Racing, but ‘recovery first.’ In one stable at Keeneland, a focus on overcoming addiction.
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Racing to recovery
Everyone on the shed row of Ready Made Racing is overcoming addiction. The stable is backed by Taylor Made Farm & is competing in Keeneland’s Blue Grass Stakes.
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Every horse race is a story of animals and humans, hopes and disappointments, wins and losses.
It will be no different April 13 when, if all goes according to plan, a two-year-old Bolt D’Oro colt named Sergeant Countzler will step onto the track at Keeneland to compete in his first race.
What’s different is that the group of men who have worked with the colt – and nine other Thoroughbreds purchased at Keeneland last fall – count it as a win to just get to this moment.
Everyone on the shed row of Ready Made Racing is in recovery.
They begin each day doing the usual things, mucking out stalls, feeding and grooming the horses, and then meet in the tack room around 6 a.m. to read and discuss a meditation. “It’s not really that we each get something mind blowing out of that each and every day but it’s more to set the tone for the day, that we put recovery first,” trainer Will Walden said.
Last summer Walden – a fourth-generation horseman who has been around Thoroughbreds all his life – took his idea for the stable to Frank Taylor, vice president of sales at his family’s Taylor Made Farm.
Taylor bought ten yearlings for about $400,000 total and figured it would take another $400,000 in salaries and expenses to get them to the track and, hopefully, sold. He reached out to several “like-minded people,” and found a group of investors to join him in this effort, including among them Will’s parents Elliott and Rebecca Walden and retired jockey Pat Day.
Taylor already had experience working with people in recovery, as he himself is. He convinced his brothers to try a pilot project they called the Taylor Made School of Horsemanship to train people recovering from substance abuse the basics of horsemanship. Not only was it the right thing to do, but he knew from long experience that many hands-on workers in the industry suffer from addictions. “It’s a lot safer to hire the ones that are in treatment,” he reasoned.
A year later 20 have graduated from the 90-day program, 11 of whom still work for Taylor Made while others have gone on to other farms or industries. One of the graduates, Michael Lowry, had gotten to know Walden while they were both in the Shepherd’s House recovery program and, along with exercise rider Tyler Maxwell, formed the core of Ready Made Stables.
It was those three who took the 10 yearlings purchased in September to Ocala, Fla., to train over the winter. “You’re a complete idiot,” a friend told Taylor for sending “three addicted guys that are in recovery 800 miles away and they’re responsible for everything.”
Walden agreed it was a leap of faith. “You wouldn’t trust any one of us with five dollars to go to the store just a year ago, let alone hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of horses.” But the three supported and encouraged each other, stayed sober and came back with race-ready two-year-olds.
By the time the Ready Made team got to their barn at Keeneland the third week of March, Walden, 31, had been sober for 16 months, the longest period since his descent into alcohol and drugs shortly after he finished high school.
It’s fitting that the first horse likely to run out of this venture is named for Christian Countzler who, Walton said, had helped him, Lowry and Maxwell climb out of addiction through his work at Shepherd’s House. “I don’t think we’d be here without that guy.”
It was Countzler who told Taylor that people in recovery working together are among the best employees you could have. “The only way you can really stay sober is by helping other people,” he said, so they support each other. “There’s no in-fighting, bickering, jealousy, it’s like a brotherhood.”
They also take very, very good care of the horses entrusted to them. “They’re kind of like my children,” Lowry said. He feeds them, bathes them, cleans up after them. But – win or lose – the horses pay him back in full, he said. “They do something to you, they bring peace, they really do, they bring peace.”
Keeneland Spring Meet
When: April 8-29, no racing Mondays, Tuesdays and Easter Sunday.
Where: Keeneland Racetrack, 4201 Versailles Rd.
Tickets: keeneland.com
This story was originally published April 7, 2022 at 10:35 AM.