of this mating was a plain bay filly. Like other moments that stand out from our time in this business, I remember with great detail the first time I saw Andrea. She was in the smallest paddock at Sue and Steve Quick’s St. Omer’s Farm in Forest Hill, MD. Timely and Andrea were the only ones in the paddock, which was used to give the babies a feel of the great outdoors and also made it easy to keep an eye on them.

It was an overcast day, but instead of being muddy, the lush green fields stood in stark contrast to the steel gray sky. Like her mother, Andrea had no white on her, save for some spots around two coronet bands. She was utterly unimpressive, except perhaps for her eyes. She had her mother’s deep, soulful eyes, the kind that make you wonder if this horse is going to be a step ahead of you at every turn.

I would be lying to you if I said I knew she had talent from day one. She was too unremarkable looking for that. The only person who may have known was the Quick’s farm manager, Andrea Cumberland, for whom Andrea was named. The human Andrea had a feeling about this filly from the beginning. The rest of us would just wait to see what happened.

For most of her training, Andrea would continue to fly under the radar. Though her trainer, Rodney Jenkins, speculated that she might have talent, he also saddled her with such unfortunate terms as “distance limitation” and “flightiness.” There was truth to these labels; Andrea would never run in a race over seven furlongs. She could be nervous at times, quirky in her running style. Over time however, her aptitude for running shorter distances became more of a specialty than a limitation. Her quirky way of making her own choices during a race became recognized as supreme intelligence rather than flightiness. As we learned about her, we also learned from her.

Andrea never did more or less than what was expected of her. As her talent began to emerge and she began to rise through the ranks in the Mid-Atlantic, we became more nervous with every start. Concerns about whether she would be able to step it up and win ran rampant, and each race she ran found my family sitting spellbound, with foots tapping and fingers crossed. Nearly every time, she showed us that we had no reason to worry. She had it under control.

My favorite race of Andrea’s was not one of her stakes wins, not her first win, and not when she was horribly interfered with in a difficult allowance race at Laurel Park and still had the pure guts to come in second by merely a length. My favorite race was a small but difficult allowance race, also run at Laurel Park. It was soon after the end of the Colonial Downs racing meet in New Kent, VA, during which Andrea had excelled over the competition, winning two stakes races. She, and PTK, was returning to her home base of Maryland. Prior to the race, Andrea received no respect, going off at long odds. It seemed that as thrilling as her stakes victories in Virginia were to us, they meant little to the Maryland racing circuit.

Well into the stretch, Andrea pulled out what had become her trademark move; dropping low to the ground, her belly almost skimming the turf, and picking off runners one by one like a bulldozer. Dane Kobiskie, the only jockey that ever won on her, always said she had a very short, 3/16 of a mile run, and you couldn’t waste it or use it too soon. Although it was short, it was lethal, as it proved to be that day. Andrea bulldozed past the competition, winning only by a neck, but validating her wins in Virginia. All in all, it was a very small moment; no trophy was presented and no interview given; it was simply one of the single greatest rides my family has had thus far.

At the end of her career, Andrea had won $173,821, more than thirty times what we had paid for her stud fee. But it was not how much she won, which, when compared to truly great racehorses, is not much. And it was not the races she won, which in the grand scheme of racing are inconsequential. What made her great was the elusive trait that horsemen drone on about for hours, but rarely ever find: heart.

Andrea taught all of us to love racing, to take the highs with the lows, to remain patient, and not to take one second for granted. Her career spanned a mere three and a half years, a period of time spiked with precious victories and small triumphs. Perhaps the most important thing she was able to teach me was to live in the moment. Horse racing is not carried by the big figures you see on television. The little people carry it, and, more importantly, the horses like Andrea, who give of themselves and provide the people involved with them with small moments of immeasurable joy.

At times, our industry gets so caught up in looking for the next big thing, we forget to look at, and thank, our little heroes and the small moments that truly make this amazing sport go round. If horse racing is to live on, we must show the world how we love our equine stars, both big and small. We can never forget that they are the reason we are here at all.

So thank you Andrea, for all the small moments. Here’s to you, my little hero.