One of the most popular horses in Thoroughbred racing in North America in 2022 is not a stakes horse, but BEVERLY PARK‘s name was right up there with the likes of the great FLIGHTLINE and stars CODY’S WISH and RICH STRIKE recently when voting began for the Secretariat Vox Populi Award. The award is determined by votes from fans and a short list decided upon by a committee is placed on a ballot.
Cody’s Wish was named the 2022 Vox Populi winner based on his poignant story on his relationship with young fan Cody Dorman and the colt’s Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile (G1) victory.
But Beverly Park has won more races than any horse in North America this year and more races than any horse has in a year since 2011. The 5-year-old horse is a true ‘iron horse’ with 13 victories from a staggering 28 starts this year, coming at almost a dozen different tracks, and earned $271,868 ($512,970 lifetime).
Beverly Park is a Kentucky-bred but he has Canadian connections. His co-breeder, George Gilbert, is from Vancouver, BC and he has owned and bred horses for 50 years. Beverly Park’s dam, graded stakes winner Madeira Park, a daughter of Canadian-bred star Langfuhr, raced at Hastings racecourse for Exclusive Stable and Ray Hanson. Hanson also bred Beverly Park.
A son of Munnings, Beverly Park was sold by Gilbert and Hanson at the 2018 Keeneland September yearling sale for a hefty $220,000.
The horse raced for PTK, LLC for a few starts before he was claimed for $12,500 in 2021 by Norman L. Cash, who was a newcomer to the sport.
Jennie Rees recently penned a story on Beverly Park for the Kentucky HBPA:
“He’s just a blue-collar horse. He’s a tank,” said owner-trainer Norman L. Cash, who goes by his middle name of Lynn. “If you leave him in the stall, he’s mad. He just wants to get out and go. He’s the most healthy horse I’ve been around or seen. I think he won once on four days’ rest and a couple of times on five. Granted those were softer spots, but he puts it out there every time. With a couple of exceptions, he’s always right there.
“He’s just an amazing animal.”
Cash — who only began training in the spring of 2021 and campaigns his horses with wife Lola in the name of Built Wright Stables — claimed Beverly Park on Aug. 5, 2021, out of a “non-winners of three” lifetime race with a $12,500 claiming tag. The horse’s win that day proved the second of eight straight and nine out of 10 for last season.
Beverly Park clearly has thrived in Cash’s care. Only once has the horse been worse than fourth, and that came at Turfway Park in his only race over a synthetic surface. He comes into the Claiming Crown nine days after winning a seven-furlong $5,000 starter-allowance race at Charles Town in West Virginia by 4 1/4 lengths in a field of eight. Nineteen days before that, he narrowly lost a $20,000 starter race at Keeneland, which came three weeks after he won just such a race at Churchill Downs.
Cash has stakes horses in his stable of about 50 based at The Thoroughbred Center in Lexington and Maryland’s Laurel Park. Double Crown recently won New York’s $300,000, Grade 2 Kelso at 42-1 odds in his 12th start of the year. Sir Alfred James is a multiple stakes winner who was fourth in the Grade 1 Churchill Downs Stakes won by champion sprinter Jackie’s Warrior on the Kentucky Derby card.
“If I could put the perfect on the perfect date for every horse I have, every race would probably be 11 or 12 days apart,” Cash said. “I just believe you can get 95 to 97 percent of what the horse has on 10 to 12 days’ rest. I just won a Grade 2 on seven days’ rest with Double Crown, the first graded stakes I’d won…. If I have to choose between nine and 19 days, I’d choose nine every time. Every horse, every time.”
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