Post- time
Horse lover's project saves retired racers from slaughterhouse
GEORGETOWN, Ky. - It all started with a shovel and a pile of manure at Suffolk Downs, circa 1997.
Michael Blowen, the eclectic movie critic of the Boston Globe, was in love with the horses. He wanted to learn everything about them, so that he might cash in more tickets. He begged legendary trainer Carlos Figueroa for a job on the backstretch. Blowen expected to be paid. Figueroa looked shocked.
"You are on scholarship to Figueroa University," said the man known as the King of the Fairs for his dominance at New England traveling fairs. Figueroa's first words of wisdom? "Lie, cheat, and steal."
Blowen shoveled and learned. He owned a claiming horse or two with friends, but he also watched as deadbeat horses were loaded onto the truck to slaughterhouses.
"They smelled death," he says. "They knew where they were going."
Their screams haunted him.
So he retired from the newspaper and started rescuing horses, initially for the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.
"I was at Rockingham, and there was room on the truck to save one more horse," Blowen remembers. "There was this old horse I wanted and I told Carlos we had a check for $250 for him. But Carlos said no, the horse still had something left in him. So I said, 'Carlos I'll give you the check for $250 and then add $500 of my own cash.' Carlos said OK."
The horse was driven away and Carlos asked for his cash.
Only there was no cash.
"I said, 'Carlos, remember: Lie, cheat and steal.' "
Now the 60-year-old Blowen does nothing but good deeds. In 2002, he moved to Kentucky and founded Old Friends, a nonprofit organization that rescues retired thoroughbreds. He gives them a loving home on a picture-perfect 52-acre farm. It is the only retirement farm in the United States that accepts stallions.
"This place," says Hall of Fame jockey Chris McCarron, who lives nearby, "is heaven for horses."
The formation of Old Friends can be traced to the story of Ferdinand, who won the 1986 Kentucky Derby and was sent to stud in Japan, but was eventually slaughtered there.
The international outcry that ensued helped Blowen and Old Friends make new friends. He persuaded a Kentucky bank to lend him $1 million to buy Dream Chase Farm. His mother-in-law co-signed a loan to help him rescue more thoroughbreds.
So he built the paddocks, pampered the horses, and just as in "Field of Dreams," people came; some 20,000 horse racing fans visited last year. Unlike other farms - Cigar is stabled just down the road at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington - visitors are encouraged to pet the horses. A small gift shop shows the horses' greatest races on video.
"We don't charge admission,' says Blowen. "We don't even ask people for money. We leave it up to them."
Old Friends has operating expenses of nearly a half-million dollars a year.
To raise money, they sell $100 shares of their horses. Old pals Jack Nicholson, Albert Brooks, and Angelica Huston have hand-sketched horse portraits on the labels of a special edition wine. McCarron autographed 2,640 souvenir bottles of Kentucky Ale aged in wooden bourbon casks with more kick than Street Sense had in last year's Kentucky Derby.
They have rescued five horses from Japan, where the return air fare is $18,000, the same amount Blowen grossed in 2003.
In a nice touch, Old Friends rescued the great Ferdinand's son, Bull inthe Heather. Its first horse, the aptly named Narrow Escape, was acquired in 2004. She was the daughter of Exceller, who beat two Triple Crown winners (Seattle Slew and Affirmed) in the
The Eagle Scouts of Woodford (Ky.) County built a running shed and Louisville Slugger made a special edition commemorative wood bat to help Old Friends get War Emblem back from Japan.
There's even a movie star on the farm. Popcorn Deelites was one of eight horses who played Seabiscuit in the Academy Award-nominated movie. Pops - as Blowen calls him - is in every scene where Seabiscuit breaks from the gate. But he's not the only star.
"Our 29 residents earned more than $30 million at the racetrack, and if you count their offspring, they've generated a half a billion dollars in revenue for the horse racing business," says Blowen. "The stallions are the stars, and when they were done breeding, no one knew what to do with them."
So Blowen brought them to Dream Chase Farm. "Actually, it's a Canyon Ranch for horses," he says with a laugh.
But stallions need separate paddocks because of their aggressive nature. Some of these old horses, opponents 15 years ago, still race each other. With a fence between them, Kiri's Clown and Awad still compete as they did at Saratoga 1995. Sometimes their grunts even sound like trash talk. Blowen watches them in awe.
"I think of it like having Michael Jordan and Larry Bird in your yard," he says.
Taking breeders to task
It's 6:45 a.m., and Blowen is more excited than usual.A racehorse named Williamstown, a son of Seattle Slew who was named after the Western Massachusetts town, is en route from the University of Minnesota.
"He set the track record for 1 mile at Belmont," Blowen says. "That record held for 10 years."
After his retirement, Williamstown was standing at stud in Iowa, became infertile, and was shipped to the University of Minnesota's equine program.
"He apparently didn't fit their program and they signed a euthanasia order on him," says Blowen.
But a horse-loving insurance agent called Old Friends instead.
When Williamstown arrives, Blowen assembles a volunteer team of a veterinarian, blacksmiths, and a halter man to aid him.
"He looks 200 pounds light," says veterinarian Doug Byars. "He needs some Kentucky groceries."
Some other Old Friends residents used to look that way. Taylor's Special, who won more than $1 million in purses, was found abandoned, painfully thin, and surviving on rainwater on a Washington state farm. Old Friends rescued him but he died last year at age 25.
Blowen says breeders have to bear some responsibility for the plight of these older horses.
"The breeders shouldn't be allowed to continue breeding as many horses as they do," says Blowen, an unpopular stance in the horse capital of the world, where breeding is a multibillion-dollar business. "There's around 36,000 thoroughbred horses bred each year and three years later one of them wins the Derby. We have to treat them better."
Blowen and Byars took their message to the State House last month to speak before the Joint Committee on horse farms about horse abandonment.
"This problem is going to get larger and larger, " Blowen told the legislators, who are planning to visit Old Friends. "These are great athletes that deserve to be retired with the dignity they deserve. The tracks should have a fund put aside - like Social Security or a 401K - for these horses."
Things are changing at a gallop's pace. The last three horse-slaughtering plants operating in Texas and Illinois have been shut down. The American Horse Slaughter Act, which would prevent the transport of horses to Mexico and Canada, is pending in the Senate.
And Blowen's work isn't about saving just the "star" horses. He says not every Old Friends horse is a winner.
Swan's Way, for example, earned just $63,000 in 13 years.
"He filled out a lot of cards, he was a real working horse at Suffolk Down," says Blowen, adding that the father of Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein, Leslie, paid his transport.
Blowen has a special bond with Ogygian, one of five horses rescued from Japan who is blind in one eye.
"He was a superstar, he won seven of his first eight starts," says Blowen. "If he didn't get hurt, we'd be talking about him with the same respect we do to Secretariat. He's a lot of fun to play with."
Other horses arrive with bad reputations. Take Ruhlmann, who once won a million dollars before 100,000 fans at Santa Anita.
"We were told that Ruhlmann was the orneriest and meanest horse that ever lived," says Blowen, patting the stallion's back. "If you did something he didn't like, he'd take a chunk out of you.
"One day the groom got sick of it and took him to his stall and apparently tried to teach him a lesson by showing him who was boss. For a couple of weeks Ruhlmann was like a big ol' puppy dog.
"Then one day when the groom was bringing him back to the stall, Ruhlmann looked around and there was nobody else around. So Ruhlmann reached down and tore his testicles off. And then he just stood there. He didn't run away or anything.
"We are very careful around Ruhlmann. He's a very nice horse now. As long as we do exactly what he wants, exactly when he says so."
Special memory
Blowen still gets misty-eyed talking about Precisionist, a Hall of Fame stallion buried in his backyard. He keeps his halter on the mantelpiece, next to a Maltese falcon given to him by Academy Award-winning director John Huston."I really respected [Precisionist]," says Blowen. "He was spectacular-looking. He nipped at me if I didn't do things fast enough. He would tell me what he wanted, whether it be to sit around and be hand-grazed or go to the paddocks and eat carrots."
Precisionist spent his last days battling sinus cancer.
"His nose had to be cleared out from blood clots," Blowen says. "I spent a lot of time sleeping out in the barn with him. I felt totally honored that I had that experience."
He even told Blowen when he wanted to die.
"He always ate his carrots," Blowen remembers. "One night he looked at me, looked down at his carrots, and looked out the window. He was ready. The next day we had a bulldozer dig a 9-foot-deep hole and he walked right over to it.
"The great champions were very, very intelligent."
At a graveside memorial service, Blowen couldn't even speak.
"He was all in tears," according to equine writer Bill Mooney.
The other horses also seemed to know what had happened. Everything was silent and sad. But then the bugler, in full dress, played the effervescent "Call to Post." The old horses stirred and even started galloping. Just like the glory days.
"It was a nice touch," says Blowen. "It picked everybody up. Everybody smiled."
Visitors also smile when Blowen has footraces against his famous racehorses. He never wins, and it never matters.
"Heaven is no better than this," Blowen contends. "I wouldn't trade this for anything. This is more fun than I've ever had in my entire life." 