Smiles all around at the post-Trainers Challenge press conference earlier this year. From left to right: Tiffany Catledge, Kerry Blackmer, Eric Dierks, Steuart Pittman. Photo credit: Mary Getsey Bernier
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Steuart Pittman successfully launched the Retired Racehorse Training Project two years ago, seeking to increase demand for OTTBs by providing a marketplace and resources for buying and selling. The organization, which now has its 501(c)3 status, gained a lot of visibility earlier this year when Steuart launched the Trainer Challenge, in which three trainers picked out an OTTB at the Maryland Horse World Expo in January and worked with it for five weeks. Then the trainers returned in February to show what their horses had learned at the PA Horse World Expo. Eric Dierks won the Best Trainer title as a result of his work with Brazilian Wedding, a 6-year-old mare by Milwaukee Brew. Trainers Tiffany Catledge and Kerry Blackmer also participated.
The Trainer Challenge was incredibly popular, with the RRTP website garnering more than 250,000 hits this year as OTTB enthusiasts logged on to watch the videos of the trainers at work. Steuart is excited to unveil an all new challenge format for the next competition: the 100-Day Challenge, in which trainers will have three months to work with their OTTBs. The conclusion of the 100-Day Challenge will still coincide with the PA Horse World Expo in February, but it will have a different spin this time around. “The plan is that each of the horses will be presented by major mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred farms, which we will announce within a couple weeks,” Steuart said. “Each one will select a horse that they bred, or is by an offspring of their stallion, that they think is a great example of a Thoroughbred sport horse.”
The 100-Day Challenge will be modeled after 100-day stallion testing for warmbloods. “We’ll have four horses that will all be trained at my facility (Dodon Farm in Davidsonville, Md.),” Steuart said. “The horses will be evaluated on suitability as sporthorses — their jumping, conformation, movement and trainability — just like stallions are evaluated for the warmblood registries.” Steuart emphasized that this challenge will focus more on the horse’s characteristics and abilities, as opposed to the original challenge, which rewarded the trainer’s prowess. The 100-Day Challenge will launch next month and run through February.
Looking ahead to 2013, Steuart will continue hosting Thoroughbreds For All events, which provide education about racing and training OTTBS, as well as a marketplace for buying opportunities. Steuart held the first of these events in Kentucky in April, with the second held two weeks ago at Fair Hill. “At Fair Hill, we had about 25 horses from the area that were all in second careers already,” Steuart said. “The hope for the future is to do some of these events at racetracks, where there would not only be horses coming in from the outside who have already started careers, but also horses brought by trainers that are still racing and looking to retire.”
Steuart is also looking to bolster the Bloodline Brag on the RRTP website, which is like a Wikipedia page for OTTB owners to enter information about their horses. “It’s really for entering second-career characteristics and competition records,” Steuart said. “If people are looking at a horse to buy by a certain stallion, they can log on to see other retired racers by the same stallion. We only have 600 horses in there right now; for it to work, we need thousands.” To incentivize OTTB owners to enter this information, Steuart is hoping to partner with a tack store that might donate $5 or $10 gift certificates to give to every person who enters information into the Bloodline Brag.
As the Retired Racehorse Retraining Project enters 2013, Steuart hopes the organization will continue to gain more clout and recognition with both racehorse trainers and OTTB supporters. “In eventing, professionals take horses off the track all the time; that’s nothing new to us,” Steuart said. “But it hasn’t been recognized by the racing industry, and they are key to building the bridge to the second career. The rescues are great, but the people at the racetrack need a market to sell their horses. That’s where we come in. Listing horses, finding horses, finding trainers to help with horses, hosting events to expose these horses — we do it all.” For much more information, visit www.retiredracehorsetraining.org.
