by Perry Lefko
After 40 years in the Thoroughbred business as a breeder, owner, consigner and farm manager, Gail Wood continues to give to the business that has been such an important part of her life.
Now the business is giving back to her.
Wood, who has co-bred a Queen's Plate winner among her many accomplishments that include key positions with the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society, the Jockey Club of Canada and the Ontario Thoroughbred Farm Managers Association, will be hornored by the LongRun Thoroughbred Retirement Society Sept. 22 with the Lana Hershelle Sniderman Award as part of the organization's annual fundraiser.
The award is given out in recognition to horsemen for their caring and ethical approach to their horses' care, both during and after their days at the races, and their generous support of the LongRun program.
“We try to give out the award every second year, but if we didn't have anybody worthy, we wouldn't bother,” said LongRun founder/chairperson Vicki Pappas, who considers Wood like a sister because of their close relationship.
Previous winners of the award include Steve Stavro, Frank and Elfriede Stronach, Gustav and Anne Schickedanz, Sam-Son Farm, Chiefswood Stable and Eurico Rose da Silva.
Wood provided a full-time home for LongRun horses in 2016 when she sold the organization one of the two farms she owned in Hillsburgh, Ontario, about a 45-minute drive north of Woodbine Racetrack. She operates her business as Woodlands Farm and it has been the home of countless stakes winners that were born and raised there as young horses.
“To be quite honest, I was a little leery [of being the recipient of the award] because I didn't feel like I had done anything,” Wood says. “There's no one more shocked than me. I've never been good at drawing attention to myself. I've never been a person who needed that.”
The farm she sold, a 101-acre property, is part of where she began her career in the Thoroughbred business. In 1973, she began working for the late Harry Hindmarsh, a prominent Canadian breeder/racehorse owner who subsequently hired her as his farm manager, a first for women at the time in the Ontario horse racing industry. In 1990, she was voted the initial recipient of the Farm Manager of the Year Award in Ontario. Following the passing of Hindmarsh in 1991 and the decision by his widow to cease commercial operation four years later, Wood decided to lease and later buy the 101-acre farm, which includes a track for training horses. It was one of three farms on the overall property.
In 2000, she bought a nearby 62-acre farm, where she built a home and developed the property for broodmares and their offspring.
“Lana Sniderman and her late husband Spencer Berg were not only good clients of ours, but were very dear friends of myself and my late husband (Dan Steeves),” Wood says. “Lana was full of life and she loved animals.”
Sniderman owned racehorses and, through Wood, she became introduced to Pappas.
“They immediately hit on something that was important to both of them,” Wood says. “It's Vicki's baby [LongRun]. She's always had a huge heart for horses.”
Pappas had been working for Woodbine Entertainment Group in horsemen's relations in 1992 when she came upon a 10-year-old gelding at Fort Erie Racetrack named Up Pops The Devil (Our Native). He won over $265,000 in his career, which was quite a lot then, but had clearly become disinterested in racing. At the time, horses couldn't race in Ontario past the age of 10.
“She was determined to convince [the owners] they should retire him,” Wood says. “It was in the fall and I got a phone call from her and she says 'I've got to get this horse off the track by tomorrow. Can you take him?' So he came to me.
“At the time Vicki didn't have any funding [to start LongRun]. Within 10 days, she found him a home. We had a soft spot for Glayva, which is a Scotch liqueur, and she says, 'how much do I owe you?' I said, 'you owe me a bottle of Glayva.'”
LongRun became a charitable organization in 2000.
“Woodbine Entertainment Group got on board and Vicki got funding from them and she got accredited by the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance,” Wood says. “All of these things are important, but the big gift was from Mrs. Sniderman and her husband being so generous.”
Sniderman passed away in August, 2012 following a battle with lung cancer. In her will, she left money for the LongRun program to purchase a farm. It was just a matter of finding the right one. Once the estate was settled, it took Pappas about a year of looking at various properties before deciding on the Woodlands farm. It coincided with Wood deciding to cut back on her workload.
“I probably needed something to slow down,” Wood says. “I'm 65 for Pete's sake. This is a lifestyle that you can do for a long period of time, but you can't do it with the [same] intensity. I sort of planned that this was semi-retirement forever. I figured at this rate I can do this as long as I physically can do anything, but the way it was, there's no way I could've.
“I lost my husband [four years ago], and that made a big difference, too. You don't have that person who, when you come home at night, you can rave at. The dogs have to listen to me.”
Spencer Berg passed away while the sale of the farm was still in the process of being finalized.
“It's just sad that neither [Lana or Spencer] lived to see it because they would have loved that given that they were good friends of ours,” Wood lamented.
“I've been a very lucky person,” she adds modestly. “I was trained to work in television. I hated it. It was slow. There was nothing exciting about it. It sounds very glamorous, but it isn't. I thought I'd work with horses and when I get too old to do that, I'll go back to TV, and now that I'm older I don't have to go back to that.
“I don't know why the horse racing industry means so much to me. People just have passions, and if you're lucky, when you're young, something ignites in you. Some people never find their passions, or some people have to work all week and try to find their passion on the weekend. I just was lucky that I fell into my passion and I was good at it. I was never afraid to work, and it was also during a time when the [Ontario] government was our partner. It would be very hard for someone like myself to do what I've done with the environment we live in now. Property values have skyrocketed. How would a young person by a farm these days?”
Wood has three broodmares she owns. Her racehorses have always been trained by Phil Gracey.
“I don't have the time to go to the track very often and I feel completely confident he takes care of my horses the way I'd want them to,” she explained. “We've done very well with him.”
Last December, she and her sister, Dr. Ruth Barbour, won the Grade III, $150,000 Valedictory S. with their 5-year-old homebred Bangkok (Street Hero), a longshot at over 15-1. She also has Bangkok's 2-year-old half-sister, Worlds Your Oyster (Silent Name {Jpn}), saying of the filly, “we like her a lot, of course everyone loves their unraced 2-year-olds.”
Wood and Pappas's husband, William Diamant, bred Edenwold (Southern Halo), who was voted Canada's champion 2-year-old colt in 2005 and went on to win the 2006 Queen's Plate. Vicki claimed the horse's dam, Best of Friends (Mining), as a maiden for $10,000, and she went on to win her first race at the $25,000 claiming level.
“I've been lucky in that way, too, but it's funny how Vicki and my life have intertwined over the years, not only in racing but with LongRun, too,” Wood said.
“Our industry needs this space, too,” she adds. “The people who attack our industry are people don't realize how passionate we are about the animals. They pick out the odd, ugly story they can find. They don't look at the hundreds of thousands of people who are deeply committed to their racehorses and make all kinds of personal sacrifices to make sure they are taken care of. Unfortunately, the negative sells and the positive is ignored. Organizations like LongRun are the trench between us and the enemy. It's a face that shows how much we care about the animal.”
LongRun had about 10 foster farms where it placed its retired horses. Now almost all of them will be relocated to the 101-acre farm. Some cannot be moved because of age.
“Unfortunately, the people that fostered for us were terrific people, so it was sort of hard to make the decision to centralize it, but when Lana Sniderman left us that large bequest, combined with the money we had been saving all along, we had the funds to do it,” Pappas said. “It was like it was fated to be. We looked at a bunch of facilities and a bunch of different options and it didn't turn out. Gail did everything possible to make sure we could afford it. She left it turnkey for us. Gail has always been supportive of us financially as a donor and supportive of me personally.”
LongRun has stalls for 46 horses at its permanent location, which has become a place for people to learn general horsemanship.
“It's really a great place for horses that can't go on to do anything because they get all this attention and treats,” Pappas said. “It's really a neat thing to see–kids that have never been near a horse interact with them.”
It's an incredibly wonderful and touching story how this all came together because of fate, people who love horses and a friendship that has become like a sisterhood.
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