Don\'t think Allday was with the Red Bullet team.
Steve Allday gave a local radio interview years ago for the Churchill Downs Radio Network, via telephone, not long before the controversy surrounding his clients began to surface. In that interview he did say he came from a harness racing background as a vet, and had no designs to move into the thoroughbred world. He hails from Southern Ohio, and was still living there at the time of this interview. His very first venture into caring for thoroughbreds was in 1993 - and the very first thoroughbred trainer to hire him was....Neil Drysdale. Allday stated that the very first thoroughbred he worked on was Hollywood Wildcat, owned by Irv & Marge Cowan, whose 3 year old season was a kind of scorched earth devastation of fillies in Southern California. Further into the interview he said that in the winter of 1999/2000, Drysdale called him and told him he had two horses he thought were good enough to be Derby type horses and he needed Allday\'s help to get them to Churchill Downs: Fusaichi Pegasus and War Chant (also owned by the Cowans and was actually a son of Hollywood Wildcat, ironically enough). That they did so well in the run-up to that year\'s Derby is now history. I don\'t know where you get the information that Allday was with the Stronach team at that time (he certainly was a couple of years earlier when Pat Byrne had all the Stronach horses), but it seems he had moved on by the time of Red Bullet. It seems as though Allday was in cahoots with Pat Byrne specifically, who took over as personal Stronach trainer in 1998 after Byrne had his spectacular 1997 with Favorite Trick and Countess Diana. But Red Bullet was not trained by Byrne - he was trained by Joe Orseno. Byrne had parted ways with Stronach well before then, and evidently Allday also deserted Stronach then too. So according to Allday himself, his association at that time was with his old friend Drysdale, seeing as they went back a few years before that. To the issue at hand, Drysdale apparently held on to Allday all through 2000. After Fusaichi Pegasus was syndicated for a huge sum, War Chant began to get his act together that fall. That strecth run of his to land the 2000 BC Mile is something I don\'t think I\'ve seen anything match it, and it no doubt had the Allday Assistance behind it. If I\'m not far off on the timeline, it was shortly after the close of 2000 (no one stays with Drysdale long, given how difficult his personality is reputed to be), Allday turned up at Frankel\'s barn - and apparently they had a long arrangement together. But all that said, Allday basically tells it that he was in the Drysdale camp at the time of Fusaichi Pegasus\'s run through that year\'s Triple Crown.
I don\'t know if an internet search will turn up that interview again, but it\'s worth a listen if anyone finds it.
Steve Allday gave a local radio interview years ago for the Churchill Downs Radio Network, via telephone, not long before the controversy surrounding his clients began to surface. In that interview he did say he came from a harness racing background as a vet, and had no designs to move into the thoroughbred world. He hails from Southern Ohio, and was still living there at the time of this interview. His very first venture into caring for thoroughbreds was in 1993 - and the very first thoroughbred trainer to hire him was....Neil Drysdale. Allday stated that the very first thoroughbred he worked on was Hollywood Wildcat, owned by Irv & Marge Cowan, whose 3 year old season was a kind of scorched earth devastation of fillies in Southern California. Further into the interview he said that in the winter of 1999/2000, Drysdale called him and told him he had two horses he thought were good enough to be Derby type horses and he needed Allday\'s help to get them to Churchill Downs: Fusaichi Pegasus and War Chant (also owned by the Cowans and was actually a son of Hollywood Wildcat, ironically enough). That they did so well in the run-up to that year\'s Derby is now history. I don\'t know where you get the information that Allday was with the Stronach team at that time (he certainly was a couple of years earlier when Pat Byrne had all the Stronach horses), but it seems he had moved on by the time of Red Bullet. It seems as though Allday was in cahoots with Pat Byrne specifically, who took over as personal Stronach trainer in 1998 after Byrne had his spectacular 1997 with Favorite Trick and Countess Diana. But Red Bullet was not trained by Byrne - he was trained by Joe Orseno. Byrne had parted ways with Stronach well before then, and evidently Allday also deserted Stronach then too. So according to Allday himself, his association at that time was with his old friend Drysdale, seeing as they went back a few years before that. To the issue at hand, Drysdale apparently held on to Allday all through 2000. After Fusaichi Pegasus was syndicated for a huge sum, War Chant began to get his act together that fall. That strecth run of his to land the 2000 BC Mile is something I don\'t think I\'ve seen anything match it, and it no doubt had the Allday Assistance behind it. If I\'m not far off on the timeline, it was shortly after the close of 2000 (no one stays with Drysdale long, given how difficult his personality is reputed to be), Allday turned up at Frankel\'s barn - and apparently they had a long arrangement together. But all that said, Allday basically tells it that he was in the Drysdale camp at the time of Fusaichi Pegasus\'s run through that year\'s Triple Crown.
I don\'t know if an internet search will turn up that interview again, but it\'s worth a listen if anyone finds it.