RIP John Forbes

[TGJB]

... who, among other things, came up with the term “bounce”, describing what it looked like on the sheet, back when I was still with Ragozin.

Dennis Heard and I were the ones who convinced John to move to Jersey from Maryland. King Leatherbury was training our string down there, we liked Maryland trainers, and asked King to give us the names of some good young ones who might consider moving to Jersey. He gave us three, John was one, we interviewed him at the Meadowlands. He showed up in a tan corduroy sport coat with patches on the elbows, looked like a preppie. We ended up hiring him, and he ended up winning about a hundred training titles in Jersey, and eventually being elected head of the horsemen’s group.

John trained for me later as well, after I started TG and was managing Ed Wachtel’s stable. We used two apprenticesâ€" Johnny V in NY, and a girl, Julie something, in Jersey. At the time she was going out with Steve Brown, one of John’s assistant trainers, the other being Pat McBurney.

I’ve worked with a lot of good trainers. As a pure horseman, John was as good or better than any of them. There was more correlation between what he said about a horseâ€" getting better, ready to tail off, time to get outâ€" than anyone else I ever worked with. He once told me he didn’t like the way a horse was standing when he took a piss in the test barnâ€" and he was right, the horse had a problem that was surfacing.

RIP, John.

[hellersorr]

Why did you like Maryland trainers in the seventies and . . .  do you still?

[TGJB]

It’s a different game now, so no. They seemed to be the best horsemen back then, at least in the claiming game.

[portbay711]

Johnny trained for me in the early 80’s and Julie rode for me when she was Johnny’s stable rider before anyone really knew her. I can’t remember the Kentucky Derby year, but Julie was riding the 1st or 2nd race early in the card, she was 55/1 because nobody knew who she was in Kentucky. I was only in my late twenties at the time and it was the best score we made all day. We were right on the rail in a box and our whole box was yelling like crazy when she was in deep stretch and won the race. Everyone around us knew after the race we were from New Jersey and it was long after they knew who Julie Krone was also.

Another quick story about Johnny and me, I traveled a lot for long periods of time nationally, I was in software sales, I went to the races late in August, it might have been Labor Day weekend, I see Johnny in the paddock and he comes running up to me and says where the hell have you been? I put together a last minute stallion syndicate to buy some yearlings in the September Kentucky yearling sale, he says it’s 100k a share and I need it in a week, I told him I would love to do it but that’s really short notice for me to come up with 100k cash.
I was able to raise 50k on my own and I went to all of my buddies trying to raise the other 50k but none of them wanted to go in on it. I tried to buy in for 50k but the syndicate didn’t want anything less that 100k buy in. Of course, they go on to buy 6 horses at that sale and 4 of them were stakes winners and one of the was Tale of the Cat, who they sold to COOLMORE for $14.1 M. They had a ton of fun with those horses and I will never forget tale of the cats kings bishop. He was a monster that day.
Johnny obviously knew Jerry very well which is how I learned about the Thorograph’s. I have used them religiously ever since.
I am sure Johnny has a group of great horseman surrounding him now, talking horses. He loved this game so much and he could talk your ears off. RIP Mr.Forbes, our game will miss tremendously.

[portbay711]

By the way, I know the other colt they wanted to buy at that same sale that year was Awesome Again, but I think Johnny was only able to raise 1.2M for that sale  I still have all of the photos of the yearlings and the prospectus they put together for the investors when they came back from the sale, johnny told me there was another great colt they wanted to buy but didn’t have enough money to get him also. Can you imagine if they could have bought Awesome Again and Tale of the Cat from the same sale of 7 horses purchased. That would have been beyond lucky. I think the cat sold for $360k and Awesome again was in that same range also. He obviously had a great eye for horses. As crazy as this might sound, johnny, pat and I believe Julie would sit quietly in the stall with the yearlings watching their behavior for an hour or so before they bid on the horses they bought. He was a very interesting guy. They don’t come any better

[portbay711]

I just checked on awesome again and that was not the other stallion the syndicate couldn’t buy but I know it was another great one, if I can find out the one the next time I speak with McBurney I will pst the name for posterity’s sake. Sorry for the misremembered post before this one. Hopefully I can find out the name of the other colt

[portbay711]

I think I found the other colt, it was Wild Rush, who sold for $430k; Tale of the cat sold for 375k.

[shanahan]

Those are great stories, thanks for sharing...that is about the time I got into racing myself so I can imagine what fun that was to win, or sell for huge profit.

[portbay711]

I couldn’t figure out how to respond to the private email I just received but yes I do remember John Piesen, another great man.

Thank you for the kind reply to my vignettes about John Forbes but I have another one that was very unusual and is so telling about who John was. One afternoon at Monmouth I was diving in John’s suburban down the road between the barns alongside the race track, for those of you familiar with Monmouth there is a hill that goes up to the track as the race track turns into the final turn. The races where running that afternoon and as luck would have it, there was a race leaving the starting gate from the 6 furlong chute, our windows were open so John hearing the bells as the gates open, pulls over to side of the road towards the track, he stops the car and without saying anything to me, he jumps out of the car and starts racing up a fairly good hill to get to see the horses coming down the backstretch going into the turn. Of course not knowing what the hell was going on, I jump out of the car also and run up the hill after John, I catch up to him as the horses are 100 yds from the turn, John still isn’t saying a word but is watching what I believe where the horses. We both stand there until the horses cross the finish line in dead silence and I say to john, which horse were you watching? He says “I wasn’t looking at the horses, I was watching the Jockeys, I wanted to see how they were riding. After knowing him for many years, I came to realize what a student of even the smallest details john was. He was so innovative and always thinking about some minute detail of something about, horses, jockeys, breeding, interval training, you name it. He will never get the true respect he deserves, but there are others like him still out there but they are quietly disappearing.
I strongly recommend if you never watched or listened to a race on the backstretch it’s quite amazing, when there is no one else around you and the horses come tearing by you like a nascar race, and you hear their hoofs hitting the surface and you hear and see the kick back, you can actually hear the jockeys talking and sometimes yelling at one another, it’s really amazing. Put it on your bucket list if you haven’t experienced it yet. You will not be disappointed.
So many things I learned about racing from Mr. Forbes
Cheers
Brendan Cassidy

[P-Dub]

Can you post, oh I dunno, about 100 more of these??

[richiebee]

Too many memories, from back in the day when I was a dual threat, live racing
at both whatever downstate NYRA track was open and nights at the Meadowlands
flat meet, three or four days a week, four months a year.

Hey, you\'re young, you\'re healthy, what do you need a real job for?

Back then John Forbes and JJ Crupi ruled the Jersey roost, and before Krone and
Antley arrived on the scene the top riders were Bill Nemeti, \"Hollywood\" Herb
McCauley, and Jake Nied.

The John Forbes story I remember was from opening day of the Monmouth meet,
1984. I was working for Bob Scanlon, an Irishman who had a string of horses at
Monmouth for Robert Sangster, one of the dominant Euro owners at the time.

A friend of mine had told me that he had breezed a horse for John Forbes, a
horse that was to be entered opening day, and that the horse had gone super
fast, super easy. He told me the name of the horse.

When the entries came out I was surprised to see that super fast super easy was
entered in race one, a bottom claimer. The horse as I recall had run for 30-20K
claimers in Florida and was getting beaten consistently, but had enough form
that there may have been a lot of interest in him at the claim box.

Therein lies the rub. A leading trainer can always expect certain
accommodations from the racing office, and that was what happened here: the
race that super fast, super easy was in \"somehow\" came up as race one of the
meet. Under the old rules of claiming in NJ, which may have been revised, an
owner could only claim a horse if they had started a horse at that meet. Claims
have to be dropped before post time -- so how many owners have started a horse
at a meet that hasn\'t officially begun yet?

The Forbes horse was 2/1 ML and went off at 4/5. Drew off in the stretch. The
jockeys were on strike at the time so the winner was ridden by a \"replacement\"
jock with a rather unforgettable name....J.C. Penney.

There is a brick pillar on the second floor of the Monmouth Clubhouse where
there is a \"wall of fame\" which is set aside to honor some of the great people
that made Monmouth what it was in its heyday. The wall is dedicated
to top horseman Virgil \"Pop\" Raines. John Forbes is on that wall, and will
certainly be honored in some way by Monmouth...maybe a graded stakes
race to be named for him?

[shanahan]

I thought Sangster lived in Barbados?  If not, everyone knows who is is/was there...