It was in 1972 that a 25-year-old trainer/driver named Jim Ferguson steered Goodbye Columbus to a second-place finish in his Adios elimination

. Goodbye Columbus came up well short in the final, though he went on to finish second in the Messenger and 2-3 in his Little Brown Jug heats for Ferguson.

Now, 37 years later, Ferguson is taking another shot at the Adios as the trainer of Roadway. The Blissful Hall-Terinatross gelding drew the rail in Friday’s first of three eliminations. The top three finishers in each elimination return for the $677,665 final on Saturday, Aug. 1.

Although he’s earned only $42,880, Roadway is blessed with early speed and familiarity with his home track.

“I think he can go in 1:51 or 1:50 and change with a good trip,” Ferguson said. “He hasn’t done it yet, but he hasn’t had the opportunity.”

In his only other Adios start as a trainer, Ferguson sent out Southwind Jason to a fifth-place elimination finish in the 2006 edition.

A second-generation horseman, Ferguson entered the business full time in 1967 after seeing action in Vietnam. He worked as second trainer for Hall of Famer K.D. Owen, toured with the Grand Circuit and in 1977 settled in Illinois, where he worked for the next 22 years.

“After that, I was in Ohio for a few years, shipping horses to the Meadows to race,” he said. “That was too tough, so we moved here. I have 16 horses; I’m 62, so I don’t want more than that. If they’re good horses, that’s enough.”

In the Meadows’ competitive environment, Ferguson used his Illinois pipeline to get horses. At one point, every horse he trained had an Illinois connection, although he’s since acquired others for Pennsylvania-restricted races. Richard and Ruth Suda, co-owners of Roadway along with Ferguson, his wife Judy and Arlene Deets, were neighbors of the Fergusons when they all lived in Chicagoland.

Their purchase of Roadway was nothing if not unusual. Afflicted with breathing problems, Roadway was on the auction block at Delaware, Ohio. Ferguson knew of his breathing woes and thought he could fix them. His last bid on the horse was $6,000. When the auction continued to $7,500, Ferguson opted out — or so he thought.

“They brought me the sales slip to sign,” he recalls. “I said, ‘I didn’t go that high.’ Judy said, ‘I did.’ Here she’d been bidding on him the whole time. I thought those bids were coming somewhere behind me.”

Ferguson kept Roadway and immediately addressed his breathing problems by treating him for equine protozoal myeloencephalitis (EPM), an often debilitating disease of the central nervous system.

“He’s been just wonderful since then,” Ferguson said. “He’s given me only one bad race, and that was when he was due for treatment. Now, I’m pretty religious about his treatment.”

Ferguson knows what Roadway is up against in the Adios but says the event will be gratifying no matter the finish.

“I don’t think we can beat Well Said, though I think we can be competitive with the rest,” he said. “If you’d asked me back in 1972 when I was a hotshot kid, I would have told you that driving the winner would have been the most satisfying result. Now, as a trainer, I get more satisfaction sending my horse out there and making him the best he can be.”

(Meadows)