Page 30 - The Game July 2006

30 The Game, July 2006 Your Thoroughbred Racing Community Newspaper
Tom MacDonald has been trying to eke out a living around the racetrack most of his life. He started as a hotwalker, worked as a groom and over the years just about every other occupation around the track. He has tried other jobs, at other places - everything from selling cars to scalping tickets, but the racetrack always draws back its own and strangely it rewards loyalty (albeit slowly) and now at fifty one years Tom is content. He has found a niche in racetrack life as agent for the successful jockey tandem of Mark Walker and Richard Hamel.
However, that’s not what this column is
about. It’s about something else Tom did. A few weeks ago Tom hit the big Kahuna—the superfecta. He hit to the tune of $18,500. But that’s just the beginning of
this story.
You see, a few years back Tom, like
many racetrackers, would have celebrated by going to the clubhouse bar and blowing a huge chunk of it on booze and stupid gambles—we’ve all seen that one, right?
But Tommy has other concerns in his life right now. He has a father with cancer, a brother on dialysis and another brother who is about to undergo major heart surgery. So when he got this windfall he
did something to be proud of, he left the track and went to his parent’s house where, as his sister says, he took care of them.
"My dad always had a thing about having money in his wallet so I made sure he had some. And I gave a few bucks to my brother who needs help right now.
"My family has been through a lot lately, so I went to see them and just hung around. They needed to hear something positive and good. Everything’s been negative lately. Every time they pick up the phone something in the family’s gone
wrong. But we’re dealing with it and this was a nice win because something good happened to someone in the family, so it was good that way.
"With the rest of the money I just paid off my bills. That’s what I did with the money I won. As far as hooting and hollering—nothing."
This story is interesting because it belies a stereotypical racetrack image—one of blow- ing the money and regretting it later—but there’s more.
Tom got a call on his cell phone later that day and after visiting his dad he went to visit a friend.
The friend, who had been sober for seven years, had slid off the wagon. Tom spent the
next few hours talking too him, helping him get sober and...well the expression is ‘twelve stepping him’.
Tom himself has been clean and sober for three years now.
"I’ve been through it. I was bad. I quit because I lost control," he says.
Further to that Tom says very little, other than he got help from people on the backside.
"I’m doing really well. It’s remarkable how I’ve changed my life around. I’m changing from my old ways and I’m having fun. And I’m learning to deal with all the problems, learning to deal with life. You know life on life’s terms, kind of thing. Before, I always used to think poor old me but now I accept things as they are and I have a little more confidence in what I do. I can do things like being an agent and I’m not scared to do them. And I’m a little more spiritual. I mean I don’t go to Sunday school but I’m 51 and I’ve finally grown up."
On the evening of his big win Tom stopped at a fast food restaurant on the way home. It had been an exhausting day. He ate a sandwich and went to bed.
And slept well.
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News In Review
Stallions Favourite Trick and Saratoga Six were among six stallions that died in a barn fire at Jim and Marilyn Helzer’s JEH Stallion Station in New Mexico on June 6.
Favorite Trick, 1997 Horse of the Year as a two-year-old after an undefeated year which included a win the the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. He retired at age three with 12 wins in 16 starts and more than $1.7 in earnings. In 2006, the eleven-year-old stallion was third on the state’s sire list for progeny earnings and had sired a career total of 16 stakes winners and had total progeny earnings of $8.4 million.
Saratoga Six, who was a twenty-four-year-old in 2006, was purchased for $2.2 million as a yearling in 1983 and was undefeated as a two-year-old in his sole year of racing. As a stallion he is represented by 40 stakes winners and earners of $25 million.
The four other horses that perished in the blaze, which started approximately at 9pm, were Quarter Horse stallions, Fredricksburg, Southern Cartel, and The Down Side.
1992 Breeders’ Cup Distaff winner, Hall of Fame member and two-time Eclipse Award winning older female, Paseana, died June 21 in her native Argentina at Dr. Ignacio Pavlovsky's Haras San Ignacio de Loyola.
Paseana retired in 1995 with 19 wins in 36 starts and earnings of more than $3.3 million which included multiple wins in G1 races.
According to Dr. Pavlovsky, the nineteen-year-old mare died from hemorrhaging following a ruptured blood vessel in her abdomen.
Trainer Aidan O’Brien and owners Susan Magnier and Diane Nagle’s, Yeats (IRE), was the winner of the G1 Ascot Gold Cup on June 18.
The 2005 G1 Coronation Cup winner was running for the first time since finishing sixth in the G1 Canadian International at Woodbine last October. The 7-1 shot was ridden to victory by jockey Kieren Fallon.
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$0Down
$182.88/mth 7.59%Fin.