Louisville Magazine

APR 2017

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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38 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 4.17 Dream Chase Farm, blending seamlessly into the picturesque countryside of Georgetown, Kentucky, is home to Old Friends Equine, essentially a retirement home for 105 horses (most of them former racers). Just off the road, a black, split-rail fence surrounds a small graveyard called Champions Cemetery, which contains three headstones — etched with records set, notable races won, money earned. Skip Away (1993-2010), Noor (1945-1974), Springsteel (foaled in 1929, "injured in service" on June 30, 1934). Charismatic, who won the 1999 Derby and died suddenly this year, will join them soon. "He was aptly named. He was a charismatic horse," says Michael Blowen, a former Boston Globe movie critic who opened Old Friends in 2003. "He was a star and he exuded that kind of classy confidence. He had it in spades." For 12 years, Blowen worked to repatriate Charismatic from Japan, where many prized American stallions go to breed after their racing careers. In October, Blowen got the good news: Charismatic would make it to the farm by early January. The horse died Feb. 19. "At 6:30 the night before, he was doing fine. He was up on his toes, he was alert," Blowen says. "The next morning, when we found out that he had died — it was devastating." (Blowen thinks Charismatic's death may have been the result of a hairline fracture in the horse's hip, which could have been there for years and was perhaps exacerbated overnight.) Old Friends typically buries horses on Memorial Day, in another graveyard on the property, but Charismatic will get his own ceremony at Champions Cemetery some time in April. "The funerals are more like an Irish wake," Blowen says. "We want to do a tribute to him so no one forgets what a great racehorse he was." When this issue went to press, Charismatic was in a diagnostics lab at the University of Kentucky, which is in charge of the necropsy. Charismatic's cremated remains will occupy a walnut "casket" about double the size of a shoebox. "It's amazing how they can take a 1,200-pound animal and fit them into this casket," Blowen says. "You realize how much of them is water." — TE THE BIT WE LOVED

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