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News
Briefs
HBPA NEWS By
Jeannie Spence
DON’T FORGET THE INFORMATIONAL MEETING
Thursday, April 10th at 7:00
pm in The George Royal Room
THE BEN TERNES CELEBRATION OF LIFE:
In the kitchen (Trackers) on Wednesday,
April 16th at 11:30am.
Opening day is just around the corner;
there are more recorded works each day which should be a
good sign that there will be lots of entries.
Congratulations to all our owners and trainers with the
recent wins in Oregon, California, and Alberta!
THE THOROUGHBRED LADIES CLUB
The ladies will be outside Trackers on
Saturday April 19, serving
coffee and donuts. The TLC has always
been a major cog in the backstretch support group and
welcomes new members.
The TLC meetings are held on the first
Tuesday of every month at different locations. For more
information phone May at 604-420-0869.
President May Jaager
Vice President Audrey Brown
Treasurer Barb Williams
Secretary Marie Hoggard and Rae Skuse
Health and Welfare Marion Ryan, Anna
Byrne, and Marilyn Combs.
Membership Barbara Ganger
Historian Marie Hoggard
Social Convener Louise Massey and Shirley
Collins
CONGRATULATIONS TO:
Felipe Valdez and Annette Luke on their
recent marriage.
Sohen Gill, was the recipient of one of
the highest accolades awarded by SPORT B.C. He was awarded
the Daryl Thompson Award of Excellence for 2007. This annual
award is given to an individual to honor the lifelong
commitment to B.C. Sports. Sohen has been involved with
lacrosse since he first played the game at the age of eight.
Sohen has played lacrosse, coached, and was General Manager
for many teams in the Lower Mainland. He currently is the
President of the B.C. Lacrosse Association and Commissioner
of the Western Lacrosse Association. Besides winning the
Daryl Thompson Award of Excellence, Sohen was recently
recognized in the Vancouver Sun Newspaper as one of the most
influential Indo-Canadians in this province!
The Point Restaurant at Signal Point
Gaming in Williams Lake won the Food Service Award for the
Williams Lake Chamber of Commerce’s 13th Annual
Business Excellence Award. The Signal Point Gaming is one of
our newest teletheatre outlets.
SMILE YOU’RE ON CAMERA!
It was nice seeing Carmen and Camille
singing on the am news and also singing our National Anthem
at the Canucks game. We miss Carmen on the Sport of Kings,
but we wish both the twins “Good Luck” with their music
career.
The article on Carolyn Costigan in the
March issue of the Canadian Thoroughbred. After graduating
with honours from The Flying Start Program, she is presently
working in Ireland with trainer Jim Bolger. Anyone
interested in this wonderful program should go to the
website: (www.darleyflyingstart.com).
Jackie Humber and her great interview
with Mike McCardell on Global TV.
Eric Garcea riding B.C. bred, Eastside
Johnny in the Michael Burns Jr. Sovereign Award winning
photo, By the Dawn’s Early Light.
The beautiful picture of Rob and Sheena
Maybin’s mare, Cash Red Jester and colt, by their stallion,
Acceptable, on the cover of March’s newspaper, The Game.
Shannon McVeigh’s interview with Jackie
Humber in the January newspaper, The Game.
VET’S
LIST
Eric Garcea, we are glad that your
operation went so well
OUR DEEPEST SYMPATHY TO THE FAMILIES OF
Donny Knudsen Judith Milne
Ben Ternes
The Ternes Family as well as the entire
Thoroughbred community suffered a second loss with the
sudden death of the stallion Vying Victor. Our province has
lost a brilliant stud manager and the top sire. There will
be a Celebration of Life for Ben in the kitchen, (Trackers)
on Wednesday, April 16, at 11:30.
WINNERS FOUNDATION
Attention all grooms! The food vouchers
are available, for $30 you can get $45 worth of meals in the
kitchen (Trackers). See Joe Grey, Cindy Krasner, Debbie
Peebles, or Jeannie Spence for these vouchers.
The weekly Winners Foundation Meeting is
held every Sunday at noon above the kitchen (Trackers) in
the TV room.
Burgers and Beans are a great hit every
Wednesday, come and join us.
Joe Grey’s phone number is 604-999-5819
THE NEW STRIDE THOROUGHBRED RETIREMENT FOUNDATION
We gratefully accept donations and
Remember they are tax-deductible. Donations provide
care, rehabilitation, retirement, and retraining for the
horses.
Donated products like wormers, vet.
products, supplies and tack greatly benefit the horses.
Support our fundraisers and spread our
website by word of mouth.
You can contact us through Meril Agrey,
8376 Bradner Road, Abbotsford, B.C. V4X 2H5 (phone
604-856-1339)
THE LEARNING CENTRE
Our Pizza Day was well attended and the
pizzas didn’t last very long. Congratulations to Fran
 Hardwick
on winning the computer and printer. It was so nice to have
Fran win as she is the hardest worker at the Learning Centre
and we are all so proud of her! Good Luck with your test,
Fran! A special thank you to Marion Yip for donating her
computer and printer to the Learning Centre. We have been
very busy every day, but that is the way we like it! We want
to have a special workshop such as digital cameras, flowers,
first aid each month so come up and let us know what you
would like to have. DON’T forget income tax time! John will
help you do your taxes on-line.
Alvina, Juanita, and Jim have some great
plans with the art circle, contact them if you wish to join.
Cenek is teaching Spanish and ESL on Fridays. Chris is no
longer tutoring, he helped us a great deal, Thank you Chris.
We had a special visit from a Grade 4
student, Saya and her Father Kenji. Saya is doing a report
for school on Hastings Park and since she loves horses, she
wanted to visit the backstretch. She promises she will write
something for our news.
Grooms watch for “SOCK DAY” on April 23rd!
Thanks so much to Juanita who wrote the
following about her dream trip to the Kentucky Derby!
Barbaro: In the Presence of Greatness
It is 7:50 on the morning of May 6, 2006.
I am standing in line before the turnstile opens at
Churchill Downs. The bearded man before me wears a wildly
flamboyant and rose-covered hat. He is a P.R.
photojournalist in town from Ohio. He is known as Derby Man
and this is his 40th Derby. And today is Derby
Day.
Just before eight o’clock the turnstile
opens and the crowd flows through. It is only now that I
realize the $40 entrance fee allows me simply to pass
through the turnstile and enter the grounds. It does not
allow me direct viewing access to the track. And forget
about the grandstand area—on this particular day, Churchill
Downs is doing its best to welcome 157,000 horseracing fans
into an area that normally accommodates 60,000 at the most.
On this particular day, Churchill Downs is doing its best.
What a shock-and what a disappointment.
After spending a full week in Louisville in anticipation of
viewing the race, could it be that I wouldn’t be able to see
it? For the past week I have been entering the same grounds
with the regular morning employees who arrive by bus. For
the past week I have sketched horses and watched the morning
works, chatted with personnel, taken photographs of the
likes of Barbaro, Brother Derek, and Lawyer Ron, enjoyed
early morning coffee in Silks before the restaurant’s
opening and chatted with Scotty the waiter. I have wandered
quietly and undisturbed through the grandstand facilities,
admiring original paintings and poetry on the wall, the huge
jockey mural, the massive and glorious Churchill Downs glass
sculpture on the sixth floor; and I have drifted casually
and innocently into areas that I was not supposed to go.
Earlier in the week I had been given free access into the
jockey viewing area in order to sketch the works. In true
Kentucky fashion, grandstand personnel have been most
gracious, most courteous and most accommodating.
So now, what to do-here on Derby Day?
After driving 2,500 miles surely I must see the race.
Unwilling to face defeat; and being acquainted with
racetrack backstretch protocol, I am confident there is a
place where the locals go to watch a race. And of course
there is, and I managed to sniff it out. I trundle off to
the media scaffolding as it is close to the rail coming into
the first turn. And surely enough, here are the locals and
the veteran viewers, happily ensconced on their viewing
blankets along with picnic baskets or paper bags packed
with…I don’t want to know.
 Again
Kentucky hospitality kicks in as I am quickly introduced to
‘The Two Cathys’ who are longtime friends and Derby diehards
who have been sitting in this exact same spot every year for
the past ten years, once even when it snowed. So I am
welcomed to sit and share a blanket shared by ‘The Two
Cathys’ on one side and on the other, Louis, the music
conductor from New York who has shown up on a whim for the
day before continuing on to visit his folks in Florida. We
are now a team of fans-we share the blankets, the snacks and
the binoculars as the crowd filters in and fill up the
blanket spaces around us. It is shortly after eight a.m. and
there is a long day of racing in front of us. We have until
shortly after 6 p.m. before the big race.
But the crowd is mellow, well-mannered and celebratory. Time
passes congenially.
Actually, most of the locals have already
had their special day. It is the Derby Oaks on Friday prior
that captures their attention. On this Friday schools are
shut down and businesses close as homegrown Kentuckians
celebrate this stakes race for the fillies. It is their
community day for celebration, as The Kentucky Derby itself
takes such a working toll on many members of the local
populace who are called upon to accommodate all the
requirements, wants and needs of such a massive crowd. It is
said that much of Churchill Downs annual revenue hinges upon
Derby Week alone.
In any event, after having settled on the
viewing turf for over ten hours and after having watched the
earlier nine races, I find that post time for the tenth
race-the Derby-is almost anti-climactic. It is almost a
paradox –it has been a full day of racing and the big one
has just arrived. But this mellow crowd is still in
celebratory mood and the atmosphere is one of edgy
anticipation. The collective energy is indescribable.
At the last minute I have someone save my
place as I hustle off to bet and then to visit the paddock
area in an attempt to take photos amongst the elbowing
crowd. I manage to wiggle my way into paddock rail position
although most of the ensuing photos end up registering backs
of people’s heads. But I do step back as Michael Matz with
family and others enter the paddock area. I do manage to
capture photo glimpses of the four- footed super star. But
time is closing in. I hustle back to the viewing slope and
join my newly found friends in anticipation of the race.
I realize later that I have already met
Barbaro earlier in the week as he drifts by on one of the
morning works. He smacks of grace, of confidence and
elegance that is difficult to describe but easy to
recognize. One can recognize the presence of greatness even
if one cannot describe it. There is a coolness and
confidence about him and he looks very strong. Somehow his
mere presence manages to convey the message, “Ask anything
of me and I will deliver”.
On that day I chose him to win.
And he does win, as the world now
knows..in a romp’what the world doesn’t know on May 6, 2006,
is this will be Barbaro’s last complete race. And today in
2008 it is Barbaro’s legacy which outruns that race of all
horse races-The Kentucky Derby.
“Our perfect companions never have fewer
than four feet” Colette
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