Skelly

"Her dad should have shot me," says Tim Hamlin wryly. Needless to say, he had met Nancy at a horseshow. She had just started out on her veterinary studies. "And she quit school to come to a little town in northwest Iowa to help me," Hamlin recalls. "This was '84, we were kids, had no money. We lived in a single wide trailer house for seven years. Nancy would get up at 4 a.m. to make donuts, so we could buy horsefeed." Eventually they found a filly that emboldened a...

One of the most progressive horses to race during this year's meet at Oaklawn Park, Red Lane Thoroughbreds' Skelly (Practical Joke) took Saturday's $500,000 GIII Count Fleet Sprint H. by the scruff of the neck and never gave any of his rivals a chance, as he led past every pole for an impressive first victory at the stakes and graded stakes level. Having earned the right to contest a race of this caliber off big-figure allowance scores in the slop Feb. 25 and over a fast strip Mar. 17, the...