Old Friends’ Blowen turns page on birthday to new friend

Georgetown, Ky.

Michael Blowen may be forgiven for being like new parent who finally gets some time away from the baby. That night out is a welcome relief, but the whole time is spent worrying whether the babysitter can handle it.

“They say something that would make me a little nervous, and that wouldn’t work,” he said this week.

In this case his baby is Old Friends. In the realm of Thoroughbred aftercare farms, this is where Shangri-La meets Disneyland. Blowen is James Hilton. He is Walt Disney. And 20 years after the birth of his baby, he is retiring.

Appropriately, like the nearly 300 horses living well on the farm he built from scratch, Blowen observes his birthday in January. As in this weekend.

“I’m going to be 77 on Saturday,” he said. “I’m working on a memoir, and I’m calling it Final Furlong, because your life changes when you turn for home. You can actually see your expiration date up there somewhere.”

Blowen is a young 77, walking nimbly when he is not using a golf cart to get around Old Friends, which has grown from a one-horse operation to 236 acres. He has not done it alone, but as a combination of latter-day horseman and soft-selling evangelist, Blowen can take credit for building Old Friends into a multimillion-dollar charity.

Realistic about that expiration date, he decided it was time to hand over the keys and the reins. Hundreds of reins. To find the next president and CEO. The babysitter.

“For a few years I looked for people,” Blowen said during an audio tour of Old Friends for Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod. “Some people will be like 80 percent there, 85 percent.”

That was when he made that remark about being nervous. Back to square one.

And then John Nicholson came along. So did his bona fides that include 17 years running Kentucky Horse Park, the multi-purpose megafarm and international competition venue about six miles down Ironworks Road from Old Friends.

“I’ve known John for about 30 years,” Blowen said. “He ran the Horse Park when John Henry was there with all these great horses. He took care of them. I met him actually the first time I set foot in Kentucky when Forego and Bold Forbes were at the Horse Park.”

Nicholson more recently ran the Virginia Horse Center and was wrapping up some work as a consultant when Blowen came calling.

“He was looking for something, and I just grabbed onto it,” Blowen said. “I said I’m looking for somebody to take over, because I’m getting a little long in the tooth. And also, it’s big now.”

Gone are the days when Blowen and his wife and former newspaper columnist Diane White could handle all the work from their modest farmhouse.

“It’s gone from a mom-and-pop operation where Diane and I could do everything on the golf cart, and feed the horses and everything, to Walmart. It’s a multimillion-dollar business now, and I’m completely out of my element. I’m a 10-cent superfecta guy. I’m not into the big money, and I don’t know how to handle it.”

Nicholson, 64, does not formally take over Old Friends until Feb. 1. Blowen and White are not making an exit. Not at all. They will remain very much involved from the same farmhouse that has been headquarters since they moved to the current property in 2006.

“The key thing to remember is the formula is in place,” Nicholson said this week as he joined the visit to Old Friends that included another member of the media and occasionally White. “The formula has the basis of always putting the horse first. As long as our hearts stay pure to that idea, then it’s just a matter of building on that concept.”

Nicholson has a history of being a builder. The Kentucky Horse Park on his watch added an arena, a stadium, a museum and was the hub for the World Equestrian Games in 2010, the first time they were held away from Europe.

He also knows how to raise money, the biggest task for any charity.

“I look back at what we did at the Kentucky Horse Park and what we did in Virginia,” Nicholson said. “I think if you are creative in how you go not only about things but how you build even new relationships. Building relationships with maybe non-traditional folks that maybe we don’t think about in the racing industry at first glance, and so I’m beginning to think in those terms by taking alternative routes. It has been a successful formula to Kentucky Horse Park and in Virginia and some other endeavors, so I think we’ll take a look at how that might apply here.”

Go back to that Shangri-La analogy. Nicholson’s vision is to take Old Friends to the next level.

“What has happened is that Michael and the team have built Disneyland,” he said. “Now we’ve got to build Disneyworld.”

The best friend

Forest green. That is the uniform of the day so many winter mornings at Old Friends. In the bright sun and the persistent wind and the bracing chill this week, Blowen and Nicholson were sporting winter coats as familiar as the natural ones on the horses in the big meadow.

Blowen’s jacket has the names of dozens of resident horses on the front and back and both sleeves, all stitched in bright yellow Lucida calligraphy. Nicholson’s was more modest with just Old Friends and the Dream Chase Farm designations. It was like Blowen was on Ohio State’s first string with a helmet full of buckeyes, and Nicholson was waiting his turn to earn his.

No matter the season, anyone who ever toured Old Friends either alone or in a big group knows the day begins and ends with that old gray grazing maybe 100 yards behind Blowen’s farmhouse.

“Let’s go see Silver Charm, my favorite horse of all time,” Blowen said. “Actually, he’s my favorite living thing. I have a wife. I have a son. I have a grandson. But everybody’s got those. I’ve got Silver Charm. I mean who can’t have a wife? Who can’t have a son? Who can’t have a grandson? It’s kind of easy.”

Silver Charm turned 30 a couple weeks ago. That is how The Jockey Club sees it with the en masse Jan. 1 birthdays. Blowen prefers to say Silver Charm will be 30 on Feb. 22, the day in 1994 when he was foaled out of Bonnie’s Poker as the Florida-bred son of Silver Buck.

“We’ll have a little party for him,” Blowen said. “He shares a birthday with George Washington, and I’m still trying to figure out who did more for the country.”

Standing with a handful of what he called cookie crumbs for his mostly toothless pride and joy, Blowen looked Silver Charm in the eye and said, “You look like George Washington now that you’re all white.”

Looking great and happy at 30, the winner of the 1997 Kentucky Derby and Preakness and runner-up to fellow Old Friends resident Touch Gold in the Belmont Stakes and Eclipse winner and Hall of Famer and unquestioned ambassador of the farm has taken a shine over the years to human company.

Just don’t pat him.

“He doesn’t like that,” Blowen said. “But he’ll let you kiss him on the nose.”

The conversation turned to memories of that Derby day nearly 27 years ago.

Sent the photo that went with this story, Silver Charm’s trainer Bob Baffert texted back, “Made me famous.”

Racing fans know where they were that day like it was one small step on the moon in 1969 or a miracle on ice in 1980 or maybe Tiger winning The Masters in 2019.

Blowen that day was in New England, where he used to be a movie critic for The Boston Globe.

“I was taking a horse up at Suffolk Downs to run in a $3,500 claiming race the day that he won the Derby,” he said. “I was trying to get the horse into the race so that I could watch the Derby.”

Little did Blowen know that Silver Charm one day would be like a backyard pet for him. That backyard pet seemed to grow weary of the reminiscing this week. Been there, done that. He walked about 40 yards away to stand in the sun and graze on some fresh hay in his field.

A few minutes later, Nicholson strolled over, and the conversation began to move back along the well-tended fence toward the center of the farm. That was when the old boy in the field channeled his past self with a 50-yard burst toward the activity. It might have been just a jog, but the story will be told that Silver Charm’s zoomie was a full gallop.

Not bad for 30.

Finding those dollars

The guides who give tours at Old Friends are volunteers, but the professionals who tend to the horses are paid, as Blowen put it, to “make things easier.”

Veterinarians, however, do a lot of volunteer work at the farm. The older the horses get, the more care they need.

“Fortunately, we have a great relationship with Rood & Riddle, the great veterinary clinic, and that hospital is only 14 minutes from where we are,” Blowen said. “I swear to God, that short distance has saved so many horses’ lives here, because we find out a horse is getting colicky and needs to go to the clinic, we can have them there. From the time we first notice until the time they’re in there and maybe even on the operating table, we can do it all in an hour.”

It is not cheap to take care of horses, especially older horses. And to maintain a big farm. And to bring new residents to their forever home.

Some money comes from racing’s purse structure via the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance to farms all over the country. Otherwise, it comes down to the fundraising that Blowen has spearheaded and that Nicholson hopes to take to another level.

Where money from racing conglomerates and the well-to-do might make the biggest dent in the budget, Blowen said Old Friends could not get by without the dollars donated by the average fan.

“It’s grassroots,” he said. “We have a handful like (horse owners) Samantha Siegel and Susan Chu and the Bafferts and some other people that have money that are really, really supportive,” Blowen said.

He also has heard the stories from visitors who say they will make a donation only to find their talk is as cheap as the check allegedly in the mail. It was just such a promise, normally unrequited, that led to his favorite fundraising moment.

“Four-and-a-half years ago, it would have been around Halloween, I had done four tours, and I was tired,” Blowen said, remembering he just had sat down in his Adirondack chair behind the house with a beer in one hand and past performances in the other.

“Not more than 30 seconds later, a car comes up the driveway,” he said. “I go, ‘Oh, man. OK, fine.’ I walk over to the car and say, ‘Excuse me, can I help?’

“They said, ‘Well, we heard this is a cool place. Can we look around?’

“I said, ‘Well, we’re closed. Can you come back again tomorrow?’

“The guy said, ‘We’re from Fargo, N.D., and we can’t come back tomorrow.’

“They seemed nice, and I said, ‘If you don’t mind me drinking a beer.’ So I got them a beer, and we drove around for I don’t know, about 20 minutes or so.”

Blowen remembered he was keenly aware of bills due at the time for hay and feed, and he had to pay $90,000 by the end of the following month. That was foremost on his mind as the man from North Dakota was saying goodbye.

“He says to me, ‘I want to leave a donation and everything, and I forgot my checkbook.’ And I’m like OK, fine.

“A couple weeks later, I get an email from him saying, ‘I haven’t forgotten about the donation. I’ll be sending you something.’ He didn’t forget. I forgot. I thought he was just blowing me off. I didn’t think he was serious at all.

“The Monday after Thanksgiving, I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to get this money. I go to the mailbox, and there’s an envelope in there, and it’s handwritten on the outside with the address and everything. Inside there’s just a check. There’s no letter. There’s no nothing. You know how much the check was worth? Half a million dollars. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

A legacy cemented

Blowen may not be the boss at Old Friends much longer, but he forever will be the founder, the builder and the driving force to make it the most famous retirement home for racehorses anywhere in the world. It has spawned a second farm in New York and inspired another with the same name in Japan.

It would seem there is a place in the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame for Blowen. The Pillars of Turf section was created for just such off-the-track contributions to the sport.

“That’s very nice of you,” he said when the idea was mentioned. “I told Bob Baffert, ‘Silver Charm may have taken you places, but he has taken me to many, many more.’ I get so much satisfaction just coming out here every day and just seeing these horses.”

That was part of the deal he made to let Nicholson take over Old Friends. He might not make the big decisions anymore, but he still wanted to be near the likes of Lava Man and Channel Maker and Noble Indy and Birdstone and even the ones whose names barely got a whiff of winner’s circles let alone the Hall of Fame.

“I told them when I was retired, I said, ‘Don’t kick me out of the house,’ ” Blowen said. “You can’t kick me out of the house.”

He will travel now and again, usually in the summer to Saratoga.

“People are nice to me and never a problem,” he said. “After three days I get homesick for Kentucky. I have to come back here, because I miss it so much.”