One Ride is Plenty, Thanks

Next week are the OBS Fall Mixed Sales in Ocala, and Hobeau Farm is listed as dispersing their breeding stock. There aren't many horses, and it's hard to believe that such a massive breeding and racing operation can be reduced down to this tiny dozen or so band of weanlings, yearlings, and broodmares.

Jack Dreyfus started Hobeau in the sixties. Dreyfus (yes, the Dreyfus of Dreyfus Funds) created an empire of 300 Thoroughbreds galloping across 1800 acres of northwestern Marion County. He bred Onion, and Prove Out, both of whom would defeat Secretariat in major stakes races; another horse would defeat Kelso, and he had a respected sprinter in the more recent Kelly Kip.

In the broodmare band that his estate is selling - Mr. Dreyfus died in the spring - is the mare Miss Shoplifter, dam of Florida sire Put It Back. We're fans of Put It Back and we're looking forward to seeing her in person.

When you are rich enough, you can be as eccentric as you please, and so Hobeau Farm had appalling sky-blue post-and-rail fences surrounding the whole astonishing acreage. You could see them from multiple roadsides, and it used to throw my bearings off - if that’s Hobeau Farm, I must be way off my route. Hobeau is clear over on the other side! That is how big the place was.

When I drove to Lambholm South a few years ago to look at mares, I wasn't sure where it was. When I drove in the farm lane, I thought the barns looked familiar. When I pulled up at the office, I saw, to my astonishment, the iconic blue fencing straggling under the oak trees. In my absence, Hobeau had been sold, renamed, and refenced - but they'd left some of the blue post-and-rail fencing, in tribute to this mighty Ocala institution.

I rode there just one morning, in 2001. I rode in Ariats and half-chaps, which got me some looks everywhere I went, but hey - it was what I was used to, and I saw no reason to change after ten years just because it wasn’t the style the race trackers affected. There was one wiry little man, with a sharp Boston accent that would raise blisters on your skin, and one good-looking young groom, as metro and urbane as the rider was rough-edged and blue-collar.

The barn was an enclosed, with covered, windowed shedrows and a center aisle, like you might find up north. It was ill-designed for hot Florida days, too much wood standing in the way of the breezes that the hill-tops ought to attract. Most of the Ocala training barns have open shedrows, begging for the slightest breath of wind on a still August morning.

After a rough look up and down from the Boston jockey, and a cheery good morning from the groom, I went into the tack room and found a battered old exercise saddle. The stirrup irons had no pads, and no latex, just plain aluminum grips. I went to the jockey.

“Do we have any latex wraps?” I asked.

“Latex?” He looked at me, perplexed. “Whaddya want latex for?”

“The stirrups,” I said, annoyed. Who didn’t put latex on their stirrup irons? I learned that in eventing, for heaven’s sakes. From steeplechase riders, thank you very much. I didn’t like being talked down to at 18. I was very insecure, and being alone with a grizzled old jockey wasn’t doing a lot for my self-confidence anyway. I knew I’d screw something up.

He evidently had never in his life heard of putting latex on stirrup irons, which to this day I find somewhat hard to believe, and waved me away. I walked back to my first horse in a huff. The horse wasn’t thrilled to see me, but I knocked the dirt off gently and then tacked up slowly and thoughtfully. Too slowly: the old jockey was riding by. “Let’s go, let’s go,” he said excitedly, waving his whip around his mount’s ears.

I gave the girth one more hole, leaving it loose enough to not upset the long yearling, and then vaulted into the saddle. Or so I meant to. At the other stables I’d ridden at, the exercise riders were expected to mount by themselves, and the horses were accustomed to this.

Evidently here, even with one groom for twenty horses, the groom still gave a leg-up.

I found this out after I got up from the corner of the stall where I’d landed, brushed the shavings off my vest and behind, and straightened my saddle. The groom was standing in the doorway. “You didn’t wait for a leg-up,” he said, amused. “What were you thinking?”

“Jerry Bailey didn’t give leg-ups,” I muttered, and put my hands on the pommel and saddle, proferring my knee for him to bounce up with cupped hands. The horse stood beautifully for him, and, ducking under the low frame of the door, out I rode.

The filly danced down the steep hill after the jockey and his colt; he did not seem predisposed to wait for me, and I could see that the annoying chivalry that accompanied many mornings at racing stables would not be present here - perhaps I would find that it wasn’t so annoying after all, to be waited upon and worried about, as a delicate little female in a big scary man’s world, on big scary Thoroughbreds! I wasn’t enjoying the jog down the hill, the filly’s head straight up, her ears framing my vision, headed towards the jock who blithely sat his colt with his legs dangling, not a care in the world.

And the stirrups were already giving me grief as well. I had no grip at all on the slippery aluminum and it was worrisome trying to keep my foot shoved home while we slid and stumbled on the wet turf. I started to feel afraid of the gallop ahead.

The training track at the time sat down in the cup of a valley, with woods along the far turn and backstretch, and in the infield. You could leave a trainer at the gate, gallop around the backstretch, disappear from view, and if anything happened to you back there, the trainer wouldn’t know until the horse arrived home again, riderless.

I had only ridden under the careful eyes of progressive trainers, who took things slowly with their yearlings, but there was no trainer here, only the nameless old jockey, and as soon our horses hooves touched the sand of the track he was gone like a flash, galloping the colt flat out. I’d never gone so fast in my life. I tried to keep my filly down to a decent hand-gallop, in deference to her age, and lack of warm-up, and common sense, and everything everyone had ever taught me, but he turned his head and shouted, “COME ON! CATCH UP NOW!”

So I shook out the reins, and the filly leapt forward and took me around the track at a breakneck speed, breezing when she should have been cantering. I’d already marked this entire farm as a bad job, and wasn’t really planning on riding another horse, when we came around the first turn. There in the corner, in the worst possible spot, was a second gate in the fence, and a pathway coming out of the cursed woods. And there were five horses standing there, waiting to come onto the track.

My filly dodged towards the inner rail and kept running. In that single athletic move, my toes gave up their tenuous hold on the slippery aluminum of the stirrup irons, and I was galloping, at more than thirty miles an hour, without stirrups.

This is the day I realized that I am a damn good rider.

I let my legs slip down around her like I was riding bareback, pressing my knees against what little saddle I had, and prayed the leather inseams of my breeches would give me enough grip against the saddle leather to withstand a stumble. The filly didn’t understand what my feet were doing down around her forelegs and accelerated, into a full bolt, even faster than we had been going before. The colt had disappeared around the far turn and was heading for home, and she was frightened and determined to catch him.

I clung on, heart in my mouth, while she freight-trained around the turn and came into the stretch. When she saw the colt standing by the gate (why he was standing, after that hard gallop, I do not know) she settled, and I was able to bring her down to a bone-rattling trot, and finally walk up.

The jockey and another man, the manager I suppose, since no trainer had materialized, were looking at me with horror.

“You can’t ride,” the manager said. “I’m sorry, but that’s too dangerous. You’re not what we were looking for.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not.”