The Ghost Horse Page 20

  * * *

  Appearances can be unreliable. Lisa’s Booby Trap had always been a beautiful, athletic girl, but only fleetingly was she a filly whose performances matched her aesthetic charm. Three weeks after blowing up in the Riskaverse Stakes, Lisa’s Booby Trap found herself in an allowance race at Finger Lakes. Snyder had figured a short race (five and a half furlongs) on the dirt, against light competition, would be just the thing she needed to regain her footing. Instead, she ran an oddly anxious race, ducking out early, bumping another horse, then veering wide before struggling to a third-place finish. At that point Snyder shut her down for the season.

  Months went by as Snyder rested the filly, invested in bloodwork to determine whether there was some sort of systemic problem, and slowly went about the task of getting her ready for a comeback. By now, though, Lisa’s Booby Trap had become, to most of the racing world, a mere footnote; or, worse, a fluke. Not that she was the first horse to disappear seemingly overnight.

  “There’s usually a window for horses to run well,” noted Michael O’Farrell. “And when it closes, it closes fast.”

  Even John Tebbutt, in the wake of Lisa’s two consecutive losses, was prepared to declare her career over. At the very least, he considered it unlikely that the filly would ever run as well as she had in the summer of 2010.

  “I hope so, but I doubt it,” Tebbutt said. “A lot of horses peak at that point, in their three-year-old year. Everything is clicking, they’re young and healthy. For Lisa, it was perfect for a while there; she was on top of her game. And then … well, it’s just hard to get them back after something like that. When they start running badly, they’re usually done. It’s not necessarily because there’s anything wrong with them, but this filly had a lot of issues. I think it’s amazing that Timmy did what he did with her.”

  * * *

  Stubborn to the bone, Snyder would make good on his promise to get Lisa back on the track, if not necessarily back on track. In the spring and early summer of 2011 she would win two of three starts at Finger Lakes before returning to Saratoga for the running of the Rachel Alexandra Stakes on August 1. As before, Lisa ran before a crowd that included Tim Snyder’s sister and daughter, who had once again flown in from California. For good luck, Carol Calley watched the race while wearing a watch that had belonged to her daughter. If the buzz surrounding Lisa’s Booby Trap had diminished considerably this time around, she remained both a fan and bettor’s favorite (if only for sentimental reasons), going off as the second choice at 3-1 odds.

  In a performance eerily similar to the previous year, though, Lisa struggled badly before a Saratoga crowd that hoped to witness a resurrection of her story, lugging out while running near the front early in the race, and then again as the field approached the final turn. Jockey Dennis Carr, who had picked up the mount on Lisa’s Booby Trap at Finger Lakes, struggled mightily to get the filly under control, but she fought him every inch of the way. Fearing his mount might veer into traffic and cause a catastrophic accident, Carr surrendered as they came into the stretch and eased the filly across the line.

  She was the eighth finisher in an eight-horse field.

  Dead last. Again.

  “I couldn’t get ahold of her,” the jockey said to Snyder as they walked off the track. “Never seen her do that before.”

  The trainer nodded grimly.

  A few weeks and several thousand dollars in vet bills later, Snyder revealed that Lisa had been bothered by both an abscessed tooth (which was removed) and an infection in her eye, the result of dirt having been kicked up in front of her during the Rachel Alexandra. Once healed, she returned to the track—again, at Finger Lakes—and won her next three starts. In November 2011 she was named Horse of the Year at Finger Lakes Racetrack.

  In 2012 Lisa ran twice at Presque Isle Downs in Erie, Pennsylvania, and once at Finger Lakes. She hit the board in all three races, but did not win any of them. Lisa’s Booby Trap had by now compiled career winnings of $169,580 dollars. If she was no longer on the national radar—no longer the kind of horse that came up in discussions of Eclipse Awards and Breeders Cups—she was nonetheless a solid minor league racehorse.

  In ways large and small, she was an earner.

  Through the filly Tim Snyder had found purpose and motivation; he’d also reconnected with friends and family. One day, for example, he got a call from his childhood buddy Dale Thirtyacre. The two had drifted apart decades earlier, with Tim working at tracks mostly in the Northeast and Florida, and Dale working in the Midwest. Tim made a life out of the business; Dale did too, for a while, before moving on to other pursuits. Eventually he took a job installing insulation, work that by 2012 had left him on disability, incapacitated by emphysema.

  “My brother called me one day,” Thirtyacre remembered. “He said Timmy had this great horse. I was surprised to hear that he was even alive. I had no idea.”

  Thirtyacre stopped speaking for a moment. His breathing was labored, and it sounded for a moment as though he had simply grown too tired to talk any longer. Suddenly, though, he began crying.

  “Timmy was like my brother; I thought he was gone forever. And now he was back from the dead.”

  By the fall of 2012 Lisa’s Booby Trap had returned once more to the Calley home in Camillus. Offers to purchase the mare had mostly dried up, and those that occasionally came in were for a fraction of what Snyder had been offered two years earlier. Not that it mattered, for the horse remained off the market, unavailable at any price.

  Meanwhile, Tim Snyder, after several years of self-neglect—due primarily to a lack of insurance—began addressing some nagging health problems of his own. Most people had noticed during Lisa’s time in the spotlight that the trainer walked with a pronounced limp, a condition he attributed primarily to arthritis and accrued scar tissue from old injuries, but which probably had more to do with the undiagnosed lump mushrooming in his upper leg. There was a persistent cough, too, and pain in his ribs.

  Eventually Tim endured the necessary tests and scans, and sat through endless hours of consultations with doctors; he listened with great agitation and annoyance as they recommended a drastic course of treatment. There would be radiation to shrink the tumor, surgery to remove what was left, and then chemotherapy to beat back the metastases on his liver, and in his lymph nodes.

  That was the plan, anyway.

  Snyder wasn’t so sure. The cutting he didn’t mind. He’d been through worse. But the chemo? He saw what that had done to his wife and to his father, the way it took them apart, an ounce at a time.

  “Fuck that,” he said. “They want to pump me full of poison so I can live one more year, and feel like shit the whole time? I’d rather ride it out and maybe have two or three good years. And who the hell knows what’ll happen? Doctors don’t know everything, right?”

  There was a pause, a deep sigh, and then a sudden change of direction.

  “Hey, let me tell you something else. I got a damn good horse here. She’s resting in my barn, and she’s gonna come back next year, strong as hell. She’s gonna win another hundred thousand dollars, and then I’m gonna breed her. We ain’t done yet. Believe me … you ain’t heard the last of Lisa’s Booby Trap.”

  Acknowledgments

  The writing of a book is a long and frequently lonely journey. But it really isn’t a solitary undertaking. The truth is this: on the road from concept to publication, input is required, and gratefully accepted, from numerous contributors.

  I’ll start with my family, since they have to put up with a writer’s obsessiveness, moodiness, and endless sharing of anecdotes that may or may not be of any interest. My wife, Sue, shoulders most of the burden with patience and encouragement, but I owe a debt of gratitude as well to my daughter, Emily, a gifted writer and keen listener, and my son, Max, who knows a good story when he hears one.

  Thanks also to my sister, Peg, for support in ways too numerous to recount here, and to my brother, Tim, who is not only an exceptional writer, but
one of the most knowledgeable horse-racing journalists in the business. And to my parents for raising all of us in a home where reading mattered and books were seen as a pleasure, not a chore.

  The Ghost Horse could not have been written without the full cooperation and trust of Tim Snyder, who opened his life to me, sharing details both pleasant and extraordinarily painful. From the outset, he held nothing back, and his openness made for a richer book than otherwise would have been possible.

  Thanks, also, to Carol Calley and Frank Calley, who graciously welcomed me into their home and answered all of my questions, no matter how intrusive. I can’t imagine that there is anything more painful for parents to endure than the death of one of their children; and I don’t think the hurt is diminished simply because that child has grown into adulthood. By the time I began working on this book, Lisa Calley had been deceased for seven years, but she remained a strong and vivid presence in the Calley home: in photos, trophies, trinkets and other memorabilia, but in spirit as well. To the extent that it’s possible to know someone you’ve never met, I feel like I came to know Lisa, and I have Frank and Carol to thank for that. Like Tim, they trusted me with their most intimate feelings and memories. I hope I honored that trust.

  Thanks to George Santangelo, a horse lover who introduced me to Tim and helped facilitate our working relationship. And to John Tebbutt, a racetrack lifer who knows Tim Snyder about as well as anyone, and who helped fill in the gaps of a sometimes murky story.

  As always, I owe a debt of gratitude to my agent, Frank Weimann of the Literary Group, who continues to be a smart and savvy partner while indulging my need to pursue the occasional labor of love.

  Finally, thanks to everyone at St. Martin’s Press, most notably my editor, Marc Resnick, for having faith in this book, even as the author blew one deadline after another. I appreciate your patience more than you can imagine, and I hope the final product was worth the wait.

  Author’s Note

  While the vast majority of the information presented in this book was obtained through first-person interviews and original research, the author would like to acknowledge the following publications and sources for providing background material that proved useful in the writing of The Ghost Horse:

  The Times Union, The Blood Horse, The Boston Globe, the Daily Racing Form, Dateline NBC, ESPN.com, Equibase, Finger Lakes Casino and Racetrack, The Post-Star, the Herald-Leader, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the New York Racing Association, the New York State Racing and Wagering Board, The New York Times, the Star-Banner, the Democrat and Chronicle, The Saratogian, Sports Illustrated, The Post-Standard, the Television Games Network, the Thoroughbred Times.

  Teenage jockey Warren Snyder in the winner’s circle at Rockingham Park, after riding Septime to victory in November 1940. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Septime crosses the finish line first at Rockingham, with Warren Snyder aboard. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Warren Snyder weighs in before a race. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Warren Snyder and his wife, Virginia Snyder, relaxing on the beach with their infant son, Tim. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Timmy Snyder with his dad. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Timmy Snyder and his older sister, Cheryl, playing in the backyard of the Snyder home. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Tim Snyder, in his late teens, on yet another road trip. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Fearless from the start, little Lisa Calley begins a lifelong love affair with horses. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  A teenage Lisa Calley competes in a jump competition. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Carol Calley and her daughter, Lisa, on vacation near Lake George, New York, in the 1980s. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Lisa Calley works with a horse at the family’s indoor training facility in Camillus, New York. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Lisa and Tim relax during a trip to California. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Tim and Lisa at the wedding reception of Tim’s niece, in California. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Lisa’s Booby Trap crosses the finish line first to win the Loudonville Stakes at Saratoga Race Course on August 6, 2010. (Photo courtesy Adam Coglianese)

  Trainer/owner Tim Snyder guides Lisa’s Booby Trap back to the winner’s circle while jockey Kent Desormeaux celebrates after winning the Loudonville Stakes at Saratoga. (Photo courtesy Adam Coglianese)

  Tim Snyder shares a celebratory embrace with his mother-in-law, Carol Calley, near the winner’s circle at Saratoga after they watched Lisa’s Booby Trap remain undefeated with a victory in the Loudonville Stakes. (Photo courtesy Adam Coglianese)

  Tim and Lisa’s Booby Trap at the Calley farm in Camillus, New York. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Lisa’s Booby Trap pokes her head out of the stall while resting at Finger Lakes. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Tim walks with Lisa after giving the filly a bath at Saratoga Race Course in the summer of 2010. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Jockey Kent Desormeaux rides Lisa’s Booby Trap into the paddock at Saratoga before the Loudonville Stakes, while Tim Snyder walks alongside. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder).

  Tim takes a nap with T-Bone, his Jack Russell terrier, at the Calley home in Camillus. (Photo courtesy Tim Snyder)

  Tim Snyder preps Lisa’s Booby Trap prior to the Riskaverse Stakes at Saratoga, on Sept. 2, 2010. It would be the first loss of Lisa’s career. (Photo courtesy Brien Bouyea)

  Lisa, in a full pre-race sweat, before finishing last in the Rachel Alexandra Stakes at Saratoga on August 1, 2011. (Photo courtesy Brien Bouyea)

  ALSO BY JOE LAYDEN

  The Last Great Fight

  About the Author

  JOE LAYDEN is a multiple New York Times bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, and the author of more than twenty books.

  THE GHOST HORSE. Copyright © 2013 by Joe Layden. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio

  Cover photograph © Stephen Carroll/Trevillion Images

  ISBN 978-0-312-64332-4 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-02125-0 (e-book)

  St. Martin’s Press books may be purchased for educational, business, or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-211-7945 extension 5442 or write specialmarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: May 2013