These were emailed to me the other day! Enjoy!
Steady Smiler as a 3 year old
Steady as a 4 year old.
Steady at 7. He finally looks like the horse I own all the others he looks like such a baby.
If you live in Vancouver and frequent the races you may have seen Steady Smiler race. Most of his races were run at Hastings from 2003-2007 and the last photo is at Woodbine 2007 where I believe his owner(that I have been in contact with) shortly after that lost him in a claiming race. The owner/trainer that owned him from a yearling to 2007 is the lady that sent me these and is also sent in the mail today 4 of his winning videos and the video of the British Columbia Derby that he came in second and won $66,000 in that race alone. Learning more and more of his history and I noticed she is exactly right when she told me that they allowed Smiley(as they called him) to be himself and he always did well for them, but the following owners did not and he never did well after he left them.
Here is the link to his racing records and you can see he was very consistently placing 1st, 2nd and 3rd with the occasional lesser placing for 5 years then you can notice after 2007 he only had one more win after that and it was in a low claiming race in 2009 just a few months before I purchased him. It is amazing what a horse will do for someone he wants to please but will not perform the same for others. Something I better ALWAYS remember in my work with Steady! I know some may not have any interest in any of this but for those OTTB enthusiasts out there this stuff can all be so fun!
Go Steady!! How wonderful that you are able to keep in touch with his former owners. Photos and videos an extra bonus!
ReplyDeleteThat is cool! I don't have much info on either my girls and I wish I did.
ReplyDeleteIt's great you get to know so much about his past. I don't know anything about Ritchie racing career.
ReplyDeleteWould love to have my guys photos, I do know his record though and what happened in each race which is also great to know!
ReplyDeleteAny OTTB has their every move recorded somewhere. You would be surprised how easily it is to find out any info you would want to know. I found Steady's records on Equibase.com then from the race records saw that he had the same owner/trainer for many years. I then googled the names and found their information online. Very cool but kinda creepy what you can do these days with the internet. I found though that if the people owned the horse for a while, especially if he won them money they will remember them. Whether or not most people will be as nice as these have been I don't know but if someone tracked me down about one of my animals that they now love and own I would give them any info they wanted. So if you know Ritchies jockey club name go to equibase.com enter it in and if he ran any races it will be on there.
ReplyDeleteLove the pics and how generous and nice the previous owners are!
ReplyDeleteCheers raced for 3 years and won several - but changed hands several times. We have been able to find some videos on-line but I have not tried to get photos. On my agenda for Winter!
Thanks for sharing :)
How cool! I would love to know more about Nina's background, but her tattoo is illegible and she was handed around so many times it is impossible to trace. I think her previous owner actually had her records at one time but she threw them away because she didn't realize they were the right ones.
ReplyDeleteWhat fabulous pictures!! I wish I had more than just one pic like that of Miles. Steady was obviously fabulous at his job...this is just one of the reasons I love OTTBs so much. You CAN track their every race for the most part, and I think it can tell you so much about them:)
ReplyDeleteWhat fantastic pictures! I think it's so cool that you are able to keep in track with his previous owner. That's so awesome to know he put his heart into racing for them and not the new owners. I think he's lucky to have ended up with you where he can once again put his whole heart into something. :D
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