Good times roll at Beau Ridge Farm

Location. Location. Location.
A boy grows up three blocks from the race track. He makes his life there.
A girl lives a block and a half from the track. She makes her life there.

Eventually, what was once started simply because of proximity and curiosity becomes a sprawling, roiling business and passion that consumes two lives completely.

Welcome to Beau Ridge Farm in Bunker Hill, W.Va. And to Cynthia O’Bannon’s and John McKee’s lives. Described as a “working farm” by O’Bannon and “nothing fancy” by McKee, it’s home to nine stallions, 43 mares and everything in between.

Working farm—and working people—is putting it mildly. They don’t do fancy, they don’t entertain, they don’t eat out. A vacation to them is a drive to Lexington, Ky., to look at farms for sale.

O’Bannon and McKee say they do it all. And they mean all. From selecting the matings (both), to breeding the mares (O’Bannon), to training race horses at Charles Town (both), to ponying horses at night (O’Bannon), to shipping mares to Kentucky (either/or), to raising cattle (McKee), to wheeling and dealing in real estate (McKee), to industry politics (both), to making hay (McKee), O’Bannon and McKee run as fast as their horses. Which is strong company.

For the most part, they breed to race and race they do. Known to invade New York with rapid 2-year-olds and to scourge the West Virginia Breeder Classics, Beau Ridge is prolific in sending out winners while upgrading the business all the way. “We’re busy,” McKee says.
“Busy isn’t the word,” O’Bannon says. Ask them how often they fight and the one-two punch of lines comes again. “Regularly,” McKee says.
“Once a day,” O’Bannon says.

That’s how they do most things. They answer simultaneously but often with different answers. One will start a thought and the other will finish it. They dress in sneakers, jeans and flannel. The operation mirrors them.

This isn’t a farm along Paris Pike in Lexington, it’s Beau Ridge in West Virginia. There are no stone pillars at the end of the driveway, no call buttons at the front gate, no white-washed fence, no ornate cupolas at the top of the barns. The fence line gets eaten down by the horses, not by a brigade of weed eaters.

That doesn’t bother McKee or O’Bannon. They make sure a visitor knows the fence is secure and the horses are well taken care of. That’s all that matters to them.

McKee bought Beau Ridge in 1969. O’Bannon came on board about eight years later after the couple met at the track. McKee was training horses and O’Bannon had her pony in his barn. He wanted the stall, she moved her pony to his farm and the West Virginia racing scene would never be the same.

The farm sits 12 miles from Charles Town. “Eight miles north of Winchester on Interstate 81,” O’Bannon says, imitating a recording.
“My father was track superintendent for 30-some years at Charles Town. I always wanted a pony and once I got one, I fell in love with it. That was it,” O’Bannon says. “I couldn’t make any money showing horses. It was just a hobby, so I thought this is the only way to make a living and still fool with horses. He and I teamed up and it kinda worked.”Since then, they’ve ridden the hard times and fought for the good times in West Virginia.

O’Bannon is president of the West Virginia Thoroughbred Breeders Association and McKee serves on the board of directors. They were there to see slot machines change everything at Charles Town.
That’s the main reason they mastermind an 80-horse operation (in two barns) at Charles Town and a breeding operation that has nine stallions and all the mares who go with them.

Arromanches, Castine, Catastrophe, Explosive Red, Loach, Robb, Standing On Edge, Storm Center and Stritzel combine to make Beau Ridge the biggest breeding farm—in terms of volume—in the state.
Explosive Red was West Virginia’s leading stallion in 2002, with progeny earnings of $1,071,680. The son of Explodent stood at Adena Springs North in Canada before moving to Beau Ridge for 2002. Adena Springs, Airdrie Stud and Taylor Made are three of the top farms that have joined up with Beau Ridge in one way or another. Not bad, considering there was a time when McKee had one stallion, Beau Legs, and no help.

“I would tie the mares in the corner and breed them myself. A wonder I didn’t get killed. The only horse I had was him so I teased with him too,” McKee says, shaking his head. “I used to walk hots as a kid and then went into the service. When I came back I wanted to get back into the horses so I bought a one-eyed race horse with a cracked sesamoid. I said, ‘If I can make him win, I’ll make it in this business.’ And I got him to win a couple of races and it just blossomed from there. Well, blossomed. . . it’s been a rough road. We used to race for $22,000—a night.” Now they run in allowance races with bigger purses.

O’Bannon remembers the hard times, too. “It was unbelievable. I didn’t even want to breed our mares and he’d say, ‘You breed those mares, things will turn around.’ We hardly bred any outside mares,” O’Bannon says. “I’ll tell you how un-busy I was; I was at Charles Town getting the 2-year-olds ready and doing the breeding and I wasn’t overly taxed.”

That could hardly be said now. They bred 216 mares last year. The alarm goes off at 4 o’clock in the morning and the day flies from there. O’Bannon works the farm during breeding season while McKee goes to the track. They help each other and things get done—some way and somehow. Depending on what race they’re in and where they’re running at night, a lot of times it’s midnight before it’s over.
The farm itself has been cut back to 57 acres—they sold off a large tract of the original property when city sewer came in and increased the value. Now they’re leasing different farms and looking for new ones.

“We’re looking at two different places. We need something in the 200-acre range,” McKee said. “City water and city sewer made it better value to sell. The whole area is getting developed because in non-rush hour, you’re only a little over an hour from Washington.”
But the biggest development in their lives has been the slots at Charles Town.

“We were always hoping. There was a light at the end of the tunnel—video lottery,” McKee says. “Mountaineer had them for a long time but local people didn’t want them in Charles Town. If they didn’t change management it would never have happened. She went door to door.”
As always, that’s where O’Bannon picks up the conversation.
“When you’re president of the breeders’ association, you can’t just let it go. You have to do something,” O’Bannon says. “I stood on the corner with signs, got cussed at and just kept trying.” McKee chimes back in with his own story.

“It was pretty cool standing down there on the streets in November,” McKee says. “She had made a big kettle of vegetable soup for me. I warmed it up, got some cups, spoons and gave all the people holding signs a cup of soup. And I’m not crazy about giving up my soup.”
Then back to O’Bannon.

“We were begging people,” O’Bannon says. “I’d explain all it was going to do—education, fixing the roads.” McKee finishes the conversation about slots. “There’s people in Charles Town that aren’t for anything. They came over the mountain and want to shut the gate behind them,” McKee says. “Before they’d pave one street a year. Now they blacktop the whole damn town. It’s not a big town but it’s all blacktopped. They couldn’t think of doing the things they do now without the slots. The race track has saved this whole town.”
With the introduction of slots came the improvement of Beau Ridge’s stock.

Out went the $1,500 limit at the sales. Out went the defunct stallions. Out went the cheapest of the race horses. They now have the best group of stallions they’ve ever had and the mares are creeping up the quality ladder as well.

“It’s more attractive now for people to breed to West Virginia stallions. We bought one mare for $27,000, another one for $15,000. We take shots that a lot of people don’t take and we run our own show,” McKee says. “Last year we had a weak year as far as the West Virginia-bred races were concerned. The year before that was our best year. We’ve done real well with the young horses. I think in the last 10 years, we’ve won the first 2-year-old race in New York 10 times.” (They did it again in 2003, winning with Cash Button on April 10.)

The babies get broken in their private barn next to Shenandoah, which is adjacent to Charles Town, while the horses racing prep at Charles Town. About 30 are “across the road” as Shenandoah is described and about 50 hold shop at Charles Town. The stable ships horses up and down the East Coast, competing anywhere they fit. Horses run in O’Bannon’s name and McKee’s name. It’s separate but together—always helping each other out could describe it best.

Horses like Fortune n’ Fame and Kris Taylor run hard through the area while there’s always a new group to follow the ones that are sold off to anywhere from Korea to the three-day event world. Most importantly for McKee and O’Bannon, ends meet has been made.

“There’s been a lot of those days when you didn’t think you were going to make it,” O’Bannon says. “Now, we got enough stuff to sell to make it. We got enough farm equipment to stock a dealership. If something went wrong at Charles Town, if they got rid of the horses and just had the gaming tables, we’d still make it with the value in our real estate and horses.”

You can almost see the exhale from both of them. Keeping the bill collectors at bay has always been a major part of the operation. And a major contributor of stress.
“We were fighting foreclosure for a lot of years,” McKee says. “We had a couple of homebred horses. Restless John made about $200,000 and we lost him for $50,000 in New York. That got us out of foreclosure that year. We lost his full sister up there for $75,000 and she paid for the farm payment that year.”

McKee crunches numbers while he thinks about the entire operation. Two numbers stand out for him when it comes to his real estate—650 and 15,000. That’s the dollar per acre value of Beau Ridge Farm in 1969 and 2003.

“I bought it as an investment, not as my final place,” McKee says. “It’s been longer happening than I planned.” But Beau Ridge being a Mid-Atlantic institution might be coming to an end. McKee and O’Bannon are shopping for property in far-off lands.

“What we got out of the 200 acres we sold we can buy a place in Kentucky. Somewhere down the line, we’d end up in Lexington. Not in the near future, five years maybe,” McKee says. “I’m 63, I don’t want to be looking too much farther down the line. I’d like to raise our young horses down there. Just breed and sell. We’ve talked to Taylor Made and Airdrie and they’ve given us some help. We’re trying to get some better mares and we’re testing the water down there. We’ll have enough horses bred in West Virginia to carry us for a while. The plan is to go down there and not owe anything on the farm.”

Weanlings by With Approval and Distorted Humor will be sold in Kentucky—as an experiment in that water test. Things have changed for Beau Ridge. One-eyed horses, breeding mares solo, foreclosure threats are all in the past.

As with any good farm, there was one who broke everybody’s heart. Beau Ridge’s darling was Rachel’s Turn. The daughter of Aye’s Turn would come home for Christmas with a bow every year and go back and bang out money for the farm the next year.

“Rachel’s Turn was known as the princess of the Jersey shore. She won a bunch of races up there,” McKee says. “For a Charles Town horse to make the front page of the Racing Form is something. Well, I thought it was something.” Eventually they retired her and bred her to Mining, thinking they finally had their good mare.

“She won 15 races from 35 starts, won two [West Virginia] Breeders Classics. The last race she ran, she won an allowance race at the Meadowlands and re-bowed,” O’Bannon says. “We picked out Mining for her and she came home in foal. Two weeks later she was down with EPM and she died. For her to run that hard and go through all those injuries, it just didn’t seem like it was fair. I told him, ‘If I can handle this, I can handle just about anything.’ McKee explains the financial ramifications while O’Bannon reflects on the emotional.
“That was a big blow for us because we always had to lose those kinds of horses to pay the bills so we finally got where we could keep one and that happens,” McKee says. “I said no more. We run them, lose them and pay the bills.” McKee is no nonsense when it comes to the business. Of course he did drive to Philadelphia Park to console O’Bannon when Rachel’s Turn died.

When it’s all said and done, McKee and O’Bannon know they’ve made an impact in the horse world.

“Yeah, I’m proud,” McKee says. “Take a one-eyed horse with a broken sesamoid and a pony and turn it into 80 race horses and a breeding operation.”

He leans back in his chair and sums it up. “We do it all.”