Claiborne at 100

DRF WEEKEND
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Claiborne
at
100
Story by Glenye Cain Oakford ■ Photos by Barbara D. Livingston
Claiborne Farm wears its 100 years lightly. The entrance is flanked by
unpretentious, ivy-laden stone pillars from a time when Kentucky’s stud
farms were working farms first and showplaces by virtue of hard-earned
reputation, not expensive architecture. Claiborne’s 3,000 acres sport no
trendy trappings, no gaudy gates, no outward sign of the modern, quasicorporate world of stallion boutiques. Its barns are unassuming, with
typically understated brass name plates on stalls and sepia photos displayed around a tack room. But the horsepower those barns have held,
and still hold, is breathtaking.
Claiborne has achieved its age largely by eschewing fashion in favor of
old-school principles that the first Thoroughbred-breeding Hancock, Civil War veteran Capt. Richard Hancock of Virginia’s famed Ellerslie Farm,
would have recognized. Hancock’s son Arthur Boyd Hancock founded the
farm on property originally owned by his wife’s family, the Clays, and
brought it to prominence. His son, Arthur B. Hancock Jr., better known
by his nickname, Bull, expanded the farm, its horse population, and its
influence throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Claiborne’s current owners – fourth-generation horse breeders Seth
Hancock and his sisters Dell and Clay Hancock – have sustained Claiborne by doing what their ancestors and farm owners of all kinds do: cultivating.
Successive generations of Hancocks have cultivated loyal clients.
They’ve built priceless broodmare families and developed enduring lines
of stallions. The farm has been home to generations of workers, part of
Claiborne’s extended human family whose personal histories are entwined with the Hancocks.
Edmond Boyle, 70, is a living part of the farm’s history, the son of a man
who worked 57 years at Claiborne and who has been employed there himself for 51 years. Boyle has no formal job title; technically, he is a maintenance manager. In reality, he’s a major support beam in the farm’s operations. Boyle’s vivid memories of farm founder Arthur Boyd Hancock
Sr. illustrate the mutual affection and sense of obligation that has bound
Continued on page 5
Generations
of Hancocks
stand behind
America’s
preeminent
family-run
Thoroughbred
farm
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Saturday, July 31, 2010
DRF WEEKEND
Copyright © 2010 Barbara D. Livingston
DRF WEEKEND
generations of Claiborne’s owners and
their employees.
Through a boy’s eyes, Boyle recalled
Arthur Boyd Hancock Sr. as an awe-inspiring man who made workers snap to attention when he rode his white horse on daily
rounds inspecting the farm.
“He was a big man,” Boyle said. “Probably 6-6 and maybe 6-7. Broad shoulders and
had a deep, baritone voice. When I was 5 or
6, I was scared to death of him. When I’d see
him come around, I’d get behind my dad.”
A personal encounter with Claiborne’s
founder one winter gave Boyle new insight
into Hancock Sr. that helped make Boyle
a lifelong Claiborne man. At age 7, Boyle
became seriously ill with an ear infection
and whooping cough. He recalled watching
through a bedroom window as Hancock
Sr. walked through the snow to the Boyles’
house. Filled with dread, he hid under his
covers.
“When my mother answered the door, he
said, ‘I’ve come to see the boy,’ in that deep
voice, and I knew immediately that was
me,” Boyle said. “So I scurried all the way
to the bottom of the bed. He came in and sat
on the end of the bed and turned the covers back, brought me out and sat me up. He
said, ‘How are you doing, young man?’ And
then he said, ‘I brought you something.’ ”
Hancock gave the boy one of the large
Virginia winesap apples he kept in a dish
in his house. Then he reached into his suit
pocket and pulled out a large yellow Claiborne paycheck.
“And there was my name: ‘Pay to the
order of Edmond Boyle, five dollars,’ from
the farm,” Boyle recalled. “I saw him in
an entirely different light at that moment.
And he sat there and talked with me and
read a story with me for what seemed like
the longest time. And when he went out
the door, my whole outlook had changed.
I thought, ‘Wow, what a nice man he was.’
And after that, in a sense, I really loved the
man.”
Likewise, some of the Hancock family’s
richest memories are of the Claiborne employees they grew up with or, later, watched
grow.
“I really probably remember the guys
more than the horses, at an early age,” said
Claiborne’s current president, Seth Hancock, who was raised on the farm. “Our
farm manager now is Bradley Purcell, and
one of his backups is his brother Wesley. I’ve
got a picture back there in my office from
when they were about 9 and 6, foaling a mare
up at the foaling barn. That’s pretty neat, really, that they were out here when they were
kids. I was running the farm then, and now,
here they are. They’re the managers.”
It would take volumes to give credit to
all of Claiborne’s stallions and mares, or
to the influence they’ve had in the century
since the farm was founded. But traces of
Claiborne’s most important bloodlines,
most vivid equine and human characters
and transformative moments are still very
much in evidence in the farm’s landscape
and hard-working staff.
Opposite page: A farm road shaded by Green Mountain
sugar maple trees leads to a broodmare barn. This page:
Clockwise from top left, a boot brush outside the main
farm office; the no-frills waiting area inside the office;
Edmund Boyle, 70, a maintenance manager.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
PAGE 5
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Saturday, July 31, 2010
DRF WEEKEND
Copyright © 2010 Barbara D. Livingston
Claiborne Farm burials
MAIN CLAIBORNE CEMETERY
Ambiorix (c. 1946-1975)
Blenheim II (c. 1927-1958)
Bold Ruler (c. 1954-1971)
Buckpasser (c. 1963-1978)
Court Martial (c. 1942-1966)
Double Jay (c. 1944-1972)
Gallant Fox (c. 1927-1954)
Herbager (c. 1956-1976)
Hoist The Flag (c. 1968-1980)
Johnstown (c. 1936-1950)
Mr. Prospector (c. 1970-1999)
Nasrullah (c. 1940-1959)
Nijinsky II (c. 1967-1992)
Princequillo (c. 1940-1964)
Reviewer (c. 1966-1977)
Riva Ridge (c. 1969-1985)
Round Table (c. 1954-1987)
Secretariat (c. 1970-1989)
Sir Gallahad III (c. 1920-1949;
marker only, grave is at
Marchmont division)
Swale (c. 1981-1984).
CLAIBORNE/MARCHMONT
DIVISION CEMETERY
Stallions
Ack Ack (c. 1966-1990)
Conquistador Cielo (c. 1979-2002)
Cox’s Ridge (c. 1974-1998)
Damascus (c. 1964-1995)
Danzig (1977-2006)
Devil’s Bag (1981-2005)
Drone (c. 1966-1987)
Easy Goer (c. 1986-1994)
Forli (c. 1963-1988)
Hawaii (c. 1964-1990)
Majestic Light (c. 1973-2000)
Out of Place (1987-2010)
Private Account (1976-2004)
Private Terms (1985-2010)
Sir Gallahad III (c. 1920-1949)
Sir Ivor (c. 1965-1995)
Tom Rolfe (c. 1962-1989)
Topsider (c. 1974-1992)
Unbridled (c. 1987-2001)
UNMARKED GRAVES BY BARN
4 (PROBABLE)
Chatterton (c. 1919-1933)
Star Hawk (c. 1913-1925)
Stimulus (c. 1922-1945)
War Cloud (c. 1915-1923)
The gravestones of some of Claiborne’s great horses line the
outside of the farm’s main office. Many of the horses’ bloodlines are connected: Nasrullah was the sire of Bold Ruler, who
was the sire of Secretariat; Princequillo was the sire of the
dam of Secretariat.
UNKNOWN
Nantallah (c. 1953-1972)
Tulyar (c. 1943-1972)
Broodmares
Alluvial (f. 1969-1994)
Banshee Breeze (1995-2001)
Blitey (1976-2004)
Con Game (1974-2001)
Dearly Precious (f. 1975-1992)
File (f. 1976-1993)
Foreseer (f. 1969-1998)
Marguerite (f. 1920-1945)
Moccasin (f. 1963-1986)
Narrate (1980-2010)
Number (1979-1997)
Numbered Account (f. 1969-1997)
Obeah (f. 1965-1993)
Personal Ensign (1984-2010)
Pure Profit (f. 1982-1999)
Qui Royalty (f. 1977-1999)
Relaxing (f. 1976-1999)
Special (1969-1999)
State (f. 1974-1993)
Thong (f. 1964-1986)
Tuerta (f. 1970-1985)
Wild Applause (1981-2003)
SECOND MARCHMONT
CEMETERY
Andover Way (1978-2002)
Arabian Dancer (1979-2008)
Christmas Past (1979-2008)
Country Hideaway (1996-2008)
Educated Risk (1990-2010)
Glitter Woman (1994-2006)
Infinite (1980-2007)
Miner’s Game (1989-2009)
Our Country Place (1992-2006)
Terrain (2006-2009)
Watch the Time (1986-2008)
List provided by tbheritage.com and Claiborne Farm
DRF WEEKEND
Saturday, July 31, 2010
PAGE 7
Stallions
A who’s who of legendary bloodlines traces back to Sir Gallahad
Pulpit,
Claiborne’s
current top
sire, stands
in a barn surrounded by
wall boxes that
hold halters
and bridles.
The stallion who put Claiborne Farm on the map
traveled across the Atlantic in style just 15 years
after Arthur Hancock Sr. opened the farm. Hancock and the first modern stallion syndicate paid
about $140,000 for Sir Gallahad. For his 1925 journey from London to New York on the steamship
Minnetonka, The New York Times reported, “special arrangements were made in the construction
of Sir Gallahad’s stall so that the pitching of the
vessel in heavy weather would not cause injury. . .
. Sir Gallahad was insured for more than his purchase price, and it was understood that the special
care in his transportation was largely due to conditions imposed by the insurance underwriters.”
Hancock’s gamble paid off, and Sir Gallahad
became one of the century’s great sires, ensuring
Claiborne’s future.
The penchant of Arthur Sr. and his son Bull
Hancock for importing fast European stallions
brought America some of its most influential
Thoroughbreds. These foundation stallions are
buried in a hedge-bordered plot adjoining the
Claiborne farm office. The headstones are plain
rectangles stating only the horses’ names and
years of life. But their histories live on in record
books, pedigrees, and in the fading memories of
those people lucky enough to have known them.
Princequillo’s life reads like a boys’ adventure
novel. His grandsire died in a fire at Xalapa Farm
in Paris, Ky. His sire, Prince Rose, was killed in
1944 by artillery fire in France, where he was a
leading sire. Princequillo got to Kentucky after
shipping through the U-boat-infested Atlantic as
a yearling. At Claiborne, he became sire or broodmare sire of five Horses of the Year.
Then there was Nasrullah. His violent temper
was as infamous as his genes for speed were good.
Even the great jockey Sir Gordon Richards pronounced him “very, very difficult.” His reputation
as a bad actor on England’s racecourses spooked
some breeders when he went to stud, but he rose
to the top three on England’s sire list anyway. He
was the first sire of that caliber to be imported to
the U.S. in mid-career. He so violently opposed
Claiborne veterinarian Floyd Sager that he reputedly never did get his recommended tetanus shot.
“He’s actually a pretty spoiled horse,” Bull Hancock told turf writer Whitney Tower. “If visitors
want to look at another stallion first, he’ll kick up
a hell of a fuss in his stall as if to say, ‘There’s no
point in looking at those bums when you can look
at me.’ ”
Nasrullah begat Bold Ruler, who begat Secretariat.
Bold Ruler, an eight-time leading sire, started
out as a sickly colt whom Bull Hancock hid in a
back pasture. First, he had a double hernia, then
joint ailments. He injured his tongue as a yearling and later hurt himself twice in the starting
gate. But he could run. He was the Horse of the
Year in 1957 and beloved by his owner, Gladys
Mills Phipps, who piloted her Bentley, two poodles beside her, to the track to see him. When
Bold Ruler was found to have a brain tumor,
Phipps had him treated with cobalt at Auburn
University, which bought him almost another
year of comfortable life.
Continued on page 8
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Saturday, July 31, 2010
DRF WEEKEND
Joe Peel, a 25-year
employee at the farm,
with Pulpit. Below,
the halter of Buckpasser, one of the
farm’s great stallions,
who died in 1978,
hangs in a barn.
Claiborne was already in its golden era when Bold
Ruler sired Secretariat. But Secretariat was a personal
foundation sire for Bull’s son Seth. In 1973, only months
after his father’s unexpected death, Seth was 23 when he
raised eyebrows by syndicating Secretariat for a record
$6.08 million before the colt made his first start at 3.
“Everybody thought, ‘He must be pretty smart, look
at this,’ ” Seth Hancock said. “Well, I was really lucky. I
wasn’t smart. Daddy had a wonderful relationship with
the Chenery family going way back, and that’s why Secretariat came here.”
When Secretariat won the Triple Crown in 1973, Hancock said, “It basically made me. It gave people confidence
in me.”
Seth Hancock’s era has been marked by two other great
horses: Danzig and Mr. Prospector. Danzig, a 15-3 hands
son of Northern Dancer, raced only three times and never
covered more than 75 mares in a season. He never shuttled. But at his death in 2006, he was North America’s
leading sire of stakes winners. On the farm, he was famously territorial, even charging pigeons and crows
who dared to land in his paddock. Danzig wasn’t mean,
longtime farm manager Gus Koch once said, “but you
wouldn’t turn your back on him, because he was always
ready to go.”
Mr. Prospector had already been leading freshman
sire two years before he arrived at Claiborne in 1980 from
Aisco Farm in Florida. Two years later, his son Conquistador Cielo was voted Horse of the Year, and Mr. P’s career took off. From his Kentucky books, he got champions
such as Gulch, Forty Niner, Rhythm, Aldebaran, and a
dozen other champions. Mr. P’s influence still lingers
in the Claiborne stud barn. His leading earner, Seeking
the Gold, was also a sire of champions at Claiborne until his pensioning in 2008. Mr. P is the broodmare sire of
Claiborne’s current top sire, Pulpit, whose son Tapit was
2009’s leading freshman and 2-year-old sire.
Mr. Prospector’s runners were famed for their speed
and precocity. Much coveted in the auction ring, they
brought seven-figure prices. But his lasting influence is
best shown in his dominance of the broodmare sire list,
which he led from 1997 to 2003 and again from 2005 to 2006.
When Mr. Prospector died at age 29 in June 1999, he was
buried between Nijinsky II and Secretariat.
“It was just such an honor to come down here to groom
the best stallion in the world,” said his groom, Buck
Campbell, the afternoon the old stallion died. “I could
do things I probably shouldn’t have with him. I’d go in
his stall every morning to groom him, and I didn’t put a
shank on him. I should have, but I didn’t need to with him
because he’d pay no attention to it. He knew he was something important.”
Claiborne’s stallion history is notable for two untimely
losses that cost the farm and the breed tremendous genetic potential: Easy Goer was a promising young sire
when, galloping toward a visitor one day in 1994, he fell
dead in his paddock. He was 8. The first Claiborne-owned
Derby winner, Swale, was raised in Barn 16. In 1984, after
his unexpected death eight days after he won the Belmont
Stakes, a van brought him back to Barn 16 to be laid in a
custom-made casket. More than 500 sympathy cards and
bouquets flooded the farm office.
“There’s no telling what we lost when we lost Swale,”
Koch said.
But it’s not just big-name champions who catch the stud
grooms’ hearts.
“We lost Out of Place early this year,” said Kevin Lay,
a third-generation employee. “All these big, rough, tough
guys were there when the call came we were going to put
him down. It was like sitting around, 7 and 8 years old,
watching ‘Old Yeller’ again. The lump’s in your throat,
and you’re trying not to cry, but the guys are sniffling
around you, and then you’re sniffling. You get attached
to them.”
DRF WEEKEND
Saturday, July 31, 2010
THE GOLD STANDARD
FOR SUCCESS AT KEENELAND
IS CLAIBORNE FARM.
While the 100 years of unparalleled influence of Claiborne Farm is felt throughout the Thoroughbred world,
they hold a special place in our racing history. They remain the only stable to have earned the
coveted gold bowl for winning 50 stakes races at Keeneland.
We are fortunate to have been a part of their storied past as well as their future as they head
into yet another century of doing the usual, unusually well.
keeneland.com
PAGE 9
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Saturday, July 31, 2010
DRF WEEKEND
Bull
“I never thought of anything else,” Bull Hancock
once told Daily Racing Form’s Charles Hatton when
asked whether he had ever thought of not taking over
Claiborne. “I grew up on this farm, and when I was 12,
my father was paying me 50 cents a day to sweep out
after the yearlings.”
Bull, who had studied genetics and eugenics at Princeton, took Claiborne’s helm in 1948, when Arthur Sr.’s
health began to fail. He inherited the farm nine years
later on his father’s death. Bull’s philosophy, still the
farm motto, is “Do the usual unusually well.”
Bull built a small stone retreat across Kennedy’s
Creek from the farm office, but it, too, became a place
for striking deals.
“Mr. Bull would have his friends here in the evenings, and they’d play poker and drink some good Kentucky bourbon,” said Edmond Boyle, a 51-year farm
employee. “There was a black gentleman that worked
for him named Nathan Brooks who could cook everything Mr. Hancock desired on this old grill. I just
shiver to think some of the horse deals that went down
here.”
Like his father before and his children after him,
Bull was a hands-on owner. Coffee in hand, he left
the house at 6:30 a.m. and started his rounds “to see
things,” he said. Just weeks before his death, he was
supervising construction of a new, U-shaped barn.
“When he’d come watch us turn out yearlings, you’d
think, ‘Who’s this guy?’ ” said Billy Purcell, a new
yearling groom in 1972 and now the broodmare supervisor. “He wasn’t a fancy dresser or anything. What
you saw was what you got. He was a great guy, and I
wish I’d gotten to be around him more.”
Bull never realized his fondest hope: to win the Kentucky Derby as an owner.
“For a hardboot like me, there’s no race like the Kentucky Derby,” he once said. “Anybody that tells you different, well, they’re lying.”
Bull’s death from cancer at age 62 in September 1972,
Boyle recalled, was “a jaw-dropping shock” for the
farm. His death left sons Seth and Arthur III at the
helm under the supervision of an advisory committee – Bull’s longtime partner William Haggin Perry,
breeder Ogden Phipps, and a revered horseman and
longtime farm manager, Charles Kenney.
“I remember the fi rst meeting we had, Seth said, ‘I
don’t care what you all want me to do. If you want me
to go back and muck stalls, that’s fine. But I’m here,’ ”
Dell Hancock, Seth’s sister, said.
But the succession was not smooth.
Arthur B. Hancock III, the older son and heir apparent, had a tempestuous relationship with his father
and was, he later admitted to Sports Illustrated, “a
freewheelin’, hard-drinkin’, guitar-pickin’, bar-brawlin’, skirt-chasin’ fool.” At a December 1972 meeting, the
advisory group selected Seth as Claiborne’s president.
Arthur stormed back to Stone Farm, a 100-acre farm
he had leased from Bull. He sold his share in Claiborne
eight years later, saying, “I felt one way about some
things, and they felt another way, so we agreed this
was the best way to settle it.”
In the end, both Seth, now 61, and Arthur, 67,
achieved Bull’s dream of owning a Derby winner,
Arthur with Gato Del Sol in 1982 and Seth, for Claiborne, with Swale in 1984. Arthur also won the Derby
in 1989 with Sunday Silence.
The influence
of the farm’s second
owner runs deep
Counterclockwise from the
top: the Bullpen, across the
creek from the farm office;
a casting of a bull outside
the Bullpen; Arthur “Bull”
Hancock.
DRF WEEKEND
Congratulations to Claiborne Farm and the Hancock family
who have dedicated their lives to a simple philosophy -
“Take Care Of The Horse, And
The Horse Will Take Care Of You.”
100 years of unequalled success shows
nothing is more important.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
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Saturday, July 31, 2010
DRF WEEKEND
Copyright © 2010 Barbara D. Livingston
DRF WEEKEND
Mares
A home to tough, talented, and enduring female families
The morning of April 6, 1954, was a good
one for Claiborne Farm, not that anyone knew
it yet. At 1:15 a.m., Miss Disco, a mare owned
by the Phipps family, foaled a Nasrullah colt.
Exactly eight hours later, the Claiborne mare
Knight’s Daughter also produced a colt, this one
by Princequillo. The colts were Bold Ruler and
Round Table. Both would become Horse of the
Year, in 1957 and 1958, respectively, and then
leading sires. Their dams became Broodmares
of the Year, Miss Disco in 1958 and Knight’s
Daughter in 1959, all on Bull Hancock’s watch.
Bull Hancock’s great legacy lies in his restoration of the farm’s bloodlines after Arthur Sr.
handed him the reins in 1948. Shortly after taking over, Bull gave Daily Racing Form’s Charles
Hatton a frank assessment of the farm’s mares.
“We haven’t replaced any stock in 12 years,”
he said. “We have about 75 mares, and I don’t
like any of them except two.”
Bull painstakingly reconstructed the band of
mares, he later said, “so my children wouldn’t
have to,” and he felt strongly about the mares’
management. Weaning day was fi xed on the
first Tuesday in October, and about this and
other things Bull was immovable.
“Claiborne is not against progress and experimentation and will support logical research
and use the proved results,” he once said. “But
we will not use the Claiborne mares for experiments. They are too valuable.”
Claiborne has been home to 15 Broodmares of
the Year and many priceless racemares. Some
have founded dynasties. Consider Rough Shod,
whose influence still lives in her great-greatgreat-grandson Blame – Claiborne and Adele
Dilschneider’s current Grade 1 winner.
Bull bought Rough Shod cheaply in England
in 1951. She produced a champion son, Ridan,
whom Time magazine once condemned as “an
incorrigible people-hater who ran away with
his exercise boys.” One of her daughters, Thong,
foaled Special, without whom there would never have been Sadler’s Wells or Nureyev.
Then came Moccasin, strapping but ladylike
and still the only juvenile filly Horse of the Year
in North America. She, too, became a dam of
champions. She was the fi lly who sparked Dell
Hancock’s abiding interest in racing, and she is
the mare deputized by longtime farm manager
Gus Koch when his sons, future Claiborne employees, practiced leading horses.
Koch, now retired, calls Moccasin his favorite
mare in his 31 years at Claiborne. He remembers Special fondly, too.
“She was such a kind mare, very maternal,”
he said.
Others were harder to handle, like Obeah,
dam of Go for Wand.
“There was a tough mare,” Koch said. “We
Continued on page 14
Opposite page: Liable, one of the farm’s current mares,
out on the field with a foal by Tiznow. This page: Another Tiznow foal with the mare Yell.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
PAGE 13
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Saturday, July 31, 2010
DRF WEEKEND
From top: The foaling barn at Claiborne, where future
champions Bold Ruler and Round Table were born on the
same morning, April 6, 1954. Preach is the mare of Pulpit,
the farm’s current leading stallion.
were showing her to someone one day, and she grabbed [broodmare manager] Billy Purcell and took the watch right off his arm.”
Sometimes Claiborne’s mares have provided twists of fate. When Tuerta was born, Bull Hancock was so angry that she was a fi lly – and with
only one eye – that he kicked a bucket down the barn aisle in his fury. He
had wanted a colt to point for the Derby. Twelve years after Bull’s death, it
was Tuerta’s son Swale who finally gave Claiborne its first Derby winner
as an owner.
Claiborne’s old bloodlines remain vivid in today’s pedigrees. Pulpit,
Claiborne’s current stallion star, is out of Preach, whose female line traces back to Knight’s Daughter and is one of Claiborne’s oldest families. Pulpit’s daughter Wend is only 9, but her pedigree glitters with inbreeding to
Round Table, Princequillo, Knight’s Daughter, and Nasrullah. There are
many others.
Personal Ensign, who died earlier this year, is the most famous Claiborne mare in recent years. The daughter of a Broodmare of the Year −
Grecian Banner − she arrived at the farm in 1988, an undefeated 4-yearold so fractious she could hardly be shod. Eight years later, she became a
Broodmare of the Year herself after her daughter My Flag won her fourth
Grade 1 race. In 2000, My Flag foaled a champion, Storm Flag Flying.
Koch said Personal Ensign was one of the bravest horses he has known.
As a racehorse, she overcame a fractured pastern that required her to
take nearly a year off before continuing her 13-race winning streak. As
a broodmare, she nearly died of peritonitis. The same illness killed her
dam, but Personal Ensign fought through it and survived. She was, Koch
said, an equine Greta Garbo.
“She was aloof,” he said. “Her whole life, she was a mare who did not
want to be bothered. She wasn’t a mare you could ever get very close to,
but she was an exceptional mare.”
Thinking back through the generations to be born and give birth in
Claiborne’s wooden foaling barn, Koch said: “It’s families. That’s what
striking to me about my career at Claiborne. There are so many good
families, and the families are so deep. That was the unique thing about
my career out there. To be around all those families and watch their traits
come out generation after generation, it was special.”
DRF WEEKEND
Saturday, July 31, 2010
CONTINUING OUR SUPPORT
FOR TRUE CHAMPIONS
LML
The Breeders’ Cup would like to thank Claiborne Farm for being a founding member of the
organization and for the many years of support and participation that have been given to
the Breeders’ Cup. Congratulations on 100 years of excellence in thoroughbred breeding and racing.
C HU
UR C HILLL D OWNS
N OV
VEMBER 5 & 6, 2010
BREEDERSCU
UP.COM
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Saturday, July 31, 2010
DRF WEEKEND
Workers
The outside world is frequently no match for the lure of the farm
Wes Purcell realized he lived somewhere special
when he was just out of kindergarten and his class took
a field trip to Claiborne.
“We passed right by our house on the farm,” he said.
“When we rode the school bus home, everybody wanted
to get off here because there were all these horses and
acreage. When people would ask where we lived, they’d
say, ‘You lived where Secretariat was!’ People vacation
to where we live.”
Wes, 32, who works with the farm’s broodmares, and
his brother Brad, 36, the farm’s general manager, were
born in the Claiborne farm house where they grew up,
the sons of Billy Purcell, 66, who also works with the
broodmares.
Claiborne’s workers number about 80 now. They are
the hardworking machinery behind the farm’s peaceful
exterior, and their lives have entwined for generations
with the Hancocks.
Some have long Claiborne bloodlines themselves.
Former general manager John Sosby’s dad had been a
groom. Gus Koch, who retired as farm manager in 2009,
raised 10 children there who learned to lead horses with
Moccasin. And Eric Tubbs and Kevin Lay are the third
generation of their family to wear the Claiborne uniform.
At 11, Wes Purcell was among the mourners at Secretariat’s private burial. The iconic champion was one of
29-year-old Eric Tubbs’s early memories, too.
“I’d wake up every morning wanting to go to work
with my dad,” said Tubbs, whose grandfather was the
first of the family to handle stallions. “We’d come out
with him to haul feed, and I can remember him pointing
and saying, ‘That’s Secretariat.’ It gives you cold chills
thinking about now.”
What gives Tubbs those chills today? Something as
simple as bringing in the yearlings each morning.
“We have a certain call that we holler for them,” he
said. “It sounds like a big foghorn, and my brother some-
Continued on page 18
Claiborne worker Billy
Purcell is flanked by sons
Brad (left) and Wesley.
Both sons were born and
grew up on the farm.
DRF WEEKEND
The NTRA Salutes
5^S[Tad`W8Sd_
on the Occasion of its
Centennial Anniversary.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
PAGE 17
PAGE 18
Saturday, July 31, 2010
DRF WEEKEND
times calls me in the morning from Cherry Valley, maybe two
miles away, and says, ‘I hear you.’ You can’t see the yearlings, but
you can hear them coming. The horses look to you to take care of
them, and it gives you goosebumps thinking one you raised could
do that good.”
Sometimes the children of Claiborne’s farm families have
considered other careers, but the outside world is frequently no
match for a foal’s whinny, a Claiborne sunrise, or the warmth of
the farm’s extended family. That was the case for Brad and Wes
Purcell, who tried accounting and teaching.
Ronnie Tipton left IBM when it downsized and he returned to
the farm where his grandfather and father lived and worked. Now
64, he co-manages the maintenance crew with Edmond Boyle.
“A lot of us come back,” said Tipton, who recalled his pride in
the farm even when he was at IBM. “When people find out I grew
up at Claiborne, they’d be interested, especially when Secretariat
was here.”
Kevin Lay, 34, left for a spell, too.
“When you leave, you leave something,” Lay said. “You leave
family. It eats at you. The day I got hired back was one of the greatest moments of my life. Coming over that hill in the morning, the
fog and those horses, if that doesn’t move your soul, nothing does.”
Lay, like several others, has a young son he hopes will someday
be working under the next generation of Hancocks, led by Seth’s
son Walker, 20. Chances are, says Boyle, they’ll stick around.
Boyle grew up at Claiborne under the eye of Arthur Hancock Sr.,
who did his rounds on a white horse while the farm’s mule team
did the mowing. Boyle fondly remembers placing Monopoly money bets with the farm’s founder when Boyle’s father chauffered
him to the races.
“You’re part of the family, and the Hancocks make you feel
that,” Boyle said. “When you’re here, you’re at home.”
A wall of photos that pays tribute to longtime employees of
the farm can be found in an office near a foaling barn. Ronnie
Tipton (left) and Edmond Boyle co-manage the maintenance
crew; both of their fathers also worked at Claiborne.
DRF WEEKEND
Saturday, July 31, 2010
PAGE 19