‘Which part of Ireland are you from?’ George asked.
‘From the south, sir,’ I said. ‘County Cork.’
‘My mother’s father was Irish.’
I hadn’t spotted that in any of my research.
‘He came from a bit further north. From Thurles in County Tipperary.’
‘I know it,’ I said. ‘I went to the racecourse there as a kid.’
‘I’ve never been able to get there myself,’ George said. ‘Maybe one day.’
I breathed a small silent sigh of relief. I hadn’t been there either.
I stood and listened as the two men turned their attention to Paddleboat.
‘He ran Thursday in a seven-eighths-mile, fifteen-grand claimer,’ Charlie said. ‘Finished sixth of eight. Never in with a chance and not claimed.’
‘Is he on Clen?’ George asked.
‘Has been,’ Charlie replied. ‘Came off it to go to the track.’
‘Put him back on it. Up the dose.’
Charlie wrote something down in a notebook.
‘If he shows no improvement soon,’ George went on, ‘we’ll have to get rid of him — maybe in an even lower claimer. Ship him down to Philly Park if necessary.’
Unlike in the UK, claiming races made up the bulk of contests at US racetracks. Before the start, any horse in the race could be claimed by a new owner for a fixed amount as determined by the race conditions. Title in the horse was transferred as the starting gates opened, although the former owner was entitled to any purse-money earned in that particular race.
It would clearly not be sensible to run a really good horse in a race in which the claim figure was very low. The horse would be sure to be claimed by a new owner and, even if it won the purse, the original owner would lose a valuable animal for a fraction of its true worth.
However, if a horse was valued around the claim figure then, if it were claimed, the original owner would recover his initial investment, plus he has the chance of picking up a substantial purse on top if it won the race.
In this way, racetracks used claiming races to encourage horses of roughly equal value, and hence of a comparable standard, to race against one another. This made the racing more competitive and thus boosted the ‘handle’, the total sum of money wagered by the public. The handle was what ultimately determined the tracks’ income, which was what they really only cared about. Each day’s programme would have claiming races with a range of claim amounts and horses were entered accordingly.
Claiming races were popular with some owners but usually less so with the trainers, as they had little idea if a horse that was in their care in the morning would be residing in someone else’s barn come evening.
Not that all horses were entered in claimers. The top-class ones, those that contested the major stakes races, never had their ownership so easily changed, but for the journeyman horses, those that made up the majority of the backside population at Belmont Park, they lived a merry-go-round life in the barns, being repeatedly claimed by new owners and sent to different trainers.
Paddleboat was clearly not going to remain in Raworth’s barn for much longer. If a new owner didn’t claim him soon, I feared he’d be off to the knacker. However, I was much more interested in what drugs George was planning to give him in the interim.
Clen was short for clenbuterol, a drug used extensively in certain parts of the world to treat asthma in humans but also as a decongestant to help clear an unwanted build-up of mucus from a horse’s respiratory tract.
But I could hear Paddleboat’s airways. They were as clear as a bell — not even a hint of a wheeze.
I’d once done some research on clenbuterol for the BHA. Although not in fact a steroid, it had similar anabolic effects in horses, such that it helped to build muscle. It was rumoured to have been widely used in US training barns for many years almost on a daily basis, like a feed supplement. Only recently had new regulations been introduced requiring that clenbuterol use be suspended at least fourteen days prior to racing.
‘See to it he also gets a five-millilitre shot of HA in each hock joint and five hundred milligrams of Adequan into his hindquarters,’ George said to Charlie, who wrote again in his notebook.
HA is hyaluronic acid, a component of synovial fluid found naturally in healthy joints, while Adequan is an osteoarthritis drug. Both are used for the treatment of degenerative joint disease, something that really shouldn’t affect a horse that was only four years old. Paddleboat’s future prospects were looking worse by the minute.
George and Charlie moved out into the shedrow.
I quickly closed the stall door and moved on to my next horse, a five-year-old gelding called Debenture. The trainer and his assistant repeated the process of feeling his legs and discussing his future.
‘He’s still getting the vitamin shots,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve given him two already this week and I’ll do one more tomorrow. They should set him up well for the Spring Handicap.’
‘Good,’ George said, before moving back out into the shedrow and on to the next horse.
And so on, down the full line of stalls.
When the inspections of my four horses were complete, I returned to each one in turn, replacing the protective pads and bandages on their legs and removing their halters.
George Raworth and Charlie Hern were still on their tour when I’d finished, so I walked round the shedrow towards Stall 17, which was at the other end of the barn, next to the office.
Stall 17 was the home of the barn star.
Fire Point had his head out over the half-door and he seemed to be taking a special interest in everything around him. Horsemen often talk about a horse having an intelligent head, by which they mean it is broad with eyes set far apart, a straight profile with ample nostrils. Fire Point’s head was none of those things. It was narrow, slightly dished, and with a small muzzle. However, his eyes were bright and alert.
‘Wonderful, isn’t he?’ said a voice behind me. I turned. It was Keith. ‘I love redheads,’ he said. ‘He’s like a reincarnated Secretariat.’
It was quite a statement. It was true that both Fire Point and Secretariat were chestnuts, but Secretariat was a legend in racing. Big Red, as he had been nicknamed, didn’t just capture the 1973 Triple Crown, he destroyed it, completing his trio of wins with an astonishing 31-length victory in the Belmont Stakes, a feat so extraordinary that it reportedly made those watching it cry.
And now, more than forty years later, Secretariat still held the record times for all three of the Triple Crown legs. He had been quite a horse, maybe the best ever.
I went over to stroke Fire Point but Keith put a hand out to stop me.
‘Mr Raworth doesn’t like anyone going near him. Other than me, that is. I look after him.’
I remembered that it had been Keith I had seen leading Fire Point over from the barns before the Kentucky Derby. Now he looked at the horse almost in awe. Certainly in adoration.
When the trainer’s tour of the barn was over, the grooms lined up at the feed store for Charlie Hern to issue the correct amount of concentrated mixed horse nuts for each animal.
As a general rule, racehorses eat one pound in weight of mixed feed for every hand high they stand at their withers. Most Thoroughbreds are around sixteen to seventeen hands high so they eat sixteen to seventeen pounds a day, plus some hay for fibre.
‘Paddleboat,’ I said, getting to the head of the line.
Charlie scooped two large measures of nuts from the feed bin into a black plastic bucket with a large number ‘1’ painted on the side in white. He then poured some thick syrup onto the food from a stubby brown glass bottle with a white label.
The syrup contained the clenbuterol — it said so on the label. Next, he measured more feed into the buckets marked 2, 3 and 4, for my other horses.