2009 Hollywood Gold Cup Winner

February 6 - Awesome Gem

I've had the pleasure of painting a few hundred graded stakes winners and I've worked with so many truly kind and generous owners, but one man will always be remembered with the greatest of respect. Clyde Haugen was a friend, a kindred spirit, a man who loved horse racing and especially the ones he had "pieces" of. Clyde owned horses with West Point Thoroughbreds, somewhere around 20 different horses but without question the one that was his pride and joy was Awesome Gem.

He was the only client that lived in the same town as me, Indian Harbour Beach. It was a fluke that we ever met. I played on a co-ed softball team in 2007, our third base woman was also a flight attendant for Delta. On a flight, she saw this man wearing a Del Mar hat and started talking horses with Clyde. She asked Clyde if he knew me, he said no, but knew of me and wanted to meet me. She set it up for Clyde and me to meet and there was an instant bond.

Clyde would have me come over to his house. He showed me his horse room that was filled with photos of all his West Point horses, but it was Gem that made his eyes light up. For a couple years, every time Gem raced, Clyde was there, as he followed his favorite horse all over the country.

Clyde passed away in late 2008. He had fought cancer for nearly 20 years, but you'd never know anything was wrong as his attitude was always the most positive. Clyde was in Boston for a speaking engagement with his trip continuing from there to Hong Kong to watch Gem race. He passed away the day he was supposed to fly there.

Clyde was under the impression that I only painted Grade 1 winners . . . and Awesome Gem just never scored that G1 at that point. Clyde finally asked me if a Grade 2 was good enough to paint Gem. I wanted to tell Clyde that G1 criteria was something he imposed but I told him, I'd be honored to paint Gem for him. I mean, Clyde had already had a carousel horse made of Awesome Gem . . . how many Grade 1 winners have one of those?

We were figuring out exactly how we wanted me to paint Gem, the final details were to be made when he returned from Hong Kong.

One detail we had settled on was to use Jeff Bloom as the jockey in the painting. Jeff had been a jockey but was Clyde's contact for West Point. Jeff and I shared being called by Clyde as the "sons he never wanted." (Keep in mind, Clyde had five daughters and no sons.)

When Clyde passed, he was cremated and had prearranged that some of his ashes would ride a race in a jockey's boot at Santa Anita. After the race, the jockey returned to the finish line and dumped Clyde's ashes into the track.

In January of 2009, there was a memorial held at his house on a canal. At a set time, there was a toast made with his favorite wine Chateau DuPape. Clyde had arranged for a case to be there when this day came. Then, as the toast was made, we were informed that 4 other celebrations of Clyde's life were toasting around the world at the exact same time, there were cases of Chateau DuPape at all locations . You see, this old former fighter jet pilot had become a business mentor and had successful understudies in the US, the Orient, South American, and Europe. Clyde will always be part of my life and whenever I think of Awesome Gem, I think of Clyde.

Awesome Gem is retired now after a long, successful career on the track. He resides at Old Friends in Georgetown, KY and when I do see him, I like whispering "Clyde loves you." in his ear.

Oh, by the way, Awesome Gem did finally win his Grade 1 in the Hollywood Gold Cup and this painting was commissioned by Terry Finley. When Terry called me about painting this horse, I know I choked up just talking about painting Gem. Thank you, Terry and West Point because without you, I probably would have never met Clyde and been the "son he never wanted".

If a great racehorse is one that wins a single defining race, a beloved racehorse is one that keeps coming back, year after year, ready to run his honest race. Awesome Gem belonged firmly in the second category. A bay gelding foaled in February 2003 in Kentucky and bred by Catesby W. Clay and Peter J. Callahan, he was sired by Awesome Again — winner of the 1998 Breeders' Cup Classic and Belmont Stakes hero Tiznow's chief rival as a stallion of his era — out of the Pentelicus mare Piano. Campaigned by West Point Thoroughbreds and trained on the West Coast by Craig Dollase, he was a sturdy, sound colt who turned into a sturdier, sounder gelding, and that durability is what allowed his story to unfold the way it did.

He emerged as a graded-stakes-class three-year-old, taking the San Fernando Stakes (G2) at Santa Anita in 2007, and gave West Point its first million-dollar earner with a thunderous closing third behind Curlin in the 2007 Breeders' Cup Classic at Monmouth — a race in which he ran past Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense over a sloppy track and only narrowly missed second. From there he became a fixture of the older-horse division. He won the Hawthorne Gold Cup (G2) in 2009, then the race that came to define him: the 2010 Hollywood Gold Cup (G1), defeating Rail Trip at Hollywood Park to give a horse who had run in some of the country's best fields a Grade 1 of his own. He kept on running into his late campaigns, winning the Lone Star Handicap (G3) and the Longacres Mile (G3) in 2011 — at age eight — and showing no measurable drop in class.

He retired in 2012 with a record that read 52 starts, 11 wins, 15 seconds, 7 thirds, and earnings of just over $2.88 million — a campaign whose length and consistency are increasingly rare in the modern American racing economy. He spent his pensioned years at Old Friends Equine in Georgetown, Kentucky, where he greeted visitors as one of the farm's best-known residents. Awesome Gem was never the most famous horse of his generation, but he was, for several seasons, one of the most reliably good ones — and in a sport that often celebrates the brilliant flash, there's a quieter kind of greatness in a horse who runs in 52 races and brings something to almost every one of them.

Sources:

• Awesome Gem — Wikipedia

• Awesome Gem — Horse Racing Nation

• Awesome Gem — Old Friends Equine

• Awesome Gem — West Point Thoroughbreds

• Awesome Gem — Pedigree Query