It was nearly a decade ago, yet 49-year-old Gerald McGinn still remembers every detail about the evening he lost his four-year-old homebred G Ts Graig in a $4,000 claiming race at Northlands Park Raceway. “I had another horse named Lindsay out of a New Zealand mare and Graig,” recalls McGinn, an Alberta resident, who now owns 19 head, including seven broodmares. “I thought Graig was the better of the two, so I kept half of him and syndicated the other half for $400 a share between 27 other people. The trainer they had chosen called me up shortly before 9:00 p.m. one night to tell me he had a problem with a stifle and he was going to put him in a claimer. I asked him if we would lose him and he said probably yes.
“I was going to take the horse out of the paddock,” he says. “But he was in-to-go with the harness on, ready to race. I had one chain off and my hand on his halter and said to myself: ‘to hell with this -- there is some kind of dirty deal going on.’ But when I looked at the horse, he was absolutely dripping sweat and I thought: ‘well, I only own half of him,’ so I put the chain back on him and lost him. I was very upset and when the horse next raced for his new owner, he went the mile in 1:56 and [our trainer] couldn’t get the horse to go in under two minutes.”
The gelding had debuted in rein to trainer/driver Ray Stewart on July 11, 1997 at Whoop Up Downs for an $800 purse. He completed the mile in 2:05.2, finishing third behind Cannon Attack and Royal Cadillac. During his freshman season, G Ts Graig raced 12 times with a slate of 1-1-2 and won $3,695.
As a sophomore, he won once in 14 starts and earned $7,232. The gelding, who is his sire’s leading performer, began to round into form during his four-year-old season. From 19 races that year, his resumé read 5-4-3 with more than $20,000 on his card, all while normally pacing in $4,000 claiming events.
It was his five and six-year-old seasons, however, when G Ts Graig really came into his own. The former $4,000 claimer was transported to the California, Illinois and finally New Jersey and was placed in the claiming handicaps as well as opens. He established his lifetime mark at five and collected more than $215,000 in purses in 2000 and 2001.
Today, the son of McGinn’s stallion Bomb Rickles and his mare Ireland has brushed his nose against the gate on 343 occasions with 65 victories, 54 seconds and 43 third place finishes. The gelding, who was named for McGinn’s grandson and is currently owned by Burke Racing Stable and Weaver Bruscemi LLC, has deposited more than $700,000 in the bank and paced to a lifetime mark of 1:50:1 as a five-year-old.
G Ts Graig now ranks 11th in total victories for 2009 out of all North American pacers age three or older and is in 10th position in the same category for aged pacers. On July 7, 2009, he paced in 1:52.4 at Harrah’s Chester Downs to tie the world record for the fastest mile ever by a 14-year-old on a five-eighths of a mile track. He is also the fastest male Alberta-bred ever.
“I’ve followed his career all these years and even drove down to California to watch him race,” says McGinn. “I watch him on television all the time and I can always tell whether he is going to win or not win by watching him in the post parade. He looks great and his other owners have taken care of him. I’ve always wondered what his career would have been like if I had kept him.”
Throughout that career, the horse has been a model of consistency. The only year he failed to capture a race or earn less than $38,000 was in 2003, and he has averaged roughly $2,000 per start while earning nearly three-quarters of a million dollars. In the last two years, the gelding has primarily found himself in-to-go at Pennsylvania facilities. “We’ve known the horse for years and have claimed him many times,” explains Ron Burke. Burke, who conditions the gelding for himself and Weaver Bruscemi LLC, is a native of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania and a leading trainer in North America in both victories (641) and bankroll ($13,508,199). “He’s a very good horse; a total professional and super nice. With him I’d like to make a case they should let 15-year-olds race, but the truth is that you have to draw the line someplace. He’s definitely the exception and not the rule by far.”
G Ts Graig is currently contesting $15,000 to $20,000 claimers, but over the last months of his career he will gradually drop in class and hopefully be protected from entering someone else’s barn. There is already a plan in place for his retirement.
“Most of the time when you see 14-year-olds race, they are in the bottom of their class, but he’s competitive,” Burke says. “By the end of the year we will probably get him down into the bottom classes because we will be guaranteed wins, but he is going to be the favourite or next to favourite every time he goes to the gate.
“The truth is that Larry Baron loves him and we actually told him we would race him and give him to Larry once his career is over,” he continues.
“I like that about Larry. He’s a guy that’s in it to make money, but he seems to be very fond of this horse. For us he’s been more of a money making proposition but Larry -- he just loves the horse. I hope we end up with him, so we can give him back to Larry and he can enjoy him in retirement.”
McGinn was concerned about what would happen to the horse after the first of the year, so he had his daughter call around to the tracks the gelding was frequenting to let whoever ended up with Graig know that they could ship him to Alberta and he would keep him on the farm. “He’s a nice horse and I think he deserves a nice retirement,” says McGinn. “His brother Jet was getting ready to be sold for slaughter, which I can’t stand for, so I wanted to make sure nothing would happen to him. But I had heard through a friend that Baron really liked the horse.”
Baron, who trained and drove from 1980 to 1986 and then got out of the business until 2005, saw the grit G Ts Graig possessed and finances were the reason he purchased the horse for the first time. Over the last four years, however, monetary concerns also developed into a genuine affection for the animal. “I don’t know how many times I’ve claimed him or purchased him over the past four years; maybe fifteen, twenty times,” the 54-year-old Horsham, Pennsylvania, resident grins. “He’s just a nice, gentle, horse that always tries and gives his best. He’s not a great horse. I’ve got 85 horses and he is far from the best, but he’s just a great warhorse. He gives you a 100 percent effort all the time.”
There is another reason G Ts Graig holds a special place in Baron’s heart. “I hadn’t driven a horse since ‘86 or ‘87 until I drove last year,” he explains. “It was good to be back in the bike and enjoy myself, so I decided to race a couple times just for fun and I drove G Ts Graig twice. Actually, he’s the only horse I’ve driven this year and that’s one of the reasons I like him so much. He knows his way around the track and it’s enjoyable to drive a horse like that. I had hoped to have him and drive him in several starts, but I will get him back when he is done racing.”
And Burke is not the only one who thinks the gelding is in good enough form to continue racing at age 15.
“When you look at him, he looks like a five-year-old,” Baron says. “I just feel bad that he’s done racing, because it seems like he loves it. I understand the limit and you don’t want people racing horses that shouldn’t be racing, but he’s a pretty healthy racehorse at 14 and there are four, five and six-year-old horses that are not nearly as sound as he is, so we are putting him out to pasture when he’s as good as he’s been over the past three or four years.
“He recently won in (1):52 and is just rock solid,” Baron adds. “You wish you had a barn full of racehorses like him. I have some real nice ones that are open horses, but he’s pretty much been my favourite for as long as I’ve been back in the business.”
In Alberta, horses are able to race at age 15, and if McGinn were to have the gelding returned to him, he says he might consider racing him.
“He looks like he can still go, but I don’t know if I would want to beat him up on these tracks up here with the small amount of purse money we race for,” he says. “I would have to talk to the trainers to see what they have done with him. I think they were swimming him and I don’t have access to that here.”
While he’s not exactly certain what fields G Ts Graig will be roaming, Baron intends on securing the best of homes for the gelding. “I just want to turn him out on a farm and let him enjoy the rest of his life,” he says. “He’s earned it and is one of those horses that deserves a good home when he is done. This guy has always been just an ordinary claimer, not like Boulder Creek (who Baron owned) that made $3 million and anybody is going to want to give him a good home. Believe me, it broke my heart when Ronnie Burke took him from me (in September), but I knew Ronnie would take good care of him and Mark Weaver told me that if I don’t claim him back before the end of the year, he will drop him off wherever I want, which is extremely nice of both of them.
“Maybe making sure a horse like this has a good home isn’t the easiest thing to do fiscally, but I’ve been fortunate in this business,” Baron continues. “He’s a tough old campaigner and I want to make sure he’s taken care of. After all, we do owe them something.”