(Paris) When his father died in 1972, Arthur Hancock had already made a name for himself in bluegrass music.. His father left his sons the most famous thoroughbred breeding farm in Kentucky.
He was now 29 and had to choose between the guitar and horses.
“I was at a crossroads,” says the man who has already recorded with Willie Nelson. “There was music. There was the farm…”
He returned to the farm. Claiborne, which his grandfather Arthur founded at the beginning of the last century and which his father, Arthur Jr., made prosperous, is one of the world’s leading centers of horse racing.
PHOTO YVES BOISVERT, THE PRESS
Arthur Hancock looks out over his farm in Paris, Kentucky.
We are 20 miles from Lexington, in the heart of thoroughbred country. The descendants of French Huguenots named the county Bourbon, in honor of the kings of France. The small town is called Paris, Kentucky.
“I said to myself: ‘I have my whole life ahead of me. I don’t want to play in bars anymore, with people who smoke and drink.’ I’ve done quite a bit of that. And then I love the farm. I love the land. It’s in my blood, you have to believe…”
With his large arms, he embraces the immense green meadow that surrounds us.
“The earth soothes the soul,” he said in his undulating accent.
— What do you like about horses?
—You just have to look into a horse’s eye… All your stress disappears.”
I met Arthur the Third on my way to the Spirit in the Bluegrass Festival. He came to hear his son, Arthur IV. He chose the music.
“That man already had a horse that won the Kentucky Derby,” a musician whispered in my ear. I went to meet him.
“Actually, I had three,” the octogenarian kindly corrected me.
Coming back from the festival, while doing some research, I realized that I had met one of the most famous horse breeders in the world, but that we had talked almost exclusively about bluegrass. The next day, I rushed to Stone Farm.
He was there.
“Excuse me, I feel like I ran into Michael Jordan and we didn’t talk about basketball…”
He let me in. Showed me his family photos. Handed me a book that told the story of how Claiborne was founded by his grandfather, the son of a captain in the Confederate army.
The real book of his life, however, has not yet been published. Dark Horse will tell the life of the legendary Sunday Silence, the horse who saved his farm.
PHOTO YVES BOISVERT, THE PRESS
Arthur Hancock the third of the name, shows a photo of himself with his father and grandfather.
He was a nonconformist, he had a lot of courage, but he was easy-going… I identify with him.
Arthur Hancock
Because even though he inherited Claiborne with his brother, Arthur III went off to do things his own way.
“After four months, I couldn’t take it anymore, advisors and executors running it all. I left.” His brother Seth, just 22, took over Claiborne on his own.
Arthur III purchased pastures and farmland to start his own business: Stone Farm.
“Have you ever seen salmon swimming up a river? They must be strong, right? My idea was that you needed terrain to make horses stronger. With hills. If you’re a rider, you know what I’m talking about.”
Probably no one in the history of racehorses has taken inspiration from fish to establish training principles…
Except that 4,700 acres (19 km2) of agricultural land, it is not given.
“I found myself in deep debt. In the 1980s, under Reagan, the tax rules changed. $100,000 horses were suddenly worth $30,000. Land was half its value. The horse racing market had collapsed.
“With Staci, we have six children. I was going to lose everything. In the morning at dawn, I was going to walk on the earth, praying for a miracle. And the miracle happened.”
We could speak of a series of miracles.
Hancock had first gotten rid of Sunday Silence, a strange-looking, crooked-legged horse that no one thought was worth much. He eventually bought him back for $17,000, but sent him to California. The beast nearly died of a virus. Then, when Hancock got him back to Kentucky, the driver died of a heart attack on the highway. The trailer overturned. Inexplicably, the horse escaped without any injuries.
In 1989, Sunday Silence won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, two of the three Triple Crown races, in addition to the Breeders’ Cup. He was the horse of the year. A large purse is attached to these victories, but the main way to make a profit is by selling a winning horse. The horse becomes a breeding stock from which one hopes to produce champion offspring.
Except that no one in the United States wanted to buy this horse with legs “like coat hooks,” as one trainer put it.
Some Japanese showed up at Stone Farm with a check for $11 million. The farm was saved.
“If it wasn’t for Sunday Silence, I’d probably be at a bluegrass festival playing guitar with my son.”
Horse racing, once Kentucky’s most popular sport, no longer has the same luster.
I remember when co-workers would laugh at the guys from North Carolina with NASCAR, something that would never be as popular as horses…
Arthur Hancock
The industry has been hit by numerous doping and abuse scandals. Several horses have died in training or competition, particularly because of the drugs they are injected with.
PHOTO YVES BOISVERT, THE PRESS
One of the Stone Farm horses
In 1991, Hancock was one of the first to denounce the practices of breeders in a shock speech that became famous.. He did not make himself popular in his circles by exposing the dirtiest practices. He advocated for a law and a control agency.
At the time, the powerful Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was against any control legislation, in part because the owners of the Kentucky Derby were so adamantly opposed to it. The big money was against it. There was concern that a horse police force would expose too many scandals and further damage the reputation of racing—an industry valued at more than $5 billion and employing 60,000 people, and therefore alive and well in the United States, no matter what anyone says.
Except that the scandals and cheating were nevertheless exposed… along with the complicity of the industry. Under public pressure, a law was finally passed at the end of the Trump presidency, in 2020, creating an integrity agency that would conduct doping tests like in sports.
Once again, Arthur Hancock was the dark horse : no one gave him any chance of success, but he eventually won his battle.
Dozens of trainers, drug makers and veterinarians have since been charged.
“There’s finally a sheriff in town. We used to be a nation of outlaws,” he said.
Stone Farm still houses 335 horses, most of them boarded.
“I said to one of my men one day, ‘Can you believe we’re bigger than Claiborne?’ He said, ‘We may be big in volume, but they’re big in other ways.'”
His brother’s farm is still home to many champions.
“Nobody knows which horse is going to be a champion. You can buy a $10,000 thoroughbred or a $1.5 million thoroughbred, and you don’t know which one is going to be better. It’s a dream that people are buying.”
He had his own, saved by a horse with crooked legs.
“Do you know the song Garden Partyby Ricky Nelson? It’s all right now, I’ve learned my lesson well, you see you can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself. That’s how I lived.”