by Mike Curry

(Originally published March 25, 2006, Thoroughbred Times)

Experienced horsemen understand that the path to the Kentucky Derby (G1) can be as bumpy as a twin-engine plane chugging through a volatile storm front, but nothing could have prepared owners and breeders Roy and Gretchen Jackson for their first taste of the often-perilous Triple Crown trail.

The Jacksons chartered a flight from their winter vacation in the Bahamas to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to watch their undefeated homebred Barbaro make his first main-track start in the Holy Bull Stakes (G3) at Gulfstream Park on February 4. The couple embarked on the short trip at noon—plenty of time to reach Gulfstream by the seventh race when their Lael Stables’ High Court (Brz) was scheduled to contest the Suwanee River Handicap—aboard a twin-engine Navajo plane that seats six passengers.

“Halfway to Fort Lauderdale, the pilot tells us, ‘Be sure your seat belts are tight, because it’s going to be bumpy from here on in,’ ” Gretchen Jackson said, recalling the impending collision with a storm off the Florida coast. “It was hair-raising.

“They closed the Fort Lauderdale airport, so we couldn’t land. We had to turn back and go back to Nassau [Bahamas] to refuel. Halfway to Nassau, the pilot said that they opened the airport again, so we went back through the doggone front again.”

With beverage glasses strewn all over the cabin, the Navajo turned around and set course for a second confrontation with the storm. “When we were in a holding pattern, that plane was bouncing around like you wouldn’t believe,” Roy Jackson said. “We were going through the [storm] and out again, through the thing and out again.”

After arriving at Gulfstream shaken and very late, but intact, the couple discovered that their reserved table had been given away and the Suwanee was moved off the turf due to rain, forcing High Court to be scratched. Fortunately for the Jacksons, Barbaro barreled through the slop to a three-quarter-length triumph in the Holy Bull, remaining unbeaten and stamping himself a true Derby contender. He is expected to make his next start in the Florida Derby (G1) on April 1.

“The best thing was we didn’t care about eating or anything, we were mainly there to see the race and that was phenomenal that he was able to pull it off,” Gretchen said. “We weren’t nervous at all before the race because we had just been sweating bullets coming into the airport.”

The Jacksons hung on every word from winning jockey Edgar Prado, who praised Barbaro’s determination, and chatted with winning trainer Michael Matz. Officially stricken with Derby fever, the Jacksons, who have been married for 46 years, floated back to the airport to resume their vacation.

As Roy and Gretchen renewed acquaintances with the Navajo, the pilot explained that the airport at the Bahamas had forgotten their return-flight arrangements and the Navajo would be forced to touch down in darkness. Guided by the stars, the pilot located the runway after circling several times as the Navajo landed under the shadowy guise of the Bahamas’s night. The Jacksons poured out of the plane, happy to be home and eager to find their way through the desolate airport. They were quickly cut off by a van of police officers—armed with rifles—intent on snuffing a perceived attempt to circumvent customs.

“They probably thought we had drugs and contraband,” Gretchen said with a chuckle. “We got frisked and spent an hour and a half talking our way out of that one, because they don’t do anything very fast down there.

“When we finally got home, we still hadn’t eaten and it was ten o’clock. But the electricity was out, so we had some cold soup out of the can. That’s how we celebrated.”

Barbaro’s Holy Bull victory proved especially fulfilling to the Jacksons, who have been racing and breeding horses from their Lael Farm base in West Grove, Pennsylvania, since 1978. The couple has never had a starter in a Triple Crown race and not even a plane ride through a volatile storm could temper their enthusiasm.

“We’ve never, ever come close, but it didn’t ever deter us from trying every year,” Gretchen said of breeding a potential Derby contender. “Hard-headed and you always hope—I think that’s the common bond in all horsemen. We’re all nuts about it. You just have to love it and you keep trying. It’s fun winning on all levels, but … if you love horses, you just hope you have a horse good enough to go in the Kentucky Derby one day.”

High school sweethearts

Roy and Gretchen Jackson met at a high school dance held at Springside School in their native Philadelphia during the 11th grade. They maintained a connection while both attended and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and were married five years later in June 1959.

After graduation, Roy worked as a stockbroker before being selected to join a business management-training program with the Philadelphia Phillies, an opportunity for him to pursue a passion for baseball with his hometown team. He later owned the Class AA York Pirates, which he later sold to a local group, and then started the Tucson Toros, a Class AAA affiliate of the Chicago White Sox and then the Oakland A’s that he also sold locally. Stints as the president of three different leagues in the minors followed.

”I went on from there to run the Eastern Baseball League and the Pacific Coast Baseball League,” Roy said. “I did the International League and the Pacific Coast League at the same time. I did those three leagues and then in 1983 a couple of us that I had met in baseball started Convest Inc., an agency that represented professional players.

“We had a lot of contacts—managers, umpires, people that ran teams—so we had a lot of help from all sorts of various areas,” he explained. “We had both major and minor league players, probably the best one we had for his entire career was Edgar Martinez; he was a designated hitter in Seattle.”

A home in West Grove

The Jacksons purchased a 190-acre farm in the quiet town of West Grove in 1978. Named Lael Farm after the Gaelic word meaning loyalty, the property is less than 45 miles southwest of Philadelphia in an area of the state that is close to the borders of both Delaware and Maryland.

“It’s a wide-open country, still, of farms,” Gretchen said. “The opportunity to have land and racehorses in a really good area that is not threatened by development really appealed to us 30 years ago. It was an area with promise that you could expand.”

Lael Farm was a fully operational foaling, boarding, and breaking facility for two decades, but the property gradually became much more serene as the couple grew older and encountered difficulty finding quality staff. “They tend to gravitate to Kentucky and Florida, the areas where the large breeding operations are,” Roy said of experienced help.

Today the farm serves largely as a retirement home for horses that raced in the Lael silks. The Jacksons have four children—Mac, 44; Lucy Zungailia, 42; Hardie, 40; and Fred, 32—and ten grandchildren, so the property also houses a collection of riding ponies for the youngsters.

”We have eight horses on the farm; I still ride for pleasure,” Gretchen said. “We have a couple of ex-racehorses on the farm that are sane enough to ride. Then we have about four guys that raced and are just here in retirement.

“[Lucy] lives on the farm with her family and she still rides. We have seven ponies here for our grandchildren. Four live on the farm. [Lucy] has three girls and a boy and they all ride. The little boy is two years old, but he wants to ride, too.”

Roy and Gretchen own 26 broodmares, with three mares in England, two in Pennsylvania at Charleton Farm, and the remaining 21 in Kentucky at Denali Stud and Mill Ridge Farm. The couple has more than 20 horses in training with both Matz, based at nearby Fair Hill, and with longtime friend Barclay Tagg.

“They always want the best for the horse, plus they’re a lot of fun to be around,” Matz said. “You couldn’t ask for better owners. If you call up and say the horse needs a little bit of rest, they say to do what’s best for the horse. …They take the good with the bad. You couldn’t ask for more generous people.”

Track success

The Jacksons have campaigned several standouts during nearly three decades in the industry, including 2000 European champion two-year-old filly Superstar Leo and Irish classic-placed Grade 3 winner Storm Dream (Ire). A multiple stakes winner named Palace Revolt nearly got away.

“We were about to give up on her,” Roy said. “She ran in a $5,000 claimer at Philadelphia Park and they put her on turf just as sort of a last resort. She ran in the Long Island [Handicap (G2)] and all of the big races in New York. She won the [Atlantic] City Breeders’ Cup [Handicap].”

Another outstanding competitor the couple raced was Grandera, a son of Grand Lodge whom the Jacksons owned in partnership with Viv Shelton. Grandera won a stakes and placed in three Group 1 races in Europe as a three-year-old before being sold privately to Godolphin. He went on to win the 2002 Prince of Wales’s (Eng-G1) and Irish Champion (Ire-G1) Stakes, but the Jacksons had plucked quite a consolation prize by acquiring his dam, Bordighera, by Alysheba.

“While he was running, we found out that [Bordighera] was available through Amanda Skiffington, who lives in England and is [a bloodstock agent],” Roy said. “It was sort of a logical thing because the price wasn’t very high and we knew Grandera had some ability.”

Worthwhile trip

In early November 1998, Roy and Gretchen Jackson embarked upon a familiar trek up the New Jersey Turnpike to watch two-year-old filly La Ville Rouge run at Aqueduct in the Tempted Stakes (G3). Bloodstock agent Kathee Ringert, based at Fair Hill, tipped the couple off that the daughter of Carson City was available. Lael was becoming less of a full-time endeavor at the time as the couple concentrated more time to racing and building a broodmare band.

“We’ve tried all along to find horses with a good-enough family,” Gretchen said. “[Ringert] just knew of her as a two-year-old that was up for sale.”

La Ville Rouge was beaten only a half-length while finishing second in her stakes debut. The Jacksons liked what they saw in the average-sized filly, cementing a private deal to purchase La Ville Rouge.

Out of stakes winner La Reine Rouge, by King’s Bishop, La Ville Rouge proved a talented racehorse for Lael, winning five races in 20 starts during the next two seasons and placing in three graded stakes races at four. But the best was yet to come for La Ville Rouge following a visit to Saint Ballado in 2001. The resulting foal, Holy Ground, went on to place in stakes on both dirt and grass. The Jacksons bred La Ville Rouge back to Dynaformer in 2002.

“We’ve always loved Dynaformer for his versatility, and we’ve watched some of his renowned grass horses,” Gretchen said. “We use Nicoma Bloodstock, Headley Bell, and it was his advice to breed that mare to Dynaformer.”

Bell shared a mutual respect for Dynaformer and believed the stallion was a strong fit for La Ville Rouge for a variety of reasons. “Really, as much as anything, I thought the mare could use some size,” Bell recalled. “Dynaformer is a horse that we’ve always had high regard for from the standpoint of he [stood his first season for $5,000] and made his way all the way up to, at that time, $50,000.

“The cross of the Hail to Reason, the *Turn-to, the *Ribot, with all of the ingredients of the Blushing Groom (Fr) with the Carson City—all of the pedigree blend,” Bell continued. “So it was a combination of size, pedigree blend, and believing in Dynaformer’s ability to breed a racehorse.”

Dynaformer proved a prudent selection for La Ville Rouge. The resulting foal was named Barbaro, after one of six foxhounds identified in a painting displayed in the Jacksons’ West Grove home.

Eye-opening start

John and Jill Stephens, who handled the breaking of Barbaro in Florida, called almost weekly with praise for the colt.

“We’d go down to see the two-year-olds down at John’s farm and from the time Barbaro was a yearling in Kentucky to the time we saw him as a two-year-old, he really blossomed,” Gretchen said. “There were many horses of ours that we really liked, horses that we bred and thought were really nice-looking horses, but I want to think that he might have been a little bit nicer than all of them.”

Matz confirmed Barbaro’s promise to his owners once the colt joined his Fair Hill barn. Barbaro made his debut at Delaware Park in October 2005. The colt balked at the starting gate that day, but once the doors snapped open he surged forward from post nine and raced from just off the pace before seizing command in the second turn of the one-mile turf race, drawing off to an 8 1/2-length romp.

Barbaro reiterated his potential with a resounding eight-length romp in the Laurel Futurity in November and added a smashing 3 3/4-length score in his sophomore debut in the Tropical Park Derby (G3) at Calder Race Course on January 1.

“I think at this point what stands out is his will to win, plus he’s got terrific ability,” Matz said about Barbaro. “I think the biggest thing for any athlete—whether it be a horse or another athlete—is their heart. You can look at the numbers and say this horse is faster, but so far, no horse has crossed the finish line in front of him.”

Star overseas

Before Barbaro began racing, the Jacksons were following a talented colt in Europe named George Washington. They always wanted a foal by Danehill and sent Bordighera to the stallion in 2002. George Washington was born in Ireland on March 1, 2003, less than two months before Barbaro took his first breath.

George Washington was held in high esteem, leading the Jacksons to reluctantly offer him in the 2004 Tattersalls Ltd. October yearling sale. “I remember [Roy] putting a real high, high, high reserve on him,” Gretchen said. “The only way we were going to part with him was if someone was really willing to pay for him, and they did. It was hard.”

Demi O’Byrne paid $2,050,335 for the colt, easily the top price of the sale. “We didn’t really want to sell him, but when it got to that price, and the fact that he was [in England] and not in America were deciding factors,” Gretchen said.

The couple enjoyed following George Washington’s brilliant two-year-old campaign, which included wins in the National (Ire-G1) and Phoenix Stakes (Ire-G1) as well as the Railway Stakes (Ire-G2) in Ireland in 2005 en route to earning the Cartier Award as European champion two-year-old colt.

“We really enjoy the racing end of it, so it isn’t as exciting as having a horse that is racing for you, having bred him,” Roy conceded. “[Selling a horse] is always hard and Danehill was coming to the end, too, and that made it harder. If it had been a filly, we probably would have retained her.”

George Washington is listed as the early 9-to-4 favorite for this year’s Two Thousand Guineas (Eng-G1). He and Barbaro could conceivably give the Jacksons a rooting interest in both this year’s Kentucky Derby and Epsom Derby (Eng-G1). “Not in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine it could happen,” Gretchen said of such a powerful crop. “They could almost collide. That’s a real far-out possibility, but if Barbaro goes back to the grass, maybe they’ll meet someday. That would be amazing.”

Before that showdown materializes, Roy and Gretchen could witness a showdown with Barbaro and another horse toting their colors. Lightly raced Showing Up, a son of Strategic Mission trained by Tagg, debuted in February with a four-length score at Gulfstream. The Jacksons purchased the colt, out of the T. V. Commercial mare Miss Alethia, at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic two-year-olds in training sale for $60,000.

A half brother to multiple stakes winner Gimmeawink, Showing Up impressed Tagg in his second start with a 2 1/4-length win in a Gulfstream allowance race on March 11. “That was surprising,” Gretchen said. “[Roy and I] were just overwhelmed by his performance. He had to fight very hard for that win. I counted three times that horses came to him and he was able to fight back and win by a considerable [margin].

“Barclay called us and said he would really like to send him to the Wood Memorial [Stakes (G1) on April 8 at Aqueduct]. He’d like to nominate him also for the Triple Crown, so he is being nominated.”

Mike Curry is a Thoroughbred Times daily news editor