The Canadian Sportsman
Dave & Dave
Back To Dave & DaveOctober 02, 2009
For years now, Jimmy and Christina Takter have been naming horses after members of the harness racing media — Ken Warkentin being the most famous, of course. But there have been others, including Bob Heyden, Dean Hoffman, Nicole Kraft, Kathy Parker, Gordon Waterstone.
So, where’s the love for your Canadian friends, Jimmy? As a man of the world, you’d think he’d throw a little international goodwill our way. After all, I’ve even made the trip to his spectacular farm in his New Jersey, seen his Statue of Liberty and sat in his American room.
Not that Jimmy has to name a horse after me, but someone from The Sportsman would be nice. I vote for Schellenberger, the maiden name of my colleague Lauren Lee. Now that would be a great name. Here comes Schellenberger! Perhaps one for our advertising director, Kristy Dustin. And Dustin dusts them off again!
About the closest I’ve come to having an equine namesake in thanks for all the love I’ve showered on the industry is Bob McIntosh’s threat to name a horse DontwhipmeBriggs (see previous entry).
Nice.
But of course, Dave Landry gets the pseudo star treatment. Back in 2007, Landry began telling me Doug McIntosh, Bob’s brother, was going to name a horse after him.
Sure, sure, I thought, with equal parts skepticism and envy.
Occasionally, I would check and, upon finding no horse with that name, I figured this was just something Doug mentioned in passing as something he might do... Until I opened last year’s Lexington Selected Yearling Sale catalogue and discovered hip number 151, an Artsplace colt out of Doug’s mare Angel in Disguise. The name? Yup, you guessed it — Landry.
This delighted the human Landry to no end and he quickly began devising schemes to cobble together both coins and coconspirators to purchase his equine namesake. Thankfully, they remained just that, schemes — though I’m convinced this colt will end up winning the North America Cup for no other reason than it’s named for Landry.
Unable to be in Lexington the week of the sale, Landry asked me — seriously — to have Blair Burgess scope out the equine Landry and report back.
Blair was a good sport and, after giving a lightning-quick, less-than-lukewarm scan of the pedigree page, promised to take a look at the horse before it sold (for $22,000 to Len Kordy of Kingston, ON).
The next day, I ran into Blair at The Red Mile and asked him what he thought of Landry.
“Small and correct,” Blair said simply, before walking away.
I’m not sure if he meant the horse or the photographer.
Comments (0)
Print
Add Your Comment
Blog Archives
