TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1045316
education, guaranteed to register far deeper than the superficial legacy of his Anglicised diction, as light and precise as Earl Grey tea poured into bone china. So, yes, it's a horse farm in Kentucky—but it's a horse farm where you might glimpse a Henry Moore outside an estate cottage; or where the office walls are adorned not only with these photographs, but with art from across the spectrum—from a rare contemporary portrait of the Godolphin Arabian, to Andy War- hol's only equine image. And Beck brings a corresponding breadth of perspective even to the narrower horizons of the Turf. Nothing expands that quite like the equine cemetery: Vaguely Noble, Blushing Groom (Fr), Riverman, Lyphard, Irish River (Fr), Cozzene, a Hall of Fame of its own all the way back to distaff legends Regret and La Troienne. "I think the oldest stallion buried on this farm is Peter Pan," says Beck. "But even including Equipoise, Tom Fool, all these great stal- lions that have stood here, I really think Tapit's been the best. Of all of them. Which is quite amazing." He points again at the photos. "Bloodlines are so tremendously fascinating," he says. "How they transform generation to generation. If you look at Empire Maker, for instance, personally I see a combination of Dr. Fager, on the one hand, and Buckpasser, on the other. Both, again, (four or) five generations back." So between the genetic legacy, in the Thoroughbred, and the liter- al bequest of a farm acquired by his father from John Gaines in 1989, Beck remains ever conscious of the need to strike a delicate—but dy- namic—balance between respecting the past, and evolving his own imprint on Gainesway. "Every single day," he says, asked how often he weighs this chal- lenge. "Probably even when I sleep. It is a truly magnificent place, with incredible history—predating John Gaines by many, many de- cades. I have to say that when my father bought Gainesway, I thought he'd bitten off a lot. And as he acquired Jock Whitney's farm, Gre- entree, and the rest of Sonny and Marylou Whitney's farm, it became 1,500 acres of really special land, and I'm very conscious of the history that comes with it."