Life The Good Good Good Good L

Biscuits and Breezing offers up-close look to see Thoroughbreds put through paces

ife and work went as scheduled on this sunsplashed day before Thanksgiving morning at Fitzdalton Stables. On one side of the U-shaped barn, Kate Dalton was behind a wheelbarrow filled with straw and wheeling it to a station to be picked up by a Springdale Race Course front loader. On the other side, her husband, Bernie Dalton, was mucking out the stall of a young Thoroughbred which was just learning the ropes.

There was hardly anything unusual about the goings-on at the white brick facility other than the fact that one mare was not among the residents. Looking for Down Royal, the visitor asked Bernie where she was in possibly trying to get a photo of a jumper who is almost a lock to be among the three finalists for the 2022 Eclipse Award for Steeplechase Horse.

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Winter 2023 - The Camden Horse & Equestrian

“She’s not here,” Bernie Dalton said with a smile creasing his face. “She’s at Jill Waterman’s place and enjoying the good life. She’s grazing her head off.”

Pressed for more information, Dalton explained that the 8-year-old Alphabet Soup mare --- which he and his wife/trainer Kate bred and are owners along with Joseph Fowler ---, had been retired from the race course and will begin what will be her third career as a broodmare. Few horses went out on a better note than did Down Royal whose extended stay at the track could be attributed to, of all things, the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Daltons were prepared to send Down Royal into an early retirement and the paperwork to put that in place was all but signed, sealed and delivered for her to become a show jumper. The virus halted those plans as the intended new owner of the jumper was stuck in Ireland and its rigid quarantine laws prevented anyone from leaving the Emerald Isle until the number of illnesses dropped.

Given this scenario, the Daltons were left with a bit of a dilemma. They could have Down Royal live a life of leisure at the barn and wait things out for her to become a jumper or, they could return her to training to resume racing over fences. They chose the latter. It was a prudent move.

“Originally,” Bernie said of that period of time in 2020 in which Down Royal’s career plans were in limbo, “we were going to retire her and sell her as a show horse. Sarah Katz, who does that kind of thing, ended up getting stuck in Ireland with COVID. The longer it went on, the less likelihood there was of me wanting to sell her. I said, ‘That’s it. She’s going back in training.’ It was like her last hurrah.”

With the National Steeplechase Association schedule being a shell of its usual self in order to protect all parties from COVID-19, jump meets were few and far between. One by one, races were cancelled as the virus raged on. Some meets such as Middleburg and Great Meadow, both in Virginia, staged their races in June rather than in April or May. The meets were held sans patrons and were held, for the most part, to provide owners and trainers with a way to give their jumpers a venue to race while also providing a limited source of income for all parties concerned.

For the Daltons, they ran Down Royal in both early summer stops. She finished eighth in an allowance in Middleburg and came home sixth in a handicap chase in Great Meadow. The races were her 16th and 17th career starts from which she had one win and netted her connections a little more than $28,000. If there was ever a time to consider a change of scenery and vocation for Down Royal, this seemed as good a time as any.

When COVID-19 interrupted those plans, it allowed the Daltons to evaluate what may have been holding their jumper back. One thing they looked into was that in every one of her starts --- including three on the flat in New York ---, Down Royal raced after having been treated with Lasix, a legally, allowable ant-bleeding medication used by veterinarians in the horse racing industry to prevent respiratory bleeding in horses running at high speed. Lasix was used to prevent, sometimes fatal, pulmonary hemorraghing in horses due to blood entering their lungs.

While not a performance-enhancing agent, Kate and Bernie used the sudden free time in Down Royal’s schedule to debate the merits of Lasix on her and wondered what would happen should they take her off the medication.

“We’d been hemming and hawing about taking her off the Lasix,” Bernie said. “Kate said to me, “If you want to take her off Lasix, now’s the time to do it and see if it works.’ We haven’t looked back since.

“She’s always been very useful, but she just hadn’t quite been seeing out her races. I mentioned to Kate that we never worked her on Lasix at home and she always worked lights out here. Going to the races, she always ran well and was second or third, but she just wasn’t getting the job done and always seemed to weaken a little bit.”

Down Royal broke her maiden at three, winning an allowance chase at the NSA season finals in Charleston in November of 2017. That came after a near-miss a month earlier when she finished second in the $50,000 Gladstone Stakes for 3-year-olds at the Far Hills (N.J.) meet.

A strong jumper and a quick learner from the get-go when moved to jumping fences, Bernie Dalton smiled when thinking about the near-misses and issues in Down Royal’s first two starts over hurdles.

“First time out, she was going to win at Shawan Downs and she tipped over at the second last (fence); she over-jumped it And her speed kind of pushed her over … she didn’t make a mistake,” said Bernie, who has been aboard Down Royal in each steeplechase start. “Second time, she ran in the 3-year-old stakes race at Far Hills and she would have won, but she got badly interfered with on the bend and we ended up third and the winner got taken down and we got moved up to second.”

As a 4-year-old in 2018, Down Royal was chasing down jumpers such as Iranistan and more than holding her own in graded stakes company, but she could not get over the hump. In her 5-year-old campaign, Down Royal was racing almost exclusively in stakes company and had second-place finishes in the Margaret Henley Currey Stakes in Nashville in May and then in the Mrs. Ogden Phipps Stakes at Saratoga in August.

With the NSA returning to an almost full slate of stops in 2021 and with Lasix no longer part of her routine, Down royals became the horse the Dalton’s saw at home in Camden, but was now winning races.

A win in the spring at the Queens Cup in Charlotte touched off a season which ended with a two-race win streak which included the Randolph Rouse Stakes at Colonial Downs before ending her year with a victory in the $50,000 Peapack Hurdle Stakes at Far Hills as Down Royal accumulated $91,500 in purse money.

That figure paled in comparison to what would come in 2022; a year in which Down Royal won the Margate Currey Henley Stakes for fillies and mares before expanding her horizons and competing against and beating the guys by rallying to win the $150,000 A.P. Smithwick (Gr. I) at Saratoga on July 20.

The leap of faith in racing against the boys was not as far-fetched as it might have seemed.

“She was full of confidence going in; she won her last four or five going into the race. She was full of herself,” Bernie said of that warm afternoon in upstate New York. “We didn’t think we’d win. We talked going up and looking at the entries that we could be third. We were perfectly happy to go and get a bit of black type (graded stakes mention) and be third for a mare that we were planning to breed, down the road. For her to go out and win, it was unbelievable.”

With the last fence having been removed from race meets in New York for safety reasons, jumpers had a longer run to the finish in Empire State tracks than at hunt meets. Dalton said one less fence was not something which favored Down Royal.

“It didn’t really suit her because she’s a great jumper. It worked out that she could quicken up there, but taking the jumps out doesn’t suit a horse like her. She gets you a couple lengths at every fence if you need them,” he said.

Having bested the males in the Smithwick, the Daltons brought Down Royal back to Camden and then, shipped her back to Saratoga for a run in the $150,000 Jonathan Sheppard Stakes. A Spa double was not to be as she came home sixth in a field of seven.

“It seemed like she was in good form, but you never know until you run them. And when we ran her, she came up a bit short,” Bernie Dalton said of his mount that afternoon. “You’ve only got three weeks between races so you’re not really working them. You do some strong gallops between races, but to ship a thousand miles up and a thousand miles back, you don’t have a lot of time to turn around before you have to go back up again.”

He added that he and Kate never hesitated in running Down Royal in the Sheppard Stakes for several reasons.

“What else were you going to do, wait two months to run back or that type of thing? You take your shots and support the game. The game’s been very good to us and we’d like to support it, especially at Saratoga where there is good purse money,” he said. “Plus, she’s a New Yorkbred and if she didn’t win and got second, we would have been delighted, but it didn’t work out … that happens.”

Unfazed by that performance, the Daltons had one last start in mind for Down Royal in what would be her swan song. They entered her in the $75,000 Zeke Ferguson stakes at Great Meadow on Oct. 22. In her final run before retirement, the 8-year-old won by 3 ½ lengths in front of an appreciative crowd. “We went into the Gold Cup fairly confident,” Bernie Dalton said with a smile. “She was the only Grade I winner in the race and was in off a nice weight. I thought she could fall over and still win the race.”

A jumper who took to the flat courses at the race tracks as easily as she handled the hilly courses at race meets, Down Royal amassed a career-high $165,000 in earnings in 2022 giving her more than $322,000 in 25 starts, with the final 22 coming over hurdles. The Daltons credit her reversal in fortunes to being taken off Lasix and running free’ not to mention her having figured things out over the years.

“She matured. She definitely got better,” Bernie Dalton said. “I think between that and taking her off the Lasix, it really helped her.”

Bred at the barn of Joe McMahon in New York, Down Royal has the same stallion, Alphabet Soup, which produced Italian Wedding, a Graded stakes winner for retired Hall of Fame trainer Jonathan Sheppard. The Daltons figured if Down Royal could not cut it on the flat, her breeding suggested that she could make the transition to jumping. “That was the kind of logic behind it and it worked out,” Bernie Dalton said.

First sent to New York-based trainer Peter Pugh as a 2-year-old, Down Royal had an inauspicious start on the flat. Her first race came off the turf due to heavy rains in Saratoga. The 5 ½-furlong race was put on the dirt and little went right as Down Royal, nicknamed Princess by the Dalton, had a rough, 10th place finish.

“Peter liked her and she was working fine and decided to give her a run. Of course, it rained and came off the turf and 5 1/2 (furlongs) on the slop and Princess did nothing. She did not like the slop,” Bernie Dalton said with a laugh. “She trailed the field the whole was and was like, ‘Ewww, I’m not getting dirty.’

“We sent her back up the spring of her 3-year-old year and she ran a couple times on the turf and those races, basically, just weren’t far enough for her. She was only getting going when they were stopping. We decided to school her up that summer and run her over jumps that fall.”

Once taken from the flat to fences, Down Royal thrived, especially when taken off Lasix. With six wins in her final eight career starts, the nearly white mare has exceeded the expectations of her handlers and connections.

“By far … by far,” Bernie Dalton said. “When we bred her, all we were looking to do was to win a couple races. To do what she did was unbelievable.”

Her racing days behind her, Down Royal is retired and healthy. The next step is to bring her to the breeding shed. A Grade I winner, having black type beside her name will add to Down Royal’s stock and credibility when it comes to breeding and the financial end of her third career.

For a team which has gotten used to winning, Bernie and Kate Dalton want to keep things rolling with Down Royal in the coming years.

“It’s a fairly substantial amount of money to people like me and Kate. It’s life-changing,” he said as to the money which can be made by Princess as a broodmare with each healthy offspring she delivers. “You’re talking about $40,000, that kind of thing, with breeders’ awards and owners’ awards. To us, that’s like winning two races.”

Winter 2023 - The Camden Horse & Equestrian