Roger Attfield - Training Champion Norcliffe at Baker’s Acres

At Woodbine racetrack in the heart of Toronto there is a delightful creation fondly known to backstretch horse people as Baker’s Acres. Developed by Colonel Charles Baker during his tenure as Chairman of the Ontario Jockey Club, ‘The Acres’ is a half-mile meadow track of finely harrowed sand hidden in the far-west corner of the backside barn area. A charming little sand-track, twenty-feet wide and coloured like a painted postcard in the dusty browns and greens of a country farm and ringed by shady maple trees and a white painted fence. Young horses find it especially cool, a place where the training is fun.

Charles Baker first saw the value of Baker’s Acres when it was only a forgotten and dusty meadow behind barn 12A; what is now barn 35. No fence at the time, a plain dirt trail six or eight feet wide with knee-high weeds and grass growing wild in the centerfield, the meadow gallop was country living for horses and right here in the middle of Toronto. Almost ideal for a horse to vacation between races, accomplished horseman Charles Baker was impressed.

Norcliffe, his dazzling three-year-old colt, was the 1976 Winter Book favourite to win the coming Queen’s Plate. Bred by E.P.Taylor at Windfields Farm in Oshawa Ontario, Norcliffe was sired by Belmont winner Buckpasser, from the stakes winning Northern Dancer mare, Drama School. One of the most expensive yearlings of his crop, Charles Baker had signed the $80,000 auction slip at the 1974 Saratoga Summer Yearling Sales. The colt then broken to the saddle by Baker himself, proved such a wonderful individual that Baker was inspired. Indeed, he bet with his heart when he named the powerful bay Norcliffe, after the farm where he lived in the hunt country of King Township.

Norcliffe was never a disappointment; precocious as a two-year-old and masterfully trained by Roger Attfield, a young transplanted Englishman aspiring to make his mark, the colt set a stakes record for juveniles in Woodbine’s prestigious Coronation Futurity.

Thoroughbred horse racing however, can be shockingly cruel. The following spring in March, Norcliffe’s training program was compromised by a serious foot problem. Now seen as similar to the injury which plagued Big Brown, the 2008 Kentucky Derby winner, Norcliffe developed a quarter crack in his near front foot.

“But different than Big Brown and his foot problems, way back in 1976 a quarter crack was a major disaster,” Roger Attfield explains. “The wall of Norcliffe’s hoof had split at the coronet band. Painful when he galloped, the usual thing was to wait three or four months and let the crack grow out of the foot. Sickening for all of us; that meant Norcliffe was out of the Queen’s Plate; that all the dreams had ended.”

Roger is sitting quietly on his long toothed Thoroughbred pony and breaths a long sigh. Early morning and foggy here at Woodbine, his set of two colts are entering the well groomed sand track which rings Baker’s Acres. Attfield, a patrician man with an English, ‘Windsor’ face, is the essence of a gentleman horse-trainer. Well seasoned by more than fifty years of riding and working with horses, he is wearing a throat warming wool knit sweater and a tweed hacking jacket with the lapel turned up to thwart the chill. His hazel eyes thoughtful under the brim of a dusty helmet, his colts are now only vague shapes in the billowing waves of fog.

Norcliffe was Roger Attfield’s first Queen’s Plate winner. Roger elegantly representing every Thoroughbred horse trainer for that milestone occasion while wearing silk top hat and tails, he has since has knelt before Queen Elizabeth and has won the classic race a record seven more times.

“We can all thank God that Colonel Baker was not the sort to give up,” Roger continues. “He’d been a member of the Canadian Jumping Team that won gold, and knowing horse people in Kentucky, he searched for answers, learned of a new method to heal quarter cracks called the Bane Patch. Almost identical to the patch Big Brown wore in the Kentucky Derby, at the time, it was very expensive. Still, the Colonel wanted to win the Queen’s Plate. So sparing no expense we flew in Bill Bane, the farrier who invented the patch. And scary then to watch the cutting out of the crack and the filling in of the bloody hole with some sort of plastic, even when the patch was in place, I was nervous”.

Norcliffe loved to train and was a big, strong, beautiful moving horse, but would the patch come loose with racing and training? Would the patch last until the Queen’s Plate?

Concern wreathes Roger’s face even now. “So of course Colonel Baker was worried too. But never surrendering, it was also his idea to train Norcliffe in this here meadow. Hoping to get him off the bit; we could save the foot, you see.” Roger pausing, the memory clearly vivid, his eyes are on his two colts as they are caught suddenly in a shaft of brilliant sunlight. Both horses with their heads bowed and appearing happy, the riders are standing up in the tack. The view only for a moment, again they are smudged shapes moving through the fog.

“Yes,” Roger exclaims, “and like those colts out there, Norcliffe loved training at Baker’s Acres. My first ‘Big Horse’, just lovely for me sitting on him, he always stopped right here and stood posing before we galloped. Checking out the fox and geese in the infield, he would have stood for an hour if I’d let him. Wonderful times, then we would canter around the track, getting in the miles.”

Nevertheless, the breakdown of the Bane Patch or the appearance of another quarter crack continued to be a worrying possibility and even after Norcliffe had won the Queen's Plate, Attfield continued the frequent use of the meadow trail as a training site.

"I always grazed Norcliffe out there in the centerfield,” Roger muses. “Magnificent standing there tail-swishing at flies, it’s no wonder to me that he became a great stallion. The sire of Groovy, the Eclipse champion sprinter, Norcliffe was the leading sire of two-year-olds in America, only just bad luck that he died early from colic.”

Shifting in the saddle, Roger caresses the dozing pony whose lower lip is hanging comically. “Still, the Colonel was a stickler for the details. This meadow and that raggedy old dirt track was not a first class situation. Unworthy of Woodbine, he wanted it cleaned up, and bringing in heavy grading equipment, he had the track levelled out there above that rise in the meadow. See it?” Roger says, and pointing, he stands up in the irons. “Out there and above the rise - where that row of trees was started.”

Sitting back in the tack, Roger nudges his knee and the pony turns a step. “So that’s when I started calling this place Baker’s Acres. Just a great place to train and Woodbine already about the finest training centre in the world, everyone agreed with the idea. And look at these horses!” he exclaims. “Do you see that big colt galloping there on the outside? A great mover, he reminds me a lot of Norcliffe. Strong, and with a real good mind; just look at him going by.”

Now the horses and riders are emerging from the fog. The outside colt quickly looming large and galloping close to the rail, his ears are pricked and head bowed, he is concentrating on his work. Impressively reaching for ground, clouded breath streaming from his nostrils, a hand can reach to touch him as he passes. A big dark horse with a deep shoulder and hip, his hocks are stroking straight and true and he’s a powerhouse when galloping away.

The two-year-old playfully bucking then, the colts again caught in the brilliance of a sun-streaked patch in the fog, he is another Roger Attfield racing dream in the making. Perhaps another Queen’s Plate winner, of course the colt loves to train at Baker’s Acres.

Written By: Gerry Belanger, Originally published in ThoroughbredStyle Magazine, May/June 2009 Issue.