TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/881129
The Pons family may have originated in France, but after 84 years and four gener- ations at Country Life Farm, their roots run deep in Bel Air, Maryland. Ironically, it was New York racing legend August Belmont ZKRƬUVWEURXJKWWKH3RQVIDPLO\DQDPH now synonymous with Maryland racing, to America and into the racing world. Patriarch Fleur Pons came over from France with Belmont in 1893 and passed away just a couple of years later, leaving be- hind his wife and their three young children. Belmont paid for their education and hired Pons's son Adolphe on as his secretary. "I don't know how he got to be Belmont's equine guy, but he picked it up and helped him build Belmont Park," said Adolphe Pons's grandson Mike Pons, who now runs Country Life with his brother Josh. "That was Belmont's farm in Long Island, estab- lished in 1905. That started the ball roll- ing and then they had all these wonderful mares." Belmont did not sell his homebreds often, but when he was sent overseas during WWI, he wrote to Pons and told him to sell the yearling crop in order to support the war HƪRUW2QHRIWKRVH\HDUOLQJVZDVWKHOHJ- endary Man o' War. "Grandfather tried to sell them privately as a group, but, just like forever in the horse EXVLQHVVWKHEHVWZD\WRƬQGRXWKRZPXFK a horse is worth is to put it in a sale," Josh Pons said. "So, they put the whole draft of them in the 1918 Saratoga Yearling Sale. He called up Samuel Riddle and said, 'This [Man o' War] is a really good horse. This is the best horse in the crop.'" Marylanders have been breeding and racing horses for more than 250 years. For almost exactly one-third of that time, the Pons family has operated a Thoroughbred nursery in the Chesapeake Bay State. Josh Pons, who runs the farm with his brother, Mike, is cur- rently the President of the Maryland Thoroughbred Breeders Association, which has seen purses and prestige skyrocket over the past few years. As the annual Maryland Million day approached, the Pons brothers sat down to talk to the TDN about their history, and their deep roots in Maryland.