Saddle up, Thoroughbred racing fans. This latest installment (Volume 14) of memories from a very old mind is for you. Call it: “Hey, You Want a Horse? … We Don’t Monkee Around.”

In 47 years writing sports for The Times-Dispatch, covering just about everything and liking most of it, my reaction to drawing the Colonial Downs beat in 2000 was … You’ve got to be kidding me! I didn’t know anything about the nags other than they have four spindly-looking legs that, miracle of miracles, hold up huge bodies without snapping while running very fast. OK, so I was familiar with Secretariat, bred and raised up the road in Doswell, who provided us with all those Triple Crown thrills in 1973. But not much more other than you better take a couple of shirts with you to the track because odds were you’d lose one pretending you knew enough to make some money.

It was into this wonderful world of Nathan Detroit that I entered with some trepidation but nevertheless determined to (a) get it right; and (b) have some fun doing it. Little did I know how much fun, thanks to people just as determined to provide all the help they could without once attempting to censure my naturally cynical thought process. People like PR director Darrell Wood and handicapper “Derby” Bill Watson who told me recently, “Darrell had an impossible job. He had to please everyone all the time. That’s why I never bothered.”

• Any mention of the
• old
• Colonial Downs, owned by enigmatic Jeff Jacobs, and the
• new
• Colonial Downs — about to begin its second season July 27 — has to start with “Derby Bill.” Born in Washington, D.C., 60 years ago, Watson was hooked on “The Sport of Kings” as a youngster “when my uncles would take me to Pimlico.” He learned, at an early age, that knowing all there was to know about a horse — pedigree, better on a fast or sloppy track, etc. — was the only way to have at least some chance of making a successful trip to the betting window. “You get to know the horses like they’re family,” Watson said.

You couldn’t miss Watson at Colonial Downs, his loud voice usually booming with laughter — all 6-6, 300-pounds-plus of him. He was there from the beginning when the New Kent County facility finally opened for business in 1997 although he didn’t become the track’s official handicapper until a few years later. Da Hoss is his choice for “best horse ever to run here. He won the Breeders Cup, got injured, came to Colonial Downs for a prep race [in that initial season], won easily, then won the Breeders Cup again. Not too many horses can say that,” Watson said.

No, “Derby Bill” doesn’t talk to horses but he knows a thing or two about them because he’s seen a thing or two, like the ups and downs of wagering a bob or two on them “The more you do it, the easier it becomes, especially now because there’s more information [which also means] it’s easier to lose more money, too,” Watson said. As the handicapper, his job, he said, “was to gather and shoot out information. I never told people what to bet.”

He’s not a professional bettor, and he thinks he can stop, if he wanted to … but, of course he doesn’t. To date his best single payoff was $4,400 on a trifecta at the Kentucky Derby. You should be a millionaire by now, Bill. “You would think.” OK, so at least you’re ahead of the game, won more than you’ve lost? “I wouldn’t say that — no.”

But, who’s counting, right? Watson doesn’t get around much any more. He keeps up, though, appearing on a weekly local radio show devoted to his sport of choice. “Every day was fun for me, win, lose or draw, to work at the track,” he said. “It’s like a baseball player in the major leagues, or a football player in the NFL It’s the same thing in horse racing … if you love the sport.”

It was a day like any other day at the race track Sept. 9, 2000, when along comes trainer John Scanlan, one of the great characters of all time — any sport … anything. It was my first Thoroughbred meet at Colonial Downs, and I had talked to the Pennsylvania native on several occasions. Scanlan was a scream, always good for a funny. So, naturally, I thought he was putting me on when he walked up and said, “Hey, you want a horse? … I’ve got one you can have … Right now … Free.” Yeah, right!

Believe it or not, he was serious. Scanlan, who was 68 when he died earlier this year, had just watched One More Broad go off the favorite in a maiden claimer and finish fifth. It was six races (0 for 6) and done for the 3-year-old owned by multi-millionaire Daniel Borislow, who had Scanlan under exclusive contract. C. W. Nash, who sold Scanlan coffee every morning at a nearby 7-Eleven, eventually accepted the horse for his 12-year-old son, Matthew, to ride.

The morning Scanlan was to turn over One More Broad to Nash, Colonial’s publicity department (read: Wood) attracted a large gathering of media types for the feel-good story of the meet. As the van was being backed up to haul the horse away, the bay colt reared up, got away and began running around the barn area at a rather rapid pace. Nonplussed, Scanlan said, “If I knew he was that fast, I wouldn’t have given him away.”

Less than a year later, on May, 5, 2001, Scanlan had Borislow’s Talk Is Money in the Kentucky Derby. It was, to say the least, a temperamental horse that had been purchased for $2 million as a yearling. Scanlan originally referred to it as “Hanging Tree” because “if it doesn’t do too good, I may have to find a tree and hang myself from it.”

The horse quickly developed a knack for throwing jockeys. At Churchill Downs, prior to the 127th Run for the Roses, hall of fame jock Jerry Bailey withheld Talk Is Money from the post parade “for good reason,” said NBC’s Tom Hammond. “He’s tossed riders three times during parades.” That was about all the network had to say about the 47-1 longshot. If Hammond and friends mentioned Borislow, or Scanlan, we missed it.

Talk Is Money started 11th and finished last (17th), having suffered what was diagnosed as a heat stroke. Bailey walked the horse across the finish line. Scanlan later said, “Bailey was scared to death of him.”

Earlier, Scanlan told us off-the-record Talk had no business being in the Derby, but Borislow wanted to be there “to sit with the other owners.” Borislow died in 2014 at age 52.

I was fortunate to be there during Colonial Downs’ days of glory …

• When Jacobs started the short-lived “Grand Slam of Grass” in 2005 and eventually grew the Virginia Derby payout to a cool $1 million.
• When, in 2004, Edgar Prado won his third straight Derby, this time aboard Kitten’s Joy. The race was graded (III) for the first time. Still competing at a high level, the 53-year-old Prado won the 2006 Kentucky Derby and currently ranks eighth on the all-time winners’ list (7,000-plus). Kitten’s Joy won nine of 14 starts overall, was named 2004 American Champion Turf Horse but has been even more impressive at stud. From 2009 through 2019, his offspring earned more than $100 million. “He was good on the track, even better in the shed,” said Derby Bill.
• When Davy Jones, of The Monkees fame, became the face of Colonial Downs. Born in England, he was an apprentice jockey and sometimes actor when a friend encouraged him to try out for the role of the Artful Dodger in the original stage play of Oliver. He got the job that ended his riding aspirations. But he got back into horse racing as an owner, which he pursued as a hobby after The Monkees (1965-71).

In 2000, Wood was calling a steeplechase at Colonial Downs when he noticed one of the owners was a David P. Jones. Could it be? It could. His horse won and later he told a track worker how much he liked it here. “He said if there was anything he could do to help us, give him a call. And I thought ‘yeah … yeah ..’ That winter I gave him a call for the helluva it … and he became our celebrity spokesperson,” Wood recalled recently. “His horses ran here. He did a concert by himself and another time with [another member of The Monkees quartet] Mickey Dolenz. For three years, he did all our radio and TV commercials. And, we never paid him.”

I sat down with Jones on a bench in front of the track’s main entrance, asked one question and he was off and running. What impressed me most was his enthusiasm. Here was a transplanted Brit making a Yank feel at home. “He just fell in love with the place,” Wood said. “It was a unique relationship. The perfect marriage.”

• When Charlie “Doc” Dunnavant almost single-handedly kept Standardbred racing alive, if not terribly well. Management wanted to dump the pacers and trotters, and Dunnavant, an owner and driver, refused to give in. The track was obligated by its license to run an annual meet, however short. Wood, who is from Buffalo, N.Y., and remains a big fan of harness racing, served as regular race caller — usually to a handful of spectators. Ownership finally prevailed. “They won,” said Wood, now PR and marketing director of the Virginia Equine Alliance. The Standardbreds are not scheduled to return to Colonial Downs any time soon.
• When we got to see, and talk to, such leading jockeys as Horacio Karamanos, Mario Pino, Portsmouth’s Ryan Fogelsonger and Rosie Napravnik. And owners such as all-time track leading winner Ferris Allen from Varina. A quick aside: His father, Bert, also was a trainer of note, At his memorial service, when it was over, they played the record of Roy Rogers singing, “Happy Trails.” How original — and fitting — was that? “… until we meet again …”
• Back to Jacobs. Originally, attempts to build the track hit all kinds of snags including lawsuits. Jacobs came to the rescue with an infusion of cash that led some of his harshest critics-to-be to bow down in verbal gratitude. But the millionaire son of former Cleveland Indians owner Richard Jacobs (1996 net worth: $875 million) quickly drew the ire of the horsemen as well as the commission in a war that had no winner. Jeff Jacobs became something of a recluse when it came to Colonial Downs. However, when he did appear, usually for the Virginia Derby, we’d talk and he would say things like he was going buy a farm nearby, or he was going to plow the track under, or he was going to sell it, etc. Eventually, he did try to get about $60 million for the track and its 345 acres, apparently settling for about a third of that while his Jacobs Entertainment, Ltd., was building casinos around the country.

When he finally turned in his parimutuel license to the state in October of 2014, Jacobs said he had no immediate plans for the place “except to keep the grass cut.” He’s now 66 and recently was granted a license to open the first sports book in Colorado.

• The 2020 schedule will run six weeks and was changed to Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays — post time 5:30 p.m. — with the hope of getting more simulcast interest. The $200,000 Virginia Derby will be under the lights Sept. 1. The pandemic has hurt Colonial Downs, too. There has been little money coming in which will put a lot of pressure on the track to make good its promise of an average daily handle of $340,000. That’s about $150,000 less than last year’s pre-COVID-19 racing. “It’s going to be terribly difficult. It will be a grind,” said Derby Bill. “Everyone is paranoid [because of the virus], and you can’t have fun if you have to stay away from people.”

Then again, more and more people aren’t betting on site anyway. Watson sees the new law supporting wagering on other sports, too, which could have a negative impact on more than just horse racing. “More people will bet more money, and more will go broke. It will benefit Virginia — and the politicians — with more tax revenue … and will come from people who can’t afford to lose it,” he said.