Fan Mail and H.R.H. Prince Ahmed Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz

July 19, 2012                                Fan Mail and a Prince

Dear Reader,

As the first and only woman to train and race a horse through all three legs of the American Thoroughbred Triple Crown, I received a lot of mail from people all over the world. Including the following letter from H.R.H. Prince Ahmed Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz, who owned Lear Fan the sire of my horse Casual Lies.

May 11, 1992

Dear Mrs. Riley,

When I bought Lear Fan as a yearling in 1982, I had a premonition that he would do well. Many other horses were bought and sold but never with the same conviction.

When he first stood at Gainesway Farm and I visited him, the same vibes came across, notwithstanding the decline in the equine industry as a whole and the prophets of doom decrying his potential.

Since I retained a majority shareholding in the syndicate, I have followed the progress of his progeny with a keen interest, albeit remotely. The story of Casual Lies has been quoted as a fairy tale, Cinderella reborn, etc. I did not share that view. I felt history was about to repeat itself since he appeared to be a chip off the old block. I happened to be in the U.S. on one of my too infrequent visits this year, and I watched the race with a positive attitude.

Permit me to congratulate you on your success with him so far and wish you even more for the rest of the season. By copy of this letter I am asking Pat Payne, the Sales Director at Gainesway Farm, to give Lear Fan an extra carrot, two more sugar lumps and a pat on the shoulder for a job well done.

I am uncertain whether I shall still be in the U.S. on May 16^th, but wherever fate happens to take me, I promise you my voice will be nearly as hoarse (!) as yours at the Preakness.

Every best wishes,

H.R.H. Prince Ahmed Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz

I delighted in reading the mail I received from fans both in and out of racing. I certainly had not expected to get any, let alone a letter from a Prince.  At the time, along with other criticisms from various sources, I had been accused of treating Casual Lies like a big pet. So it was charming to find this Saudi Arabian Prince enjoyed feeding carrots and sugar cubes to his horses as well. Although I must admit, the treats I gave my horses were carrots, apples or an extra handful of grain. Sugar only entered their daily rations in the form of blackstrap molasses.

Take care,

Shelley Riley

A Look Back - Sacramento State Fair

July 12th, 2012 

Hi there everybody,

                Today the California State Fair is opening for the 2012 season.  The Cal Expo stable area is where I first learned the craft of training racehorses.  We met and made friends with a lot of interesting people over the years we were stabled at Cal Expo.

Sharing the shedrow with us at one point was one of those interesting people and a very memorable old fellow named Sam Johnson. I don’t know how old he was, I can’t really even hazard a guess, suffice it to say, and too my twenty-six year old eyes he was ancient.

                Sam had a uniform he wore every day. Every item consisted of faded khaki, including the floppy hat he wore without fail, and pretty much every minute of every day. We shared a hot walker next to the barn and as we watched our horses walk, Sam would tell his stories.  

                Unlike a lot of elderly people I have met, Sam never told the same story twice. It was really remarkable how varied and rich his repertoire was. Sam was a prolific story teller, the old memories just flowed off his tongue and he always painted a picture with his words that put you in the moment.

                Most people judged Sam on his looks, his cataract covered eyes bulged, one looking to your left and the other at your feet. The bottom lid on the right eye had a large divot gone, as a result the eye watered steadily. A stream of tears coursed down his check to splash on his khaki colored jacket. His nose ran nearly as copiously as his drooling eye, so Sam always had a well used crumpled up handkerchief at the ready, stuffed in his hand.

                 He only had one tooth left; at least it was the only one I ever saw. Located in the middle of his bottom jaw, it angled out, yellowed with age and he had his top lip tucked behind the lone tooth most of the time. It was hard to make out the words Sam was using all the time, but I did the best I could.

                 Jim couldn’t understand why I would listen to old Sam. Jim was like the rest of the critics, feeling the business had passed Sam by and considered him little more than a derelict, and certainly felt he was no longer relevant.  But I had found that Sam remembered things long forgotten by his more youthful colleagues, who had been seduced by the lure of new technologies and were dependent on new medications to do the training for them.

                 I might have to listen to fifty stories to glean one gem of information, but there was no hardship in that. Sam was a gentle soul and he was blessed with a rather pointed sense of humor.

                Sam only had a couple of good clients left, but they had been with him for a long time and they kept the faith. One gentleman had sent Sam a nice two year old colt to break and train. Truthfully I thought this big rambunctious colt was going to get the best of Sam. One day the colt thunked Sam a good one, right on top of his head, after he’d reared up, striking out at Sam with his front hoofs. 

                The old floppy hat never budged, leading me to believe, as I had suspected, it had become one with Sam’s scalp over the years. Jim ran and caught the ill mannered colt, while I helped Sam to his feet. He was sporting a nasty red scrape, but surprisingly he seemed otherwise none the worse for wear.

                As time went by, the colt became more and more of a problem. He had obvious talent but was turning into quite the uncontrollable rogue on the tract. Sam asked Jim to get on the colt, but Jim refused when Sam wouldn’t let him carry a whip. A real necessity if you’re going to climb on a nasty tempered colt, one who particularly liked nothing better than rubbing you off on any solid surface he could get next to.

                 I agreed it wasn’t worth the $2, which was the going rate for galloping a horse in those days, to get busted up on a horse without any manners.

                Next thing I know, I look up to see Sam heading off to the track with the obnoxious colt hooked up to a harness-horse racing buggy.  I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was more than a little surprised Sam wasn’t already dead and the horse down and tangled up in the remains of the buggy.

                This colt was as wild as a March Hare, and this looked as though a clear case of suicide by stupidity was about to happen right in front of all our eyes. You wouldn’t want to hook any horse up to a buggy without a lot of prep work, let alone a green two year old thoroughbred colt.

                Word spread rapidly around the barn area and everybody who could, raced to the rail to watch the smack down that was about to take place. The buzz of excited voices ceased abruptly when the colt stepped onto the track dragging the cart and big Sam behind him.

                The colt stood there, frozen in place, the rail birds held their collective breath, eyes riveted, unblinking, for fear of missing the launch. The colt looked right and then left, he lifted a front leg… the railbirds leaned further over the rail, straining to see the action. At which point the colt turned and walked up the track, as though he’d done it a thousand times before.

                Sam trained that colt using a buggy for weeks on end. When he finally put a rider on his back and took him to the track for the first time since he’d hooked him up to the buggy, the colt galloped around there like an old campaigner.

                Eventually Sam entered that colt and he raced well. Old Sam certainly danced to the beat of his own special drum. You didn’t need to agree with his tactics, but then Sam had his own style of proving there was more than one way to train a horse. He’d also acquired another story to tell, that is if you were willing to listen.

                I probably won’t be coming out to Sacramento for the Fair this year, but I have been asked to be a guest at another handicapping clinic in Santa Rosa at the Sonoma County Fair. I will let you know the date when I find out.

Take care,

Shelley Riley       

Alameda County Fair - Jorge Herrera

July 8^th, 2012      

Dear Readers,

     First off, I want to thank all of you that showed up at yesterdays Alameda County Fair to attend the Handicapping Seminar. As a guest speaker, I was thrilled to see so many people show up for the event, standing room only, in fact.

    Located right next to the saddling paddock, Dennis Miller and Frank Mirahmadi put on a great show.  Both gentlemen have a vast amount of experience backing them up, making the seminar both interesting and useful.

    Frank is the announcer and race caller for the Alameda, Ferndale, Fresno and Stockton County Fairs, as well as the race caller at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas during their racing season Frank is also a TVG on air personality.

    Dennis Miller is the editor of “Aces” a Northern California Golf Lifestyle magazine, great website, by the way. Dennis is also The Alameda County Fairs Horseracing Publicist, charged with promoting the horseracing side of the Association.   

   To be greeted so warmly by so many fans of the Shelley Riley – Casual Lies saga, was not only surprising, but refreshing, while the interest shown in acquiring the memoir was heartening and encouraging. Duly incentivized, I was at my computer, typing away early this morning, pushing to finish editing Chapter 14 after Tracy’s initial comments had come back on the Chapter.

    I don’t know how long it will take to get it published, as you know, but I will keep everybody apprised as to my progress on that front.

   Finally I wanted to say a few words about the tragic loss of Jorge Herrera. As you're aware, Jim Riley, my husband for well over 20 years was a jockey. As the wife of a jockey, my heart was in my throat throughout every race he rode, and until he jumped off and unsaddled his mount.

   The life of a jockey is a life filled with danger, slightly more than a hundred pounds of man or woman, perched atop over a thousand pounds of horse flesh, with a mind of its own.  I needn’t dwell on recounting gory tales from the past; we have all seen the accidents, spectacular and horrifying alike. What I do know firsthand, is the feeling that sweeps over you as you see someone go down in a race, the fear and the alarm. When it’s your loved one, the fear escalates to near panic and the alarm becomes terror.

     In the early seventies, Jim was riding races at Charles Town Race Track and Shenandoah Downs. Both tracks shared a parking lot and ran their meets one after another, in Charles Town West Virginia.  About as far from the top tiers of racing as you could get, and Jim was riding a lot of horses with very questionable underpinnings.

    Racing under the lights, on a tight five to six furlong oval, aboard hard used old campaigners, was audacious to say the least. But we were poor and even a losing jock mount meant a lot to us at the time.              

      One night, Jim had been scheduled to ride several horses on the card and one old class horse in particular, stood out from the rest.   

    This horse had once been a really good racehorse, winning allowance and stakes races alike. Changing hands, via the claiming box many times, his glory days were obviously long gone. This classy but unfortunate warrior had been campaigned steadily, right down to the bottom of the barrel, over a career spanning many years.

    Named on the horse at the draw, we didn’t know the trainer, he didn’t train a lot of horses, but his stats were pretty good. So why didn’t anybody want to ride him? Once the horses were in the saddling paddock, it became pretty obvious, this old boy had seen his fair share of injuries over the years.

   Swathed in running bandages, it was obvious, unless they had packed the bandages with cotton to scare off a claim, this horse had some pretty big ankles and his knees looked like a spiked dog collar.

  I rushed over to the Jocks room and waylaid Jim as he came out. Anxious and worried I told him the horse had two big ankles, and his knees looked like deeply notched flywheels. He laughed, and told me not to worry; those old broke down class horses stayed around, because they knew how to take care of themselves. “He won’t run fast enough to hurt himself, no matter how hard I ask him.” Was his parting comment, as he walked over to the saddling paddock, to get on his mount.

   I hurried over to the rail to watch the horse warm up, praying they would scratch him in the post parade. No such luck for me, he traveled like a new car on a four lane freeway.  As the race was being run and as they approached the turn, three horses went down, bam, one after another. It looked like the whole field might go down. Only four horses avoided the melee, by going practically to the outside fence, avoiding the downed riders and their mounts. I stood gripping the rail with all the strength in my one hand, while the other covered my mouth. I whispered behind my hand, please get up, please get up…….

   I was so focused on the wreck; I failed to see Jim and his wily old campaigner pass under the wire for the win.

  On the way home, I was talking about the horse and how bad his legs looked, I felt we had gotten twice lucky. One, he’d won the race and two he didn’t break down or get caught up in the accident.  At which point Jim laughed at me, and told me to stop worrying, he’d ridden a lot of horses who were a lot worse than him.

  But you don’t stop worrying, that’s just the point, they love what they’re doing, and part of why you love them is because of their passion for their chosen sport. After that night, I made Jim promise me that if he went down, even if he had a broken leg, he needed to get up and lean on the rail so I could see he was alive.

   Jorge Herrera left this world with his boots on and his whip in his hand, doing what he loved to do. My heart goes out to the family left to mourn his passing. Jorge was way too young to start his next adventure, wherever that may be.

Take care, each and every one of you,

Shelley Riley