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Old 05-01-2004, 06:40 PM   #1
Guv
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Philadelphia, PA
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SMARTY JONES..."Story Full of Twists"

I am not a big horse racing fan, BUT my interest was peaked for the Kentucky Derby because Smarty Jones trained at the Philadelphia Park Race Track which is about a mile from my home.
After reading this article, his victory is even more amazing considering the circumstance involved on the way to his Kentucky Derby victory


http://www.courier-journal.com/cjspo...428-13814.html


Smarty Jones story full of twists

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By C. RAY HALL
chall@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

Every Kentucky Derby roils and rolls into something that becomes The Story.

This year The Story — whatever it turns out to be — already has been lapped by the back story.

The Smarty Jones story involves a plot line older than Hollywood — a cast of unknowns faces adversity, catches a rising star and wins one for the little guy.

The Smarty Jones story also involves:


An undersized 3-year-old Pennsylvania-bred who flirted with self-destruction last year, lying in the dirt in a bleeding, unconscious heap. The sight caused his trainer, John Servis, to exclaim, "Oh my God, the horse killed himself."

A trainer and a jockey — Stewart Elliott — appearing in their first Derby. It has been 25 years since such a combination won the race.

Two unlikely owners — a car dealer and a former social worker. One of them, Roy Chapman, is so sick from emphysema that he may not make it to Churchill Downs for Saturday's race.

A payday that could be the richest in racing history for a single horse — nearly $6 million in purse and bonuses.

A horse so coveted that one suitor asked the owners to "name their price." They declared him not for sale, even for a blank check.

A horse with a mysterious name and an even more mysterious fate. Is he as perfect as his record — six wins in six starts — or will he be perfectly exposed as a pretender on Saturday? ("You can't knock this horse," rival trainer John Kimmel said. "You can knock him on his pedigree. But he doesn't know his pedigree. Any horse that comes into this race undefeated is special.")

The memory of a slain trainer whose matchmaking produced Smarty Jones.

The spirit of the real Smarty Jones, a lady all the way.
The story already trumps fiction, even if you don't know its most heartbreaking side. Mortality hangs over this tale, even as the horse and his human connections grasp for a sliver of immortality.


The owners, a Pennsylvania couple named Roy and Pat Chapman, employed a trainer named Bob Camac. He suggested the Chapmans buy a yearling filly at Keeneland. They spent $40,000 for I'll Get Along, who won some small stakes races. Camac eventually arranged a breeding session with a stallion named Elusive Quality. The result was Smarty Jones.

Nine months later Camac and his wife, Maryann, were found shot to death in their New Jersey home. Maryann's son, Wade Russell, eventually was sentenced to 28 years in prison. Press accounts said Camac suspected his stepson of forgery and theft and meant to confront him.

The Chapmans already were cutting back their farm operation because of Roy's health. After Camac's death, they came close to leaving horse racing altogether.

"Mr. and Mrs. Chapman were so devastated that they actually were planning on getting out of the business," Servis said.

They sold most of their stock. But Pat Chapman recalls this counsel from veteran horseman George Isaacs, who broke their horses in Florida: "This is a real nice colt," he said of Smarty Jones. "You might not want to sell this one."

The Chapmans kept Smarty Jones and three other horses. They also kept Camac's memory.

"He's with us," Pat Chapman said. "Bob Camac's hand is on this colt, I tell you."

Several of Camac's clients sent their horses to his friend, Servis, a 45-year-old trainer who grew up as a jockey's son in Charles Town, W.Va. He lives in Bensalem, Pa., near Philadelphia Park, which became Smarty Jones' training ground. It almost became his burial ground.

SMARTY is a hard-charging colt who challenges his 170-pound exercise rider, Pete Van Trump, for control. Last July, Smarty's handlers were trying to train him to work in the starting gate. He reared, struck his head on an iron bar and crumpled.

"The first thing I thought was he was dead," Servis recalled.

"It was pretty bad. He knocked himself out for a good 30 seconds. I mean, his head was actually up underneath his body. ... The blood was pouring out of his nostrils from the internal damage."

In the barn, a veterinarian attended the injured colt.

"He started swelling fast," Servis said. "The inflammation — you couldn't see his eyeball at all — and the tissue was pushed out of his eye socket. I mean, the tissue was out about that far. (He spreads a thumb and forefinger about 3 inches.) And I said, `Boy we gotta get this horse to the hospital.'"

Smarty was shipped to New Jersey Equine Center. Servis wondered how he would break the news to the Chapmans.

"I was thinking the worst," he said. "I was dreading making this phone call."

A veterinarian, Patricia Hogan, called with encouraging news. Smarty had a broken orbital bone and multiple hairline fractures. But his injuries were not life-threatening, and the doctor reassured him: "He's a good patient. ... He's going to need some time, but I think he'll be fine."

Smarty spent three weeks in the hospital and a month on the farm before Servis eased him back into training. At first he walked Smarty around the track and let him stand and simply look at the starting gate. He was hesitant around the gate for a while, but now, Servis said, "I think he'll be fine."

SMARTY JONES got his name from a little girl who grew up in Tuscaloosa, Ala., in the 1920s.

Her given name was Mildred McNair, but her grandparents, Mama and Papa Jones, nicknamed her Smarty Jones.

"She was probably a little bit of a smart aleck," said Mildred's daughter, Pat Chapman.

Smarty turned out to be a tall, slim, dark-haired woman who spent her adult life in Georgia and New Jersey. She painted for fun — and occasional profit.

She was, her daughter said, "an incredible woman. She loved to tell an off-color joke. But she was a lady all the way."

She was 68 when she died in 1989.

Twelve years later, on Smarty's birthday — Feb. 28 — a colt was born in Pennsylvania. Pat recalls thinking: "`I'd love to name this horse after my mother.' But I didn't want to name him Mildred."

Pat, who is handy with a name, apparently isn't as handy with fame.

"We've only been celebrities two weeks," she said, "and it's already wearing us out."

Her mother would have handled this with more aplomb, she thinks.

"She would have loved this," Pat Chapman said. "My husband and I keep talking about and saying, `Would she be eating this up?' She would enjoy talking to all the media."

Smarty's daughter Pat eventually went off to a smart girls' school, Bryn Mawr, where she earned a master's degree in social work. Pat was running the DUI program in Bucks County, Pa., in the mid-1970s when she decided to buy a new car. A friend told her to go see a dealer named Roy "Chappy" Chapman.

"When I met him, he had his arm in a cast and I said, `Oh, my, what happened to your arm?'

"He said, `I was out fox hunting a couple of weeks ago and had an accident. The horse fell on me.' And I knew then that he was the most fascinating person I had ever known. I had never known anyone who had been fox hunting."

Or, for that matter, anyone who had a horse fall on him.

Chappy sold Pat a 1976 Ford Granada. Six years later they were married, combining their families (his three children, her two). They eventually bought a 100-acre farm. After promising themselves they'd get around to various projects "someday," they named the place Someday Farm.

TO THE Chapmans' Pennsylvania neighbors, Smarty Jones is a folk hero. He may be an even bigger celebrity in Arkansas, where Oaklawn is celebrating its centennial with a $5million offer for a horse who wins the Rebel Stakes, Arkansas Derby and Kentucky Derby. Smarty is one victory away. Fans at Oaklawn will try to root him home Saturday with a Smarty party.

It wasn't the $5 million incentive that brought Smarty to Arkansas.

"It's kind of embarrassing," Servis said, "but I didn't even know about the centennial bonus."

He figured the path of least resistance to the Derby ran through Arkansas.

He told the owners: "The more time we can give this horse to mature, the better he's going to get. The last thing you want is to push him before he's ready."

He remembers their response: "You take the route you want to take. Just get him to the Derby. That's all we want."

SOME FOLKS have tried to buy the Chapmans' Derby dream out from under them.

"My husband, being a car dealer, if you start dealing, that gets his blood boiling," Pat said. "One man had called wanting to buy the horse, and he said, `Name your price.' I mean, we kept turning down offers. `Name your price.' My husband said, `Oh, my, this is really getting my attention.'

"And I said, `Look, let's you and me, let's get serious here together. If we sold the horse for five-plus million, what would we do differently in our life? Tell me one thing we would do differently.

"I said, `Our kids are having such a ball with this. It's just so exciting. And he said, `Yeah, you're right. You're right.'

"So of course he's not for sale. In my mind he's never been for sale. But my husband did entertain it briefly."

It's not certain her 77-year-old husband will make it to the Derby.

"Some days, he's really good," Pat said the other day from Florida, where the Chapmans have a second home.

"You'll be talking to him and you think this man doesn't have a problem, but other days he's really struggling. Every breath is a struggle."

Still, they hope to be at Churchill on Saturday.

"We're doing everything in our power to get him there," she said. "He is really wearing out. This whole thing, the adrenaline, the excitement, he is so tired.

"He's very tired now and wondering how he's going to do it. But I said, `We've got to get you there, and we'll spend most of our time in the (hotel) room, but you need to be there for that Derby.' I said, `If you can't make it to the race that day, don't worry.'"

A FEW hours before she spoke — and a few hundred miles north — a gentle rain pattered on the roof of Barn 42 at Churchill Downs. Smarty Jones' trainer opened a piece of paper that carried the printed name of Sydney McWard, a preschooler in Carlinville, Ill.

Her crayon drawing showed the Twin Spires. A bean-shaped brown object hovered nearby, like a spaceship. Or maybe the sun. It was shooting out things that appeared to be sunbeams but turned out to be a horse's legs, tail and head. It was Smarty Jones, who seemed to be levitating.

Imagine the connections running through that drawing. They started with a little girl in Alabama. In a different century they connected a horse in Pennsylvania and a little girl in Illinois. And, no doubt, a few million dreamers in the times and spaces between.

"I'm going to frame it," the trainer said.

The drawing probably wasn't worth much on the art market. But in the market of myths and dreams, it was like Smarty Jones.

All of a sudden, priceless.
__________________
~~~MIKE~~~
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