The horse’s name — Grinding Speed — screams contradiction. Yet so do the triumphs he has had in timber racing following a dismal career on dirt.
Seven times, Grinding Speed ran on flat tracks, finishing in the money once. But an Annapolis attorney, Michael Wharton, liked the skinny gray gelding, plucked him from obscurity in 2009 and set out to teach him how to jump.
Grinding Speed didn’t disappoint. In 22 sanctioned races over hill and dale, he has eight victories, six seconds and one third. Last year, after wins in the prestigious $100,000 Virginia Gold Cup and $75,000 International Gold Cup, the National Steeplechase Association named him its 2015 timber champion. At 10, the thoroughbred Wharton bought on the cheap for $2,000 has earned $295,200 — and he’s still in his prime.
On Saturday, Speedy, as he’s known, is the favorite to repeat in the 106th running of the My Lady’s Manor in Monkton, a three-miler with a $30,000 purse. It’s the first leg of Maryland’s timber triple crown.
“I wouldn’t swap him for any horse in the race,” said Mark Beecher, Speedy’s Irish-born jockey for the past five years. “The first time I saw him he wasn’t much, kind of skinny. But when I rode him, he was very easy-moving. Now he’s big and robust and I fancy him to win every race we ride.”
At 6-foot-1, Beecher looks like Ichabod Crane aboard Grinding Speed.
“We’re both a tall drink of water,” he said.
The NSA’s champion timber jockey last year, he bows to his mount’s success.
“He has done so much for my career, winning five Gold Cups [three International, two Virginia],” said Beecher, 31. “When people look back, he’ll be the horse I’ll be remembered for riding.”
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It has been a thrill ride for Wharton, who discounted the horse’s disappointing efforts on dirt. Grinding Speed had the pedigree — his sire, Grindstone, won the 1996 Kentucky Derby and a sibling, Birdstone, won the 2004 Belmont Stakes — but not the panache to win on the track.
“He was running at Penn National and just not cutting it,” Wharton said. “But I liked his breeding and disposition. He took to the turf, jumps and long races quite easily. Alicia [Murphy] worked magic on him.”
Murphy, 61, is Speedy’s trainer and recommended his purchase, if only for pleasure.
“When you sat on him you thought, ‘Even though he doesn’t go fast, he sure feels good,” she said.
What turned Speedy around?
“Some horses go to the track, are kept in a barn and just don’t thrive,” said Murphy, of Reisterstown. “They need the good times of farm life. The truth is, we got extremely lucky.”
Lucky, too, in the 2013 My Lady’s Manor. There, leading at the next-to-last fence, Grinding Speed fell. Thrown clear, Beecher suffered a broken collarbone and dislocated shoulder. Three weeks later, the pair won the Virginia Gold Cup.
“They are two amazing athletes who see eye to eye,” Murphy said of horse and jockey. “It’s a beautiful marriage; we should all be so lucky.”
Speedy’s crowning moment, she said, came in the 2014 International Gold Cup, a 3-1/2 mile race in Plains, Va. Again, calamity struck at the penultimate fence.
“A horse to Speedy’s inside jumped out into him and brought him almost to a standstill,” Murphy said. “He’d been even with the leaders but now was fourth. Speedy and Mark said, ‘No way.’ I’ve never seen horse and rider gather themselves up like that and give over 100 percent to the finish and win. Speedy has that deep-down fight, but it was a true test of heart, courage and physical ability on both their parts.”
Wharton, who lives on a 17-acre farm in Butler, wouldn’t part with Speedy for the world.
“People have felt me out, but he’s a lifer for me,” the owner said. “He’s competitive, but enough of a gentleman that this 60-year-old amateur can gallop him several times a week. Speedy is a type A [personality] as am I; we understand each other. I can’t tell you how cathartic it is, after a rough week at work, to go to the barn and get on this horse and gallop two miles in a beautiful meadow doing a big looping figure 8.”
That’s what awaits Speedy in retirement.
“I don’t want him running races at 13 or 14, when he has lost a step,” Wharton said. “I love the fact that my horse is doing well, but I want him to go out at the top of his game. And I want to do things with him myself, like dressage, show jumping and fox hunting.”
Everyone on Speedy’s team agrees on that.
“We all know the day will come when he just might lose his spark,” Beecher said. “When that happens, Mike has a plan. He’s so close to this horse that if he didn’t have two sons of his own, he’d probably adopt this fellow and bring him into the house.”