Horse Sense.(Larry Jones)(Interview)

In the spring of 2006, Rick Porter, the owner of a small but promising stable of racehorses, set out to find a new trainer for his thoroughbreds. Porter, a prosperous Delaware car dealer with Kentucky Derby ambitions, interviewed candidates at racetracks in New York and Maryland before turning his search to Delaware Park, his home track. On an impulse, he stopped at a barn marked by a small sign that read, "Larry Jones Racing Stables." Porter had never met Jones, and he didn't know much about him, except that Jones seemed to saddle a lot of winning horses.

Jones was racing at another track that day, but Porter poked around the barn. As he talked to the people who worked there--the assistant trainers, exercise riders, grooms, and other stable hands--he learned that many had been with Jones for some time. Racing is a migratory business, of impermanent professional relationships; Jones's crew seemed inclined to pick up and move whenever the boss did. They answered all of Porter's questions, speaking of Jones in almost reverent tones. Porter remembered that he'd once asked his former trainer about Jones, and had got the reply "He's a hell of a horseman," the highest possible praise.

"When I finally got to meet Larry, I'm not quite sure exactly what it was that I really liked about him," Porter recalls now. "He just had a different air about him."

Jones presented a memorable, if not particularly imposing, figure--about six feet tall, with skinny bowlegs, and a crooked smile planted beneath a big white Stetson. The encounter was like none that Porter had ever experienced with a horseman. Jones outlined an approach to training that might be described (though certainly not by Jones) as holistic. He said that he liked to climb up on the horses himself for morning gallops, because it kept him in better touch with the animals. He created a unique feeding program, reflected not only in the special mix he fed the horses (which he kept secret) but in the way he fed them. In most stalls, hayracks are installed in a corner at head level. Jones believed that horses should eat as nature intended, by grazing, allowing the nasal passages to drain; in his stalls, the feed is spread over the floor.

"I liked everything he said about the way he trained," Porter says. "I liked what he said about his feeding program, and I liked his medication philosophy." The issue of medicating horses has been a chronic source of controversy for the horse-racing industry. Horses, like all animals, occasionally need medication; some of those routinely administered to racehorses not only improve their physical well-being but also enhance their racing performances, leading to overuse. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that racing is governed by various state authorities, enforcing different rules to greater or lesser degree, rather than by a single, national governing body that has a clear set of rules and the power to discipline violators.

Debate over the use of medication has occasionally spilled over into a broader public discussion about the humaneness of the sport. Porter's meeting with Jones took place during one of those moments. The running of the Preakness Stakes, outside Baltimore, the second leg of racing's Triple Crown series, had occurred on the weekend that Porter first visited Jones's barn. In that race, Barbaro, the Kentucky Derby winner, pulled up lame, with multiple fractures in his right hind leg, injuries that eventually proved fatal. The disturbing incident, seen by millions of casual fans drawn to television coverage of the race by Barbaro's Triple Crown prospects, brought unwelcome scrutiny to the sport. Critics insisted that racehorses were overmedicated and overbred, and exposed too early to track surfaces that caused injuries. Reforms were discussed but, for the most part, never implemented.

Jones didn't like to medicate his horses, and he refused to administer anabolic steroids, even though they were legal in most racing jurisdictions. Many trainers routinely inject their horses with hyaluronic acid, an organic substance that has the effect of loosening stiff joints. Jones didn't inject, preferring the less invasive method of oral application. Unlike many of his fellow-horsemen, he didn't object to the trend toward softer artificial surfaces on racetracks, to reduce injury, and he believed that the sport needed a national governing body with enforcement power.