People often speak of the will, or of the heart of a Standardbred, based on what they do on the racetrack. Onlookers often judge them in this regard by looking at their final quarter speed or ability to hold off challengers in deep stretch. But sometimes, horses show their true desire long before they ever race. Fall In Line, a three-year-old gelding developed by Casie Coleman, is a perfect example of that. Forget about what he can do on the track - this guy wasn’t even supposed to live, let alone race. His heart said differently however. By Chris Lomon.

Sometimes racehorses beat the odds beyond the ones found on the tote board.

Throughout the history of Standardbred racing, upsets - mild, middling or monumental - have been par for the racecourse.

Whether they happen on the big stage, smaller circuits, or anywhere in-between, longshots have gained a certain aura and allure by finding a way to persevere, overcome and succeed, when logic strongly suggests otherwise.

Just like Fall In Line.

 

When the three-year-old brown gelding, the one with the white, right-front pastern and white left-hind pastern, first came into Casie Coleman’s world, the longtime horsewoman never could have imagined what was about to unfold.

Her first impressions of the handsome son of Betting Line-Lets Fall in Love were glowing.

“I liked everything about him,” recalled Coleman. “Anyone who has seen him says how gorgeous he is. A very good-looking horse, perfect conformation, thick butt, big shoulders - just a sharp-looking animal.

“And I loved his pedigree. Betting Line was mine, so that played a big part as well. But I also liked the maternal family too. I loved him. I was actually surprised we got him at the price we did. I thought we would have had to pay a lot more.”

In the end, Coleman and her partners, Mark Dumain, Mac Nichol and Kevin McKinlay, paid $35,000 for Fall In Line on November 8, 2022, at the Black Book Yearling Sale in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

There was an unmistakable air of excitement around Coleman’s barn in Wellington, Florida, in the aftermath of the yearling purchase, but that all changed two weeks later, the start of a chain of events that no one saw coming.

“I take the temperatures of our horses every day - it’s just part of our normal routine - and if you hadn’t taken his, you never would have known something was wrong,” recalls Coleman. “He appeared to be fine.”

But he was not.

Far from it, in fact.

“The first time we saw how high his temperature was, between 105 and 106, we all thought the thermometers were wrong, so we kept taking it and taking it and trying different thermometers,” Casie shares.

“Things escalated quickly. I would estimate that was on a Thursday. We gave him a cold bath and did all the things you would to bring his temperature down. We didn’t want to do antibiotics right away because I believe it is important to help them build up their immune systems and learn to fight it off.”

Fall In Line however, would soon find himself in a fight for his life.

Diagnosed with pneumonia - it was the first time Coleman had encountered such with one of her horses - the yearling pacer underwent a battery of tests.

“When Friday and Saturday came, and he was still spiking that temperature - we monitored it the best we could - a vet did the ultrasound without asking me - and I am glad they did.

“We put him on some strong antibiotics, and at one point, we had to rush him to the hospital – it had turned really bad.”

Coleman was forced to confront her worst fears.

“The one thing that was running through my mind was, ‘I can’t believe this is happening’. When we saw what was coming out of the tube from his lungs, this yellow liquid, the reality hit that he was likely going to die.”

Throughout it all though, quite remarkably, Fall In Line never acted like a horse whose life was in peril.

“He never missed a meal, his ears were up, and he looked happy,” said Coleman. He never got the shits real bad or acted like a sick horse. It was crazy really.”

His Florida groom, Ashley Roesch, watched as the hard-headed horse became far gentler than she had ever known.

“He was so tough to be around [earlier on], but when he got sick, we just bonded so much,” said Roesch.   

Coleman continued to be astonished at how the young horse handled everything that came his way.

“I have never seen a horse that was this sick not show any signs that he was sick. It was amazing.

“And then I kept on telling myself that if he ever made it through this and somehow became a racehorse, he was going to be the toughest racehorse you would ever find.”

For many months however - a full year in fact - whether or not the horse ever raced was of no concern to Coleman and her team.

“There were plenty of times we had to give him ice baths, put cold towels over his ears - it was everything, all day and all night,” said Roesch. “That’s what it was for all of us.”

As the Christmas holiday season drew closer, it was status quo for Fall In Line.

“It was Christmastime, and it was well past a month of this horse being in and out of the clinic multiple times. Our only focus was saving him,” recalls Casie.

“The vet was leaving for Christmas and told me that she felt it was time to put him down. We actually had a few arguments because I believed he would eventually be fine. It was his attitude… he was trying to tell us that he wanted to live. I didn’t care if he ended up as a riding horse or a pasture pet, I just felt like we owed him the chance to live.”

Those disagreements stretched into the next few days.

“We were still arguing, and one day over the phone, calling me from my barn, she basically told me she was going to put him down. I told her that we weren’t going to do it. If we did need to put him down, while she was away, there were other vets there. We were just going to keep doing whatever we could to save him.

“It didn’t matter if he ever became a racehorse. Saving him was the goal. We saw that he had that will to live.”

A different veterinarian witnessed that himself when he came to see Fall In Line, who at the time, was on four different antibiotics.

A decision was then made, but not by Coleman.

“This other vet’s idea was to take the horse off everything for 48 hours. After then, we would put him on just one new antibiotic, which was a powder he could take orally, rather than a shot. The poor horse had been given so many needles at that point.”

The multiple daily needles were obviously given in an effort to save the animal, but Coleman was relieved, in-part at least, that the good-natured horse could now take his medicine orally instead. Even though his ears were still up the majority of the time, she could tell the number of needle jabs was wearing on him to some degree.

Casie also admits, and gives great credit to those around her, for making the decision that became a major turning point in the saga of the horse that wanted so badly to live.

“Deshawn Minor, my main assistant trainer, and the vet made the decision to do that [take him off everything for 48 hours]. They probably felt I might not want to go that route, and they would have been right,” she laughs..

“Normally, that would have upset me, but it obviously worked. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were the two days they took him off the antibiotics.”

And then something amazing happened.

Perhaps, a combination of science, resolve, and maybe, just maybe, a Christmas miracle changed everything.

“He didn’t have a temperature,” recalled Coleman.

The horse who had been through so much finally seemed to be on the right track.

Fall In Line was, after countless months, able to see the world beyond the walls of his stall.

“Previously, they had maintained that we were to keep him in the stall, hand-walked, no turnout,” says Coleman. “They didn’t want him running around.. But then, the new vet said we should put him out in the field with hay, water and grain… so we did. He went out there, no temperature, running around and having a great time.

“The first vet came back after the holidays, walked by the horse’s stall, and said, ‘I am so sorry. What day did it happen?’” Ashley was confused. “The vet had thought we had put him down because she saw his stall was empty, but Ashley told her he was outside in the field.”

Coleman, emotional at the recollection of that moment, was no longer burdened by the opposing views of how to treat Fall In Line.

“However differently we saw it all, the only thing that mattered was that the horse was doing fantastic,” smiled Casie. “Everybody involved was thrilled at the turn he’d taken for the better.”

Roesch felt like she could finally exhale.

“Every day, I was telling Deshawn, ‘Please tell me if I am going to walk into the barn to an empty stall’. I needed to know if I was because I would break down if that happened. Thankfully, that never came to be.”

The decision was then made to find a suitable home for the horse.

“Once we got him through everything and knew that he was happy and safe, I decided he was healthy enough to go to a farm and live a happy life,” said Coleman. “But I wanted to take some time before we did that because I wanted to be sure as I could be that he wouldn’t take a turn for this worse again.”

Coleman, who normally turns out her horses at a farm in Lexington, Kentucky, opted to keep Fall In Line in the Sunshine State, close at hand.

“I didn’t want to risk shipping him to Kentucky at that point,” she reasoned, “in case he didn’t take to the ship well. I also wanted to keep him close, because the vets here were familiar with his situation.”

The horse was sent to Donald Dupont’s farm in Wellington, not far from Coleman’s home base.

Fall In Line stayed at the farm from January of 2023 to November of that same year.

“He was doing great there, and it was about the time when I started to bring the babies in from the yearling sale,” remembered Coleman. “He looked like a million dollars and never spiked a fever when he was with Donald.”   

And that is when she had a thought.

“I said to Deshawn one day, ‘Go bring that horse in from Dupont’s.’”

“He asked why, and I said ‘Let’s train him’. So, that’s what we did.

“I remember bringing a vet in who knew nothing of his issues and asked him to do an ultrasound at his lungs. I wanted a fresh set of eyes on him without knowing his history. He did the first lung and said it was perfect. He did the other lung and said it was pretty much perfect, but it had a little scar tissue.. but that was where the tube had been put in a while ago to drain his lungs.”

Coleman then had a question for the vet.

“When I asked if that [scar tissue] would affect his ability to race, he told me that it wouldn’t. When I told him the history of the horse, he was shocked. There looked to be no long term side effects visible in his lungs from what he’d been through.

“We put him in training, and we put him on the Flexineb (a portable, re-usable, equine nebulizer for delivering aerosolized drugs and natural therapies to the airways of the horse) every day. We also lasered his lungs daily, just to do everything to ensure his lungs were okay.”

Fall In Line started his training regimen with the babies at first. He had only two weeks experience in the fall of 2022 before he got sick, so he was really starting from scratch. But throughout the 2023 winter months, as he trained down and got his bearings, he was eventually training down with Nijinsky, the eventual 2024 North America Cup winner and Legendary Hanover, who would go on to win the 2024 Meadowlands Pace.

Talk about going from the outhouse to the penthouse!

And on certain days, Fall In Line would actually get the better of his two contemporaries on the training track.

“There were days last winter when I actually told Tony [Beaton] that I was pissed I didn’t have him [Fall In Line] paid into the N.A. Cup,” Casie laughs.

On April 26th of this year, now under the tutelage of trainer Anthony Beaton, Fall In Line took to the Woodbine Mohawk Park racetrack for his first qualifier.

With champion driver James MacDonald in the racebike, Fall In Line covered the mile in 1:56.3 - home in :27.4.

He qualified twice more, in May, at the Milton oval, both times in 1:58.4.

Everything seemed to be trending in the right direction for the pacer, or so it appeared. But eventually that all changed.

“Up in Ontario, we found out he actually had a new problem… which we eventually discovered was an abscess,” recalls Coleman.

“We immediately thought it was his lungs at first because Tony walked into his stall one morning and there was blood everywhere. I saw the pictures - it looked like a masacre. We assumed it was his lungs of course, but when he had him scoped, it wasn’t from his lungs. It was something none of us had ever seen. It was an abscess inside his nasal cavity.

“When you look at his lines and see some time in between when he qualified [the third and fourth times], that’s the reason he missed all that time.”

True to form, Fall In Line took it all in stride.

“He was happy, not bothered at all, throughout those moments,” smiles Coleman. “It took a while before they figured out how to get it all cleared up, but there’s another thing he overcame,” beams his proud co-owner and developer.

Six days after an August 2nd winning qualifier at Mohawk, Fall In Line and MacDonald lined up behind the starting gate for the third race - his first lifetime start, and something thought to be utterly impossible less than a year earlier.

Regardless of where he finished or how fast he paced, it was a win-win for Coleman, and everyone associated with the horse.

Sixth at the three-quarter pole, Fall In Line rallied to finish third in 1:54. Pacing his own final quarter in :26.3.

One week later, on August 15th, he was third again, this time pacing the mile in 1:53.2 - home in :27.1.

On August 22nd, the horse that had been, at one point, an extreme longshot just to live, let alone put his nose on the wings of the gate, lined up at Mohawk as the 4/5 choice in the evening’s third race.

Saddled with the outside post eight, Fall In Line got away third, before moving to the lead just past the half. A length-and-a-half clear through three-quarters in 1:25.1, he held off his main rival to win by three-quarters of a length in 1:54.

Cue the jubilation.

“I have never been prouder,” said Roesch, who watched the race from Florida on her laptop. “I was so emotional. I cried. When I tell you I lost my voice, I lost my voice early in the race.

“Then I thought about Casie and how much respect I have for her. She could have put him down, but she didn’t. She fought for him, and I love that.”

“It was pretty cool,” said Coleman. “This horse is so special to everyone associated with him. My owners, staff, everybody- it meant so much to everybody to see him win a race. It is crazy what he overcame. To make it to the races, to win a race, and to win it at Mohawk, is so special. It has been a long path.”

Coleman is grateful for the many who have been along for the ride.

“There was one night, Deshawn and I went for dinner and then to the casino, and all of the sudden his phone alarm goes off and he says, ‘I have to go. It’s time for me to treat the horse’. He was unwavering in wanting to make sure the horse was treated every six hours, to the exact minute. This went on for a couple months. If it wasn’t for Deshawn making that earlier decision and then him and the vet giving him his [new] medication, who knows what would have happened?”

She could say the same about her career.

A five-time recipient of Canada’s trainer of the year honours, and the only female to ever win that specific O’Brien Award, a life-altering accident in 2000 at Sandown Park, in North Saanich, British Columbia, nearly put an end to her time in racing before it really even got started.

Coleman was mixing an alcohol-based liniment to warm her horses’ hooves when it ignited.

She suffered third-degree burns to her legs and right arm, and first-degree burns to her neck and face. She spent three months in intensive care at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria, British Columbia, and underwent six skin grafts.

In 2009, Coleman made a special trip back to Fraser Downs to host a fundraising day, on Remembrance Day, for the hospital that aided in her recovery. Nearly $25,000 was raised for the Burn Unit at the hospital.

The horsewoman who has purchased, raised, and developed several champions, including American Ideal, Betting Line, Sportswriter, Western Silk, Vegas Vacation, Betterthancheddar, McWicked, Art Colony, Chancey Lady, Our Lucky Killean, Vegas Vacation and Michaels Power, laughed when asked if she’s more resilient than her beloved three-year-old pacer.

“Fall in Line is a lot tougher than me. I went through that fire when I was younger and have gone through some tough moments in my career, let alone being a female in a predominantly male sport, but he’s tougher than me.

“You know, he has never felt sorry for himself. He is an unbelievably tough horse.”

Fall In Line is also a handful.

“Any nickname we have for him, and there are many, most aren’t suitable for print,” laughed Coleman, who has won the North America Cup twice [as a trainer], along with two Fan Hanovers, one Adios, two Ben Franklins, three Ontario Sires Stakes Super Finals, one Shes A Great Lady, three Little Brown Jugs, and two Jugettes.

“We all love him and care for him, but he is one tough horse to handle. He almost needs two grooms. He really is tough to deal with, a lot of work. I swear he got worse after we had him gelded too,” she laughs. “He’s always in a good mood though, a very happy horse, but he’s also a handful.”

And, without question, a bona fide miracle.

“I know we had so many people praying for us throughout all this,” said Roesch. “I know that had something to do with this. His will to live is something I think about every day. He has taught me so much, but mostly, to never give up despite what the odds might say.”

 This feature originally appeared in the October issue of TROT Magazine. Subscribe to TROT today by clicking the banner below.