POPES IN THE BREEDING SHED

The following unabridged Chapter from Kevin Conley's STUD
is provided through the courtesy and with the permission of the
author. Please visit the website at http://www.studslife.com.

For a .PDF file click here.

Continued from page 2: You'd think that with all the juicy elements in the Bluegrass - sex, violence, new money, old money, fancy houses, heavy accents, beautiful scenery, sex - that Hollywood would have fallen in love
with horse country long ago. It has not. I turned up just one
dramatic treatment of the breeding world, a Cheryl Ladd vehicle
that aired in February 1988, on CBS. It's called, not surprisingly,
Bluegrass, and it's hard to find.

But the McLeans have a dusty, old promo copy, because Crest-
wood Farm appears in the production, giving the film's only
credible performance. Crestwood plays Outlaw Farm, the place
that Ladd and her band of plucky, shucksy employees rescue from
bankruptcy on the strength of a single horse. The Outlaw staff
includes a dipso farm manager, an ex-con groom, and a teenage
exercise jockey who gives birth to the ex-con's baby just months
before she rides Sir Outlaw to victory in the Kentucky Derby. The
film is, according to Pope Junior farfetched and hokey and full of
accents he has never heard in his life.

In the movie, the fate of Outlaw Farm hangs on a loan that Ladd
tries to get from Mickey Rooney, who offers her the $500,000 she
needs on the following terms: `If Sir Outlaw wins the Kentucky
Derby, then you'll pay double. And if he loses, I'll take over the
farm.' The closest that Pope Senior ever came to taking a gamble
like that was when he and his wife sold their house just before they
moved to Crestwood Farm. He used the money to buy horses. `My
wife didn't know it at the time,' he says, in a mild spirit of mischief,
the way you might report that you let the boys stay up late to watch
the ball game.

The McLeans sound so commonsensical when they talk about
the risks of the horse business that listening to them on the subject is
almost soothing. They have partners in nearly all the horse purchases
they make at the auctions, and the partnerships buy four or five
horses at a time (`a basket of mares,' they call it). `It's good to spread
the risk,' Pope Senior says. `Because, inevitably, if you've got one,
then you either hit a home run or lose completely.'

They talk easily about the intricacies of the business. But they're
not so comfortable talking about their success. When I ask a few
questions about Crestwood's solid record and how grateful their
partners must feel about it, Pope Junior says, `Well, it's a risky
business and - We've been able to at least protect people and maybe
- I think we've done pretty well.'
The father interrupts, and is even more eloquently unpromo-
tional: `They seem to keep coming back, so . . . So, we're doing
something, I guess.'

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