Page 12 - March 2008 The Game

12 The Game, March 2008
Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper
THhe Coldwater Kid’s Kind Deed
By Chris Lomon pool two or three times a week
e hadn’t seen him for years, but John Cardella to build up muscle tone and wasn’t about to turn his back on an old friend, stamina without putting pres-
one who was in need of a helping hand.
As soon as the woman on the other end of the line
sure on his healing shins. The training program produced a horse gritty enough to win his rst three starts – the Rebel and Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn and the Kentucky Derby.
mentioned the name Bompago, Cardella, whose thoroughbred racing career spans ve decades, pricked up his ears.
The call came from Vicki Pappas with the LongRun Thoroughbred Retirement Society, one of the rst adoption and placement programs for thoroughbreds in Ontario.
Worth an estimated $12 million, Sunny’s Halo, a horse that some Torontonians named cocktails and even named model homes after, was, in the minds and words of many, a slam dunk to take the Plate.
“Would you be able to help us out?” Pappas asked Cardella. “Bompago needs a little assistance.”
How could he forget the name?
For it was Bompago, a $40,000 claimer that Cardella snagged in 1982 at Fort Erie Racetrack, who one year later gave the conditioner his biggest thrill, a stirring score in Canada’s grandest horse race, the Queen’s Plate.
The rst time Cardella saw Bompago, on July 29, 1982, he watched the horse beat one of his own, Caustic Ruler. That performance got the trainer to thinking he might be better than the one he saddled.
Photo Above:
Former Jockey Larry Attard and Trainer Johnny Cardella with the now 28-year-old Bompago at his retirement home in Newmarket Photo Right:
Jockey Larry Attard & Owner/ Trainer Johnny Cardella leading Bompago after his 1983 Queen’s Plate win at Woodbine
“Of course I’ll help,” said the 77-year-old. “Just let me know what you need.”
At the ripe, old age of 28, Bompago, the ery son of Upper Case, found himself in a tough spot.
Bred by Eaton Hall Farm and owned by Thor and John Craig Eaton, a Toronto family that had built the famous department store, Bompago had been raised by Tom Webb.
He had been under the care of Dr. Linda Low, a veterinarian, who took over Bompago’s handling after he retired from a successful turn as a jumper for several years, a career he started in the late 80’s.
Michael Burns Photo - from
The Plate/A Royal Tradition, Cauz, Deneau/OJC
After Low passed away in the summer of 2007, Tracy Dineley, a woman Cardella had known for some years, wanted to bring Bompago to her farm. The only issue was money.
Webb consigned him to the annual yearling sales at Woodbine, and when the bidding stalled, trainer Gord Huntley purchased Bompago for $25,000.
Stahlbaum at the gate and ran off.
“I drove my car to the backstretch and there he
Enter Cardella.
On August 27, 1982, at Fort Erie, Cardella claimed Bompago, in partnership with his brothers, Carl
and Gerry and nephew Paul, as he watched the bay gelding notch a three and a half length win in his third lifetime start.
was, back at his barn, with some of the grooms holding him,” remembered Cardella. “He wasn’t hurt at all.”
Each month, Cardella writes a cheque to Dineley and that money goes directly towards the care of Bompago.
In the Cup and Saucer, a mile and one sixteenth affair on the turf, Bompago looked like a clear winner. In the stretch, however, where the old outside Marshall turf crossed the main track to the inner grass, he made a right-hand turn to the outside rail and wound up settling for second.
“Everyone who has had him, including myself, just loves him,” said Cardella, who, over the years, has visited Bompago, including when the converted thoroughbred competed at the Royal Winter Fair in an equestrian competition in the late 1980’s. “I think about him all the time. He was probably the best horse I ever had.”
The year was 1982 and Cardella, six years into
his career as a full- edged trainer, was, just like his fellow conditioners, looking for a horse. Not just any horse, but one that could perhaps contest the Queen’s Plate.
But could Bompago be the one to tackle Sunny’s Halo?
Cardella, who began his training career in 1964 and served as an assistant to Hall of Famer Frank Merrill Jr., had some good ones in his barn, but none, in his view, that could tangle with the horse pegged as the second coming of Northern Dancer, a horse by the name of Sunny’s Halo.
“When I saw him in that claiming race, I didn’t want to let him slip by.”
The rst came from Attard, now Bompago’s regular rider, who suggested to Cardella that he make an equipment change: get rid of the ring bit. Cardella replaced the bit, a loop that tightens around the horse’s jaws, clamping the mouth and locking the head in place, with a leather-covered slide bit that was softer on the horse’s mouth.
Tabbed at 3-5 in the 1983 Queen’s Plate Winter- book, Sunny’s Halo, owned by David (Pud) Foster and trained by David Cross Jr., looked every bit the part.
Talented, but temperamental, Bompago was anything but the favourite of exercise riders and jockeys alike, not above dumping them on the track.
“We knew that if we could stretch him out, we might be okay,” recalled Cardella, of Bompago’s rst win since he had claimed him. “He ran a helluva race in the Trial.”
Tall and leggy, boasting a beautiful chestnut coat, Sunny’s Halo had already built up an exquisite and enviable resume.
Larry Attard, who nished second aboard Wayover in the 1981 Queen’s Plate, a scant nose behind Fiddle Dancer Boy, still recalls his rst impression of Bompago.
A day later Sunny’s Halo injured the ankle that had bothered him the year prior, in the Arlington Classic, and was out of the Plate.
He won a Sovereign Award as Canada’s
champion juvenile in 1982 with victories in the Grey Breeders’ Cup Stakes along with the Swynford, Colin and Coronation Futurity. Stress fractures in both front shins were later discovered after a poor showing at the Meadowlands in the Young America Stakes, ending his two-year-old campaign.
“I knew he had a reputation for being a bit crazy,” said Attard. “But it never came into my mind to think that way. When someone gives you an opportunity
to ride their horse, you give 100 per cent. But he was tough to handle. In post parade, he would have to go away from the other horses so you could keep him calm.”
The role of favourite was now handed to Bom- pago.
That winter, Cross decided to concentrate “Sunny’s” three-year-old training in California,
rst at Santa Anita and then Hollywood, where
he galloped, walked and swam, using the equine
After coming out on the losing end in four consecutive races, Bompago appeared to be on the brink of anonymity on the Plate scene.
With the mercury soaring into the 90’s, several trainers wondered if their horses could handle the heat.
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Cardella hoped so.
Inconsistency plagued Bompago early his three- year-old campaign. He won the Achievement Stakes at Greenwood on April 16, and then nished out of the top three in two of his next three starts.
“He beat my horse, who was an American-bred, so I gured he might be able to win a stake and with a little luck, maybe make it to the Plate,” said the man known as the Coldwater Kid, a moniker given to him by the late Jim Proudfoot, a longtime sports columnist, for Cardella’s use of cold water in aging horses for aches and pains.
In the span of three weeks, though, two key events occurred.
Two weeks later, Bompago nished third in the Yearling Stakes. Cardella was suitably impressed with the two-year-old’s potential. His behavior, however, was cause for concern.
It worked to perfection as Bompago, at 25-1, won the Plate Trial Stakes by ve lengths.
In a race leading up to the Cup and Saucer Stakes, a key Plate prep, Bompago dumped then rider Gary
Not Cardella.
On June 26, 14 starters lined up on a track rated as “fast,” for the 124th edition of the “Gallop for the Guineas.”
“When I saw him in post parade, he was all professional. He had a habit of acting up in post pa-