Our friend, Bill Nack wrote the following story about Old Friends a year or so ago for Life Magazine.  Unfortunately, Life never ran the story as the magazine closed.  We thank Bill for kindly allowing us to print the story here on our website.       

     Bill Nack, Old Friends Story

     One cold Kentucky afternoon last winter, bearing in his hands a lush bouquet of giant carrots, Mike Blowen was walking along the black creosote wooden fence that demarcates the paddocks at Hurstland Farm when, in the distance, he saw the old horse standing in the gray wind. A red-tailed hawk circled over the paddock, in a slowly descending spiral, until gradually the scene resolved itself into a 19th Century English painting, a country landscape with the bird wheeling and the horse posing under him as still as statuary.
    "Come on over here, Sunshine, you've got company!" Blowen called, his voice rising. "You want to come over and say hello?"
     Sunshine Forever turned his head and started toward Blowen at a walk, his neck rising and dipping as he approached, then broke into an ambling jog as he neared the fence. He had heard his master's voice. Blowen is the president and founder of Old Friends at Hurstland, an operation devoted to rescuing old and unwanted thoroughbred stallions, preferably those who were once famous racehorses, and retiring them to a life of pastoral bliss, with the sole job of  nibbling carrots offered by the tourists. For Blowen, who rescued Sunshine Forever last year and paid the $28,000 it cost to buy the horse and fly him home, the rugged bay will always be his favorite among the growing gang of equine seniors residing at Old Friends.  
    At age 19 last winter, and except for the sparkle in his luminous brown eyes, the horse no longer resembled the strapping, muscular, fire-breathing dude he was at age three, in 1988, when he swept to three major triumphs against some of the best turf runners in the world. After scoring two decisive victories at New York's historic Belmont Park, in the Man o' War Stakes and the Turf Classic, Sunshine won a third in the fabled Washington, DC International at Laurel, all in the brief course of four weeks. By year's end, owner John Galbreath's handsome bay son of Roberto---Galbreath's great stallion whom the owner had named after Roberto Clemente, the immortal outfielder on Galbreath's Pittsburgh Pirates---had won more than $2 million in purses and been voted America's champion grass horse. A beautifully bred horse, with a robust physique to match his exceptional ability, Sunshine was among the finest blooded horses of his generation, a grass-mowing star. 
     Now here he was today, 16 years later and a bit sway-backed, but looking even older than his years, his coat dull and scruffy, his body light of flesh and boney through the ribs and hips. No wonder. Just six weeks earlier, Sunshine Forever was living in that last pasture of oblivion reserved for the many stallions who either do not make it as progenitors or who live beyond their years as productive, profit-driving stud horses. After failing as a stallion in America, Sunshine Forever was sold to breeding interests in Japan, where again he did not make it as a sire. "Once these horses, at whatever level, stop producing income for people, they're in danger," says Blowen.
     Last year, after chasing an e-mail tip to his website at oldfriendsequine.org, Blowen discovered that the old champ was living out his days on the back pasture of a farm on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, the center of  that country's flourishing thoroughbred breeding industry. No longer much wanted in the servicing of mares, an aging failure with no earning power at stud, Sunshine Forever had been quietly consigned to Japan's equine junkyard, there to await his inglorious fate. Blowen intervened to save him for Old Friends, and on Nov. 1, 2004---after a flight half way around the world and a free ride from New York to Kentucky, compliments of Sallee Horse Vans---Sunshine ambled down the ramp and back into the state where he was born.  
     The bay came to the fence and nibbled on the tip of a carrot. "Six weeks ago, you couldn't go near him," says Blowen, a 58-year-old former movie critic at The Boston Globe who first became aware of the sorry plight of many racehorses while touring the better gambling hells around New England, chiefly Suffolk Downs. "You should have seen him when he first got here. He had lost a lot of weight and looked terrible. But he has improved every day. He has picked up weight and settled down a lot since he got here." 
    What was doubly eerie, as Blowen looks back on it now, was that Sunshine Forever was at the very same Hokkaido farm where Ferdinand, the doughty little chestnut who had won the 1986 Kentucky Derby, had spent his final days as an unsuccessful stallion before his owners had him slaughtered for human consumption. Ferdinand was the colt with the bushy, golden forelock who had also won the hearts of millions by taking home the roses in what became known as the Geezer Derby, flying home under his aging, 54-year-old jockey, Bill Shoemaker, and into the arms of his aging, 73-year-old  trainer, Charles Whittingham---two legendary figures of the turf. He was also the colt who, as a four year old, whipped the best horses in America in the Breeders' Cup Classic and was acclaimed, at the end of 1987, as the nation's Horse of the Year. He was the equine hero who retired in 1988 with earnings of almost $4 million, the year that Sunshine Forever was just getting started.
     Indeed, as far is Blowen is concerned, the two horses will always be inextricably bound in history. Had Ferdinand not suffered so cruel a fate, Old Friends would never have assumed the job of retrieving American stallions from overseas; and, had it not, Sunshine Forever would surely not have made it home. When a correspondent for the Blood-Horse Magazine, an industry publication, reported in July of 2003 that Ferdinand had died in that Japanese slaughterhouse the year before, the news loosed a firestorm of  indignation among those who follow the sport. The reason for the outrage was rooted in the belief, widely cherished in America, that famous racehorses, in general---and Kentucky Derby winners, in  particular---are not a natural part of the food chain, either in Japan or anywhere else. At the time, Blowen had just formed Old Friends as a final gathering place for aged or unwanted Kentucky stallions.
     "When the news broke that Ferdinand had been killed, the impact was huge," Blowen says. "All of a sudden it was like a tsunami---a wave that just overtook everything. No one could believe that it had happened. It was brutal. We became like a lightning rod for the expressions of outrage that people felt about Ferdinand's death. We got a thousand hits on the Oldfriends website in a week. We decided then: we have to find a way to retire these stallions so this does not happen again. There's no reason why we can't write a better ending for these horses' lives. Our whole focus changed."
      What astonished Blowen, when he began compiling a list of American-born stallions serving abroad, was not only how many were overseas---more than 50 in Japan alone---but in how many far-flung places they were working. There are at least three Kentucky Derby winners in Japan---Silver Charm (1997), Charismatic (1999), and War Emblem (2001)---as well as two in Turkey---Strike the Gold (1991) and Sea Hero (1993)---and one in Saudi Arabia: Alysheba (1987). He found two winners of the historic Travers Stakes at Saratoga---Java Gold (1987) and General Assembly (1979), Secretariat's greatest son---on the same farm in Germany. Winners of the Belmont Stakes ended up everywhere, from Colonial Affair in Argentina to Coastal (1979) in South Africa to Temperence Hill (1980), who died in Thailand.
    Through international contacts and Old Friends volunteers, Blowen has been in touch with many of these stallions' keepers and has made it known that he would like to have the horses when their days of service are over. When Alfred Nuckols' invited Blowen to set up old friends at Hurstland, a farm that had been in Nuckols's family since the 19th Century,  Blowen envisioned the place as the end of a tour---The Champions Tour---that would begin at the nearby Kentucky Horse Park, where John Henry and Cigar draw thousands of visitors every year, include a stop at the movie theatre in nearby Midway, where visitors would see films of the stallions in action at the track, and end at Hurstland, where folks could hobnob with the stars.
     Today Blowen is busy stocking the place. He has been in touch with the Saudi prince who owns Alysheba, America's 1988 Horse of the Year. "We've been begging the prince to retire Alysheba here when his career is over," says Blowen. "What a tourist attraction! And we'd love to have Sea Hero and Strike the Gold back from Turkey. We are getting Criminal Type sometime this spring. He was (America's) Horse of the Year in 1990. The Thoroughbred Club of Japan is donating him to us. We want to prove that these old stallions still have value, that they are still worth something." 
    Of  course, Sunshine was the first American star to be installed at Old Friends, but he did not arrive alone. While reaching for him, Blowen also acquired another Japanese outcast, the 19-year-old Creator, a bright, energetic chestnut who was bred by Dubai's Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum and raced under his colors to major victories in France. Along the way, Blowen decided to make Old Friends co-ed. Across the road from Sunshine is the field where Bonnie's Poker, now 22, lolls away her twilight years. She is the mother of Silver Charm, who nearly won the '97 Triple Crown---after winning the Derby and Preakness, he narrowly lost the Belmont to Touch Gold---and ended up winning nearly $7 million in purses.
     Two months after Sunshine and Creator arrived, Old Friends welcomed another old stallion who had once been among the fastest horses in the land. On Mar. 5, 1989, under Whittingham's deft care, Ruhlmann blazed a mile in 1:33 2/5s at Santa Anita, a track record that still stands today. A year later, the black bullet won the historic Santa Anita Handicap at 1 ¼ miles, the same race that Seabiscuit made famous in the final victory of his career. At Hurstland, Sunshine's paddock adjoins Ruhlmann's on one side and Creator's on the other, but it is Sunshine who reigns like a king.
    "He's still very much a star," Blowen says. "You have to deal with him on his terms. Creator jumps up and down whenever I come with carrots. He has no shame. Sunshine is a little more laid back. And he still has the magnificent eye of the champion. He can be affectionate but you have to prove you are worthy of it. I'm just in love with him. I feel really privileged just to see him every day. People say to me all the time: 'Isn't it great that these horses have a place to retire to?' Yeah, it's great, but look what they're doin for us. They're doin' for us much more than we could ever do for them." 
    And never more so than two days after Ruhlmann, a Texas transplant, was turned out in his paddock. Blowen was approaching on his daily carrot run when he saw Sunshine and Ruhlmann facing each other over the paddock fence. "They were staring at each other," Blowen says. "Moving their heads a little bit, just nodding at each other. Then all of a sudden they bent their necks down and just took off from a standing start and flew together to the other end of the paddock. Racing each other just for the hell of it and having fun. They are born and bred to run and compete. They may be 20 years old, but when you get them out there in the fields, they act like kids. From my angle, I couldn't tell who won it. It was a photo. Honest. But it was an amazing sight to see. Like I died and went to heaven."
     And what are old friends for, after all, but to make all those around them feel young again.
   The End   

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