By Bill Finley
What had been one of racing's best feel-good stories of recent times ended in tragedy Saturday when Grade I winner Bullards Alley (Flower Alley) had to be euthanized following the running of the GII Dixiana Elkhorn S. at Keeneland.
Trainer Tim Glyhsaw reported that the 6-year-old was put down while still in the horse ambulance and had suffered from a left hind compound condylar fracture.
Bullards Alley may not have been a huge star, but his back story was an inspiring one and many were attracted to the tale of a bunch of underdogs winning at the highest levels of the sport. Bullards Alley was purchased for $11,000 by Wayne Spalding at the 2014 Fasig Tipton Summer Selected Horses of Racing Age. Unraced at the time, he was part of the Eugene Melnyk dispersal. Spalding, who would later bring in Faron McCubbins as a co-owner, turned the horse over to Glyshaw, who had never won a graded stakes at the time.
But Glyshaw proved more than capable and figured out that Bullards Alley would be at his best in turf marathons. He spotted him accordingly and was rewarded with both the first graded win for the horse and for himself in the 2016 in the GIII Louisville H., a race run at a mile-and-a-half on the turf at Churchill Downs.
“When he ran second at Keeneland in a mile-and-three- sixteenths allowance race in 2015, that's when I knew he was going to be a very good horse,” Glyshaw said. “We just needed to find races that were longer and longer for him. Unless you compete at the graded stakes level, those races are hard to find. You don't find many mile-and-a-half races unless they are graded stakes. We were lucky enough that he had the quality to compete at that level.”
Bullards Alley continued to grind away, but did not have a true break-out performance until he won last year's GI Canadian International. Clearly relishing the soft turf that day at Woodbine, he won by 10 3/4 lengths and earned a 114 Beyer figure.
With that win and a subsequent sixth-place finish in the GI Breeders' Cup Turf, people started paying attention to the horse who was once let go for $11,000.
“A lot of people really liked this horse,” Glyshaw said. “What they liked about him was that he wasn't one of those $500,000 or $750,000 purchases that go on to be successful. He was sort of a workmanlike horse. He was very nicely bred but we got him for a very low price in the [Eugene] Melnyk dispersal and he went on to do pretty big things. Not that a horse who cost $500,000 and goes on to make $1 million isn't special, but this was a completely different story.”
Bullards Alley was winless in his three starts after the Breeders' Cup, but was still in good form when entering the gate for the Elkhorn. With Corey Lanerie aboard, Bullards Alley broke with the field but was pulled up approaching the first of three turns.
“Corey said that he thought it happened when he was bumped a little bit out of the gate,” Glyshaw said. “He thinks he landed wrong on his left hind ankle, not on the proper part of the hoof. Basically, he rolled his ankle.”
Glyshaw said that the discussion whether or not to try to save the horse was a quick one. He reasoned that even if Bullards Alley could pull through surgery he would not be mobile enough afterward to have a good life.
“Even if you spent $30,000, $40,000 to try to save him, he's not going to have any life at all,” Glyshaw said. “He liked to run around, liked to play, liked to rear up. None of that stuff would have been possible even if they could save him. There was just no point.”
Bullards Alley took Glyshaw to places he always wanted to go, but never knew if he would get there. He was his first graded stakes winner, his first Grade I winner and, along with stablemate Bucchero (Kantharos), gave him his first Breeders' Cup starts when the pair appeared at Del Mar last year.
“It's pretty devastating to our barn and everyone who has been involved with him, obviously, including the owners,” he said. “He was our first horse on the national scene. It's been easier with all the kind comments on Facebook and Twitter. I didn't see it, but I was told that Todd Schrup on TVG, when they announced that they had put him down, was virtually in tears. You don't hear that very often.”
Bullards Alley won six of 40 career starts and had three stakes wins. The $11,000 purchase earned $928,622.
Not a subscriber? Click here to sign up for the daily PDF or alerts.
