Once a Year, He’s Young Again

Just as certain as arctic temperatures and snowfall by the foot, central Nebraska is visited every winter by an arthritic old gelding who is in his element when he runs in those harsh elements. It wouldn’t be February at Fonner Park without trainer Joe Moss winding up the indefatigable Leaping Plum to win the Jake Grasmick Memorial Handicap again.

When Fonner Park--a five-furlong bullring whose configuration is not unlike Fairplex Park in Pomona--runs the four-furlong Grasmick on Saturday, Leaping Plum will try to win the $15,000 race for an astonishing eighth consecutive year. Because of Fonner’s modest trappings, this is not comparable to Kelso winning Belmont Park’s Jockey Club Gold Cup five times in a row, as he did in the 1960s, and not even something that ranks with Irish Linnet winning the Yaddo Stakes five straight times at Saratoga in the 1990s. But in a sport that begs for continuity--the best horses frequently are rushed off to stud before they have even cooled out from their final victories--the 11-year-old Leaping Plum is the ultimate stayer, a Fonner tradition and a rock-solid affirmation of the breed.

The good folks of Grand Island, Neb., aren’t allowed to flip the pages of their calendars until this horse has won another Grasmick.

“It’s nice that this horse is being mentioned in the next breath with Kelso,” said Moss, a 54-year-old third-generation trainer who has had Leaping Plum from the start. “Growing up, Kelso was my favorite. He was my hero.”

While Moss deserves kudos for doing all the grunt work, the man who actually brought Leaping Plum to Nebraska in the beginning was Clyde Woods, a cabinet manufacturer from Omaha who bought the horse for $11,000 at a Keeneland yearling auction in 1992.

“Clyde picked out the horse and insisted we buy him,” said Paul Miskimins, a dentist from Mitchell, S.D., who is Woods’ partner and Moss’ cousin. “He had had a half-brother to Leaping Plum that turned out to be a fairly nice horse. There were some horses in that sale that we had rated much higher, but Clyde just had to have Leaping Plum.”

By Lightning Leap out of the mare Velvet Plum, Leaping Plum has run 61 times, winning 29 and adding seven seconds and 10 thirds, for purses of $369,716. While 17 of his wins have come at Fonner, the stocky chestnut is not a one-track pony. He broke his maiden the first time out of the gate at Thistledown in Cleveland, and since then he’s also raced at tracks in Illinois, West Virginia, Kansas and Iowa. He has won at one track that’s out of business--Ak-Sar-Ben in Omaha--and has twice beaten quarter horses, at a distance of about a half-mile.

“This is a horse that’s been awfully good to us,” Miskimins said, “and we try to take very good care of him. One year, for instance, he wasn’t feeling that good and he only ran three times. He’s a big fish in a small pond, we know that, and we’re not boastful about what he’s done. We just consider ourselves very fortunate to have him.”

Just running in the same race eight years in a row is a feat for the ages. The Grasmick, named after an original board member when Fonner opened in 1954, was first run in 1968, and before the Leaping Plum era, the stake had never been won more than three times by the same horse.

Leaping Plum was 5-1, a horse still trying to find his way, when he won his first Grasmick in 1995. He won by 11/2 lengths, carrying only 117 pounds. In the six subsequent wins, his margins have ranged between 21/2 and 81/2 lengths, while carrying between 122 and 128 pounds. In 1996, when he won by 81/2 lengths, his time was 44 1/5 seconds, still the half-mile record for Fonner Park.

Jockey Newil Wall is shooting for his third win with Leaping Plum in the stake on Saturday. Wall, 53, missed the race one year because he had broken a leg.

“Newil gallops the horse, works him and rides him well in races,” Moss said. “He gets the horse to relax, and knows everything about him. He’s not a horse that relishes the whip, for example. We found that out after a while, and Newil knows that he won’t run any faster or harder if he hits him.”

Leaping Plum has been the odds-on favorite for the last six times in the Grasmick, paying $3.40 to win last year.

Every Grasmick win has come off a layoff of at least 101 days. In 1999, Leaping Plum stiffened up badly on Moss two races after his Grasmick win and the trainer gave him the rest of the year off. Leaping Plum hadn’t run in more than 10 months when, under 128 pounds, he won the 2000 Grasmick by 31/2 lengths. On Saturday, assigned 122 pounds, the horse will be making his first start since a fifth-place finish at Beulah Park in Grove City, Ohio, on Dec. 15. Rival trainers may look at that result, rationalize that Leaping Plum is running at an age when most horses have long been pensioned and think they have a chance. But only twice has Moss’ horse gone into a Grasmick after closing out the previous year with a win.

It takes some clever training by Moss to get the horse ready for his seasonal debut at Fonner.

“In Nebraska, you train by the weather,” said Moss, noting that 12 inches of snow had fallen on Grand Island in February. “I’m always keeping one eye on the Weather Channel. If you see a storm coming, you hurry to get in a workout before it comes. If the track gets frozen, all you can do is walk the horse and hope for the best.”

With Leaping Plum, loving care also seems to work. Lisa Moss, the trainer’s wife of 20 years, also works at the barn and shares in spoiling the veteran.

“He’s incredibly spoiled, and has gotten to love his apples,” Joe Moss said. “All he’ll eat, though, are the golden delicious. Anything else isn’t good enough for him. He knows and he won’t take them.”