Alfred Nuckols Jr.

He was 12 when he finally convinced his father that he was ready to work with the horses. Previously he had been baling, mowing, weed-hooking, stripping bluegrass. His father agreed, albeit at a cost to his pay from $7 a day to $5. But the company of horses has always been beyond price to Alfred H. Nuckols Jr. Nor, to be fair, was that literal grounding--in the soil and pasture of the historic Hurstland Farm--lost on the youngster. To this day, in his stewardship of the portion that devolved to...

What has happened to this business? Growing up, I admired the participants, the trainers and the horses. There was Kelso, Forego, Typecast and a legion of others who raced and won without the need for modern day pharmacology. There were trainers who trained their horses without medications and honorable owners who only wanted to win at the highest level on a level playing field. You hear stories and rumors of "so and so uses this on their horses" and think that testing procedures will ferret out the cheaters. Then you...