By Dick Jerardi
We parked near the fence just outside the barn on the aptly named Crooked Rd. late Friday morning and there he was, two days after his official 24th birthday, the horse racing legend that is Smarty Jones. It was almost like he was waiting for us, just as the state of Pennsylvania and, for that matter, the country, had been waiting for the animal that would not only transcend horse racing in 2004, but would change the direction of countless lives.
Trish Bowman was finishing sixth grade when her father Al told her about this horse from Philadelphia Park, 10 minutes from their Bensalem home, that would be running in the 2004 Kentucky Derby. So she watched the race and that was the start. Horse racing quickly became her passion.
When she turned 18, she appeared at the Parx stable gate, got a job walking hots for trainer Ned Allard, eventually went to work for Kate DeMasi and was an invaluable member of the “Let’s Go Racing” team while she was attending Holy Family University.
A generation later, Trish is now a steward at Horseshoe Indianapolis after going through the Godolphin Flying Start program and holding a job with the Jockey Club before working in the racing office in Maryland and as a safety steward at Oaklawn Park.
She returned home in November from Indiana and had just one request. She wanted to visit Smarty. So there we were at the Equistar Training and Breeding Center, not far from Penn National, in Annville.
And there was Smarty Jones, right there by the fence in his paddock when we got out of the car, the white blaze still prominent on his head, the pleasing personality unchanged, used to the attention we were only too happy to give him.
After visiting with the masters of Equistar, Rodney and Sharon Eckenrode and their children in the barn, we went back outside to say goodbye to Smarty. Only he wasn’t quite ready for us to leave. The horse started running around the paddock like a 3-year-old again, once, twice, half a dozen times, just rolling like he was in some imaginary race against all those horses that never stood a chance in the Derby or the Preakness or every other race he ran in except the one where the horses that couldn’t win were sacrificed to make it almost impossible for Smarty to win.
Smarty Jones came to Equistar six years ago. Breeding season starts in a few weeks and the horse who has thrown 36 stakes winners and 14 graded stakes winners will still get some mares to breed. But he is obviously much closer to the end of that career than the beginning.
“He’s still very energetic,” Rodney Eckenrode said. “He never has had any trouble settling mares. Whether they swim far, swim fast, I don’t know, but they get where they need to.”
Smarty Jones remains so popular that they still get Christmas cards and Christmas presents for him at Equistar.
“Next month, it will be birthday cards and birthday presents,” Eckenrode said.
Before Smarty came to Equistar, Eckenrode was told to “get ready” for all the attention.
Smarty’s owner, Pat Chapman, wanted to bring him home and wanted him available to the public.
“We do our very best to get people in here,” Eckenrode said. “It’s harder during breeding season.”
Most Smarty fans call ahead to ask if they can come for a visit. A few just show up.
“We got a letter and I can’t remember where it was from,” Eckenrode said.
Might have been from the Carolinas, he said to himself as he called out to his wife saying: “Do you remember that lady who sent that letter who said ‘I’m sorry our schedules didn’t match, but I got to visit Smarty and saw all your horses.’ We never even knew she was here.”
Providentially, the Eckenrodes bought Equistar in 2004. They have 60 acres and two other stallions, Brody’s Cause and recent arrival Zozos.
“It was definitely a fixer upper kind of deal, but it was what we could afford and just kind of built on it from there,” Eckenrode said.
Now, Equistar has a wonderful setup and it has Smarty Jones.
“It was just so cool (to visit),” Bowman said on the ride home. “My whole life and everything that I have is because of that horse. I’ve traveled the world, all of my friends, my whole livelihood started because of that horse winning the Kentucky Derby. Now, 20 years later, I’m a steward. I know there are a lot of people that got fixated on horse racing because of him.”
She didn’t really understand the significance of the Derby win at that moment, but her father was cutting out articles every single day for her to read about Smarty and the history of the sport.
“After that, horse racing was everything to me,” she said. “It became my entire life.”
And part of the reason she became a steward was “to give back because of everything it had given me over the years, this life that I have.’’
Before we left Equistar, Smarty, breathing a bit heavily after running all about, was indicating he was ready to head back into the barn. So Eckenrode brought him inside, first stall on the right, a double wide, fit for the horse racing royalty that is Smarty Jones.
