| What can we find for you? |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Read the latest news headlines, browse our classifieds, and more. Start receiving your copy of the Gilmer Mirror today! |
McNair is a busy manBy ELWYN HENDERSON Houston Texans team owner Bob McNair is a very busy man these days. Not only was he preparing for the NFL Draft last week, he’s also preparing to have three of his thoroughbred race horses run in three major races this coming weekend. On Friday, May 2nd, he has Country Star, a three-year-old filly entered in the Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs in Louisville. She will be one of the favorites to win that race. The next day, Saturday, May 3rd, he has Cowboy Cal running as one of the favored horses in the Kentucky Derby. That same day, Braydon’s Pass running in England’s first leg of their Triple Crown, the 2000 Guineas. He has won multiple stakes and graded stakes in England, and will be favored to win that race. The story of how Cowboy Cal got his name is very interesting. According to Mr. McNair, it all started with the four year old son of friends of the McNair’s coming down with liver cancer in the 1960’s. “He’s really named after our son Cal, but also in memory of a young friend of ours who at the age of four developed liver cancer. His name was John Law. John’s father, Dr. Law is a Presbyterian minister. He and I went to college together. They were living in North Carolina. When their son became ill, they brought him down to M.D. Anderson for treatment. When they would come down, they would stay with us, and so when little John saw Cal, who at that time was about seven or eight years old, he wore this cowboy outfit, and he’d wear it every day, and you couldn’t get it off of him. Little John called him Cowboy Cal. We thought it would be very appropriate to name this horse Cowboy Cal in memory of John Law. There is a memorial fund set up at M.D. Anderson for John Wall in his memory. Whatever earnings we win in the Derby from Cowboy Cal, we’re gonna donate those to the John Law fund at M.D. Anderson hospital. There’s a lot of excitement, a lot of reason to want to see Cowboy Cal win. Dr. Law and his wife Millie, who went to school with my wife Millie are coming over from North Carolina to the Derby and they’ll be our guests there, so it’s going to be an exciting time. We can hardly wait.” McNair continued, “Cowboy Cal is trained by Todd Fletcher, who has been the top trainer, I think, for the last three years in a row. Todd thinks that Cowboy Cal is probably his best three year old. Cowboy Cal has a running style that’s well suited for the Derby. He likes to run a little off the lead. He’s what you call a “stalker”, and hopefully, he’ll be three or four lengths off the lead in maybe the second line of horses. He has a good finishing kick second gear that a lot of the horses don’t have. Depending on his post position and how the race sets up, he could be a formidable contender. The Derby has twenty horses in it, and with twenty horses, it makes it a very, very difficult race. Quite often the best horse does not win, it’s the horse that gets the best trip. It really makes it wide open and very unpredictable. We hope we get a good post position, and we hope the race sets up well for him.” gilmergreene@gmail.com |
