By Dick Jerardi
Scott Lake has had thousands of horses pass through his barn. A few really stand out for the Parx Hall of Fame trainer who has started 31,167 horses and won 6,429 races in a career that began in 1987.
Emperor Tigere is one of those few.
“I claimed him at PEN like on a last-minute deal,” Lake said. “The owner said ‘let’s take this horse’ and we’re like scrambling to get the claim slip filled out.”
That was Oct. 16, 1998 at Penn National. The claiming price was $8,000 for owner Robert Orfanelli.
Emperor Tigere started 13 times over the next eight months for Lake, winning 11, with a second and a third. By the time the horse arrived at Canterbury Park in August 1999 for the first year of the Claiming Crown, Emperor Tigere was a horse racing celebrity.
“They gave him a police escort from the airport to the race track,” Lake remembered.
Emperor Tigere was the 7-5 favorite in the $100,000 Claiming Crown Rapid Transit. The horse, as was his custom, led from the start and still led by more than 2 lengths at the eighth pole. The problem was that the race was at 6 1/2 furlongs, not the 6 furlongs that were best for Emperor Tigere. The horse got run down late and had to settle for second.
“He had a really great personality,” Lake said. “He kind of helped me move out of PEN (to Parx). He was one of the horses I had in the barn at the time that was good.”
It took a while for the horse to regain his best form after that race in Minnesota, but he did win four more races for Lake. All told, in 36 starts for Lake and Orfanelli, Emperor Tigere won 15 times with earnings of $218,915. After his final start on Dec. 28, 2001 at Parx (still Philadelphia Park then), Emperor Tigere was retired to the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.
“He was a good horse for us,” Lake said. “At the end of his career, he wasn’t running the same, started to tail off a little bit so we decided to retire him.”
Emperor Tigere began his racing journey with trainer Graham Motion and ended up in the barns of Ferris Allen, King Leatherbury, Howard Wolfendale (father of Maggie), Dale Mills, Tim Kreiser, and, finally, Lake.
All told, the horse raced 73 times with 20 wins, 15 seconds, six thirds and earnings of $308,258.
And lived out of his final 21 years with a wife and husband team that loved him not for what he accomplished on the track, but just for being a cool animal that was impossible not to love.
Glenye Oakford was at the very first TRF adoption day at the Blackburn Correctional Facility in Lexington, Ky. It was June 2003. There was kind of a catalog printed off what could have been a copy machine.
“I looked at a couple of horses who were okay, but didn’t really strike me,” Oakford remembered.
She asked if there were any others. Turns out there was one more who was not in the “catalog.”
“They brought him out for me and he was just so beautiful,” Oakford said. “He immediately fixed his eyes on me like he was so interested to get to know me and to meet me. He had the most beautiful pair of ears. He was black with a little white star which I’m very partial to.”
And that was it. This was the one.
“From that moment on, he was very engaging,” Oakford said. “He was interested in people and what they were doing.”
When she agreed to adopt the horse, she did not know his name or his history. It was, of course, Emperor Tigere.
In an email Oakford sent to Turning For Home program administrator Danielle Montgomery, she wanted to let her know that Emperor Tigere “passed away (Dec. 8) at the age of 30 and was loved and treasured every day of his life with us.”
Emperor Tigere foxhunted, but was mostly Oakford’s trail horse. He retired from riding the last 10 years after an old tendon injury began to become an issue again.
It was a tendon sheath infection in 2005 that led to a story only true horse lovers will understand. Emperor Tigere was sent to the Hagyard Equine Medical Institute in Lexington, but the horse would not lie down and rest.
“He got really depressed actually,” Oakford remembered. “They needed him to lie down periodically to take weight off that leg. They said he would just stand there and be sad.”
So the solution to the problem was to have Glenye and eventual husband Christopher, who is British and was making his first United States visit to see he, sit just outside the stall door on upturned buckets watching movies on Glenye’s laptop.
“He would lie down facing the door kind of between us almost like he was watching the movie,” Glenye said. “I remember we were watching ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ there. I can’t remember the other one.’’
That stall duty turned out to be Christopher’s American vacation, but, as Glenye said in an email to Lake, he asked her to marry him anyway.
Oakford described Emperor Tigere as “one of the most athletic jumpers I ever had the privilege to ride.”
The horse never panicked regardless of what might be happening around him. Just took it all in, relaxed, carefree, calmly considering his next move.
“He was just such a personality,” Oakford said. “He was so brave, just remarkably tough.”
And a perfect advertisement for thoroughbred aftercare, living out his life at a small private facility outside Paris, KY, his owners a close enough drive away to visit several times a week in his final years.
“He still means the world to us,” Oakford said. “It’s a thrill that he has fans and it was so wonderful to hear the story about Canterbury Park and the police escort.”
“We are eternally grateful that Scott Lake and Robert Orfanelli decided to retire him safely, and we hope that other owners will read this story and realize that a horse that might not be one that will be useful to them can still be loved for the rest of their life by somebody else.”
