
Wise Dan lets you lead him around and snap a photo. Declan’s Moon will stop goofing off with his mates long enough to take a carrot. Main Sequence lords over the paddock already made famous by a previous occupant. And among the peaceful herd at his owner’s Pennsylvania farm is the venerable ’chaser Mixed Up, nearly a decade removed from his glory days.
These are among the champions who did not go on to glitzy stud deals, nor did they end up on accessible public display at places like the Kentucky Horse Park or Old Friends Equine. They are Eclipse Award geldings of recent years, healthy and content to live out their days as just plain horses, when they are anything but.
BaroqueAgain1 wrote:That's a handsome horse; you can see the resemblance to Barbaro. Is he a gelded pasture pet or learning a new career?
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – It was 20 years ago this week that Chindi came roaring down the Oaklawn Park stretch to win the Grade 3 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap during the 1998 Racing Festival of the South.
The gelding, now 24, has been part of the local action in some fashion every year since, whether racing at the meet or working as a stable pony for trainer Steve Hobby. Chindi has been immensely popular with racing fans and horsemen for his longevity and personality as well as the deep-closing style he employed. And it does not hurt that he now looks like a 1,200-pound snowball, a Rubenesque gray gone white who can regularly be found watching morning training at Oaklawn.
“Everybody wants to see Chindi,” said his owner, Carol Ricks. “He should have been in the movies. I think he could have been another Trigger.”
Chindi has been Hobby’s riding partner for some 20 years. Hobby not only galloped the horse when he was racing but now rides Chindi out with most sets of workers each morning at Oaklawn. That’s been the regular schedule for the horse since he retired in 2005. Chindi did not care for being turned out to pasture.
“He walks faster to the track than he does back to the barn – every set,” Hobby said. “From all these years going to the track, it just amazes me he can’t wait to get up to the track. Now, he doesn’t really want to do anything once he’s up there but stand around and look, let everyone holler his name, and feed him candy. But he loves to go to the track.”
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