Beautiful Article written by our own Loopy!

[atticus]

Loopy a member on the BB and who owns HyTyme Hope (aka CBER Rhubarb) wrote this article about Portland Meadows, she did a great job. Check it out.

www.oregonquarterly.com/autumn2008/feature2.php

[NanciK]

Wonderful article, I'm so excited you posted this because ... my OTTB Total Tempo actually won this race back in 1993, see race chart below.

I understand it was quite the controversy at the time, because Tempo was considered a "ringer" being a Cal-bred runner shipped up from the southern California tracks to compete against the venerable Pacific Northwest runners.

As you can see, he was the heavy betting favorite and won by a nose!

(The betting may have been influenced by the fact the Tempo is the brother of Best Pal, who was named California Horse of the Year 3 times in the early '90's, and lost the 1991 Kentucky Derby by a nose. Best Pal was a very famous Cal-bred runner, earning $5.7 million. Here's the link to Best Pal's Wiki:
www.alexbrownracing.com/wiki/index.php/Best_Pal )

[Admin]

Excellent reading!

[wildwoman]

Nice essay-addresses a lot of the misconceptions people have about the process etc.
Nanci-did you own TT at the time or aquire him later? If so-can you share how he came to you?

[toeps]

Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed it. Well written.

[NanciK]

Sept 25, 2008 12:42:52 GMT -5 wildwoman said:

Nanci-did you own TT at the time or aquire him later? If so-can you share how he came to you?

Thanks for asking, I love nothing better than to talk about TT!

He was bred at Golden Eagle Farm, and over his remarkably long 6 season racing career with 61 starts, was moved from barn to barn and trainer to trainer, until he was retired at age 10. We did not own him during his racing years.

Sometime following his racing career, he was retrained as a Grand Prix jumper in southern California, competed successfully there on the GP circuit, and where our H/J trainer bought him (sight unseen by us) for our then 12-year-old daughter. He was 12 years old, too.

When he arrived in northern California, he was 150 lbs. underweight and depressed. Our trainer saw something in him that we didn't ... in fact, we were a bit horrified at his condition when he stepped off the trailer ... but she was convinced he would be an amazing competitive athlete, and he was.

We did not know he was off-track until I google'd his name and, shazam! a ton of race records and pictures came up of our newly purchased horse. We went on to trace his tattoo and discovered that he was a graded stakes winner and brother to the most famous and successful Cal-bred runner of all time .... Best Pal.

TT and our daughter competed very successfully during her teen years in H/J, medals and equitation, and then after his hocks started to limit his jumping ability, she dialed back to dressage. He got a 73 and a 75 on his first ever dressage tests!

Finally, our daughter discovered boys were more interesting than dressage ... and he became my horse. I'm no competitive rider, but we did enjoy a few times out on the trails in Napa Valley (not sure he'd ever been on a trail, we think he spent his entire life on the track or in an arena .. but revealed himself to be very sure-footed and careful on the trail).

We retired him to a lovely ranch in Sonoma County last year, where he succumbed to the infirmities of a life lived in service to his humans at age 18. (Previous, unknown injury to his spinal cord, possibly on the track, compromised his ability to move his back end, and one night, he went down and couldn't get up.)

I wish I'd had more time with him on this Earth, as he was certainly the horse of a lifetime for me.

Thank you so much for asking about his story, I still tear up thinking about him as I write this.

They leave such a huge hole in our hearts when they go.

My favorite picture of Tempo and Kelly ...

[wildwoman]

WOW-thank you for sharing-I teared up too. He had such a long race career and sounds like the full gamut of other activities too and was well loved.
Lisa