Since coming to Saratoga Race Course for the first time in May, Tamay Alpander has been working with three homebred horses while balancing the oversight of her retirement farm in Maine and more.
Anyone who works on the Saratoga Race Course backstretch knows the challenges of being a one-person operation. Then, there are the additional responsibilities of running a farm for retired horses that is about 200 miles away and occasionally riding horses that are another 200 miles in a different direction.
Since coming to the Oklahoma Training Track on May 4, Tamay Alpander has been solely caring for three homebreds for Windborne Farm while sometimes galloping horses for Hall of Fame trainer Nick Zito. She is also the president of her non-profit Queen of Hearts Thoroughbred Retirement farm in Shapleigh, Maine, and she occasionally rides horses for trainer Patricia Meadow at Finger Lakes.
On top of that, Alpander is also a mother to her 9-year-old daughter Kelsey, who has a pony named Star and takes riding lessons.
“It has been hard work,” said Alpander, who leaves her Mechanicville house rental to the training track by 5 a.m. “I do everything with these horses. I muck the stalls, gallop them, groom them, and feed them. It’s good because I know them. I love it, but it’s a lot of work.”
While it may be a lot of work, Alpander has enjoyed it, especially since she always wanted to be around horses.
From Maine to Maryland, then back to the New England Circuit
While her family had no horse racing experience, Alpander showed interest in horses since she was a child, starting with a pony club in Maine with the dream of riding a horse on the beach just like in The Black Stallion.
At 16 years old, Alpander stayed with Maryland-based horseman Barry Wiseman, whose mother owned a tack store in her town. Through Wiseman, she learned a lot on handling horses.
“I was one of those kids who was always in love with horses,” she said. “For my whole life, I’ve always wanted to be involved with the horses. So, this was the natural progression.”
That natural progression led Alpander to being a jockey in October 1993 at Delaware Park and Penn National before going to Atlantic City, Philadelphia Park, and Garden State Park.
By June 1996, Alpander moved back to Maine, then commuted in her Toyota Celica, which now sits dormant on the farm with 375,000 miles, to ride at Rockingham Park and Suffolk Downs.
During her 15-year run at both tracks, as well as Tampa Bay Downs in the winter, Alpander periodically won races with horses such as Tiger Like and Shapleigh Benz – both who were owned by her mother Bonnie Alpander, under the Windborne Farms name, and are retired on the farm.
However, one mare has become the foundation for the retirement farm and the horse trio that exists today: Reine des Coeurs.
Reine des Coeurs and the Future for the Alpanders
Reine des Coeurs, French for Queen of Hearts, had some appeal with the breeding by multiple Grade 1 stakes winner Lion Heart and out of the mare Queen of Millbrook, who won all three starts at Saratoga while winning a couple of New York-bred stakes races in the late 1990s, though Reine des Coeurs never followed through with that pedigree.
Bonnie Alpander claimed Reine des Coeurs for $5,000 in April 2011 at Tampa Bay Downs, then brought her to Suffolk Downs to win back-to-back allowance races. That run ended on July 13, 2011 when the mare suffered a broken leg while finishing third in an allowance race.
At that point, Tamay Alpander and her family were initially finished with horse racing.
“We were so devastated. We quit racing,” she said.
Luckily, Dr. Omar Maher saved the mare’s life with fusion surgery that gave Alpander and her family two opportunities: the retirement farm and the ability to breed her to Big Brown.
The Queen of Hearts farm has become a sanctuary for nine retired race horses ranging from ages 9 to 28. The farm gives those horses an opportunity to recover from injury while learning new skills and possibly being adopted.
Along with being a proven winner on the track, Reine des Coeurs has now produced a winner with the 5-year-old mare Steal My Heart, who has won 4-of-22 races, including her recent allowance race at Finger Lakes on May 11.
Meanwhile, 3-year-old filly Steal the Wind and 2-year-old colt Bounding Heart have yet to race. Alpander developed them in Maine in December before snow and ice forced her to bring the pair to Camden, S.C. Once spring started and Saratoga is the closest racetrack near Maine, the training track was an ideal spot for her first visit in the area.
“It’s a good place to get the horses started,” Alpander said. “I’ve always heard it is so beautiful, and it is. I’ve really enjoyed my time here. I love the barns has windows and the horses can look out. It is so natural. There is all of this space to graze them. There are a lot of tracks that don’t have that.”
Hopefully Returning to Saratoga
After handling the three horses at Saratoga over the past nine weeks, Alpander will send them to trainer Dylan Clarke at Belmont Park while she returns to the Queen of Hearts farm to take care of the retired horses.
Alpander is hoping that she gets a chance to ride at Saratoga for the first time with Steal My Heart, who is being pointed for an allowance race for New York-breds within the next couple of weeks. However, that all depends on the amount of work that is needed at the Maine farm.
“Everyone has been nice here. I wish I could stay. Maybe I’ll be back,” she said. “Hopefully, I will come back to ride her in the race. It’s a 4½-hour drive from the farm. I could feed the horses at night, then drive to get here for the day.”
