A man, a horse and the total eclipse of the sun

Shelbyville, Ind.

Keepin It Classy has seen a lot in his eight years. The same may be said of Tim Eggleston in his 45 years.

Monday afternoon was different. A lot different.

“He’s looking at the sky. He’s looking like, ‘What’s going on?’ ”

That was Eggleston, the horse trainer, talking about Keepin It Classy, the 8-year-old gelding. If it had been the other way around, that really would have been something.

Eggleston was transfixed, too, by what was going on in the sky above Horseshoe Indianapolis. The moon took a four-minute cut in front of the sun, creating what looked like a heavenly drain where all the light got sucked in.

“It’s more than I expected,” said Eggleston, who has the distinction of training Thoroughbreds and quarter horses and had Indiana’s best one of each last year. “I’m not into astronomy and things like that, but that was cool.”

The total eclipse of the sun was one of those once-in-a-lifetime events that monopolized the day for millions of earthlings. Up the road at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where there tends to be a lot of noise every spring, there was a packed grandstand. Down the road at Indiana University, where classes were canceled, Memorial Stadium was packed.

At Horseshoe Indy, an untold number of people showed up for an opening day that came 1 1/2 weeks sooner than normal. Why not start the season early and ride the celestial coattails? There were food trucks and a live band and Thoroughbred races early and quarter-horse races late and a sky show in between. The mood was bouncy and lively and full of anticipation.

At Eggleston’s barn just north of the track, it was quieter. The music was distant, there was work going on inside the barn, and the horses were going about their usual afternoon business. One gelding in particular.

“Typically he’d be sleeping this time of day,” Eggleston said. “But there’s a little more activity on a race day. He’s more of a lounger now.”

The son of Stay Thirsty who came to the barn three years ago as Eccleston was branching into Thoroughbreds was shuffling back and forth in his stall as the moon took a bigger and bigger bite of the sun. It was still very bright, but there was a yellowish hue to the slowly fading light.

Some of the barn workers stopped what they were doing to step outside and experience the eclipse. Eggleston brought some of the protective eye shades that were giveaways for fans. Five people were standing at the corner of the building occasionally looking up, all the while exchanging small talk.

Eggleston had time to talk about the best horse he had in his barn. He grew up in Michigan and started his racing career there until they stopped racing in Michigan. Next stop, Indiana, where in the fall of 2022 he was united with Nobody Listens, a gelding who won 14 races including the Grade 3 Turf Monster Stakes last fall at Parx Racing.

With five stakes wins to his name and $704,230 in earnings for connections led by owners Matt Kwiatkowski, Jason Kaylor and Roger Browning, the gray son of Conveyance was ticketed for the Breeders’ Cup.

And then ...

“He got killed in a trailer accident on the way home from the graded stakes,” Eggleston said. “They had a little construction zone. Something happened with a semi. It wasn’t a physical wreck, but they had to get around the (road work). Somehow he got down in the trailer and cut a main artery in a leg.”

The subject changed, but the story of that experience was not going away.

Twenty minutes remained until the eclipse would go total. Looking through the eye shades, the sun was dwindling to a quarter crescent.

A writer’s previous experience with a total eclipse was shared. It was the summer of 1991. An 800-mile drive out of San Diego down the Baja Peninsula in Mexico to Ciudad Constitución and a farm where there was livestock. There were horses. There were about 30 people there half a lifetime ago.

The memory plays tricks. It said it would get darker a lot sooner before the eclipse. Not this time. It said the temperature would drop and that the horses would get very still.

A peek at Keepin It Classy looked like validation. He stood at the barn door with his ears perked and a steely gaze straight ahead.

“He’s watching this horse,” Eggleston said, pointing to a runner who was coming back to the barn.

False alarm.

The countdown to totality reached 10 minutes and then five. And then a few things happened in rather rapid succession. An exterior light programmed to go on at night lit up in mid-afternoon. The temperature dropped from 70-something to 60-something.

Inside a minute to go, and Eggleston noticed something different about Keepin It Classy. That was when he said, “He’s looking at the sky. He’s looking like, ‘What’s going on?’ ”

Suddenly there was a crescendo of noise from the crowd, muffled by the distance between the grandstand and the barn. A look to the sky no longer needed the protective shades. Blinkers off, the eclipse had gone total.

For the next four minutes, there was very little talking. Keepin It Classy looked like a statue. At least he did when the video was reviewed. A phone camera had been blindly aimed in the direction of the horses while human eyes were transfixed on the images a quarter-million and 93 million miles away.

One ruby red dot was at the bottom of the umbral shadow, and it developed into Baily’s beads. Amateur astronomers know that is the cue to stop looking directly at the sun. The headline act was over.

Within three minutes, Keepin It Classy was shuffling around his stall again, poking his head at a hay ball to his right and then peering out the door to see if there was anything interesting in the stalls to his left. He was back to normal.

What would have happened if he had been training while the sun literally was overshadowed by the moon?

“I don’t know,” said Eggleston, who like pretty much anyone had not experienced a regimen of handling horses during total eclipses. “I think probably nothing. If they can see outside (the barn), he would be checking it out. But this was definitely different.”

Within minutes, the sky was bright again, and the temperature was climbing again, and birds in the area were chirping like it was morning again, and things rapidly got back to normal.

Nevertheless, it was one of those remember-where-you-were experiences that Eggleston will not forget. Neither will anyone in his party of five who shared it with him along with a few life stories.

“That changes your outlook on things a little bit,” Eggleston said. “When’s the next one?”