Read the full article (PDF) from the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association May 2009 issue.

Lava Man: A Newsworthy Kind Of Guy
by LARRY BORTSTEIN

Lava Man is still making news, even though he was retired late in 2008, and hasn’t won a race in nearly two years, since his record-tying third consecutive triumph in the Hollywood Gold Cup of 2007.

That gave him seven grade I victories, the most ever for a California-bred along with Best Pal, and capped a remarkable three-year span during which he became the richest ex-claimer in Thoroughbred history and was twice (2005 and 2006) named California Horse of the Year.

The dark bay or brown gelding by Slew City Slew, out of Li’l Ms Leonard, a daughter of Cal-bred millionaire Nostalgia’s Star, who was foaled at Carol Lingenfelter’s Poplar Meadows in Sanger on March 20, 2001, became the 38th Cal-bred to reach the seven-figure earnings plateau.

He was retired with $5,268,706 in the bank and 17 victories — 13 of them in stakes races — from 46 starts during six racing campaigns, while becoming one of the most crowd-pleasing competitors ever to run in the Golden State.

Besides his three straight scores in the $750,000 Hollywood Gold Cup, he twice won the $1 million Santa Anita Handicap and, in 2006, his best year, when he won his first seven of eight starts and earned $2,770,000, he became the first horse to win all three of California’s most important races for older horses—including the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club’s $1 million Pacific Classic.

His grade I resumé also lists a victory in that year’s $300,000 Charles Whittingham Memorial Handicap on the turf at Hollywood Park.

At eight years old and a veteran of the racing spotlight, Lava Man is still making headlines.

He has been accepted to join the expanding roster of retired Thoroughbred heroes at Old Friends in Georgetown, Kentucky.

“We’re planning a party for him when he arrives in June,” said Old Friends founder Michael Blowen, a former movie critic for The Boston Globe, who launched the facility five years ago after learning that Ferdinand, winner of the 1986 Kentucky Derby and 1987 Breeders’ Cup Classic, had died in a Japanese slaughterhouse.

“I vowed we would never let that happen again,” Blowen said.

Lava Man’s trip to Kentucky was to have taken place in April, but was delayed by a rehab stop at Magali Farms in Santa Ynez, California, and the desire by Steve Kenly and Jason Wood, who claimed the horse for $50,000 out of a second-place finish at Del Mar on Aug. 13, 2004, to send him into retirement sound and free of pain.

Those objectives have been achieved at Alamo Pintado Equine Medical Center in Los Olivos, four miles from Magali where Farm Manager Tom Hudson and his staff have tended to Lava Man since he left trainer Doug O’Neill’s Hollywood Park barn late last year.

Under the care of Alamo Pintado senior veterinarian Dr. Doug Herthel and Hudson, Lava Man has undergone arthroscopic surgery to remove bone chips from his ankles. He then began a three-month period of stem cell therapy on the ankles, which consisted of one 20-minute treatment per month.

“We are the only place in the world doing this kind of work on cartilages,” Dr. Herthel said. “And Lava Man is one of the first high-profile racehorses on which stem cells and bone marrow were used.”

“When Lava Man retired, the owners wanted to be sure he would have a very comfortable active future. We found that just removing the bone chips from his ankles wouldn’t prevent future lameness and chronic arthritis. He’s the kind of horse who likes to be active and after three months of getting stem cells, along with great nutrition at Magali Farms, he began jogging with a rider on his back and was experiencing no pain.”

The treatments consisted of removing cells from Lava Man’s sternum and injecting them into his ankles. “He received ten million of his own cells at each treatment,” said Dr. Herthel, a 1971 graduate of UC Davis, where one of his classmates was Dr. Greg Ferraro, head of UC Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine.

Alamo Pintado (Spanish for “painted cottonwood”) has utilized the biological approach to healing since 1995, he said, “because there are very few, if any, drugs that promote healing whereas nutrition, high-dose oxygen, stem cells and growth factors do. This is cutting-edge stuff.”

The Alamo Pintado procedures on horses, many of them from the performance world, have proven so successful that Dr. Chris Proctor, an orthopedic surgeon in Santa Barbara, California, since 2000, has used them on selected human patients. “This is a great example of something that we learned from the horse that is now helping humans,” Dr. Herthel pointed out.

Magali Farms’ Hudson said Lava Man’s ankles “look like a two-year-old’s now. We have a man who’s spent five hours a day with him. We’re so thrilled to have a star like him at the farm.”

Steve Kenly has marveled at the photographs he’s seen of Lava Man since the horse moved to Magali Farms. “He looks like a different horse, a happy camper with no pain,” Kenly said from his ranch in Paradise Valley, Arizona.

He said he and Lava Man’s other connections, including David Kenly, his father, had no concern that their star Thoroughbred was being turned into something of a medical guinea pig.

“We heard about the good work being done at Alamo Pintado and thought we owed Lava Man a happy and pain-free future, after all he did for us,” Kenly said.

The Lava Man as a hero story can be said to have started with Kenly’s insistence that the horse be claimed, even willing to spend $62,500 for him though Lava Man had won only three of his first 12 starts by then.

“I liked the way he moved,” Kenly recalled,” and with his pedigree I thought he was worth claiming. I couldn’t talk Doug (O’Neil) into taking him for $62,500, but we got him at $50,000 in his next start. Still, I’d be lying if I told you I thought there’d be any chance he would do what he did.”

Kenly and Wood claimed Lava Man from his breeders, trainer Lonnie Arterburn, Dr. Kim Kuhlmann, a prominent Northern California veterinarian, and his wife Eve who has competed in Hawaii triathlons (a rugged test of athletic skill and endurance that combines running, swimming and cycling) from which Lava Man got his name.

Dr. Kuhlmann admitted that losing Lava Man to a claim has caused him some pain. But that pain has been somewhat assuaged by the breeder premium awards of $470,755 that the horse earned, the second most for a Cal-bred, behind only Best Pal’s $511,681.

“Lonnie (Artberburn) and I have each received half of that,” he said. “There’s no guarantee the horse could have earned that for us on the track.”

Lava Man became a millionaire when he ran third in the $1 million Pacific Classic (grade I) at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club on Aug. 21, 2005, his first trip to post after winning his first Hollywood Gold Cup by a record 8 3/4 lengths over Borrego.

But any euphoria over his reaching millionaire status was short-lived when he was vanned off the Del Mar strip after Borrego’s Pacific Classiic triumph. There was justifiable concern that nagging foot problems would keep the former claimer from racing again.

“Sure, that goes through your mind,” O’Neill recalled. “He had some foot problems his whole career. To do what he did after that Del Mar race — and after bleeding from his foot on the track in Japan when we sent him over there — that really concerned us.”

Lava Man returned in January of 2006, to capture the $1 million Sunshine Millions Classic Stakes at Santa Anita Park and reached $2 million in earnings in his next start by taking his first Santa Anita Handicap over Magnum (Arg).

To better safeguard against foot troubles, O’Neill ran Lava Man next against Cal-breds in the $150,000 TVG Khaled Stakes, part of the California Gold Rush VII program at Hollywood Park. A win there set up his biggest turf accomplishment, over King’s Drama (Ire) in the Whittingham. He thus joined Exceller and John Henry as the only runners in California to win grade I events on both dirt and turf in a single season.

Lava Man’s second Hollywood Gold Cup win — by a nose over Ace Blue (Brz) after he stumbled at the start — came next, followed by a 2 1/2-length score over Good Reward in the Pacific Classic, which elevated his bankroll past $3 million.

Ranked first in the country for the most of 2006, in the weekly National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) poll, he completed an undefeated California campaign by defeating Santa Anita Derby winner and fellow Cal-bred Brother Derek in the grade II Goodwood Breeders’ Cup Handicap, the major fixture for older horses during Santa Anita’s Oak Tree Racing Association meet.

With a perfect record in seven starts that year, and at the peak of his powers as a five-year-old, Lava Man was sent to Churchill Downs for a Breeders’ Cup Classic showdown against Invasor (Ire) and Bernardini with North American Horse of the Year honors on the line.

Unfortunately, the gelding was not competitive, finishing seventh. He went into retirement without ever having won a race outside California, a stigma Kenly feels has been held against him in evaluating his overall career record.

“I think the fact he was a Cal-bred and didn’t win outside the state convinced a lot of people he wasn’t really a top horse,” Kenly said.

“But how come Easy Goer is in the Hall of Fame and he never won outside of New York? He won the Belmont Stakes, but couldn’t beat Sunday Silence in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Breeders’ Cup Classic. I’m not saying he wasn’t great, but he was at his best at Belmont Park, where he didn’t have to make as many turns.”

Lava Man returned from his failed Breeders’ Cup venture to begin 2007 with another Sunshine Millions victory, this one in the $500,000 Turf Stakes, in which he defeated Icy Atlantic at Santa Anita to surpass $4 million in earnings. He is the only horse to win both the Classic and Turf in the annual $3.6 million competition between Cal-breds and Florida-breds.

Lava Man’s second Big ‘Cap victory came next, this one by 2 1/2 lengths over Molengao (Brz). A trip to the United Arab Emirates for the $5 million Dubai World Cup resulted in a 16th-place disaster. Lava Man then rallied to finish second to After Market in a try for a repeat in the Whittingham on grass.

Then came the historic three-peat in the Hollywood Gold Cup, a nose score over A. P. Excellent that pushed his earnings past $5 million and tied Cal-bred Native Diver’s Gold Cup trio of Gold Cup triumphs from 1965 to 1967.

It was the last hurrah for Lava Man, He finished sixth in each of his last three races of 2007, and ran third twice in his three 2008 starts, finishing sixth in his final effort, Del Mar’s Eddie Read Handicap on turf.

O’Neill puts the grand ride on which Lava Man escorted him in loving perspective, with a rueful look at the possibility that Hollywood Park, where the horse etched his name in history, may soon be closing its doors for the last time.

“I won my first Gold Cup there with (Cal-bred millionaire) Sky Jack in 2001, then I won the three in a row with Lava Man,” O’Neill noted proudly. “The names of all the Gold Cup winners are on this wall at Hollywood Park. If the track goes out of business, I’d hate to see that wall taken down.”

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