COMMENTARY : HORSE RACING : After Backstretch Charity, Controversial Ryan Is Back in Owner’s Box

When he came to Laurel Sunday to watch his colt Awad run in the Laurel Futurity, Jim Ryan was in an unfamiliar role: that of a small-scale horse owner.

He had been, for a decade, one of the country’s leading owners and breeders, with more than 100 horses. And he was one of the game’s most visible and controversial figures. Having been elected to the elite, august Jockey Club, he became the first member in this century to resign in protest. He focused the industry’s attention on the deplorable conditions in the stable areas of U.S. racetracks--and he proceeded to do something about it.

Ryan had made his fortune in the home-building business, running Ryan Homes and then Ryland Homes. His avocation was horse racing, but eventually the hobby grew into a full-scale business. Ryan’s operation, Ryehill Farm, employed top trainers Woody Stephens and Laz Barrera and won Eclipse Awards with fillies Smart Angle (1979) and Heavenly Cause (1980). He and two partners won the 1983 Belmont Stakes with Caveat. By 1988 he had 135 horses. And then he decided to sell them all.

Managing all of these assets had become time-consuming and burdensome. “I had always enjoyed racing,” Ryan said, “but I was enjoying it less. It was like a time of life that had passed for me. When I decided to sell, it was a relief. And everybody advised me that if you sell, you should sell them all.” At two auctions, he dispersed all of his horses for $12 million.

One reason for Ryan’s diminished enthusiasm for racing may have been that he was looking on the sport from a new and disturbing perspective. One day he had won a race, went to the winner’s circle with his wife, Linda, and happily accepted the trophy. She asked, “Did you see that groom?” The man leading the winning horse had pus in his eyes, alcohol on his breath and looked as if he hadn’t bathed in six months. Ryan hadn’t seen. “Like everybody else,” he said, “I learned to block.”

Soon he was forcing himself to look at the conditions under which grooms lived. He went to Laurel, inspected its backstretch and found himself overpowered by the stench of the rooms in which these men lived. There was a Jockey Club Foundation supposedly devoted to providing money to taking care of the needy and indigent who work with horses, but it was donating a minimal amount of money to the cause. Ryan made this offer: He would donate $500,000 to help backstretch workers if The Jockey Club would put up the same amount. According to Ryan, a Jockey Club official told him, “Between you and me, you’d be pouring your money down a sewer.”

So Ryan and his wife started their own project. In 1988 they created the Ryan Family Foundation and put up $1 million for alcohol- and drug-treatment programs for backstretch workers, matching contributions that racetracks would pay to start such a project. Two years later they donated $1.25 million for off-site treatment programs. Ryan is involved also in a project to secure low-interest federal financing to build backstretch apartments; one such development is being planned for Laurel.

Even though he has been fully occupied by these and other non-racing philanthropic activities, Ryan itched to get back into the sport. He went to a sale at Timonium with his son, who was intending to bid on a few horses, and he couldn’t resist temptation.

Ryan still owned a few shares in the stallion Caveat, whose offspring had been running well on turf, so he looked for females with grass-oriented pedigrees or racing records. One of the mares he bought, Dancer’s Candy, was bred to Caveat and produced Awad, who earlier this month won a stakes on the turf at Aqueduct. The colt finished sixth at Laurel Sunday, but he clearly has a future--and so too does Ryan as a horse owner.

He owns 12 horses now, most of whom he bought for modest prices, at least by his former standards. He doesn’t intend for his operation to get too much bigger.