The Latest Chapter to Our Story

I’m not sure if there are many readers of this blog remaining, but if you take some time to read this rather long post, I think you will all understand why I was gone for awhile. When I first started writing this thing, I always said that I would write regardless of whether the news was good or bad. This post will explain our most recent situation, which unfortunately falls on the bad side.

As you will read, our beloved horse suffered a pretty serious injury and I wasn’t quite sure how to put that into words. It took time to come up with a way to tell the story. What you will find is kind of unique and maybe a bit confusing. The ‘story’ was written in the third person from the future. 2014 to be exact. I had to tell our current story in the context of something happier, so this is the direction I went. The quotes you will see are all made up by me, although, they do capture what we were thinking and actually talking about.

As of today, I wanted to let everyone know that In Over My Head is doing well in his recovery. Actually better than we originally hoped, but it will take time. He is a winner and there is no doubt in my mind he will return. We think about him all the time even though he isn’t racing right now.

Lastly, I worked on this story for nearly a month an a half and the day I gave it to Laura and Danny to read and proofread, a package arrived at my door. It was a beautiful crystal plate that had an inscription of the Exit 16W series, Greg and my name along with In Over My Head: 1.51.2. It was Mo’s last win before getting hurt. I was told from a nice guy at the Meadowlands that there wasn’t any trophy for winning a leg of the series so I‘m not quite sure where it came from. Like I said, the timing was pretty strange (on the same day I finished this story), but there are a lot of strange happenings that surround this horse. Anyway, if the person who sent is happens to read this blog, I just want to say thank you. It made our day. It was a beautiful reminder of what Mo is capable of.

Here is our story:

A LONG HARD ROAD TO AN INCREIDBLE RECORD

The summer sun beat down on them as they stood on the rail overlooking the track. The feeling Greg and Shawn had was the same one they had felt many times over the past few years before the pride of their racing stable took to the track. Oddly enough, the tension was even higher today than it was a few weeks earlier, when another one of their horses, Rattle n’ Hum, competed in the $1 million Meadowlands Pace. He finished a respectable fifth. Danny was also there the night of the Meadowlands Pace, but he wasn’t standing with them today. He had other things to tend to. There was a lot of money on the line the night of ‘The Pace’, but that wasn’t the case today. Something bigger than money was at stake today. As the two owners turned around to look at the grouping behind them, including Becky, Laura and numerous other family and friends, they looked at each other and smiled. Four years earlier, no one would have even thought this day would be possible.

Flashback – Early 2010

It was early 2010 when the small group of horse enthusiasts realized that they quite possibly had stumbled upon racing gold. Months earlier, their aptly named horse shocked the racing world by capturing the Windy City Pace. To the outside observer, it was almost a fluky win. The owner of the favorite, If I Can Dream, would later remark that he couldn’t believe that his supremely bred superstar could be beaten by a ‘two nickel horse’ like In Over My Head. Believe it. What In Over My Head (or ‘Mo’ as the owners referred to him as) lacked in gaudy pedigree he more than made up for in heart, guts and a will to win stronger than any other horse he would ever face. Despite the huge win, the Windy City was only one race. The real eye opening performances came the next winter.

Mo had qualified twice at The Meadowlands (finishing 3rd and 1st) in January of 2010 before making his first start of the season against a rather challenging field in the first leg of the Exit 16W series at The Meadowlands. Not unlike many races from In Over My Head’s past, he went off at nearly 10-1 odds. His results didn’t match his odds. He was truly bigger, faster and stronger after taking a couple of months off. After catching a second over trip, he powered home to an open length victory in 1.50.4, besting his previous lifetime mark by nearly two full seconds. In the second leg of the series, he took a somewhat different path to victory, skimming the pylons and using a 26.0 last quarter to claim another win. While it was early in the season, Mo was beginning to have the look of a horse that would be tough for anyone to beat.

The season was scheduled to make its official blast-off in the $88,000 final. The winner’s chunk of that purse ($44,000) would go a long way in paying off the new and more aggressive stakes schedule for Mo, who was literally getting better with every start. He was doing things easily and loving every minute of it. Had he developed into a top open pacer? Probably not, but one could argue he was only a step or two below the superstars who competed in the most prestigious events. There would still be plenty of opportunities for a horse like that to make bushels of money in races all over the Midwest and East. That also provided the owners with opportunities to travel to see him race, which was something they all loved to do very much.

Shawn Swenson, one of the owners, summed up the feeling in early 2010: “That season was painfully short (just two qualifiers and three races), but we at least realized what was going on. We kept telling each other to just enjoy the ride. It was like when your basketball team makes the NCAA tournament as a 12 seed and just keeps winning. It is almost like you are playing on borrowed time. The only thing was, Mo was legit. He was a Cinderella story in the Windy City. Now he was the favorite. It was an incredible role reversal. We never said it outwardly to each other, but we all thought the Exit 16W series was literally the tip of the iceberg. We knew that he was ready to take on almost anybody that year.”

It was the week leading up the Exit 16W Final when things started to get really interesting. The “no name” horse with Wisconsin owners had finally turned some heads. Everyone knew he would be the favorite in the final and some big time owners wanted him for their own stable. In a matter of just four days, owner Greg Carey had received two legit offers to purchase and another one was apparently on the way. The offers were quite large and were enough to make them pause and give serious consideration to parting ways with their beloved superstar. There were a lot of discussions amongst Greg, Shawn, Danny Carey (Greg’s son) and other people who knew the horse.

“I was completely bummed out about the idea of Mo being sold,” admitted Danny. “Since I didn’t have any financial interest in the horse, all I had was…well…the horse. The thought of not being able to watch him race as ours was just depressing. Having that said, I understood the situation and they (Greg and Shawn) had to consider it.”

In the end, they chose not to sell. “No regrets whatsoever,” was Greg’s take after the fact. “We analyzed the situation the same way we did when we bought him. Factored in our costs and profit to that point as well as what we thought he could make in the future. In the end, I think we both wanted to grow our little stable and that would have to come from our own success. Who has a better chance for success than In Over My Head? Nobody. We considered those things as well as the fact we just really didn’t want to get rid of him. There was a strong attachment there by all of us. No doubt about that.”

In an effort to justify leaving a rather large amount of money on the table, the owners loosely considered racing him in the Exit 16W series and then re-contacting the buyers to see if there was still interest. That way, they could enjoy the race they were excited about before having to make any drastic decisions.

“For better or worse, we were really confident that it was his race to lose and we didn’t want to give up that purse money and excitement,” said Swenson. “The reality is that if he had won, we wouldn’t have sold him anyway. We were just trying to justify our decision in the moment a little bit. We all talked about the potential downside too. I even had a conversation with my Dad about it. He wasn’t picking sides, just making sure that we considered all angles of the situation. I remember him saying ‘I know this isn’t fun to think about, but if he gets hurt tomorrow and he can’t ever race again, are you guys OK with your decision?’ Our answer as a resounding yes.”

That answer would be put to the test.

The Race – February 20, 2010

Everything was setting up perfectly. Greg and Danny had made the trip to the Meadowlands after a long day of being stuck in the Detroit airport. They were joined by Ed Bardowski, another horse owner who has had some stock with John Butenshcoen over the years. Shawn had made it back to his house and was watching the race on the big screen (he had purchased TVG the day before so that could happen) with Laura, his brother Kirk and their friend Liz. Mo was the favorite in the program and the favorite as the horses approached the wire. Sears was in the bike. All that was left was one minute and fifty seconds of formality and this whole season could officially take-off.

The start, however, was rather perilous. The group left en masse and In Over My Head was stuck four wide around the first turn. Even after that, there wasn’t any hole to fall into. He would have to gut it out on the outside. Things did look to be on the up and up after Lisagain emerged as the horse going first over and Mo happily took his cover. While the first half wasn’t pretty, he did have a second over trip. In the final turn, however, it began to be clear that something was not normal.

“He was gapping cover noticeably,” Swenson noticed from his perch in the living room in Madison. “He is such a relaxed horse that he will at times get a little too relaxed. John (Butenschoen) has told me that numerous times. However, the driver will get his attention and he’ll be right back where he needs to be within a couple of steps. That wasn’t the case though. He was losing contact with Lisagain. It was clear something was wrong.”

Greg and Danny, watching from the rail at the Meadowlands didn’t have the same perspective. “I didn’t realize that until we watched the replay,” Greg said. “When we saw him tip out coming into the stretch, Danny and I figured it was just a matter of time before he was passing everyone one by one. He was a long ways back due to the trip and we weren’t sure he would get to Pacinello (the eventual winner), but just assumed he’d be close.”

With what turned out to be nothing more than just raw guts, In Over My Head did make a move at the leaders as he entered the stretch, but it didn’t last long.

“Sears was really going to work on him and that was when I got worried,” Danny stated. “You don’t have to work him that hard. He does it on his own. The fact that Sears had to work him really worried me.”

Halfway through the stretch, it was clear that Mo wasn’t going to make it anywhere close to the leaders. Sears, being the consummate professional that he is, realized that before anyone else did and just let the horse take him across the wire. The result: Eighth. Timed in 1.52.1 with a last quarter of 28.0. Not bad for a horse that by the end of the race was basically running on three legs.

The Aftermath – Late February and early March of 2010

Is he sick? Did he bleed? He had never been on lasix. Both situations were easily treatable and would result in limited time off, just a matter of weeks. Greg and Danny realized the harsh reality, however, when they headed back to the barn. In Over My Head’s right front leg had swelled up noticeably. The location was also concerning. Maybe it was just a minor ankle injury. Maybe it was something far worse. It was too early to tell.

“We were definitely worried, but it wasn’t like he was dead lame,” Greg added. “He seemed to be able to put weight on it just fine and they walked him after the race and he really didn’t show any major signs of favoring it. We were really down about the race, but not overly concerned about the injury at that time.”

The next two days were tough on the group. The mind has a tendency of playing tricks in situations like that. It can force a person to assuming the worst and ignoring the fact that the odds of the worst thing happening are rather slim. The ‘worst’ in this situation was a potential injury to the suspensory ligament. The suspensory is the ligament that connects from the back of the horse’s knee, down to the back of their ankle. If you can imagine a horse’s hoof hitting the ground, you can envision the ankle dropping closer to the ground and then springing back up as the horse pushes off. It is the suspensory that is the ‘rubber band’ to allow that movement to happen. It absorbs the load of the step, then springs back as it releases the built up energy. Any horse owner/ trainer dreads the day that a vet tells them the injury is to the suspensory. They are legitimate career threatening injuries in race horses and even if a horse does return, they oftentimes do not return to the same level. It was the thought of this injury that kept team In Over My Head up for the next couple of nights.

Monday afternoon brought new hope to everyone involved. The vet had come out to see In Over My Head and the initial results were good. First, the swelling in the leg had completely gone down. He wasn’t favoring it and when the vet put him through a series of flex tests, the entire area held up very well. No pain and maybe, no problem after all. It was welcome news to Danny.

“We needed it. It usually takes a day or two to get over a bad race, but the lingering worry was this injury. All signs were good. We just had to get the leg scanned (x-rayed) and we would probably be on our way.”

On Wednesday, February 24, In Over My Head’s leg was scanned and the results put everyone back on their heels. John Butenschoen had the job of delivering the news to Greg. The scan had revealed something very concerning. A ‘grey area’ in the suspensory ligament. It was an indicator of a potential tear. John had decided to have In Over My Head taken to Dr. Patty Hogan, an expert in this type of injury. They had set the appointment for Tuesday, March 2nd. At that point, they only knew there was a problem. It could be minor or it could be severe. The next six days were going to be tense.

Weeks earlier, Danny, Kacy, Laura and Shawn had scheduled a trip to Florida from February 26th – March 1st. They originally hoped this trip would be a fun way to celebrate a great start to the season. Who wouldn’t enjoy spending some time with the Butenschoen’s at their winter training facility outside of Orlando? The trip ended up serving a different purpose: a much needed distraction. Having that said, the dark cloud of a potential serious injury hung over the group.

John Butenschoen recalls: “We were talking about it at dinner one night and all I wanted to do was tell them some good news, but there wasn’t any. We just didn’t have enough information at that time. I was definitely worried, but there was no sense worrying too much. We wouldn’t know anything until after the next vet visit anyway.”

Danny and Shawn returned from the trip with a newfound positive attitude. There is something about being around the other horses that helped pick them up. They shared the news of Showtime Shark (the other horse in their stable) with Greg. Shawn felt the group’s fortunes turning. “I have no idea why, but I just thought everyone was going to be alright. It was nice to have that feeling in the middle of all that uncertainty, but looking back, all it did was make the news that much more painful.”

Greg received the call from Dr. Patty Hogan at around 3pm on Tuesday, March 2nd. The news was bad. An ultrasound had confirmed an injury to the suspensory ligament. The recommendation was for eight weeks of daily hand walking followed by eight weeks of turnout, if he is ready. In all, the total recommended time away from training was eight to ten months. After that, the prognosis was uncertain if he could return to his previous level of racing. Greg delivered the news to Shawn in a phone call that was short on words and long on silence. The worst case scenario had just presented itself. Team In Over My Head was crushed.

The Rehab – March of 2010 through March of 2011

The shock of the devastating news was coupled with denial. It just didn’t make sense. How could the injury be that bad if In Over My Head was only showing limited signs of lameness? “Those were some dark days,” Shawn recalls. “When Greg first called to tell me the news, I thought he was joking. Not that he would ever joke about that, but that is how unbelievable it seemed. Danny said he thought the same thing. I have a hard time explaining to people the feeling of hearing that news. It is kind of like if a family pet was badly injured. I know we don’t see Mo everyday so a dog owner might not quite buy that, but it is still a legitimate comparison. The second part of it is the business part. Mo was like our best salesman…well, our only salesman really. We were in this together and suddenly, our entire business model was blown up.”

It was an education for everyone that a suspensory injury can be much worse than meets the eye. It was all water under the bridge at that point, however. What Mo needed was time to heal. Everyone decided that the best place to do that was back in Illinois at Butenschoen’s farm. Even though he was a horse that had traveled quite a bit over the previous couple of years, it was still ‘home’ for In Over My Head. It is safe to say that he would have received excellent treatment in each location, but the ‘x’ factor was that Greg, Danny, Shawn and others could go visit him as he worked his way back to health. While there is no specific medical benefit of those visits, a little extra love has never hurt anyone…human or horse.

The process of healing a suspensory ligament is a slow one that is also full of potential pitfalls. The problem is that oftentimes, the ligament will heal with scar tissue as opposed to the original smooth parallel fibers that compose the ligament. Scar tissue is more brittle, less elastic and more apt to become reinjured. This is really the major reason why the suspensory injury is such a bad one. The horse’s body will heal the injury, but it would never be what it once was. Because this ligament is vital to high stress movements of a racehorse, a less than perfectly healed ligament leads to performances sometimes less than what the horse was able to do in the past. What team In Over My Head didn’t realize at the time, was that a literal framework was already working its magic within Mo’s leg just hours after leaving Dr. Hogan’s offices.

The treatment is called ‘A-Cell Therapy’ and is still considered cutting edge treatment today, nearly ten years after it was first introduced. In a general sense, cells are injected into the injured area. What they do is provide a matrix that new cells can attach to. The result is a more natural shaped ligament post healing, as opposed to the random scar tissue pattern that was common without the treatment. In its early years, the treatment showed a success rate of 85% in which the injured horse returned to the same performance they did prior to the injury. An incredible percentage compared to the past. In addition, the healing process was 30% faster than without the treatment. Luckily for everyone involved, most importantly In Over My Head himself, his body took to the treatment immediately.

While the healing process was slow, it was encouraging as In Over My Head showed continued signs of improvement throughout the spring and early summer of 2010. In August, five and a half months after the injury occurred, he was able to get back on the track for slow jogging miles. This was something Mo relished. “When I had him up in Point that winter (of 2009), he would always get so excited when it was time to jog.” Danny said. “It is almost like he would try and contort his body to speed up the process of getting the equipment on. When he would see the track, it was like a kid seeing the entrance to Disneyland. He just loved being on the track.”

The jog miles were short and slow at first, but gradually picked up speed. There was a time when everyone involved thought he might actually be ready to race again in the late fall, but after talking through it, the team decided to error on the side of caution. Greg recalls: “If it was a different time of the year, we may have tried him, but the soonest he would be ready would be in November. We didn’t want to start him back in the winter and certainly didn’t want to rush him at all, so we just kept jogging him and decided to hold off until the next spring.”

It was that decision that got In Over My Head the vacation that he ‘earned’ a year earlier. “I think we all said before the Windy City when we were back in the barn, ‘Mo, if you win tonight, you’ll get to go down to Florida for the winter’. It was obviously a joke for two reasons. One, we thought he had almost no chance at winning and two, we had already planned on staking him to those late closers at the Meadowlands and Florida just didn’t make sense at the end of 2009. At that point in 2010, he needed a nice place to train so we figured we’d make good on our promise from the year before.” Shawn said with a smile.

The Comeback – Spring of 2011

The air was brisk on March 19, 2011 in Wilkes-Barre, PA when In Over My Head lined up behind the starting gate at Pocono Downs. It had been 394 days since his last race and as the car pulled away and the qualifier began, John Butenschoen looked on with cautious optimism. Mo had been brought back very slowly, constantly checked and rechecked with scans of his injured leg to make sure that he was progressing. According to the x-rays, the leg had actually healed months before, but everyone was cautious to a fault. The plan for today was also to start slow and give Mo a chance to open up a little bit in the last half mile. He did just that, crossing the wire third in 1.57.1, last half in 58.0. John called Greg, Greg called Shawn, both Greg and Shawn called Danny and for the first time in a long time, optimism again overtook the group.

After a second qualifier and a week off, In Over My Head was entered in a conditioned race at Pocono on April 9th. The purse was small, the field was non-descript, but it would turn out to be the most nerve wrecking race of Mo’s career for his connections. Greg, Shawn and Danny all flew out to Pennsylvania for the race. He would need to go faster. He would need to be tested. Would his leg hold up? If it didn’t, it could literally be the end of his career. They had given him over a year off to recover and if it that wasn’t enough, there might not be any fixing him.

Before the race, the tension was steadily overtaking the group. They had talked about grabbing a bite to eat before the race, but those plans had changed. Everyone was too tense. Danny recalled another time he and Shawn went out to see In Over My Head race.

“At the Meadows, before Mo’s first race in the Pennsylvania Sire Series as a three year old, I’m standing on the apron and my stomach is kind of knotted up. I wasn’t even thinking about eating and Shawn come strolling down with a big slice of pizza hanging out of his mouth. He’s apparently better at eating through the stress…although he did spend the next ten minutes before the race pretending like he was going to get sick over the rail. Actually, I’m not sure if he was pretending or not. On the day of Mo’s comeback, there wasn’t any pizza. I don’t think anyone was even chewing gum.”

They would oftentimes joke before the race or throw out ridiculous scenarios to break the tension. Today it was just silence and pacing back and forth. The horses brushed past the wire as they were heading to the starting gate. The starting line was actually on the backstretch of the five-eighths mile track. Mo looked good. He was ready. Would he hold up? No one knew for sure.

The race started and Mo left a little bit from his number six post position, finding a comfortable spot fourth on the rail. He was behind the favorite, which set up well for a potential second over trip. He looked to be going along very easy as he came past Greg, Shawn and Danny. They went into the second of three turns in the same order. On the backstretch, the favorite tipped out in front of Mo and he was tipped out to follow. It was a second over trip. He followed the favorite well into the final turn as they pulled even with the leaders on the inside. As they came out of the final turn, driver Brandon Simpson tipped Mo to the outside. He was obviously feeling good and was full of pace. The scenario unfolded like it had many times in the past. Mo fans three wide, gets his head swinging side to side and charges at anyone in front of him. Today was no different and before long there was nothing in front of him but open racetrack. As the horses hit the wire, he had won his first start back by over two lengths.

All of In Over My Head’s previous wins were emotional for the group. Some more than others of course. Springfield was the most exciting, but only until the Windy City Pace victory. This day, however, overtook them all. As Simpson took him back to the winners circle, he was eagerly asked how the horse felt. “Perfect,” Brandon said, “didn’t seem off at all.” Three enormous sighs of relief. The wait was over a year, but they were back where they belonged: in the winners circle with their beloved horse.

Now, a win at a mid-level conditioned race at Pocono Downs is not the same level that In Over My Head had been racing before the injury, but that was OK. It was considered a quick stop in double A ball before getting called back up to the majors.

Mo raced a couple more times, and did well in both. Most importantly, his leg remained strong and without any signs of trouble. Throughout that summer, Mo gradually worked his way back up in the racing ranks and by the end, he was butting heads with the best of the best in Opens and Invitational’s throughout the eastern racing scene. He made fifteen starts as a five year old, he won seven of them and never finished worse than fifth. He was sound and strong and Team In Over My Head was loving every second of it.

Despite the injury, Mo stayed completely healthy and very competitive as a six year old (he actually made more purse money that year than any other in his career) and his seven year old year went well too until late in the season when he took a little step back and was bothered by some nagging injuries. The group gave him a long break and brought him back in the summer of 2014 as an eight year old. He started out fine, but the younger horses were starting to get the best of him despite Mo’s best efforts. Greg and Shawn had a discussion with John, and they all decided that the time had come to think about retiring him. By this point, he had built up enough of a resume that a number of small to mid size farms were willing to give him a shot as a stallion. What sounds like a sad conversation really wasn’t. He had recovered from a career threatening injury and had a mid life racing renaissance. He had nothing left to prove. It wasn’t until they talked to Danny that they all realized he actually did have one more thing to prove as Greg recalls.

“He was actually in great shape and racing well, but wasn’t quite up to his old level. We didn’t want to cheapen him. It was time to move on, but then Danny brings up racing him at the Iowa County fair. He said that it would be a great way to end his career and that he (Danny) could drive him. If he went well, he would probably break the track record.”

Danny’s next call was to Shawn and he chuckled as he remembered, “I didn’t have to lay it on too thick with Shawn. We had talked about doing something like that back at the end of his three year old season. It was the perfect place to end it. The track we all grew up going to with Grandpa. We thought it would be a really cool way to end his career. Mo was healthy enough to do it, so why not”

“I totally agreed with Danny,” Shawn said. “But not just for all the reasons he explained. I was also excited that Rex and the Vampire could be there to watch his last race.” When asked to elaborate, Shawn just smiled. Apparently that is an inside joke.

Back to Mineral Point – September 2014

It was clear that no other horse in the field had a chance to beat Mo that day. As strange as it seems, everyone in the race was pulling for In Over My Head to destroy the field and set the track record. There is a certain camaraderie amongst horsemen and women in Wisconsin where they all naturally pull for each other. Even the owner of the horse that held the track record, Dan “Pooch” Clark, felt that way. A long time friend of the Carey family, he summed it up rather succinctly, “You never want to lose a record, but as they say, all records are made to be broken. In Over My Head was a worthy record breaker and given everything he had gone through in his career, I couldn’t think of anyone better to break it.”

The record, 1.59.1, may not seem very fast in the days of sub 1.46 miles, but getting around a tight half mile oval with a less than fast surface is tougher than one might think. Danny was confident as he headed up the ramp to the track, “We won’t leave any doubt!” The horses scored down and every time Danny drove past the grandstand he was pelted with good luck wishes from the large crowd. Mo had drawn post position number one (some think the draw was a little rigged, but no one cared too much) and Danny wasted no time going to the front end. Unlike his first career drive on the same track where he flew to the quarter in a blistering 37 seconds, the now more veteran reigns man hit the quarter pole in 30 seconds flat. Mo was already beginning to show distance between himself and the field and he buzzed past Greg, Shawn and their clan who were stationed on the hill at the end of the second turn. Danny got him to the half in an even minute and as he would say later, he hadn’t asked Mo for anything yet. It was then Danny decided that since this was In Over My Head’s last chance to shine, it would be fitting to do his best Secretariat impression. He gave Mo a tap of the whip and he shifted gears. When he reached the three quarter mark in 1.29.0, the rest of the field was an afterthought. “He has the record dead in his sights!” the track announcer exclaimed. Danny asked for more and like the true champion he was, Mo found that extra level of speed for one last time. As he shot out of the final turn below Greg and Shawn, Danny was shouting words of encouragement to Mo and he picked up even more speed as they came home. The grandstand roared their approval as In Over My Head and Danny flew past the finish line. After checking the timer, the track announcer told everyone what they wanted to hear, “We have a new track champion! In Over My Head in 1.56.4!” He had paced his last quarter in 27.4 seconds and beat the field by over twenty-five lengths.

Team In Over My Head ascended onto the track as Danny turned him back toward the grandstand. The day marked Mo’s thirtieth career victory and he seemed to relish in his opportunity to pose for a win picture. The beautiful brown horse (appearing nearly all black after working up a lather) was flanked by his large cheering section. There were a lot of smiles and even some tears amongst the group. He had finished his career the right way.

What was more special?: the shocking Windy City win, his first win after an injury that threatened his career, the numerous wins once he again reached the top ranks at ages five, six and seven or the simple victory over a timer on a fair track in a small southwestern Wisconsin town? The answer is they are all special in their own right. Also, it wasn’t just the wins they would remember. It was the journey as a whole that really mattered. In the beginning, they had purchased an above average race horse that turned out to be more than that. They rode to the peak and crashed into the bottom, only to climb to the peak once again. It was the tough times that made the good times even more special. He was such a unique horse. He wasn’t the most dominant or the most consistent or the most talented. In Over My Head was a little bit of all of those things, but most importantly, he was the most memorable.