SHUG

[high roller]

Is it fair to ask - why can\'t all trainer\'s be like Shug? Guy never gets a positive - takes care of business. Anyone care to speculate how his regimen might be different than T.A.P. in regard to even all the legal X-tra\'s?

[shanahan]

high roller Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is it fair to ask - why can\'t all trainer\'s be
> like Shug? Guy never gets a positive - takes care
> of business. Anyone care to speculate how his
> regimen might be different than T.A.P. in regard
> to even all the legal X-tra\'s?


Glad to.  Does not rush the young horses at all.  They grow at their pace.  I think he may be, in the jocks mind, the most sound horses to ride.  I was to
D a similar story yesterday about Al Stall FWIW.
Easter afternoon is quite boring, glad the board is perking up.

[richiebee]

In a word, homebreds. Shug does not train young horses run through the pinhook/2YO
in training sale grind. Also trains horse for owners who, while too snooty for Miff,
understand horses and understand the game.

[magicnight]

\"Also trains horse for owners who, while too snooty for Miff, understand horses and understand the game.\"

No knocks on Shug, but, isn\'t the Phipps family just another Andrew Carnegie, minus the libraries and the university?

In terms of \"old money / horse people\" there was Paul Mellon and a long way back to second place.

[richiebee]

Anyone growing up going to the races in NY remembers Paul Mellon and his endless
string of classy turf runners trained by MacK Miller.

Unfortunately, the Mellon name has been tarnished by his widow\'s contributions to
philanderer - in - chief John Edwards...

[FrankD.]

A funny Paul Mellon story:

In my misguided youth in an effort to beat the races I thought by hanging out at Oaklahoma in the morning with my older clocker friend and getting to know as many backstretch folks as possible I would know things that no one else did!!!!!

From age 16-22 or so I lived up there mornings, tried to seduce as many female grooms, hot walkers and excercise riders as I could as well as becoming a known face around the track. I lost more money on hot first time starters, horses that couldn\'t lose and would routinely get touted by as many as 3-4 outfits in th same race that all were betting their lock.

I had a friend at the time who groomed for Mack Miller and I would get all their hotties. This is the late 70\'s and early 80\'s and was a meet that Paul Mellon wanted to win races and major stakes at for sure and did in bunches.

Mr. Miller was a southern gentlemen to the max,was very approachable and I enjoyed a quick chat with him from time to time. He had a can\'t lose Rokeby firster per my friend and I was hell bent on putting down my entire $200 bankroll at the time.

This is back in the day when they saddled under the trees before the paddock so I followed Paul Mellon one of the richest men in the world to the $50 window on the left as you entered the clubhouse and watched as he bought 1 $50 ticket on his horse.

What a cheap skate, how did this guy make his money,he must not know his horse can\'t lose.I puffed out my chest, stepped to the window and bet my 200 on the 5/2 can\'t lose firster. The horse won by open lengths paid $7.40 or $7.80 and for 2 minutes at least thought I had more money in my pocket than Paul Mellon did.

Frank D.

[BH]

Rodney O\'Domski,a dear friend gone 11 years now, did farrier work for Shug on the 2 year-olds in training in Camden(?), South Carolina.

He told me of a time when Shug was down to see the youngsters work while Rodney was there. Shug told Rodney to take a break and come down to the track with him to watch some breezes.

Rodney said Shug gave very clear instructions to the exercise riders that he was only looking for 38s or so for 3/8s works, 51s for halves.

Breeze after breeze, riders were going in 36s and 48s on the training track, fooled by the ease with which the horses were doing their works.

When finished with the breezes, Rodney and Shug walked back to Shug\'s car and upon arriving, Rodney said Shug threw his stopwatch in the front seat, laughed and said to Rodney,

\"How do you beat these f***ing horses!?\"

True story.

[Edgorman]

Great story.  But I am confused about the \"hotties\" and your priorities.

[magicnight]

Great story, Frank. You probably did have an edge in cash that day, if not in credit.

Do you remember what year they put the fences up around the paddock? I remember my first visit to the Spa was \"pre-fences\", but I can\'t remember when that was.

[magicnight]

Richie, you are really rocking that curmudgeon thing today!

Even if I believed that the sins of the widow should be visited upon the deceased, ol\' Bunny would have to do a lot more than fund some philandering politician to tarnish the Mellon silver.

Just a few examples: The National Gallery of Art, both the original building and I.M. Pei\'s 1978 expansion; roughly 1,000 works donated to said museum; funding for significant portions of both the Cape Cod and Cape Hattaras National Seashores; significant funding for the Grayson Research Center. There\'s a lot more.

The only owner to win the Kentucky Derby (Sea Hero), the Epsom Derby, and the Arc (Mill Reef, a 3rd generation homebred). Won Horse of the year in consecutive years with two different horses (Arts and Letters & Fort Marcy). Donated Sea Hero\'s million dollar bonus to Grayson. That statue of Secretariat in the Belmont paddock? Yep.

And in 1967 he advised the most recent graduates of Pittsburgh\'s Carnegie Institute of Technology thusly:

\'\'There is no intellectual or emotional substitute for the authentic, the original, the unique masterpiece.\'\'

Then he went further: \'\'Just as there is no substitute for original works of art, there is no substitute for the world of direct sensual experience.\'\' Among them he listed the sound of birds, the smell of flowers, the taste of \'\'the evening\'s first cold and dry martini\'\' ...

Tell me, deep down, Mellon wasn\'t one of us.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/03/books/paul-mellon-patrician-champion-of-art-and-national-gallery-dies.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

[richiebee]

The mere mention of the great Mellon turf horse Fort Marcy brings to mind a story
told to me by an old gambling buddy. More than anything else, it is a story about
fathers and sons.

Its 1971, and my friend Jeff is 16. Since these things tend to be hereditary, Jeff
is going to the track for the first time with his dad. Jeff\'s dad liked to play
chalk, heavily, and the chalk in the feature (the Bowling Green Handicap) that day
was Fort Marcy. According to Jeff, his dad went for the whole chunk on Fort Marcy;
this was a little before my time but it is entirely possible that WPS wagering was
the only wagering offered at NYRA at the time. Almost as an afterthought, Jeff\'s
dad gave him $5 to bet on whoever he wanted to. Jeff bet his $5 on the very classy
turf mare Drumtop.

The way Jeff tells the story is probably better than the truth. Jeff recalls being
despondent as Drumtop dropped back in the field (Jeff telling the story is fun,
because he does a pretty good Fred Capossela imitation). Jeff describes Drumtop
coming alive in the stretch, and Jeff booting him home for all he was worth. (I
have seen this act from Jeff countless times...screaming, fingers snapping,
veins nearly bursting,flailing the program like a whip, etc. Highly likely that he
was screaming right in his dad\'s ear as Drumtop rallied for the win.) Jeff cashed
his $5 win bet (and the odds could not have been that high, because research shows
that Drumtop had just beaten Fort Marcy at Hialeah). Jeff\'s dad lost the whole
chunk. The silence on the ride home was significant.

Jeff never went to the races with his dad again, though 5 years after Drumtop\'s
victory they almost ran into each other at Belmont, except that Jeff\'s dad saw his
son and walked quickly in the other direction.

More Mellon: Drumtop ended up in the Mellon/ Rokeby broodmare band in Virginia,
(if you cant beat em, buy em) producing Topsider, who I believe held the Saratoga
track record at 6-1/2 furlongs for a few years.

Magic, the temptation to engage in some word play involving the words
\"philanthropist\" and \"philanderer\" is certainly there, but I could never outdo a
former co worker who called his dad a \"philaunderer\", meaning that he enjoyed
flirting with women at the neighborhood laundromat.

[FrankD.]

Bob,

I\'ve been searching everywhere for the exact year; thinking for the 150th anniversary this year there would be lots of historical stuff out there. To the best of my recollection I want to say 1976 or so maybe 1978.

I\'ve been going since 1973 as my Grandfather took a very interested soon to be 15 year old to see the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years Secretariat run in the Whitney. He saw 10 of the 11 Triple Crown winners and if you want to be precise all 11 as Sir Barton was buried at the Sanford Farm in Amsterdam so we saw his head stone. Between us we have missed one Travers since 1926 and I was actually at the track that day but had to leave before the race to attend a family function. Before he died he made me promise that we would get 100 Travers between us; 85 down, 15 to go.

In the spirt of the Spa\'s 150th birthday and my 40th anniversary this year I will make a gallant effort to attend all 40 days of the meet. I\'ve had many 24 for 24 years but since they have gone to 40 days, I\'m usually around 30 or so.

Frank D.

[richiebee]

Frank:

The first two years I took the indirect route from NYC to school in St. Louis via
the Spa (77 and 78) there were no fences around the saddling trees.

My recollection is in 82, the year there was a lot of bad weather downstate and they
ran 28 straight days at the Spa, I\'m pretty sure there were still no fences. (I
worked up there that year, 28 for 28 perfect attendance, saw a historic Travers
where three separate classic winners came together (Gato/Aloma/Conquistador) only to
be beaten by Runaway Groom).

Could be wrong but I would imagine NYRA\'s attorneys and insurance underwriters
prevailed and the fences were constructed sometime in the mid 80s.

[FrankD.]

Richie,

As many of us 50 plus T-generates would agree; the 70\'s and early 80\'s were a bit blurry!  

[miff]

Shug,on realizing that Sunday Silence was trained by a genius \"Gotta deal with fking Whittingham too?\"