Greatness and Goodness: Barbaro and his legacy

Typically modest, Alex insists that the book is about Barbaro, and is reluctant to talk about himself, but he’s too interesting a character, and I’m far too nosy to let it go! From England originally, with the slight build of a jockey, but too tall to race, he did point to point, but has since contented himself with galloping flat horses here in the States. A contact initially led him to Michael Dickinson’s barn where he worked for a little while, but has lived permanently five minutes from Fairhill. Until 2007 he combined riding horses and working at universities, lecturing on social media with some consulting on the side, but the experience with Barbaro led to a life change,

Alex galloping racehorses

“When this project began to develop, I basically decided to give everything else up, and only focus on this. After the whole Barbaro saga, I’d become more involved in horse welfare along with horse racing through all the websites, so I just decided to travel around by racetrack to learn a lot more than I could do by just staying in one spot, and I did that for two and a half years. A lot of what I learnt probably wasn’t that unusual, but when you see stuff firsthand, it’s just better than reading about it.” 

There was a year in which Alex returned to Fairhill to write the book, and now he’s back on the road selling it. The day I saw him, he’d done a morning interview on the local TV station, had spent the afternoon at Three Chimneys signing copies, (and giving a healthy portion of the proceeds to a charity of the Farm’s choice) and after our conversation he was headed to Louisville for the Oaks and Derby, but would be in Delaware come sunday. 

Alex’s twin interests in racing and social media were responsible for him running his friends’ website, timwoolleyracing.com, which became the source for all information about Barbaro from the Preakness onwards, and thus would eventually change his life,

“I was running a website for a trainer friend of mine, another English guy, and it was a blog, so he was updating it at my persistence! When Barbaro came back for the Preakness we decided to update the site on Barbaro’s progress leading up to the race, and then afterwards…”, 

Alex doesn’t ever talk to me directly about the injury that ended Barbaro’s career, although of course it’s written about in detail, and with sensitivity in the book, 

“…after the race, we had access to all the information, we just decided to keep it going. It was all very informal, but understood. Dean Richardson (Barbaro’s vet) would call Michael Matz ( Barbaro’s trainer) in the morning, and Michael would just tell me on the horse path. 

There was never a formal agreement or anything like that, we just had a system going and it worked.  I think Barbaro captured the public’s imagination to such a degree due to a combination of a number of facts, which obviously I go into in more detail in my book, but I do think social media had a big role to play. Social media had not been around for previous heroic horses, so I think that definitely amplified it and allowed people to band together.” 

I asked Alex how he got involved in social media in the first place,

“I was a useless student, I had no ambition for anything; I got into graduate school (on scholarship, again with the modesty!)  and was amazed by this fellow Indian student – he’d just go to the computer and look up cricket scores. This was 1990, way before the web browser or anything, and I thought because it was all new, I could learn it and be smart at it. So I just got really into it. I ended up in 1997 being one of only two people teaching internet marketing anywhere in the world.  So now basically I combine my two of my main interests – social media and racing.”

Alex took the brave step to self-publish his book which means that he can choose how to allocate the proceeds, and most of the time he lets the host pick the charity of their choice. However the book is also available at the Keeneland Gift shop, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, the Kentucky Horse Park Gift Shop, and if you’re not local, you can buy it at Amazon.com, 

“The nice thing about it, is all the retail sales of the book go to me; obviously there’s costs in there, but to be honest I’m not making any money, but I’m having a lot of fun right now, and wherever I do a book signing, if it’s not a retail transaction, I just ask the venue who they’d like to support. I do some signings for the New Bolton Center and that obviously goes to Laminitis Research, and I recently did a signing at Old Friends where all the money raised that day went to them, and I would say to date, we’ve probably raised maybe $3,000 through book signings and sold about 1,200 copies “

Alex interviewed more than a hundred people for the book, and has garnered glowing reviews from the equine and thoroughbred industry, as well as non-horsey press and public,

“I really believe in the book, and I’ve very excited about it. There’s absolutely nothing more accurate on this horse than this. There’s nothing in here that’s not true. 

Some people are visual learners. I’m big into designer usability from the web, so I applied that kind of thinking to the book design.

I don’t duck any of the issues that are a part of Barbaro’s legacy either, trying to end the practice of horse slaughter is definitely a part of his legacy. I go into this in the book, and whether you endorse slaughter or not on an emotional level, the fact of the matter is that horses that have ever had bute ever in their life cannot be slaughtered, and 99% of our racehorses are pre-raced on bute.  What do we do with all these horses is a problem,  but we need to face up to that and try to figure it out. By allowing it to continue and avoiding the problem is not correct. I don’t know the answer, it’s going to take a lot of work, but it needs to be addressed. I think people are starting to come to terms with it a little bit more now. 

Part of Barbaro’s legacy is looking at appropriate retirement of horses, and Mrs. Jackson made it clear that she was interested in ending horse slaughter.

 We need to be re-habbing horses, like they do at the Secretariat Center; horses want to be useful. Then that goes back to the racing industry, we’ve got to be much more conservative with our use of drugs because by the time they’re done racing on all the medication they’ve been given it really creates a disadvantage for their next career.

However, the book is much more about Barbaro and his impact, than it is about the issues.”

It’s clear that Alex loves Barbaro and talks about him reverently; he doesn’t think we’ve seen anything nearly as good as him since,

“That Derby win of Barbaro’s was incredible, and he was undefeated going into the race. He only ever really had one close race, and even though the Florida Derby was close I don’t know that it really got to the bottom of him. He was a different kind of horse. Ironically, I think Bernadini was probably the second best three-year old of the first ten years of the 2000’s, but I do believe that Barbaro would have beaten him. When Bernadini was eyeballed for the first time in the Breeders Cup Classic, he couldn’t handle it. Barbaro had that mental maturity that if they did run head to head he would have put him away. 

Hopefully one day we’ll see something as good as him again. You could argue that maybe Zenyatta or Rachel might be up there, but I still think Barbaro was a bit better than either of them.”

I wondered if now perhaps Alex had been bitten by the writing bug, or if he was planning on publishing his memoirs?

“No, I don’t think I’ll never write another book, I know I won’t. This is my first book and my last book.”

 

Finally, I asked Alex if there was anything that has surprised him while writing the book,

“I learnt a few things from the book: I do believe that we are now in a position, with the right amount of funding and support, to solve the puzzle of laminitis, and what causes it, which we’ve never understood to date. That’s probably the most positive thing. I think while I had a very strong opinion of Barbaro, it was very good to hear the opinions of our racing journalists; they thought Barbaro’s Derby win was sensational, so that was just good affirmation.  The other thing, which might sound silly, it’s pretty obvious, but that memorial at Churchill Downs, (the bronze by Alexa King), it’s going to secure his name in history for life. In a hundred years time, assuming we still have a Derby and it’s at Churchill Downs, he will be the horse of our generation they remember. For instance,  you can’t really compare him to Man O War (because I did, mentioning his statue at the Horse Park!) because Man O War had a more robust race record because he ran more times, but also Man O War’s legacy is supported by his progeny and Barbaro never had that opportunity either, but this sculpture really does become his tangible legacy.  I got a bit geeky when I was researching how memorials support our history, and I really got into it. “

A clay model of the larger than life bronze sculpture at Churchill Downs

I’d like to thank Alex for taking time out of his incredibly busy schedule, and for all the work he does to support horse welfare. Thank you for reading, and please buy the book, it’s not only beautiful to flick through, professionally designed, superbly illustrated and packed with interesting tidbits (eg. how Barbaro got his name, and a picture & explanation) and never seen before photos that make it easy to dip into, as well as a provocative read, and an engrossing story about an amazing horse. In fact, buy a copy for yourself, and one for your mum, or your best friend, then go racing, and go Eventing! For the record, Alex said he had “no idea” who was going to win the KY Derby this year!