Gosger A Fitting Memorial To Clarke

[Wandering Eyes]

“It was great,” Steve Shahinian says, thinking back to his show-jumping days. “But it was just a little boring, compared with racing. And I thought racing was something I could figure out.”

Over 40 years on, how is that project progressing?

Shahinian, a man lacking neither humor nor candor, offers a wry look. “I've sort of half-figured it out,” he says.

A pretty modest verdict, considering his role in the making of one of the best sophomores around. Gosger (Nyquist) again pushed Journalism (Curlin) hard in the GI Haskell Stakes, harder yet than in the GI Preakness–and, after only five starts, aims to maintain his progress towards the apex of the crop in the GI Pennsylvania Derby on Saturday.

Shahinian feels that Gosger did especially well to soak up an excessive pace at Pimlico. “And it was a tough beat again in the Haskell,” he reflects. “The best two-turn 3-year-old colts in America are Sovereignty (Into Mischief) and Journalism, but Gosger is certainly in the conversation as third best at the moment, along with Goal Oriented (Not This Time). Horses don't mature until the middle of their 4-year-old year and, to my eye, Gosger still has physical developing to do.”

In managing Harvey A. Clarke Racing Stable, for the family of a cherished friend lost in 2019, Shahinian can take credit not just for the way Gosger has been allowed to develop. He has also been central to the cultivation of a family that will hugely underpin his value at stud, even if there was one conspicuous vexation along the way.

Steve Shahinian | Sue Finley

Shahinian bought Gosger's granddam Arch's Girl Edith (Arch) as a 2-year-old in 2004, for $80,000 at OBS.

“Though she wasn't actually the type I usually buy,” he recalls.  “If you want a racehorse, you buy elegant. You don't buy chunks. It's not a wrestling match.”

Here Shahinian mentions a top stallion, whom he considers built to pull a plow. For this is a guy who will say what he thinks, without being too bothered who might be listening. If possibly in too craven a spirit of diplomacy, however, we've duly excised from his conversation one or two entertaining asides–regarding, for instance, the surgery which (in his opinion) prematurely ended the career of Arch's Girl Edith.

“She was very talented,” he recalls. “She won her first start, but chipped an ankle. Anyway everyone wanted me to breed her to Distorted Humor. And like I said, if you're trying to come up with a top two-turn horse, generally you avoid those linebacker types that are usually better suited to sprints. Arch's Gal Edith already had a bit of that look and, to me, so did Distorted Humor. But what I would do is go to his son Flower Alley.”

A pause for comic effect. “So that produced a weak, pathetic, backward yearling that we sold for $11,000,” he resumes. “Then at OBS the following spring, I saw him again.”

He called Clarke.

“Harvey, we made a mistake,” he said. “He's got 'jewelry' already, so I don't know if he's going to make it. But this is a racehorse.”

“What's he going to bring?”

“Don't know, but he deserves $50,000-$100,000.”

“Okay. Well. Never look back.”

Sound counsel, more often than not. But that horse, of course, made just $35,000 before turning into 2012 Kentucky Derby winner I'll Have Another.

No matter: they still had the mare, and she had meanwhile favored the program with a filly by the emerging Tapit. Gloria S never made the gate but soon produced Harvey's Lil Goil (American Pharoah) to win the GI Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup.

Gosger wins the Stonestreet Lexington Stakes at Keeneland | Coady Media

Sadly Clarke had just been claimed by cancer. But his family maintained the stable in his memory, son Scott becoming especially enthused. And that will not change now that Gloria S has produced a horse as brilliant as Gosger.

It's a gratifying sequel to Shahinian's long relationship with Clarke, which flourished in an unexpected direction after their paths first crossed.

“Harvey had brought his kids to me for riding lessons,” Shahinian explains. “That was at Leonia, New Jersey, four miles from the George Washington Bridge. Actually the final selection trial for the 1980 Olympics was held over the jumps that I designed there. Only then Russia invaded Afghanistan, and nobody went.”

Shahinian had himself been taught, from age nine, by a mentor of the old school.

“Sergeant James Gannon, an Irishman, and instructor to the New York City mounted police,” Shahinian recalls. “He was a taskmaster. 'Bring your horse here, buddy,' he'd say. 'Give me your hand.' And then he yanks me off the horse, splat on the ground. 'You like being yanked on?' Puts me in a round pen, where the horse has nowhere to go. 'Drop the reins. Hanging on a horse's mouth makes him think to take the bridle.' Fair dues to him, he was a consummate horseman, probably the best I've known. At 80, he'd sidestep a horse over these telephone poles on cinder blocks, and you never saw him move a muscle.”

Those lessons learned, as a young man Shahinian evidently did not confine his own flair to the saddle. “I went to Vermont to build houses, fly-fish, bird hunt, chase hippie girls,” he says. “Sugarbush Valley, three ski areas, I'd build one house at a time and sell it. Beautiful country, I had my jumper, it was a great life. But then OPEC shut our oil off, we had different days when odd and even license plates could buy gas. So why build a house nobody can get to? What now? I guess law school. Went to Albany, spent three years mostly playing golf. I remember hitting one in the water, they had bass in there so I just dug out my fly rod instead.”

With that kind of attitude, guess what Shahinian did when deciding Thoroughbreds might be fun?

“I decided to get myself a training license,” he says. “Monmouth in summer but in the winter, when the big boys left town, I'd commute to New York. Up at five to beat the traffic. Belmont was nicknamed The Country Club. All the fancy outfits were there, but it was the most ridiculous main track on the planet–mile-and-a-half of deep sand, and horses can't stay on their leads–while the training track got overcrowded. A lot of the aristocratic stables used Belmont, because it was where you were supposed to be. But it wasn't where your horses wanted to be. So I requested a transfer from The Country Club to The Prison. Because Aqueduct's training surfaces were far superior, and also the right size.”

For 10 years, from 1982, his string varied between half-a-dozen and 20.

Harvey's Lil Goil carried the Clarke colors | Sarah Andrew

“I just wanted to know what it was about,” he says with a shrug. “When they opened Meadowlands, I went down to check it out. Asked some of the trainers to let me volunteer, walk hots, whatever they wanted. After a while I said to myself, 'These guys aren't horsemen, they don't actually know what they're doing. I can do this.' Which might have been true, if I'd had any kind of budget. But I was generally getting useless horses from people that didn't pay bills. The only people that thought me any good were the gamblers. They'd let me look at their sheets, then pick my brain on my horse.”

Eventually his brother persuaded Shahinian to stop tormenting himself and join his law firm instead. But there was one silver lining: this real estate guy in Manhattan, the one who'd originally sent his kids for riding lessons, had followed him onto the Turf.

“And I'd started buying horses for him,” Shahinian says. “Harvey Clarke was the best guy you ever met. Worked hard, just a perfect human being. I said, 'I don't want to spend a pile of your money, why don't we bring in a couple of others?' Because I was buying horses that could run a little, and people were paying attention.”

One priceless connection was Dr. David Lambert, with his innovative ways. As for partners for Clarke, one good example was Craig Robertson asking Shahinian to find a cheap 2-year-old.

He called Robertson from the sale. “I can find you something,” he said. “But you're not going to be proud of it, and neither am I. Why not just take a piece of something with Harvey?”

So Robertson came in for 10 percent of a War Front colt bought at Keeneland the previous September.

Shahinian had noticed Kiaran McLaughlin's work under Wayne Lukas, and supported him with Clarke horses once going solo. “At one point Kiaran had five graded stakes winners in his barn at Palm Meadows,” he recalls. “And, with all those Maktoum horses he had, four were owned by Harvey Clarke. Anyway that War Front was Soldat, and Kiaran was sprinting him on the dirt. I said, 'Kiaran, this is a grass horse. Two turns.' He didn't think so. I said, 'Humor me.' He said, 'Okay, there's a maiden coming up.' I said, 'No, nominate him for the [GIII] With Anticipation.'”

He won, of course, and Shahinian still feels robbed of the GI Juvenile Turf, believing that overwatering exposed him to a mugging on the outside. In fairness to McLaughlin, Soldat reverted to dirt to win an allowance by 11 and followed up in the GII Fountain of Youth. By the time he reached the Derby, “he'd starting to feel some stuff” and duly faded in the stretch. But it had been some ride.

So, too, was Cairo Prince. He came onto Shahinian's radar at Keeneland January, the best short yearling he'd ever seen. He tried Clarke, but $200,000 sounded a stretch. Then the horse resurfaced in the same ring that September, and this time they lined up partners. They needed $250,000 but made many multiples when Godolphin came in, after he won the GII Holy Bull by six lengths.

Now the Clarkes have a horse that could top them all. The program has been streamlined, and needs to be viable, but there was never any danger of offering Gosger as a yearling. Shahinian liked him too much, and the family trusted his judgement. As we keep saying, he's not one to pretend that his every call has paid off. But Gosger's graphlines are narrowing with the crop leaders.

In the Haskell, Gosger (outside) finishes second with Goal Oriented running third | Sarah Andrew

“He's a young, developing horse that we didn't rush,” Shahinian stresses. “He didn't get to the races until December. He'd popped a little cherry splint, right below the knee. Lots of people would pinfire, blister it. I said, 'No, he goes to the farm, gets turned out.' Dr. Bramlage said 60 days. I gave him 90. I'm never in a hurry. If they're precocious, they'll tell you. And if they need time, you give them time. My biggest flaw is, I kind of like horses! So the timetable, the calendar, never rules. The horse rules. You will have terrible regrets if you damage horses that don't have a say in the matter. So I protect them.”

Even as it is, Gosger has come a long way quickly. “He's had five starts in his life,” Shahinian says. “He'll be even better a year from now. Brendan Walsh is an excellent trainer, pays extraordinary attention to how his horses are doing. Horse training and management is like tennis. You hit 'em a shot and see how they return it. If they don't, you don't hit that next shot until they're telling you they're ready.”

Certainly he's delighted that the Clarke family have bred such a good horse.

“Other than helping them, I'm happily self-unemployed,” he sums up. “My job in life is to have as much fun as I can without hurting anybody. I live on a farm, a little apartment over a ten-stall barn. I wanted somewhere where I can let the bird-dogs out and they don't get hit by a car. That was my only requirement and, three or four bird-dogs later, it still is.”

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