In 2009, after years of losing money owning Standardbreds, Richard & Joanne Young were down to just one racehorse, and after her, the plan was to get out of the business. That plan changed though, because her name was Put On A Show, and she earned them $2.45 million. In 2023 they were once again down to just one racehorse, Put On A Show’s son, Its My Show - and he just won them the North America Cup. By Dan Fisher
(Michael Burns Photo)
Just like Michael Corleone’s relationship with the mafia, in the famous Godfather trilogy, owner/breeder Richard Young says there have been a few times over the years when he just wanted to be finished with Standardbred racing. He and his partner, Joanne, have actually been down to just “one last racehorse” on a few occasions now. The problem? Each time they get down to just one horse they seem to strike gold with it. Not a bad problem to have!
“My wife at the time [Joanne] and I had so many losing years, beginning in 1987, that eventually we were down to just one horse - in 2009 - and that was going to be it. That one horse was Put On A Show, who made $2.4 million plus. A few years later, while we still had Put On A Show, we bought I Luv The Nitelife, and she made $2 million, fast.
“I had calculated that we were down $2.7 million in actual money before that, which is why I was going to stop with the game entirely - most people would have stopped well before that, but I don’t give up easily (laughing). Then I got back four-plus million in purses in three years. When you included everything - stakes payments, bills, taxes - I was probably now up money… just a few bucks. Not much.”
The Youngs, who are now divorced but are still 50-50 partners on all of their horses, were no longer, at that time at least, getting out of the game.
“Since that time we’ve had enough success to say that we’ve stayed ahead of the game and made some money,” says Richard, just an hour after their current stable star, Its My Show, drew PP #2 for the final of the $1 million Pepsi North America Cup, and just a few days after his dominant 1:48 elimination victory in-rein to Scott Zeron.
“I haven’t necessarily had more champions like those two mares, but I did have Baby Your The Best [p,3,1:49.3; $480.339], Best In Show [p,3,1:48; $763,119], The Show Returns [p,3,1:51; $411,135]… so I’ve had horses that have made a few hundred thousand dollars or more and they’ve covered the expenses - but they’ve done that because I’ve changed how I do business, and have at no point had more than three racehorses [at a time]. When you only have three and one earns $600,000, you’re doing ok, and that’s how I’ve run my ‘stable’ for the last ten years or so,” Young explains.
If you know the man at all or have access to Richard Young’s Facebook page, you’d know that at times he seems to have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the industry he’s now been a part of for more than three-and-a-half decades. There are times when certain parts of the industry frustrates him to the point where he considers, like he did before buying Put On A Show, ‘getting out’.
Just this past winter for example, Richard and Joanne were back down to just two horses, and in early April they sold one of them on OnGait.
“We sold Always A Show Off, so once again, like we were back in 2009, we’re currently down to just one [race]horse; and that would be Its My Show. You know, he didn’t win a race at [age] two, and so in April, when we sold the other one, and we were left with just one horse, and it was a horse that had never even won a race… We were basically on our way to being out - again.
“The reality is now though, if this horse [Its My Show] goes on to win a lot of money, then I’ll be forced to go back to Lexington and buy another horse (laughing) because I won’t want to give the money to the government. And trust me, I’m not complaining, but that looks like it could be possible.”
When it’s suggested that Richard’s lifelong participation in Standardbred racing seems like it’s ‘meant to be’, he laughs at the notion heartily and retorts, “I don’t know if it’s meant to be, but I do find it kind of ironic that whenever we get down to one [racehorse] it’s a good one, yes.”
As far as the great Put On A Show goes - the true pride and joy of the Young’s lives in racing - Its My Show is her fifth foal, and also her final foal where Richard and Joanne are the breeders of record.
“We sold her a year-and-a-half ago,” Richard shares.
This news is a bit startling to anyone that knows of the connection between Richard, Joanne, and the mare that is astonishingly not yet in the horse racing hall of fame in either Canada or the U.S.
“Show’s first foal - Beach Showoff - got sick when she was young,” tells Richard. “Most of the barn she was in got sick, and seven or eight of them even died. She survived, but the effects of it compromised her racing career so we sold her [as a broodmare].
“Her second foal [Come See The Show] looked like a big Thoroughbred… she was a goddess by Somebeachsomewhere. We bought her [as a yearling] for $550,000, although we already owned two-thirds of her. It was to end a partnership. She won her first two starts in [1]:52, and was third in the Shes A Great Lady. She then had a kind of injury where we decided not to race her anymore. We put her up for sale in Harrisburg, but it was such a last minute decision that we missed the catalogue and the supplement. We called them and told them we had their sale-topper and they took her and made a supplement to the supplement (laughing). It was just one piece of paper that they circulated for this horse, and she still sold for $450,000 (laughing). I thought that Steve Jones [the buyer] might have even went too far… but her first foal went for $400,000 (laughing). So he’s out on her already.
“Best In Show was her third [foal] and he won the Meadowlands Pace, but there was also an abort, and a barren… we went barren on purpose to avoid a June foal but then she aborted and we missed two years in a row. So you have this ‘Where are all these foals?’ thing going on. It’s a very tough game and that’s one of the main reasons that we sold her,” Young relates.
“After Best In Show, she eventually had Magic Showman, who I named after Billy O’Donnell, but Magic Showman was pathetic (laughing)... he was so pathetic that I had to pay someone $3,000 to take him off of our hands. He went to Purple Haze [Standardbred Adoption Program] and will have a good life. It’s a great story though, isn’t it? I sold the sister for $450,000 and two foals later I had to pay someone $3,000 to take him,” Young laughs.
“Magic Showman though, was by Sweet Lou, and then, because you have no idea how good that one will be, we went back to Sweet Lou again. The first one turns out to be shit and now you’re sitting there with his full brother as a yearling and you’re not too excited because the first one was so bad. But it was Put On A Show, and it was Sweet Lou, and he throws a lot of beautiful horses, so you just hope.
“So now you end up getting Its My Show, and at two he has colt soreness more than anything else, and his attitude could have been better, and because he’s winless we’re not worried about him being a sire and decide he’s better off as a gelding. Going winless at two says ‘Not too many people will want this horse as a sire’ (laughing). Plus, I’m much more of a racehorse guy than a give-me-money-to-breed-to-my-horse guy… so I’m quite happy.
“The bottom line though, is that breeding is a very difficult game, so after we had the second Sweet Lou foal [Its My Show] we sold her, in-foal to Tall Dark Stranger, to Steve [Stewart] from Hunterton. It was a ‘Richard Young deal’ though. We sold her to Steve for not-a-very-big price, with the agreement that we’d get the next foal, if it was a filly, at an already agreed-upon, not-a-very-big price. Her first foal for Steve was a filly, so we bought her for that set-price and she’ll start training with Linda [Toscano] this fall. Had it been a colt, we would have gotten the first so many thousands of dollars when it went to auction, and they would have gotten the rest, but it was a filly, and that’s absolutely what we wanted,” laughs Young. “Like I said, it was a Richard Young deal… it’s the kind of thing I like to do.”
The name of the Tall Dark Stranger filly, that will hopefully give the Youngs a second racehorse once again, in 2024, doesn’t necessarily align with everything else in the family however, as the word ‘Show’ is nowhere to be found in its name. “I named the new filly,” shares Richard, “and Steve liked it. I didn’t use the word ‘Show’ because I don’t own the mare anymore (laughing), but I named her ‘Ill Take U There’ after the song by The Staple Singers. I named I Luv The Nitelife after a song and that turned out okay,” he laughs.
Its My Show and Ill Take U There may be the last tangible connections between Put On A Show and Richard & Joanne Young, but there’s one other thing that Richard isn’t letting go of. “To me, and of course I was the owner and have believed this all along, if any horse belongs in the hall of fame it’s Put On A Show. The criteria to get in [to the U.S. HOF] is that they have to earn $2.5 million [or earn $1.5 million and have two Dan Patch Awards]. She made $2.45 million and missed by less than $100,000. She was injured in the last race of her three-year-old year, so-much-so that she had three pins put into her right knee and took 15 months off. She comes back as a five-year-old to earn half-a-million dollars, beating the best horses, and becoming the fastest mare ever [1:47.3]. I put her in against the boys in the Breeders Crown, and she was only 7/1, but she tied up. She didn’t win the Breeders Crown for mares though and therefore didn’t get her second Dan Patch Award. You can blame me for that but don’t blame her.
“She was dominant at two, dominant at three, the fastest mare ever at five, with pins in her knees after a year-and-change off… and somehow can’t be in the hall of fame? She earned almost $50,000 per start over the course of her career! She only raced 50 times [and won 31 of them]. She’s also produced a Meadowlands Pace winner, and we’ll see what Its My Show might become. She was nominated to the Canadian Hall of Fame twice as well, but got out-voted there too,” shares the frustrated Young.
When it’s suggested that maybe in the end, the name ‘Ill Take U There’ won’t just be a from a song, but also karma’s way of saying that the Tall Dark Stranger filly’s possible success could help take her dam to the hall of fame in one or both countries, Young laughs once again and retorts, “That sure would be cute.”
Although he doesn’t necessarily believe in karma, Richard does admit that maybe it was all meant to be, when he shares the fact that the entire Put On A Show-thing almost never even happened for them. “When she was our only horse [in 2009], before she even raced at two, she wasn’t training all that great and I actually tried to sell her to Perretti [Farms] for $35,000. But Bob Marks turned me down (laughing).”
Now, other than standing Best In Show in Indiana, where he attracted 87 mares in his first year at stud in 2022, Richard and Joanne Young are once again, as mentioned, down to just one racehorse in their stable. Is Richard confident in that horse winning the $1 million NA Cup final?
“No. This is not the situation where your horse is just better than the others. There are probably five or six of them that can win this race,” he admits.
But even though he often likes to complain about the business, he is here in Canada for the entire week, unlike many of the other owners, and he seems to be truly enjoying himself. “I’m Canadian, from Montreal. I haven’t lived there in 51 years,” he laughs, “but Canada will always be home to me and this is the one race that I still really want to win.”
The truth seems to be that he still gets quite the high from Standardbred racing. “If it’s a good horse I still get a high; if it’s a bad one I want out (laughing). I’m not too keen on having bad horses. I’m 75 [years old] now you know? Another 10 years of this and I probably won’t even be aware that I own a horse,” he laughs loudly. A great laugh. A contagious laugh.
Enjoy it while you can Richard. When given the opportunity, you sure do know how to put on a show.
* * * *
On Saturday, June 17th, just four days after saying he was not necessarily all that confident when it came to his gelding winning Canada’s richest race for pacers, Richard Young changed his tune. An hour before the race, in the Mohawk dining room, he stated proudly that not only was Its My Show going to win, but he was going to win “by open lengths.”
Scott Zeron got the son of Sweet Lou away second, and moved to the top down the backside. After stealing a :28.1 breather in the second quarter, the pair would eventually hit the wire as champions, a head better than the charging post-time favourite, Confederate, in 1:47.4.
In the winner’s circle right afterwards, Richard said, “Well it wasn’t exactly open lengths was it?” And then he laughed that unique, Richard Young laugh.
JOANNE YOUNG Co-Owner
“Due to Covid, and also because I moved to California,” Joanne stated from her table on the outdoor terrace at Mohawk on the night of the race, “this is the first time that I’ve been to the track in over four years. It’s really nice to be back.”
About 10 minutes later, Joanne showed her guests, Cheryl Krebs of New York and Fanny Garnier of Toronto, exactly how happy she was to be back, and how exciting it can be to cheer your horse across the wire in a $1 million horse race. As an ecstatic Joanne Young led her friends to the winner’s circle moments later, with tears flooding her eyes, she just kept repeating, “We’re so lucky. I just can’t believe how lucky we are.”
Lucky? Alright. We all do need some kind of luck in this game - preferably the good kind - but good things happen to good people, and Joanne Young is definitely good people.
The CEO of A Spring Of Hope, a charity started in 2005 by Joanne and the Young’s daughter Brittany, and featured in TROT in our January, 2011 issue, the charity has provided over 50 schools, primarily in South Africa, with wells that provide clean drinking water to impoverished children - water that is also used to grow fruits and vegetables at the schools for the kids to eat.
Also a true animal lover, Joanne says that whenever Best In Show’s stallion career may end - he currently stands in Indiana - and whenever Its My Show’s racing career winds down, they’ll both have homes for life on her farm in California, where she currently keeps a number of horses, including one that she competes with in Dressage.
A very friendly individual, Joanne’s guests at the track on Cup night were both examples of friendships forged via her outgoing nature. “Cheryl [Krebs] is a dear friend of mine from New York that I met at The Meadowlands many years ago. We just sat beside each other at the races there one night and have been great friends ever since… She met me here for the weekend and to attend the race. On Friday evening we went to a salon in Toronto and that’s where we met Fanny - she’s actually the salon’s owner,” Joanne laughed. “We just met her last night but we all hit it off right away and invited her to join us at Mohawk for dinner and the races.”
Fanny grew up around horses in her native France, but had never been to the track since moving to Canada a number of years ago. “Whatever the reason for us meeting her, it was good luck,” smiled Joanne. “I’m not sure if we’ll be supplementing ‘Show’ to The Meadowlands Pace or not, but if we do, I definitely want everyone that was sitting at my table tonight, to be there in Jersey too!”
STEVE STEWART - Owner, Put On A Show
“Cindy and I were very excited to see Its My Show defeat that great group of colts he was in against,” Stewart related a few days after the race. “That was not just an ordinary group of colts in the North America Cup… this is one of the deepest groups in many years.
“As a breeder, people tend to think that the yearling sales are the biggest events for us, but they’re really not. It’s more about how the ones that you breed and raise perform on the track. If they go out and win the big races the sales will take care of themselves,” he reasons.
“Our relationship with the Youngs and Put On A Show goes back quite some time. We own her now but that’s more recent… she’s been with us here at Hunterton for a number of years and we’ve raised her last four foals, including Best In Show, who won The Meadowlands Pace, and Its My Show.
“If you’re not the breeder of record, you don’t often get recognized as the people who raised the horse, but to be honest, we’re not in it for recognition. It’s nice to be interviewed and recognized of course, but we really get a lot of satisfaction from raising horses that go out and do well. Like I said, it’s not just about the yearling sales for us,” said Steve.
“We’ve always loved Put On A Show. You should see her, even today. She’s really a big, solid mare. There’s a lot of great race mares that you couldn’t pick out of a line-up based on their looks, but with her you can. If there were 10 mares in the field together and you saw her, you’d say something like ‘Wow, which one is that?’ She really stands out. She’s nice and dark… she’s a very imposing looking mare,” Stewart says with great pride in his voice.
“I always liked her, and had some interest in buying her [Put On A Show]... but it’s not like I needed another mare,” he laughs. “Just throw her on the pile with all of the others, right? (laughing). But Richard made me a ‘Richard Young deal’ that we could not turn down, so now we own her and we couldn’t be happier… for ourselves and for the Youngs. She’s an incredible mare and she really deserves this.”
LINDA TOSCANO - Trainer
“You know, training down last year [as two-year-olds] I had three really nice colts that you could throw a blanket over: Tickertape Hanover, Its My Show and Fulton. I really couldn’t pick one over the other… they were all just really nice colts. Scotty [Zeron] qualified Its My Show at The Meadowlands twice and really liked him, so we took him to the Meadows [for a PASS event] and he really raced great for him [finishing 2nd]. We decided we were going to take him down to The Red Mile to race him in the Kentucky series after that, and then Scotty got hurt.
“Yannick [Gingras] drove him down there for us the rest of the year, and he even booked off of some [Ron] Burke horses to drive him. He knew the horse had talent, and he gave him a bunch of really great drives too, but the horse just kept getting worse. He was sound, he was healthy… there seemed to be no real reason for it. Eventually I said to Richard [Young] ‘You know we can’t keep racing him - he’s horrible’. So we quit with him and I said I wanted to geld him. He said ‘ok’ so I said ‘I’m going to do it right away so you can’t change your mind,’ and I did (laughing).
“I really can’t say for sure if gelding him made the difference because he was never dirty, and he didn’t seem to have a bad attitude. Richard asked me, this past winter, about staking him and I said that I really had no idea. We thought he’d be good last year and he just wasn’t. I said ‘I can’t have been this wrong about a horse!’ (laughing) so he picked his spots and paid him into the NA Cup, the Jug and the Adios, but not the Beal or The Meadowlands Pace.
“So he trains back great again this year - but he did that last year too and I didn’t want to get let down again I guess. Scotty qualifies him at The Meadowlands and loves him, and I said ‘Ya, ya, whatever’ (laughing). Then we qualify him again and he says ‘Linda, I think this is a really nice horse.’ And I say ‘Ya, ya, whatever’ (laughing). We put him into a maiden at The Meadowlands and the rest is history - he hasn’t lost all year.
“Brad [McNinch] (Toscano’s partner in training and in life) is Canadian, and winning this race was a really big thing to him… he got emotional and it made me emotional too. The two races that he always wanted to win were this one and the Maple Leaf Trot. We were lucky enough to win the trot [with Market Share in 2013] and now we won this. So I told him, ‘I’ve done my part you know, but maybe now you can help me get that Jug that I want!’ (laughing).”
SCOTT ZERON - Driver
“This is my favourite race,” shared Zeron, a few days later. “It always has been. I was able to win it once before [with Captain Crunch] but I really, really wanted to win this one for Linda [Toscano]. She’s just a fantastic person and a great trainer… we’ve been together for about three years now I believe, and she’s stuck with me, even through things like the accident that I was in last year, so to win it for her made it even more special.
“You know, when I was a kid our parents took us to the draw for this race every year, whether my dad was in it or not, and he wasn’t in it too often. But they’d always take us because there would be a famous hockey player there that we could meet or something. They’d do it up big, quite often in the big outdoor tent at Woodbine… to me that was always just such a big deal. The purse was a-million-and-a-half dollars sometimes and all of these important people were there… so to me it’s always been the epitome of all races.
“I actually won the Jug and the Hambo before I won it, and both were amazing, but it was always still the biggest one to me. And I had some good chances with horses like Vegas Vacation and Artspeak before I finally won it too… but now I’ve won it twice and it’s really an incredible feeling.
“Having my entire family there, all my nieces and nephews even, that meant a lot to me as well. My sister Jerrica lives in Sweden and has three little girls. I hadn’t even seen her since before Covid, so when they were planning a visit she asked me if I had anything good for The Cup. I said ‘I think I might win The Cup’ and she said ‘Well that’s when we’ll come then’. It was great having the family all there together and in the winner’s circle with me.
“And my dad was crying as he does (laughing). There were some pictures where he was crying and I was laughing, but that’s just because as he walked up to me with tears falling everywhere he said, ‘I’m sorry but I just can’t stop crying’ (laughing). It’s awesome. My dad has been such a huge supporter of my career all along, and I was able to win the Hambo for him with Atlanta - which was a million-to-one shot we could do that together - but when I win, I think he feels like he won too. And I think that’s pretty great.”
This feature originally appeared in the July issue of TROT Magazine. Subscribe to TROT today by clicking the banner below.
