Unbroken Bond
Tommasi with Tina Bond
While I was simply
going to post a picture on my facebook page with a one sentence caption, this
story, that has touched me so much, deserved a bit more effort. A few weeks ago, I had an experience which
was one of my happiest in the six years I have been involved with Akindale
Thoroughbred Rescue. With so much
negative press about Thoroughbred racing today, I felt this story should be
shared.
Every year at
the Saratoga
meet, I spend much of my time each day on the backstretch with some of the greatest
people; friends and horsemen, I have ever known. There are a lot of constants from season to
season. One that I can set my watch by
is that on day one, I will see H James Bond at the rail for five sets of works
on the main track with his Team 007.
Last summer I was talking with Jimmy about Akindale Thoroughbred Rescue
& the work that we do there. We
spoke about responsibility of the participants.
Jimmy is a busy man, being a top trainer and as well as a breeder and
owner. He & his wife Tina manage
their forty stall Gridley Street
racing barn plus their Stillwater ,
NY farm, Song Hill Thoroughbreds,
LLC, (home to their broodmares, foals, yearlings, layups and retirees). I can remember Jimmy talking about one such
homebred fondly. It was something along
the lines of “if you ever come across a horse named …”, but that’s really where
it ended … or so I thought. I did look
up the horse’s race record and remember checking to see if he was at ATBR but I
didn’t do anything beyond that.
So on day 1 of
the meet this summer, I was on the rail when I saw Jimmy’s smiling face and his
first words were “Did you find my horse yet?”.
I pride myself on remembering everything, yet for the life of me, I
couldn’t even recall the horse’s name, not to mention the fact that I hadn’t
put much effort into locating him as I thought the original conversation was
really more rhetorical in nature.
“Tommasi” is the gelding’s name (Tina & Jimmy name all their horses
after Italian red wines). I felt
terrible that I had misunderstood the original discussion and told Jimmy I
would search for his horse immediately. I
presumed he would tell me that he just needed to know that Tommasi was alright
& not in any danger, but Jimmy said he wanted to get Tommasi back as a gift
to surprise Tina. There are tremendously
loving, caring people in this industry, but we don’t often have someone ask to
find a horse they bred so they can physically & financially support it for
the rest of its’ life! Now I was on a
mission and I was determined not to leave on the last day of this meet without
knowing that Tommasi was home with The Bonds.
My first call
was to Erin Pfister who manages ATBR, who would know where to begin. We made a few calls before she contacted
Diana Baker. Diana, a very well known
horsewoman in all areas of the Thoroughbred industry and former board member of
the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, was able to tell us almost immediately
that Tommasi was with the TRF. My next
call was to their herd manager Sara Davenport.
She told me that they did indeed have Tommasi and were looking to re-home
him. They had shipped him from NY to VA
in hopes of retraining him to be a performance horse. Unfortunately, Tommasi had a racing injury
which would prevent this from happening, so he was then moved to James River
Correctional Facility. I told her Jimmy
would be calling and making arrangements to ship Tommasi home. It was almost too easy. The next morning, a Thursday, I couldn’t wait
to get to the track and tell Jimmy that Tommasi was safe and could come home
immediately. Jimmy was ecstatic and
called Sara that night to arrange to send his own truck and driver down on
Monday to pick him up. His excitement
built over the next four days as he planned how he was going to stage the
surprise for Tina. By Monday night even
I couldn’t sleep wondering whether Tommasi was back and wishing I could have a
video camera at the barn for the reunion.
The details of the surprise & how it unfolded (from both Jimmy’s perspective
and Tina’s) are a whole separate story, so I will simply share the text I
received at 10:13 Tuesday morning: “THANK YOU!!! She won’t stop crying! Tears of JOY!!! THANK YOU!”
I won’t delete
that text and I look at it often. When I
read a scathing story on the Thoroughbred industry or see a horse come into
ATBR which hasn’t been so lucky, I read that text. It reminds me of what is truly good about
people and about this industry that I love so much. I owe Tina & Jimmy Bond my sincere
gratitude for making my work worth while, sharing their passion with me, and
giving me a story I will forever hold in my heart.