Letter to the Editor: Perry Lefko

For the past few days, I have been writing about the life, and sadly, the passing of entertainer David Cassidy. He was someone I knew briefly having written a story about him about seven years ago.

One of his trainers, Arthur Silvera, who is based at Woodbine, is a friend of mine and put me in touch with David to write about his interest in horse racing. Arthur forwarded the message to David to call me.

“Hi, Perry, it's David Cassidy,” he said over the phone when he called.

That ranked second only to the time I received a call from Donald Trump to interview him about a book I was writing about Doug Flutie, who was one of his players when he owned a franchise in the United States Football League. That is the same Donald Trump who is now President of the United States.

David impressed me with his knowledge of breeding, going into great detail about lineage. He wasn't just a famous entertainer who was in the game for the show.

I wrote the article for a Canadian-based publication called Down The Stretch Newspaper, whose editor, Peter Gross, started it after a couple he knew won $16 million in a lottery and gave him the funds to start the paper. Peter is a longtime Toronto broadcaster who loves racing and is particularly fond of betting. His paper reflects his personality, which is to say it's extremely funny and irreverent. Peter once “starred” in a film called Rip Off about four high school friends who essentially form a band and live a communal life, which is to say they smoked weed.

But I digress.

In 2010, when trainer Arthur Silvera had an unnamed 2-year-old Canadian-bred gelding by Max Forever he was training for David, I suggested the name Peter The Gross, a kind of opposite of Peter The Great. Arthur proposed the idea to Cassidy, who good-naturedly agreed. Peter The Gross debuted in a $40,000 maiden claiming race going six furlongs. During the course of the race, track announcer Dan Loiselle said, “Peter The Gross is running with short, choppy-luck strides like his namesake.”

The horse finished up the track and couldn't win for trying in 10 races at Woodbine, although he did finish second once. When the racing season ended, the horse was sold by Silvera to an Ohio-based trainer, William Hackney, a horsemen in his 70s. Prior to Peter's first start, a friend asked Hackney if the breeder was the famous entertainer.

“I didn't know that David Cassidy had anything to do with horses,” he told me during the interview.

Apprised that Cassidy has been involved in horse racing as a fan, owner and breeder for several decades and had some success, Hackney was impressed.

“It's like a disease,” Hackney said of the racing bug. “He's on a different end than we are. We're hands on with everything. I'm sure he's got the knowledge, but it's different. I've been around these things since I was a little tiny three- or four-year-old kid. We always had horses on the farm. You pick up a lot of stuff.”

Peter The Gross did little in his first start at Mountaineer Park, was given a layoff of four months after that and bombed as the 4-5 favorite in his return. He placed second in his next start and on May 21, 2011, history was made as Peter The Gross led from gate to wire, breaking his maiden and 60% of the $17,600 purse. He rewarded his backers with a $9.40 payoff. Twenty days later, Peter was entered in a sprint allowance race and sent postward at 14.50-1 odds. This time he came from far off the pace and dead-heated for first.

Peter The Gross had turned into Peter The Great.

He went on to win one more race in his career, which consisted of 56 starts, in which he recorded three wins, nine seconds and four thirds and total earnings of $30,903.

Don't know if David Cassidy ever made it to Mountaineer Park, but one of his homebreds did and he made everyone get happy!