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Published on: 8/9/2008
Last Visited: 8/9/2008
Jim Casey: ,Master of Taylor Mountain'
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As a young soldier in the Korean War era, Jim Casey did his basic training at Fort Dix, N.J., a rather desolate military outpost located almost exclusively within the Garden State's equally desolate Pine Barrens.
Casey, the former coach and athletic director at James Wood High School and now an esteemed horse-owner and trainer, remembers the place well, particularly a promontory known as Taylor Mountain.
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"It was the last exercise, the last thing you did — taking Taylor Mountain," Casey recalled with a smile one sizzling July Saturday.
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Jimmy Omps, on Jim Casey
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These days, Casey, one of the top winners in the history of the West Virginia's Breeders Classics, pretty much feels the same way.
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But then, in Jim Casey's life, one he variously describes as "fortunate" or "lucky," what goes around often has a way of coming around.
Just like horses on a race track.
"This wouldn't be here if it weren't for her."
Jim Casey, in tribute to Eleanor, his wife of 50 years
Though inspired by that bump in the New Jersey landscape, Taylor Mountain Farm — with its classic three-rail fences, stately barn, comfortable brick home, and thoroughbreds lolling in the fields — looks as if it were plucked straight from Central Kentucky, fresh from the highway leading from Versailles to Lexington.But, instead of Blue Grass rising from the earth, the Blue Ridge Mountains rise in the distance.
This is where Jim Casey, some eight years ago, convinced Eleanor, his wife and forever "best friend," they needed to be.
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And inside the home Jim built for her, she could, before her death in July 2005, monitor the gestation of their mares via closed-circuit cameras placed in the foaling stalls.
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Home now to roughly 180 horses — "Too many," Casey says, "we'll need to get [that number] down" — Taylor Mountain gives its owner, now 78, "something to do."
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Ninety-eight percent of those involved, Casey says, do not make money.Exception though he may be — his mounts have earned nearly $7.5 million over a career of 40-plus years, some $2 million in stakes races — his annual expenses are staggering.Over "the last few years," this sum, including taxes, has approached $1 million, he says.The big-ticket items affecting his bottom line are salaries (about $480,000 a year), feed ($230,000), and veterinarian bills (roughly $125,000).
"This business is difficult," Casey continues.
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Casey had been importing his hay from Canada; his last "load" came from Nebraska.
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(Photos provided by Jim Casey)
The Caseys celebrate the win of Proud John, named for the Caseys' younger son, at the Tri-State Futurity on Oct. 25, 1969, at the Charles Town race track.The montage image includes a shot of the horse winning the race at the bottom.Above is young John (from left) with Eleanor and Jim Casey, an unidentified race official, and Betty and Willie Walter.
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Casey employs 16 people, including a full-time veterinarian and farm manager, Dr. Shay Swope.
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For horsemen solely in the trade as trainers, "times are tough," Casey says.Likewise for owners, as "few," he adds, "make money."
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A downside, Casey says, is that the state is about 21/2 years behind paying owners from this "10-10-10" program.
Breeding in West Virginia, he says, peaked two years ago.But, drawing on statistics clicked off from memory, Casey notes that, in the decade starting in 1996, the number of live foals born in the state rose from 130 that year to 630 in 2004.
His operation has prospered particularly in the West Virginia Breeders Classics.In the first 20 years of the event — started in 1987 largely through the efforts of NFL legend Sam Huff and held annually each October — Casey either bred or owned 11 winners.
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Neither the growth of the Taylor Mountain enterprise nor the success it has enjoyed comes as a surprise to Rudy Telek, who coached against Casey on the gridiron while at Clarke County High School in the '60s and, later, for the better part of 20 years, partnered with him in the horse business.
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"Casey always was a good businessman," Telek says.
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Still, at times, one gets the impression that horse racing is as much avocation as it is business to Casey.
"This gives me something to do," he says.
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Dr. Joseph Casey, veterinarian and Jim Casey's father
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Jim Casey is the son of a veterinarian — in fact, a onetime racetrack doc at New York's fabled Belmont Park.Thus, it should also come as little surprise that the track, to Casey, is like a second home.
"Doing this is almost like a vacation to me," he says.
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But here's a funny thing: As a boy growing up in Clarke County back in the '40s, Casey, born in Berryville and reared in Boyce, liked horses and remembers going to Charles Town — when it offered the only legal opportunity to gamble for miles around — but seldom cared to accompany his dad on his farm calls.The last thing he wanted to do, for example, was help vaccinate pigs, an activity he still describes as "nasty."He much preferred to play ball.
But here Casey walks, as he does most every day, in the barn area at the Charles Town track, where he houses 28 horses, his active runners.Saturday morning is "exercise day," and, stopwatch in hand, he oversees the work of jockeys, exercise riders, and "hot walkers" putting the animals through their paces, readying them for competition.
"The only bad part is that it's hot as the devil today," Casey says, warming to the task himself, "and horses don't much like the heat.The truth is, they're cold-weather animals."
Most of the horses quartered in his barn at the track are Taylor Mountain stock.He does not run a "public stable," but five or six of the thoroughbreds he quarters at Charles Town do belong to other owners.One, Bowman's Hero, is the proud property of Bill Walters, son of the late Willie Walters, the James Wood wrestling coach with whom, along with Telek, Casey broke into the racing business more than 40 years ago.
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Clearly at ease, Casey is able to monitor the work of his horses and riders, keep track of their times over a quarter or three-eighths of a mile, and still inform a neophyte on the wonderful yet oft-vexing ways of these majestic though high-strung animals.
"Horses, you know, are creatures of habit," he says."You have to be careful breaking and training them, so they don't develop bad habits."
For example, Three's a Crowd, a 5-year-old, hasn't run since October, so Casey will break him from the starting gate along the backstretch, easing him back to racing's rigors.
"He's a nice horse," he says, "but doesn't work too fast."
Another, Loves to Sing, is running for the first time since chips were removed from an ankle.
"Hmmm, 37.3 for three-eighths, about right for him," Casey says, obviously pleased.
And then there's Marcy's Claim to Fame, a 2-year-old on the track for just the second time.
"I think he can be all right," Casey observes.
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"You can get fooled," Casey says."Riders can see certain things, and the stopwatch tells you as well what you need to know.
"You usually get a good line, but again, you can get fooled.Some horses have cheap speed, but there's not much horse there."
Casey will introduce his 2-year-olds to the track, twice running them "lane to lane" — that is, down the near straightaway of the 3/4-mile Charles Town track — before moving them out to the curve at the quarter-pole.On this morning, eight of these "babies" will be stretching their young legs lane to lane.
"There's always hope with 2-year-olds," he says."There's always a possibility you really have something."
Then it's a matter of deciding what distance to run a horse in its first competitive race.Horses adjudged to have genuine speed go 41/2 furlongs (a furlong is 220 yards).Breaking away from the grandstand, Casey says, "teaches them to run real fast real quick.But you still need to teach them how to ,settle.'"
Races of 61/2 furlongs are specifically geared for maidens with no proven speed."It all depends on the horse," Casey adds.
That last simple statement speaks to many aspects of a thoroughbred's demeanor.Horses, on average, run competitively about 15 to 20 times in their careers, providing they "get there" — to the track — as Casey says.
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Jim Casey
It all started, perhaps, in idle whimsy — words scrawled on paper by a young soldier far from home, in one of his daily letters dispatched to his sweetheart in Virginia.
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It took some time — many years, in fact — but this "joke" came to pass, due