Free Cocktails, aka "Martini" had just won his race. So why were his jockey Debbie Hoonan-Trujillo and trainer Sharon Ross crying in the winner's circle?





The moment had been perfectly scripted. Trainer Sharon Ross arranged a day at the races for her friend’s daughter who was in treatment for cancer along with her family and friends. There was even a race named in the girl's honor, and Sharon had a horse running in it – Free Cocktails, known as Martini around the barn. A very competitive horse as a four year old, at five he was having some difficulties handling the track. Sharon thought this race on the last day of the 2007 meet might help him end on a good note. It was a $7,500 claimer at 6 furlongs, a good distance for him, and Martini flashed his old form and won the race. The jubilation was shortlived. He was also claimed by another trainer. That was not in the script.

“Debbie and I were both thrilled until we saw the tag. Nobody understood why me, Debbie and the grooms looked so upset. It was very, very bittersweet.” Sharon Ross says, revisiting her feelings on that day.

Now, five months later, Sharon and Debbie are again dashing tears from their eyes, but this time they are tears of joy. Martini stands proudly beside them at Emerald Downs to have his picture taken, again. Although his coat looks rough and he has patches of raw skin on his fetlocks, this time he has a red bow hanging from his face, not a claim tag. This time everyone around them shares the same heady emotion.

It is two months before the season at Emerald Downs begins. It was not a race but an obstacle course that was run to bring Martini here, one in which many people participated.

The story really begins several years ago, when Martini was purchased as a yearling at the September 2002 auction at Emerald Downs. He was bred by Guy and Barbara Roberts, a son of Free House out of their mare Cocktails Anyone, the Washington Champion Sprinter in 1998, and Rick Beal was prepared to pay well for him. Sharon Ross took Martini home to the farm she runs with her husband, fellow trainer Larry Ross. Here Martini was started. He gained some racing experience running a few races in the winter meet at Golden Gate racetrack, but he had not yet won a race when he came to Emerald Downs in early 2004.

There he met Debbie Hoonan-Trujillo. Although she had begun riding as a jockey in races at Longacres, when the track closed in 1992 it put a stop to her race-riding career. She worked as an exercise rider for top barns at the major California tracks before leaving racing entirely for ten years. She missed the life, though, and in 2003, she had joined Sharon Ross’ barn to ride morning workouts, soon becoming one of her most trusted riders. When Debbie told Sharon that she wanted to return to riding in races, Sharon had a sinking feeling. “I’m going to lose my best exercise rider,” she thought.

Nonetheless, it was on Rick Beal’s horses from Sharon’s barn that Debbie got her shot. The feel that she gained from riding her mounts in the morning really paid off in the races. This was especially true for Martini. On their second outing, in June 25,2004, he broke his maiden, winning a 6 furlong race. Debbie was soon riding some top stakes horses for Sharon and other trainers, but she continued her morning works with Martini.

“He was a twenty-dollar horse,” Sharon says, by which she means that although Debbie received the customary ten dollars per ride in the morning, she gave the horse all the time he needed – walking slowly to the track, standing under the trees, trotting slowly around the track the wrong way before starting his gallop, and walking him for a good stretch afterwards to cool out – time she could have been using to make an extra ten bucks. This extra case helped Martini avoid the muscle soreness and stiff shoulder he was otherwise prone to.

Sharon, who also provided Martini with massages and chiropractic treatment, kept the horse running successfully as a four year old. She is known for starting horses a little later and running them far longer than many. Her oldest horse was eleven when he retired. She lets the horse tell her when they are done.

In his fifth year, she began to worry that Martini was going to have trouble staying competitive. At the end of the Emerald Downs season, he was due to go to her farm, and probably into retirement if he did not seem up for a return next spring. Debbie had promised him a home. “We were going to grow old and wrinkly together,” Debbie says.

That choice was suddenly ripped from them on September 29th. The tears Sharon and Debbie shed in the winners circle were of sorrow and of frustration. It had not occurred to them that someone would claim a horse whose form had so clearly been on the decline.

Sharon Ross' mood quickly turned to anger when she learned who had placed the claim -- a trainer who earlier that morning had been shaking hands in her barn aisle on a deal to buy Blanding, a horse from the same owner, Rick Beal. For him to now claim Martini was against the unwritten code of the racetrack. Outraged, Sharon went straight to the Steward’s office to file a complaint. But a code is not a law, the trainer’s lawyer pointed out.

It seems the trainer needed horses for the winter meet at Portland Meadows. Apparently he though Martini could be a winner there, and was not going to let go of that idea. While the upper tiers of Emerald Downs horses go to Golden Gate and Bay Meadows for the winter, others take on the mostly easier company running for lesser purses at Portland Meadows.

The competition might be softer, but the wet track and the dismal backstretch there would be like “moving from the hotel to the motel” for Martini. She was uneasy about the horse’s future, and talked to Rick Beal.

They decided they would claim the horse back. When he ran in an $8,000 claimer at Portland Meadows on October 16th, they delegated Portland trainer Ann Peery to place the claim. But she got to the racing office a minute too late. It may not have mattered. Somebody else had already entered a claim, and there would have been a shake in any case.

Martini won the race but was claimed by yet another trainer. Now Sharon was really worried. This was not someone with a reputation as a careful horseman.

She called him and offered him $8,000, the amount he had just claimed Martini for. She told him, “He won’t like the track there. He needs time off.” The trouble is, in the claiming game, even the most sincere statement can sound like a strategy. Perhaps the man thought Sharon was not being truthful, or perhaps he did not care to hear he had made a mistake. Frustrated, Sharon told him she would have to wait until Martini dropped down a few levels and claim him back. But he said he believed he could do well with Martini, and turnd down her offer.

Perhaps to prove his decision right, he ran the horse back in a $10K claimer, with poor results. Then he tried stretching him out to a mile, and got a ninth place finish.

Still he could not admit he had been wrong. Debbie herself called him with an offer to buy Martini and got a scathingly rude response.

Martini, meanwhile, was voting with his feet. After losing again in an $8K claimer, he dropped down to $5K, but only finished 7th. He was protecting himself, Sharon says. She kept an eye on him from afar, laying low. Maybe the old man would realize that Martini would not perform for him at any level and relent.

Katie Merwick approached the trainer, thinking maybe if someone outside Sharon’s barn made the offer, it would be more palatable. But she too was rebuffed. At this point it had become a matter of pride, perhaps. She offered him more. “I’d rather see him break a leg than sell him to you,” he told Katie.



Debbie, meanwhile, had undergone double cruciate ligament surgery in her right knee, hoping to be back in the saddle by the spring meet. This meant a long layoff and extensive physical therapy. Just as she was turning the corner on her recovery, one of her dogs, Maya, was hit by a car, and underwent touch-and-go surgery herself. Debbie had not forgotten Martini, but she could not bear to watch each step of his downward slide.

On February 4th, Martini ran in a $3,200 claimer and managed a 3rd place finish. When trainer Brent Lyons saw Martini at Portland Meadows, he was worried. He told Sharon the horse wasn’t looking so good and it was time to do something. He even offered to drive all the way down and place the claim himself.

It was definitely time to get him out of there. So Sharon started getting the money together, with people pitching in as they could, including grooms and exercise riders. It was slow going, though -- late winter is a tight time at the track, before the start of the racing meet can fill the coffers.

Around Portland Meadows, it seemed everyone else recognized that Martini was finished with racing except his trainer. The horse was lugging hard to the outside, perhaps as a way of taking the strain of his shoulder, or of leg pain. No jockey would take the mount -- the paltry fee for riding a non-contender is not worth the risk of getting hurt when the horse breaks down. But apparently Martini's trainer did indeed plan to run the horse until he dropped – he transferred the horse to another trainer’s name, one with a jockey who couldn’t say no.

Suddenly it became urgent - Martini was entered for a race on Tuesday, February 16th at the $2,500 claiming level. This was the chance and Sharon was not going to miss it. An “angel” fronted the funding shortfall, and there was no way Ann Peery was going to be late to the racing office this time. Katie Merwick would drive down the next day to pick Martini up.

But first the race, a mere 4 1/2 furlongs, had to be run – and survived.

There was quite a bit of anxiety in the air. What if the trainer got wind of the plan, and scratched Martini from the race? What if the fickle gods of racing didn’t care that there was a home awaiting Martini on the far side of the finish line and he got hurt in his final race. “He’ll protect himself,” everyone said, and hoped that it was true.

Martini ran his race, and when he started to tire, his jockey must have felt he had no horse under him and did not try to push him. Martini still finished third, although he was bleeding from both nostrils. He was definitely done with racing. This time it was Ann Peery’s claim tag that was hung on him, and it signified something different entirely. The happy ending had been reconstituted -- but the work was not over yet.


Katie drove down to Portland the next morning, fighting nausea and fatigue, the remnants of a flu. She was not going to be the one to delay the planned reunion.

Debbie, meanwhile, was still in the dark. Those close to her, like her parents and sister, were part of the conspiracy, to make sure that there was space for Martini. Debbie’s partner, Lisa, had to create the pretext for Debbie to visit the track. Debbie hadn’t resumed riding yet, but she was cleaning tack for Sharon now and then. When Lisa, trying to be helpful, dropped off some girths on Wednesday, she accidentally removed the reason for Debbie to come to the track. So Lisa had to drawn into some uncharacteristic deceit. A fictitious item was invented that Debbie must collect in person on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Martini spent the night at Katie Merwick’s barn in Elma, where he found several old barn mates from the track to great him . The next morning, shrouded by the morning fog, he rolled through the gates of Emerald Downs once again.

When he heard Sharon’s voice, saying “Where have you been Bambino?" Katie reports that Martini whinnied and pawed, then tucked his head right into Sharon’s arms when he came of the trailer.

This was not the first horse Sharon Ross had claimed back out of concern for his well-being, nor was it the one she had gone the furthest for. But she was not just claiming Martini for herself and Debbie -- in a way, this was a gesture that many groom, rider or trainers can understand. It is hard for those who come to think of the horses as colleagues and companions to watch them depart for fates unknown on a regular basis. Racing is a warrior culture. The moments when sentiment is allowed to trump the hard logic of a competitive universe are rare enough that they must be treasured. Perhaps that’s why everyone entered into the plot with such enthusiasm that morning.

In the midst of a busy morning of watching horses work, Sharon couldn’t hover by Martini’s stall. But no way was she going to miss the moment that had taken so much to engineer. So Katie and Brent Lyons were stationed to watch was the barn so that Debbie could be intercepted and delayed until everything was ready. The call came from the gate that Debbie was at the track. Lisa hid in Martini’s stall – she had arranged to take the morning off from her teaching job – but her uncharacteristic presence would be a clue to Debbie that something unusual was afoot. And then the moment arrived.

“Look who’s back in his own house," said Sharon, as she signaled her groom to bring Martini out of his stall.

Debbie simply melted. For the next five minutes, she simply reconnected with Martini. Tales of woe and suffering could not be exchanged in words, but old scratching spots could easily be rediscovered, and the taste of an apple shared. I am not sure whose eye grew softest.

A cocoon of goodwill surrounded Debbie and Martini. The telling and retelling of his reclaiming, the subterfuges involved in the surprise, and the many players acknowledged, followed by the condemnation of the villain, the trainer who had so long delayed Martini’s return. Meanwhile the fog had given way to sunshine, and the last horses were cooled out after their morning works. Finally, it was just Debbie and Lisa standing beside Martini, enjoying some mouthfuls of grass in the sunshine outside barn 2.

"I never planned on owning a horse. I love them all so much and make the best of the time we share. But, Martini pretty much convinced me through the years that 'I AM' his human..." Debbie wrote. Martini fortunately convinced a few other people of this fact as well.

Martini is going to Debbie's sister’s farm, where he can graze to his heart’s content. Debbie’s knee is nearly healed enough for riding, and her dog Maya’s bones are knitting too. Perhaps one day you might meet them all out on the trails, ambling along in the summer sunshine. Happiness is the best revenge, after all.