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Tuesday, December 18, 2001

Visitors eager to take in harness races

By AUDREY PARENTE | News-Journal Staff Writer

DELEON SPRINGS — In the early-morning mist, beneath live oak trees draped with Spanish moss, horse-drawn single-seat carts meander onto a mile-long clay track at Spring Garden Ranch Training Center.

The young, harnessed steeds trot clockwise until they are coaxed by their trainers to change direction.

The horses' nostrils flare, and they bolt to life.

The pace picks up and puffs of orange clay dust churn up behind the carts' spinning wheels.

These are Standardbred horses -- trotters and pacers raised specifically for harness racing events sanctioned by the United States Trotting Association.

They are brought to Spring Garden Ranch annually to train and qualify for the official summer race season at tracks across the country.

During the training season, activity at Spring Garden Ranch will attract up to 2,000 spectators daily, especially during qualifying races at 11 a.m. each Tuesday from Jan. 15 through late May.

The ranch charges no admission and offers a full-service restaurant.

Spectators can bring lawn chairs and spread blankets on the lawn surrounding the track.

Recently, Becky Rodi, a British college student, and her dad, Dom Rodi of Glenwood, watched the trotters from wooden picnic tables overlooking the track.

"My daughter is an equestrian lover who made the British dressage (exhibition horse riding) team some years ago. We came here thinking she could ride but found out that they are breaking in the young trotters. We stayed to watch," Dom Rodi said.

"I have seen the races on TV and just didn't realize the speed they go. They are so graceful, and really beautiful."

Rodi said he'll be back when races begin in January.

"There's nothing like this in Britain. They don't bring the horses to a racetrack to train. They have private stables with their own little tracks, so you can't go and see them and have a cup of coffee," Becky Rodi said.

Jeanne-Marie Basile, co-owner of Spring Garden Ranch, said that until a few years ago, the only time she had ever seen a horse was "the mounted police during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade."

In Manhattan, she owned a construction company but left it all behind in 1994 to take over the ranch from her parents, who had it since the late 1980s.

"Spring Garden Ranch, at the turn of the century, was a 10,000-acre cattle farm owned by a colonel from the Civil War. Through the course of years, sections were sold off, and neighbors raced their wagons for fun -- a gentlemen's sport," Basile said.

During the 1940s, about 40 acres were turned into a Standardbred horse facility with about 60 horse stalls.

Now, there's 148 acres with a restaurant, a mobile home park with 38 sites, 18 barns, two racetracks and pasture covering about 50 acres.

Dennis Eckert, a retired horse trainer, became a partner in 1998. Since that time, the owners have coaxed the influx of horses to more than 600 annually.

The horses, some owned by such celebrities as George Steinbrenner, Cheryl Tiegs and Bo Derek, along with Hall of Fame trainers such as Charles Sylvester and Chris Boring, bring about 1,500 harness-racing-related employees and their families to the area for seven months.

Among the part-time residents is Bob Tice, who arrived at the ranch in November with his wife, Joyce, to set up a tack business in a small leased building.

Inside his cramped store are the smells of new leather and strong coffee from an urn for customers to share. Tice's unhurried manner, gray moustache and slight limp belie his skills. He can splice a new piece of leather onto a frayed harness and stitch it together in no time.

"This is our third year down here. We supply all the needs of Standardbred horses, from food supplements and liniments, to equipment and supplies for job carts and harnesses, protective covers for the (horses') knees, shins and ankles, Murphy blinds, head poles, and we rebuild wheels," said Tice, who has been in the horse business since 1968.

Tice said those who come with the horses to Spring Garden Ranch are like family.

"Everybody (in harness racing) is a big family, a very close-knit community," Tice said. "Horsemen have a subculture of their own, with every element of society, from the most wealthy to the least wealthy. I may be at the bottom of that, and horse owners and some trainers are very wealthy, but the common bond brings us together."

One of the owners who brings his horses to the ranch is Charles Keller, son of a 1930s Yankee pitcher nicknamed "King Kong" Keller.

Keller said he has been in the Standardbred business since 1955 and hires Brett Bittle, a nephew, to train his horses.

"I was a CPA. I spend almost all of my time on horses now. I come down here in the winter and jog the horses. We used to do it in Maryland. As an owner, it's kind of a special treat to be in Florida for the winter," said Keller, who has a home in New Smyrna Beach.

HICI Special Report — Year of the Horse: Horses, Horoscopes and Holidays

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