Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: ‘What Kind Of A Person Am I?’

Posted On Aug 9, 2020 By admin With Comments Off

It may have been “just” a West Virginia-bred maiden race at Charles Town on July 16, but there was a time that 54 -year-old owner Bill Goodman considered it a earn simply that Eternal Heart was still alive.

The filly, a 3-year-old daughter of First Samurai, have now been stood and overcome more sorrow than most horses face in a lifetime. As a yearling, Eternal Heart’s nervous system was attacked by a parasite, Sarcocystis neurona, the culprit behind the weaken and often deadly disease Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis( EPM ).

Her recovery is a story about determination, about religion, and, above all, about the people who work incredibly hard to do right by the swine with whose lives they are entrusted.

“This business gets a really bad rap, but I’ve seen some people do some amazing things, ” Goodman said, his expression hesitating as the excitement overtook him. “They get this colt, this West Virginia-bred with these issues, and precisely given her like she was Ruffian or something. That’s only the kind of people who are in this business. People like this need to be known. And the little guys don’t get the chance for these good ponies, and they should, because she would never be where she is if “shes had” been in any other barn.”

Like any good blockbuster film, the journeying began with a midlife crisis.

In 2011, Goodman was coping an Irish bar for a friend in Miami, Fla ., and had never use around horses. He adored the races, however, and devoted many an afternoon playing the ponies at Gulfstream Park.

“One morning at like six a.m ., as I was putting the night deposit in the bank, I merely had this thought, ‘I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do this anymore, ‘” Goodman excused. “I said to myself, ‘I contemplate I’ll go to Gulfstream Park, and I’m gonna get a license, and I’m gonna get a job there. So I accompanied through the back door, having never sauntered a pony in my life.”

Goodman was told no at almost every barn, but coach Peter Gulyas interpreted him stepping the back and quickly agreed to show Goodman the ropes. That lasted for several months, but when Gulyas came down to time four mares, he had to let Goodman go.

Ever the pragmatist, Goodman called the phone number on tutor Todd Pletcher’s website, and came connected with assistant Whit Beckman at Keeneland. Beckman hired him to hot-walk over the phone, and Goodman drove up to Lexington that highly night, arriving at Keeneland at three in the morning.

“I worked for Todd for just three weeks, and then I got to go to the Derby at Churchill with Gemologist, ” Goodman said. “I was just in heaven. We ran from there to Saratoga, and I started querying about learning how to groom. By the time we went to Florida, I had my firstly four horses.”

Goodman cared for some top horses for Pletcher, attending three Kentucky Derbies and three Breeders’ Cups with his commissions. Among his favorites were We Miss Artie, My Miss Sophia, Competitive advantage and Ectot.

“I learned a lot from Todd, ” said Goodman. “I was very lucky.”

Tragedy struck in 2017 when Goodman’s father died. Pletcher told the groom to take as much time off as he needed, that he would ever have a job when he was ready to come back.

Goodman had been thinking about shifting into the bloodstock business anyway, and his father’s passing allowed him to step back and start working toward that goal. In 2018, he started looking forward to his first horse, and he eventually learnt her at the October Fasig-Tipton Midlantic yearling sale at Timonium.

Under the banner WJG Legacy Equine( his father’s initials ), Goodman obtained Eternal Heart for $50,000. He’d gone a bit above his budget, but he simply felt there was something special about the compact chestnut filly.

Eternal Heart was sent to Susan Montanye’s farm in Florida for her early education, and everything followed according to schedule for the first various weeks.

On Oct. 28, Goodman got the call.

“I remember it like it was yesterday, ” Goodman said. “It was 11:31 in the morning, and the phone rang and it was Susan. I knew right away something was wrong. I recollect picking up the phone, and I has been said, ‘Uh oh.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, Uh-oh.’”

Eternal Heart’s fucking ear was at a 90 -degree angle to her top, her right eye wasn’t blinking, and the surface was sagging on the right side of her face.

“She looked like she’d had a stroke, mostly, ” said Goodman.

Veterinarians instantly diagnosed the filly as neurologic, and started giving her deeply right away. She regained the blinking in her privilege nose after 24 hours, but two weeks ago Goodman “ve got another” call.

The parasite, which had originally attached to the filly’s brain stem, had moved to her spinal cord after the vigorous care. Now, Eternal Heart was losing restrict of her hind end, and the prognosis wasn’t good.

Goodman was told that euthanasia was the most wonderful remaining option, and his insurance company called to offer him a full payout for the filly’s $50,000 value.

“I couldn’t make the decision, and the veterinarian said she wasn’t in pain, ” Goodman said. “So I applied my premier in the sand like an ostrich and said, ‘Keep treating her.’”

Montanye suggested that it might not be a bad notion to have Nieke Mailfat, an Eastern medicine specialist, take a look at the filly. Goodman agreed.

“Nieke looked at the filly and she was just telling me, ‘I can’t utter her a racehorse, but I meditate I can become her a pony, ‘” Goodman remembered. “Right then it was like, what do I do now? If I framed her down now, what kind of a person am I? Yeah, I could get my coin back, but how am I gonna living a life in that?

“I speculated I was prepared for it, but you’re now in charge of this life. I knew right away when they told me, I knew it was going to be a moral decision.”

Prior to treatment, Eternal Heart registered about a 4.5 on the neurologic flake, which races from 1 to 5 with 5 being the worst. Mailfat told Goodman that if there was no improvement in three weeks, the filly would never get better.

In simply four epoches, though, Eternal Heart was demonstrating marked improvements. She’d moved to about a 3.5 on the neurologic magnitude, and after two weeks she was able to go out in a little round pen.

“She was wobbly but she never fell, and she was just happy to be out, ” Goodman said. “I was down there perpetually, and she didn’t look like the same filly. She’s always been a good custodian, though. She’ll eat you out of house and home, so that probably saved her.”

In January 2019, Montanye called to say the filly was doing so much better that she wanted to settled a saddle on her and tacking accompany her. Taking small steps forward, Eternal Heart progressed to walking around with a equestrian on, lunging in the round pen, then canting on the racetrack by mid-February. In March, they started to let her gallop a bit.

“She was still a little bit unsteady, but she never junketed or stumbled, she just continued to get better, ” Goodman said. “Still, the thought process was, ‘She can one day has become a horse.’”

By May, Eternal Heart informed her guardians that she was prepared to strain her legs in her first “breeze.” By July, the filly indicated off her increase with a work in company, exiting a one-quarter in 25 1/2 seconds.

“Now the thought process changes to, ‘Wow, maybe she can race, ‘” said Goodman. “Susan said it was time for her to move on, and I decided to send her to Caio Caramori.”

The son of tutor Eduardo Caramori, Caio operates out of the Thoroughbred Training Center in Lexington. The two fulfill because Goodman had become friends with Pletcher assistant Byron Hughes. Hughes and Caio Caramori were childhood friends, and Hughes brokered the preamble shortly after Goodman started working for Pletcher.

Goodman and Caramori started playing golf together and talking colts. Eventually, their friendship progressed to the point that Goodman would stay on Caramori’s parents’ farm whenever Pletcher’s string was based in Lexington, and Goodman even lived there for a while after “his fathers” died.

“Sending her to Caio was undoubtedly the best decision I’ve established, because she would never be where she is today without him and his wife, Emma, ” Goodman said. “They’re just good people.”

bill goodman

Emma Caramori and child Cora trip Eternal Heart

Eternal Heart reached in Lexington on July 17, and Caramori instantly recommended discussing her for EPM once again. The teach informed Goodman that considering the filly might start her to regress in the short term, but he felt strongly that it was the best thing for her moving forward.

She did regress, but after a week Eternal Heart started vanishing the right way again. Caramori was almost ready to start looking for a race for her in December, but since she’d missed out on so much better early studying, Eternal Heart simply hadn’t had the physical preparation to be ready to race at two.

Caramori turned her out for 90 days over the winter in Florida, then started to bring her back again. She’d jog one day, then be turned out the next day for nearly a month before Caramori resumed full improve with her in April.

“Caio only analyse her like she was his own pony, ” Goodman said. “I was in the stall a lot, but when I had to leave Florida to go work for Dermot( Magner ), I knew she was in good hands.”

When Eternal Heart was ready, Caramori set up a breeze with companionship, a filly “whos been” earned at first asking. Working from the entrance, Eternal Heart was a duo steps gradual at the start and get out-breezed.

“Caio called me and said, ‘Don’t be disappointed, ‘” remembered Goodman. “It was hard not to be, but the coming week he called again and said, ‘Eternal Heart was just telling me she wants a rematch.’”

In their next matchup, Eternal Heart blew the doors off her challenger. It was time to enter her in a race.

Goodman drove down to West Virginia on July 16 to watch Eternal Heart win at first asking, racing without Lasix and exceeding her nearest rival by three-quarters of a segment to earn $16,125.

“I’ll never forget when she turned into the paddock at Charles Town, “shes had” this look upon her face like ‘I’m not in Kansas anymore, ‘” said Goodman. “In the scoot, she split mares and then she time never make anybody get by her. The rider, J.D. Acosta, was just telling me after the race, ‘Man, she is so dark-green but she has so much talent.’ His agent called the next day and said he wants to keep riding her! ”

Future plans for Eternal Heart call for the filly to stay in West Virginia, where there are multiple positions she can run through.

“Even if she never prevails again, really that she did what she did, it’s so impressive, ” said Goodman. “She’s already paid me back, big-time . … She’s just got this something about her, she precisely doesn’t want to lose. It’s reasonably humbling, actually. For two years, she has destroyed every moment of my thoughts.”

Working with ponies has filled a place in Goodman’s life he hadn’t known was empty, and the tour with Eternal Heart has reemphasized just how important it is to find the right people and to never give up.

“Caio and Susan and everybody, they’ve obligated her into a racehorse, ” Goodman said. “They’ve protected her and they’ve protected me, and they’ve put up with me. I’ve been fortunate to make good decisions, and those good decisions were a product of how I was caused and the persons who caused me. Precisely hanging around people who are good people, and who are going to do the right thing.”

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