Posts Tagged ‘shawnee country’

By Ray Paulick
I have one framed winner’s circle photograph in my possession. It was taken in 2000 at Fair Grounds in New Orleans after William T. Young’s Shawnee Country won the Grade 3 Fair Grounds Oaks carrying his Overbrook Farm silks. I always stayed out of winner’s circle photos, even when invited, because I never thought a journalist covering a race should show the appearance of favoring one horse or owner over another. So when Mr. Young saw me down on the track, where I was waiting to do some interviews, he asked me to come in and have my picture taken. I shook my head and said politely, “No thank you, I don’t like to do that.” 

“Well, that’s just plain silly,” he said, then locked his arm around my elbow and literally dragged me in to stand next to him. When the shutters clicked, Mr. Young’s arm still locked around mine, I had the look of someone who had just taken a big bite out of a lemon; I wasn’t very happy to be there after being strong-armed by an octogenarian, even though I had the utmost respect and admiration for him.

A couple of weeks after his death in January 2004, Mr. Young’s longtime secretary, Mary Agnes, called me up and asked if I wouldn’t mind stopping by the W.T. Young offices. When I got there she gave me a framed copy of the picture, the one I’d tried to forget and had never seen. Today it’s one of the most prized possessions from my years in this sport.

I thought of that New Orleans afternoon and the other times I had the great opportunity to be around this Kentucky gentleman when I learned yesterday that all of the breeding stock and most of the horses currently racing in the Overbrook Farm name will be sold at Keeneland, beginning in September with the yearlings, and continuing with the November and January breeding stock and horses of all ages sales. Eaton Sales will handle the consignment. Click here for the details.

It truly is the end of a remarkable era in Thoroughbred racing and breeding.

Young’s longtime friend and trainer, D. Wayne Lukas, said it’s akin to the automobile business losing Chrysler or General Motors (something we actually may be very close to seeing). But none of us really should have been that surprised that the operation is shutting down, and Lukas saw the writing on the wall.

“Once Bill had passed away the passion and driving force behind Overbrook lost something,” the Hall of Fame trainer said. “Bill Young was passionate about racing, adamant that Overbrook would be a first-class operation, and something to last for years to come. Once he passed away, things changed. To Bill’s credit, Junior kept it going, though it transformed more into a commercial operation.”

“Junior” would be Bill Young Jr., W.T. Young’s son, who runs the business empire his father built but who admittedly doesn’t share the passion the elder Young had for Thoroughbred racing and breeding. Bill’s son, Chris, has been in charge of the Overbrook racing stable and will continue to race horses in the Overbrook name and carry the blue and green bull’s-eye silks that have became so familiar in major races around the country. Overbrook Farm as a major breeding entity will cease to exist. The 2,400-acre Lexington farm will be leased and remain the home of the pensioned stallion Storm Cat, who made Overbrook a commercial juggernaut in the 1990s and into the current decade. Other Overbrook stallions to be relocated will be able to return to the farm as pensioners, Bill Young said.

“You’re looking at a big operation,” Lukas said. “Even with Chris’s passion, if he threw all of his energies into it he would still have a tremendous economic expense ahead of him. Without a major sire, the bottom line doesn’t make any sense. Without the passion to drive it, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Bill Young said as much in an interview yesterday. “The economics have become more challenging but it’s a challenge I could have lived with if I’d gotten pleasure from racing or raising a great racehorse,” he said. “But my background is not horse farming and I don’t have the love for it to offset the economic challenge.

“It’s been a little bit bittersweet in reaching the conclusion I reached,” he said. “My family obviously enjoyed a great experience with Overbrook, and even though the Thoroughbred business is a good business I just don’t share the passion for it. We as a family have been kicking this around for a while. Chris has more of a love than anyone in the family for the business, and his interest is in racing. He’ll continue that.”

“We’ll sell a majority of the stable,” Chris Young said. “We’ll keep some colts and fillies, though we haven’t quite decided the ongoing plans for the racing stable. I’ll breed or buy a few horses.” The Overbrook name and silks will live on, Chris Young said, “because there’s lots of good history and memories attached to them.”

Bill Young said there are no plans to sell the farm or any of the property. Though much of it is inside the Fayette County urban service boundary, Overbrook is zoned for agricultural use and Young said there are no plans to develop it “at this time.”

William T. Young came into racing and breeding late in life, after concentrating on various businesses and philanthropic activities in the Lexington community. He was in his 60s when he built Overbrook and developed an operation that won a Kentucky Derby, Kentucky Oaks and Breeders’ Cup Classic, among other races, and several Eclipse Awards. The farm was immaculately planned and laid out.

“The thing that Bill emphasized was understated elegance,” said Lukas. “He didn’t want to be ostentatious or have the farm stand out or show off. It was subtle in its elegance. He built it that way and it is one of the more beautiful farms in Kentucky: a real showplace. He tried to have it blend with the landscape.”

Lukas remembers the day when he first met Young. “He called me up and said he’d like to fly to California, and he came out with Bob Warren (Young’s longtime adviser) and we sat down and had a visit. He said, ‘I want you to become a huge part of Overbrook and do for me what you did for Gene Klein.’”

The timing was perfect, Lukas said, as Klein was getting ready to get out of the game. Though Storm Cat, who finished second for Young in the 1985 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, had been trained by Jonathan Sheppard, Lukas developed the remainder of Overbrook’s 21 Grade 1 winners. They made quite a team, two driven men with a passion for the game.

Young liked to share his passion with others, whether it was horse racing, politics or University of Kentucky athletics. There were times during my years at the Blood-Horse that Young would call up and ask me to stop by his office to debate issues in racing that I may have written about. He was adamant, for example, that racetracks should be able to have slot machines because he didn’t think government should legislate what people can or can’t do with their time and money. I was opposed to the idea of slots at the time, not for economic reasons, but simply because I felt it was taking the moral high ground to keep racing apart from such a mindless activity. “Who are you,” he asked me politely, “to tell someone what they should or shouldn’t do?” Of course, I didn’t fail to remind him that he was a major shareholder in Churchill Downs who might benefit from slots. That didn’t seem to matter, either. “I’ve got enough money,” he said.

I never left his office feeling I’d won any of our debates, but always felt that he listened to what I said.

Young also loved to surprise people with his generosity. He and Keeneland’s Ted Bassett took a couple of longtime hourly employees from the Lexington racetrack to New York on Young’s private jet for a day of shopping, dining and theater. On another occasion he took Stone Farm’s Arthur Hancock III and a longtime employee of Idle Hour Country Club by private jet to a University of Kentucky game in Georgia. Shortly after takeoff, the jet experienced mechanical failure, and began to quickly lose altitude. The pilot said they’d have to return to Lexington, but Young pointed him toward Louisville where they could get a substitute jet. When they landed safely in Louisville, Hancock and the Idle Hour worker dropped to their knees and kissed the ground, thankful they were still alive. “Can we get a car and drive back to Lexington,” the man suggested to Hancock.

“No,” Young told them, “we’re not going to abort the mission.”

“It’s like the poem says, ‘He walked with kings but had the common touch,’” Hancock said of Young, a friend and partner in the horse business. “One time he said life would be pretty boring if we didn’t have these horses racing. I said, ‘You’re right, but I guess we’re prejudiced.’ That’s just the way he felt. He loved to compete and he liked the people, and he gave me a lot of good advice. I loved him. It’s sad, and the news about the dispersal came as a shock to me, but people have to do what they’ve got to do.”

Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report

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