The Ghost Horse Page 17

  It simply wasn’t necessary.

  “Lisa’s Booby Trap—a perfect three-for-three!” declared the track announcer as the big horse strode powerfully beneath the wire. “And this is a beautiful filly. Lisa’s Booby Trap—very exciting!”

  Her winning time was 1:43.3—if not quite as impressive as she’d been at six furlongs, it was still a solid effort, given the fact that it was her first trip over the distance and that she hadn’t been pushed by either her rider or the other horses in the field. What mattered most was that Lisa had raced three times in five weeks and won all three times, by a combined margin of 36¾ lengths. She was fast and sound; she was a natural runner and competitor.

  By all indications, and against all odds and expectations, she was a prodigious racehorse, having metamorphosed from bust to blue chip seemingly overnight.

  After the race, Tebbutt said, the bloodstock agent called again, this time to confirm his client’s bid. They wanted to fly up to New York and close the deal over dinner and drinks. Tebbutt pulled Tim aside and told him of the latest offer for Lisa’s Booby Trap.

  “They want the horse,” Tebbutt said. “And they’ll pay a half-million dollars for her.”

  There was silence as Snyder took in the full weight of that number.

  A half-million dollars …

  “You’re full of shit,” he finally responded.

  Tebbutt shook his head. “No, Timmy. I’m serious.”

  With that, Tebbutt pulled out his cell phone and dialed up his voice mail. He waited for the bloodstock agent’s voice, and then put the call on speaker. Tebbutt let the message play out, then tried to read his friend. It usually wasn’t hard, since Tim rarely kept his feelings to himself. Now, though, he seemed at a loss for words.

  “Well … what do you want to do?” Tebbutt asked.

  Tim muttered something inaudible under his breath and walked out of the barn. For the next half hour he paced up and down the shedrow, talking to himself, working up a lather, sometimes gesticulating at no one in particular. Finally, he returned, his shirt soaked with sweat, his cap askew, his angular face pale and drawn.

  “Call that guy back,” Tim said. “Tell him to save the plane trip. She ain’t for sale.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY

  SUMMER 2010

  There’s a subtle difference between age and maturity. With maturity comes confidence and perspective; with age comes fear—palpable if not paralyzing.

  In the days and weeks following her impressive string of victories at Finger Lakes Race Track, Lisa’s Booby Trap spent much of her time standing quietly in her stall, munching on hay and nuzzling visitors, an athlete waiting patiently for her coach to make a decision about what she would do next. Common sense suggested a change in venue. What was left for her at Finger Lakes, where she had pummeled the competition and recorded times reflective of a horse that deserved a bigger stage?

  No one had to tell any of this to Tim Snyder. By now he had earned more money with Lisa than he had with any other horse he’d ever owned: close to forty thousand dollars. Not exactly a princely sum by elite thoroughbred standards, but enough to properly compensate all the people who had played a role in his acquiring the horse; enough to settle many old debts, get his insurance and other paperwork in order, and officially don the hat of trainer as well as owner. He’d crisscrossed the country too many times to recount, having worked at just about every track you could imagine. But in his forty-plus years in the business, he’d only been to Saratoga Race Course a few times, as an exercise rider in the mid-1980s. He hadn’t been back in a quarter century, and he’d never been there as an owner or trainer.

  Now, though, it was summertime, when the New York Racing Association annually shifted its operation from Belmont to the quaint little upstate town in the foothills of the Adirondacks. Paradoxically, for the next six weeks, the sport of thoroughbred horse racing would feel less like the fading, arcane pursuit that it has become than the major league sport it once was. Snyder once dreamed of taking a horse to Saratoga, where the smallest purse on a midweek card typically exceeded the weekend feature races at Finger Lakes, and where folks would sometimes stand ten-deep at the rail to watch the greatest horses and jockeys and trainers in the game. Truthfully, though, he’d long ago abandoned that dream, put it aside in favor of more sensible goals, like putting gas in his car and food on the table.

  You get to a certain point in life where it’s not merely impractical to keep tilting at windmills, but downright embarrassing. A young man’s reach should exceed his grasp; an older man knows better. He has a place in life, and he accepts it. Tim Snyder knew his place: on the backstretch of Finger Lakes Racetrack, with its modest crowds and modest purses and modest but fervent gamblers; working with horses that had been modestly bred and cheaply acquired. There were exceptions, and these horses—“shippers,” in the parlance of the game—would sometimes make the trek to the big time, to Saratoga or Belmont, but usually they stayed only briefly, and avoided the more competitive stakes races.

  Even this, though, had proved elusive to Snyder. Talent and knowledge notwithstanding, he was a career bush leaguer. But now, at age fifty-six, he found himself in the unlikely position of getting called up to the majors, and frankly, the proposition was overwhelming.

  “Scared the shit out of me,” Snyder recalled. “Saratoga … it’s the best racing you can find. I’d never been there [as a trainer], didn’t know anyone. It was kind of hard to believe.”

  As was his habit, Tim fretted incessantly about whether or not he should take Lisa to Saratoga, and discussed the horse’s options with almost anyone who would listen. Really, though, he was just thinking out loud; there were only a few people whose opinions he valued.

  “We had tons of conversations about going to Saratoga,” said John Tebbutt, who had grown up in a suburb of Albany, just a half hour from the racetrack, and thus was indoctrinated into the track’s lore and culture at a very young age. “Bottom line? It was the right thing for the horse. I offered to give him some money, but by that time he didn’t need it. Lisa had won enough money that they could afford to go. There really wasn’t any excuse not to go.”

  Tim heard essentially the same thing from his mother-in-law; his father-in-law was a more pragmatic sort and was still having trouble getting over the notion that Tim had turned down a half-million-dollar offer for the horse. But Frank Calley, too, figured that as long as Tim was going to keep her, he might as well race her. And if he was going to race her, then why not race her at Saratoga? Tim’s sister encouraged him, as well.

  And then, of course, there was Lisa Calley.

  Some nights Tim would drive by the cemetery and shout through the open window: “Hey, hon, we did it again! Won another race!”

  Sometimes he’d stop by and have a drink while sitting at her gravesite. He’d talk about his day, and what he’d done, and how he’d stumbled across this incredible horse that had changed his life, and how much the filly meant to him. And how he wished that Lisa could be there with him now to share it all.

  More than once, he spent the night.

  Then, sometimes, he’d be mucking out the filly’s stall or walking her out to the track, or just sitting beside her in a chair, reading the Daily Racing Form, when he’d catch himself talking to her in much the same way that he talked with Lisa. And he’d laugh.

  People are gonna think I’m nuts.

  Or not …

  “Timmy has always been great with horses,” Carol Calley said, “but this was different. This horse really responded to him. When she was at our house, in the barn, she’d start making noise as soon as Timmy’s car drove up. At the track she’d dance around when he came to her stall.”

  Maybe it was all nonsense. Maybe if you miss someone badly enough, you simply find a way to keep them in your life, projecting their spirit and influence wherever it seems to do the most good.

  “I would never say that this horse is my daughter,” Caro
l Calley said, laughing at the inherent preposterousness of the suggestion. “But there are times when she does remind me of Lisa. And I do know that she would have loved going to Saratoga, and being part of all that.”

  In early July, Snyder began making arrangements to ship his horse to Saratoga. Although he had no financial stake in the horse, nor any official designation as trainer, Tebbutt helped his friend plan the trip. Trainers typically rent stall space at Saratoga for the duration of the meet, and shippers either come in for the day or take whatever transient housing is available. Tim was fussy about his filly and considered neither of these options acceptable. If he was going to bring Lisa’s Booby Trap to Saratoga, he wanted to settle in early, get comfortable, and maybe run once or twice—preferably in races that would allow her to compete against horses of her own age and gender, for a substantial amount of money.

  Tebbutt assisted Snyder in all of this. He arranged a transport van, contacted the stall coordinator and stakes coordinator, and pitched the idea of Lisa’s Booby Trap, as much as he pitched the horse itself.

  “There is no other track like Saratoga,” Tebbutt said. “It’s an exclusive club. But they took Tim in, gave him space and treated him like royalty. And they did it because they recognized a great story.”

  * * *

  Tim and Lisa arrived in Saratoga on July 21, 2010, two days before the track’s 142nd season of racing. The filly was assigned a space in the stakes barn, an unassuming gray structure with roughly twenty stalls, located just off Nelson Avenue and only a few hundred yards from both the paddock area and one of the track’s two primary public entrances. Although potentially a high-traffic area, the stakes barn was usually quiet and overlooked, for it was far from the bustling backstretch and the sprawling operations of the sport’s more prominent trainers. The stakes barn typically housed horses that had shipped to Saratoga for a particular race, and their visits rarely extended beyond a week. As the name suggests, it was elite housing reserved for horses of a certain stature—those that would compete in stakes races. Lisa’s Booby Trap, who had been entered in the Grade 1 Coaching Club American Oaks on July 24, met all the obvious criteria, but her visit was open-ended.

  As was her trainer’s visit.

  Like Lisa, Tim needed a place to stay. Trainers, owners, and jockeys who come to Saratoga in July and August face exorbitant seasonal rental rates that can soar as high as five to ten thousand dollars per week for a well-appointed home within walking distance of the track, or in one of the tonier developments near Saratoga Lake. Nightly hotel rates during this period can easily rival those found in New York or Boston.

  For Tim Snyder, this was a prohibitive expenditure. And even if he had the money, he wouldn’t have spent it.

  “They asked me if I needed a room,” Tim recalled. “I said, ‘Yeah, I’d like to stay with my horse.’”

  So he wound up in a tack room above the stakes barn. A small and simple space, but clean and well-ventilated; throw open a window and the breeze would rush right over him. At night he could hear the post-track revelry from Siro’s Restaurant, located just up the street. He could also hear Lisa clomping around in her stall. Tim was a restless sleeper; this way, if the mood struck him, he could walk down the stairs in the middle of the night, pull up a chair, and sit beside her.

  Although he projected to reporters a refreshing air of confidence and openness, Tim was actually bubbling with anxiety in those first few days at Saratoga.

  “He didn’t really want to go,” said Tebbutt. “I don’t know if it would be right to say he was intimidated, but he was … it just wasn’t in his comfort zone to go to a place like Saratoga. Timmy is a terrific horseman who can handle just about any situation—I think he proved that—but he was out of his element up there. Four days after he got to Saratoga he called me and said, ‘You gotta get a van and get me out of here!’ Five minutes later he’s calling back saying, ‘God, I love it here. This is the best track I’ve been at; how do you guys deal with Finger Lakes?’ Five minutes later he’s calling again, saying, ‘I can’t take it here!’ For a while he was just overwhelmed.”

  Reassurance came from a seemingly unlikely source, in the person of Don Hunt, who had sold Lisa’s Booby Trap to Tim. While Hunt had a long and sometimes tumultuous relationship with Tim, and while he would soon take offense to the way he felt he was portrayed by the media (and by Tim) in the telling of Lisa’s story, he was quick to offer a few words of encouragement when Snyder called him in Florida.

  “Can you believe this, Donny?” Snyder said. “I’m in Saratoga, and I’m gonna run a Grade 1.”

  “Good for you, Timmy. You’ve got as good a shot as anyone. Don’t let them scare you.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Snyder said. “At least we’ll find out what she’s worth, huh?”

  Sensing the nervousness in Snyder’s voice, Hunt offered up one of sport’s great truisms, with a slight twist.

  “Hey, those big trainers? They put their pants on the same way you do. Saddle their horses the same way, too.”

  Maybe so, but you couldn’t walk along the backstretch of Saratoga, past the pristine and well-stocked and neatly appointed stables of Todd Pletcher or Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas, both of whom had horses entered in the Oaks, and not come away with the distinct impression that their saddles were, oh … nicer. They were among racing’s elite, insiders with hordes of assistants and grooms and exercise riders, scores of horses in training at any given time, and a plethora of well-heeled clients who were happy (or at least willing) to pay for it all.

  Tim Snyder was an owner-trainer with one horse and no assistant. For all his years in the racing business, he couldn’t have been more of an outsider, or more of a longshot. And he knew it. He was also okay with that status.

  “I kept telling myself, anything is possible if you put your mind to it,” Snyder said. “The racetrack teaches you that anything can happen. Great horses lose, average horses win. I was really nervous about going to Saratoga, going up against all those big trainers, fitting in. Everybody told me I needed a suit for Saratoga. Well, shit, I don’t even own a suit, and I wasn’t about to buy one just for Saratoga. I basically just went up there and did what I normally do. I got nothing to hide.”

  Nothing to hide, but maybe something to prove, and the Oaks, a $250,000 race for three-year-old fillies, would certainly provide him with that opportunity. Despite the fact that she had been assigned odds of 30-1, advance press surrounding the race focused heavily on Lisa’s Booby Trap and her old-school trainer, setting the stage for Tim Snyder’s fifteen minutes of fame.

  Unfortunately, the fickle upstate weather did not cooperate, producing torrential downpours on Friday, July 23, that turned the mile-and-an-eighth Spa oval to mud and substantially thinned the fields for most races. That afternoon Snyder made several treks from the stakes barn to the main track, and with each trip he became more concerned about the potential for a sloppy surface the following day, when Lisa was scheduled to run. By evening he had made up his mind: Lisa’s Booby Trap would be scratched. The filly had a history of physical problems and had never raced on anything but an ideal surface. Snyder was not above taking a chance once in a while—hell, he’d done it repeatedly over the years—but this was different. This was a unique horse and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  He wasn’t about to screw it up.

  “It cost me twenty-five hundred dollars to scratch her,” Tim said. “That’s the nomination fee, and if you don’t run, you lose it. A lot of people were disappointed she scratched, but I knew the track wouldn’t dry out, and I wasn’t sure whether Lisa could run in the mud. I couldn’t risk it. I got a one-eyed horse with bad feet, running in a Grade 1 stake at Saratoga, against serious competition, with a lot of money on the line. I’m gonna ask her to do that in the mud? No way you ask that. Don’t embarrass the horse, don’t get her hurt. She don’t deserve that. And anyway, there were a lot of other races to run.”

  As it happened, the skies cleared on Satur
day morning, and by late afternoon, when the field for the Oaks assembled in the gate, the track had dried out. Officially it was listed as “fast,” exactly the type of surface that suited Lisa best, and Tim could do nothing but watch as Devil May Care, trained by Todd Pletcher and ridden by John Velasquez, galloped to a four-length victory. This was the first time that the Oaks had been contested at Saratoga—it had traditionally been held downstate at Belmont, but an expanded Spa calendar prompted a change—and it seemed appropriate that the winner was trained by one of Saratoga’s most accomplished trainers, and ridden by its most successful jockey. This was the way things were supposed to be. Whether Tim Snyder could have altered the status quo was, for now, a question left unanswered.

  * * *

  When entries for the Coaching Club American Oaks were announced, Elaine Castillo had been named as the jockey for Lisa’s Booby Trap. In reality, though, she had already lost the mount to Kent Desormeaux, a troubled but undeniably gifted jockey with a glittering résumé.

  As sometimes happens when a horse becomes successful, greater opportunities present themselves to both the horse and its owner and trainer. It’s not unusual for a horse in ascendance to lose a lesser-known rider and gain a more prestigious one. Certainly this is what happened with Lisa’s Booby Trap, although precisely how it occurred is a matter of conjecture. Riders lose mounts for all sorts of reasons, and most accept it as a part of the game; they can’t afford to take it personally or hold a grudge without risking further employment opportunities. It’s a small world; people talk.