9/11: Remember how racing stood up after attack on America

Long before he was in charge of the Jockeys’ Guild, Terry Meyocks was president of the New York Racing Association. At about the same time 20 years ago, Geoffrey Russell was promoted to run the sales team at Keeneland, where he had already worked for five years.

When he rolled into work on the second Tuesday of September in 2001, Meyocks might have expected a light day, even though it was a turbulent time at NYRA. It is just that there were no races that afternoon. If anything, he was focused on the Breeders’ Cup coming to Belmont Park the following month.

Russell, however, was very busy that day. He was preparing for the second session of the September Yearling Sale at Keeneland.

Then at 8:46 a.m. EDT on Sept. 11, 2001, everything changed.

“I was in my office at Belmont,” Meyocks told Horse Racing Nation in a phone conversation this week. “A security guard came in and told me that I better turn on the TV. Or go on the roof and see what was happening.”

Fifteen miles away, the site was as clear as day. The first of four hijacked airplanes that terrorists turned into murder weapons had just crashed into the World Trade Center. The plume of smoke and dust in Lower Manhattan could be seen from Long Island for days.

About 600 miles away in Kentucky, Russell was quickly alerted to what was going on in New York.

“Ryan Mahan, our senior auctioneer, called me and said a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center,” Russell said in a separate call this week. “I just assumed it was somebody in a Cessna who had a heart attack and crashed, to be honest. We turned on the television down in my office in the sales pavilion. We both stood together, and we watched the second plane go in. We both just looked at each other in shock.”

Like every other sport in America – like everything else in America – horse racing hit pause in response to the deadliest act of terrorism in the nation’s history. Races at Belmont Park and tracks across the continent were put on hold. So was the sale at Keeneland.

“What I remember most about the day was the eerie silence on the sales grounds,” Russell said.

The September Yearling Sale typically begins on a Monday, when most tracks are on a break from racing. That was the case Sept. 10, 2001, when the sport’s heavy hitters converged on Lexington, Ky.

“During the sale, the atmosphere and the buzz that goes around the sales ground is phenomenal,” Russell said. “We had that on the Monday. On Tuesday it was just silence.”

And with a catch in his voice and a pause to gather himself, Russell said, “It was very poignant, to be honest.”

The second day of the two-week sale was scheduled to start at 10 a.m., barely one hour after the first plane struck the World Trade Center. And one minute after the first tower crumbled to the ground.

“When we polled both buyers and sellers, sellers didn’t want to sell, and buyers wanted to buy,” Russell said. “But then when the towers collapsed, everybody knew what had happened. We just needed to take a breath. And so we postponed the sale for a day.”

At the tracks, even though there were plenty of horses in backside stables with trainers and jockeys ready to go, the very idea of inviting a grieving public to bet on horses was a non-starter.

Racing was suspended indefinitely. So were games in other sports. With an immediate ban on air travel, Major League Baseball and the college football and the NFL were put on what turned out to be a one-week hold.

Unknown at the time was how long it would be before spectator events could resume.

“While we were talking about racing ourselves in cancelling the next several days at Belmont, we were trying to figure out what we were going to do next for the Breeders’ Cup,” Meyocks said. “When were we going to run it?”

The mood of the country was evolving rapidly. So, too, were security concerns. Was anyone confident that an international sports event could be brought to Long Island only 46 days after America came under attack? It was only a week after 9/11 when it was made clear the Breeders’ Cup would go forward.

“Obviously, on the morning of Sept. 11, the world changed,” Breeders’ Cup president D.G. Van Clief Jr. said in a written statement. “It certainly changed our outlook on the 2001 World Thoroughbred Championships. But it is very important for us to stay with our plan. We’d like it to be a celebration and a salute to the people of New York.”

That mandate came the day before racing resumed at Belmont Park. Nearly 20 years later, Meyocks remembered being optimistic about hosting the Breeders’ Cup as scheduled.

“We had a good rapport with the local police department, the New York Police Department and state police, because we all deal with the Belmont Stakes,” Meyocks said. “If we were going to have the first major sporting event since 9/11, we wanted to make sure the security was exceptional and that we had the utmost confidence in moving forward with a safe event.”

As behind-the-scenes planning for the Breeders’ Cup unfolded in the days and weeks after the attacks, the sale resumed right away on Wednesday, Sept. 12.

“The September sale is the barometer of the Thoroughbred industry, and it’s how people make their livings,” Russell said. “So we postponed it for a day and brought it back on Wednesday.”

Always conspicuous among the buyers at Keeneland, Sheikh Mohammed arrived in his role as the head of Godolphin. In the blush of the attacks, his responsibility as the ruler of Dubai reinforced his position as a visible leader from the Arab world. He wasted no time making it clear that he stood in polar opposition to the Al-Qaeda terrorists.

“We think this was a cowardly act against civilians, and we are 100 percent against it,” he said in a quote picked up by The Associated Press. “We are 100 percent with America, and we will do anything we can to get these people, to get justice.”

With that flourish of a statement and the Sheikh’s $5 million donation to the American Red Cross, the sale resumed. Russell said the feeling was still mostly sullen until an iconic horseman from Maryland changed the mood.

“Laddie Dance and his wife Jeanne Dance bought a horse for $1 million,” Russell said. “Then Laddie came in to talk to me, and he said, ‘OK, I’ve got the sale rolling now.’ And he did. Once people got over it, they just battened down the hatches and got going.”

The restoration of normalcy in New York sports was going to take a while longer. It would be 10 days before Mike Piazza would hit the decisive home run in the Mets’ first home game after the attacks. The Yankees would get to the World Series, but President George W. Bush’s stoic first pitch before Game 3 in the Bronx was a full three days after the Breeders’ Cup would take place at Belmont Park. It has been said those races were the first truly international sports event after 9/11.

“We had a lot of European owners and trainers and fans coming, too,” Meyocks said. “Considering everything, it went smoothly. We had snipers on the roof, so that wasn’t common. At the same time we felt secure and safe, and I think so did the fans.”

By then the National Thoroughbred Racing Association had established a charity fund to raise money for families of the victims of the attacks. Nearly one-third of the $6 million gathered during one fund-raiser came again from Sheikh Mohammed.

Finally, the last Saturday of October arrived. On a 50-degree afternoon at Belmont Park, the Breeders’ Cup was christened with a ceremony featuring jockeys carrying the flags of the world. Firefighters and police officers were also involved. The list of winning owners and trainers and riders who were there was truly international.

“We had a major influx of European horses, and European horses did very well that day,” Meyocks said.

European connections won three of the first seven Breeders’ Cup races, and Americans won four. The eighth and final championship, the $4 million Classic, turned into a duel between the French star Sakhee and the reigning U.S. champion Tiznow. The climax was unforgettable. So was Tom Durkin’s call on NBC.

“The American horse of the year and the Arc winner are heads apart with a furlong to go in the Classic. On the outside, Sakhee. Tiznow fights on. Here’s the wire. Desperately close. Tiznow wins it for America!”

“There was a lot of hype with that – for America,” Meyocks said. “But the Europeans had a pretty good day themselves. It was a great day of racing.”

It was also one of many punctuation marks on 9/11. A period, perhaps, for Meyocks. At Keeneland, it was a comma.

“We’ve had depressions, and we’ve had financial crashes,” Russell said. “But 9/11 will always be a very sore spot with me. I probably couldn’t tell you the years the financial crises happened, but I’ll always remember where I was and what I did on 9/11 in 2001. It’s burned into your memory bank.”

Even though he was not as close as Meyocks was to the destruction of the World Trade Center, Russell still found himself within arm’s length of the tragedy.

“We had friends and clients who were in the building,” he said. “We had to deal with things like that, too. People couldn’t get ahold of people up there, because the cell services were out. It was just a very long and eerie day.”

On the day the Twin Towers fell, both Meyocks on Long Island and Russell in Kentucky were fortunate that they got to make their normal commutes back home.

“All of a sudden in the afternoons, you started to see American flags fly at people’s consignments,” said Russell, who announced his retirement from Keeneland this year. “People were banding around together to give each other support and comfort. It was a testament to everybody in this country as well as our industry. It was like we got kicked in the gut, but now we just needed to stand up and get going again.”