| FAIR HILL TRAINING CENTER:
20 years old -
and Oh, how it’s grown
by Joe Clancy Jr.
It’s a cliche to horsepeople— cool mist, early morning
light, Thoroughbreds walking to and from the race track as the sun
begins to climb above the trees, the smell of coffee mixing with
that of manure, sweat, dirt and fresh hay. And then a school bus
rumbles past, making sure people know this is no cliche.
Fair Hill Training Center, in the northeast corner of Maryland,
turns 20 this year and like any good teenager reaches the milestone
with enthusiasm, pride, an eye on the future—and the sense
that it’s been a long road.
“Fair Hill was an idea before its time, and if I’d have
known it was going to be as frustrating as it was, I probably never
would have gone down the road,” said Dr. John R.S. Fisher,
a trainer and Fair Hill’s founder. “But it turned out
great, and that’s what matters. It’s a fantastic place
to train a horse, and that’s what we were all looking for.
The underlying factor from the beginning was to find a better place
to train a horse.”
Fisher conceived the training center idea in the early 1980s and
originally planned the facility for Pennsylvania near New Bolton
Center in Chester County. When landowners nixed that location, Fisher
turned toward Fair Hill.
Once owned by noted horseman William duPont Jr. (whose horses Parlo
and Fairy Chant are remembered in Fair Hill’s barn names),
the 5,600-acre Fair Hill property belongs to the state and features
a steeplechase course, a nationally acclaimed three-day event course,
county fairgrounds, hay fields, corn fields, a foxhunting club,
thousands of deer and vast stretches of open land.
Twenty years ago Fair Hill, maintained as a Department of Natural
Resources property, had little public use other than the steeplechase
races and the county fair. Now the property more closely resembles
a proper state park with hiking, mountain biking, fishing, public
horse trails, a nature center, Boy Scout campgrounds, hundreds of
events big and small, and even a managed deer hunt.
In many ways, the training center started it all.
Fisher negotiated a longterm lease for 350 acres, and construction
began in 1983. The concept called for showplace barns, two race
tracks and enough space for 1,200 horses.
The financial model involved initial investors (Fisher, Gene Weymouth
and George Strawbridge) to provide startup funds for such amenities
as a race track, access road and the first of many barns. Later
investors would ensure the project’s momentum and fuel additional
construction. The training center would operate as a horse condominium
facility. Private individuals would own the barns, and pay per-day
fees for race track maintenance, grounds maintenance, overall staffing
and property insurance.
Horses (Fisher and a division of Strawbridge’s Augustin Stable)
moved into Fair Hill’s first two barns by summer 1983, and
trained over the seven-furlong wood-chip track (an all-weather option
that was part of the original idea). Augustin’s Fourmatt picked
up the training center’s first stakes win that fall when he
captured the Maryland Sales Agency Stakes at Bowie.
The place soldiered through a first winter of snow, frozen water
buckets, a barely plowed dirt driveway, broken tractors, balky plumbing
and every other problem both unforeseen and predictable. But Fair
Hill was open, and produced quality performances at Mid-Atlantic
tracks.
Despite the on-track success, Fair Hill struggled to find additional
investors and lacked funds to build additional barns or the dirt
track so badly needed. The barns were massive projects and the overhead
of running the facility never ceased.
With its capital and Thoroughbred industry clout, sales company
Fasig-Tipton took over the Fair Hill Condominium Association in
1985 and further pursued the showplace concept. Blueprints included
a veterinary hospital, a sales pavilion, more barns and everything
associated with a major Thoroughbred operation. The future—as
always—looked rosy under the direction of Fasig-Tipton’s
Susan Jones, who realized the need for more barns and cleared plans
to build larger (and less grandiose) stables.
“We almost went bankrupt before Fasig-Tipton came on board,”
said Fisher. “Susan brought integrity in the management, and
that was the start of the turnaround.”
Only it wasn’t permanent. Fasig-Tipton gave up on the concept
after only two years for many of the same reasons Fisher cited in
trying to make the project work—funding, lack of facilities
and a need for more paying customers.
“We needed a critical mass of horses and didn’t have
it,” said Fisher. “There weren’t enough horses
here to make the training center economically viable.”
Gradually, that changed.
Fair Hill, under the management of the barn owners, struggled along
through the 1990s. Barns were no longer showplaces and sold for
fractions of their original cost—not necessarily a bad thing.
“The idea catered to the wealthy at the beginning,”
said Sally Goswell, whose husband Mike trained horses at Fair Hill
in the early days. “When Mike and I came, we couldn’t
afford to be here. Everyone overestimated from the get-go. Now,
most of the barn owners are making a living at horses—it’s
amazing how times have changed.”
The Goswells sold their barn, and Sally now works for the association—as
a full-time manager. Under Goswell’s direction, Fair Hill
thrives.
“Sally is a 24-hour-a-day and seven-day-a-week manager,”
said Fisher. “I can’t say enough about her. The condo
fee [$5 per day for a barn owner] is lower now than it was when
we started 20 years ago.”
Fair Hill has reached that critical mass Fisher talked about, thanks
primarily to the turnaround of Delaware Park. When the racing improved,
stalls at Delaware were in demand. The initial spillover came Fair
Hill’s way.
All 398 stalls (in 14 barns) are occupied. The one-mile dirt track,
under the management of Maryland Jockey Club’s John Passero,
is a superb surface.
Major Eastern trainers such as John Kimmel, Graham Motion, Barclay
Tagg and Michael Matz have joined more traditional residents including
Fisher, Weymouth, Jim McGreevy, Mike Moran and Ricky Hendriks.
“Fair Hill is a great facility,” said Motion. “All
my grass horses train on the [wood chip] track. The wood chips really
resemble grass, but bouncier. Horses that dislike training on the
dirt, particularly when it’s sloppy, train well on the chips.”
The driveway is still dirt and sometimes full of ruts, the plumbing
sometimes still needs work and the original barns are still cold
in the winter, but—as always—the horse wins when it
comes to living at Fair Hill.
“It’s a great environment for the horse, and that hasn’t
changed,” said Goswell. “People tell me all the time
‘If you can’t train a horse at Fair Hill, you can’t
train a horse anywhere.’”
The testimonials could fill this magazine. Imagine a combination
of farm and race track. That’s Fair Hill. There are two tracks
(one dirt, one wood chip), miles of hilly turf gallops in the country,
a seven-furlong turf track across the street on the Fair Hill Races
property, turnout paddocks at every barn and one-third as many equine
residents than can be found in most race track stable areas.
“The options are amazing,” said Moran. “You can
go to the main track pretty much all year. We had a wet spring this
year, and the wood chips have been great. There are hills and places
to work out in the country. It’s so good for the mental aspect
of training horses.”
Fisher echoes the thoughts of many: “From the horse’s
view, [Fair Hill] is more in keeping with his being. The quietness,
the expanse, the natural aspect. Fair Hill takes away the hum of
the race track and horses appreciate that.”
Trainers like Kimmel, Motion and Tagg (whose assistant Robin Smullen
worked at Fair Hill for Fisher) use the center as a rotation point
for their large, race track-based stables. Horses go to Fair Hill
for a break, get back to work on the track or the cross-country
gallops, and return to Belmont, Saratoga or Delaware Park ready
to run.
Beyond the horse, Fair Hill is a great place to be a trainer. There
are no race track pressures to run horses, no begging for stalls,
no stable gate to check your horse into (or out of) and few of the
other headaches associated with being stabled at a track that runs
races in the afternoon.
“New York’s pretty good to me, but you still have to
put up with someone asking why you didn’t run more horses
at the meet, why you need so many stalls or something else,”
said Tagg, who bought a Fair Hill barn this spring. “You have
to pay for it, but you can do what you want with horses—run
where you want and when you want.”
Location was always a strength for Fair Hill. The place is a three-hour
or less ship to Laurel, Pimlico, Charles Town, Delaware Park, Belmont,
Aqueduct, Philadelphia Park, Penn National, Monmouth Park and the
Meadowlands.
“I have to put a second division somewhere, and I couldn’t
see putting it at Saratoga (like many New York trainers) because
it’s at least four hours from everywhere,” said Tagg,
who has a dozen horses at Fair Hill. “Fair Hill makes sense
for me. If I have a horse that needs a little quieter place I can
send him there. If I have a horse that needs to run in Pennsylvania,
Delaware or Maryland instead of New York, I can do that.”
And people are closer to home—Motion and his family live about
a mile away. Fisher, Moran and others reside in nearby Chester County,
Pa. McGreevy’s home is just over the state line near Oxford,
Pa.
The future
Fair Hill was always meant to be a larger facility. The space is
there, and several barn sites await development, though no one knows
what form—if any—expansion will take. The training center
stands on firm financial ground thanks to income derived from the
leasing of three barns owned by the association, the condominium
fees and manure removal. The center is still working under the original
lease agreement with the state, and also pays a usage fee to the
DNR for the cross-country galloping privileges.
Most of the expenses involve property upkeep (a new race track rail,
tractors, mowing, the road system). Development could include new
barns, or other items.
“An equine swimming pool would make money here, but I’m
not sure the barn owners want that many more barns,” said
Goswell. “Site-wise, the place was designed for 1,200 horses,
but that would make the tracks more crowded and create a lot more
buzz to the place.”
Fisher has always looked ahead when it comes to Fair Hill.
“The racing climate in this area looks like it’s going
to improve, and that can only help,” he said. “It’s
been a struggle, and from the beginning if we had any money it went
to see that the horse was considered. Everything is designed to
be the best it can be for the horse.”
Just watch out for those school buses.
|
