For this gentleman’s club — Herb Liverman, Mel Hartman, and David McDuffee — the winners have been fast and plentiful. Over the years, the trio has owned an arm’s length list of racing greats, and this season again, it seems, they’ve got some promising prodigy under their wing.
Story by Paul Delean / Photography by Matt Waples
Herb Liverman is a numbers guy, but he stopped counting stakes wins a long time ago.
There have been hundreds, literally, in the four decades that the Montreal native has been immersed in harness racing, many of them savoured alongside his father Irving, whose achievements as an owner and breeder earned him a spot in the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in 2002.
Liverman still gets excited by a good horse, however, and this year's model appears to be Bee A Magician, a two-year-old trotting filly by Kadabra who finishes her races like Usain Bolt.
Her stunning stretch acceleration to win the $130,000 Ontario Sires Stakes Gold Final at Mohawk by a widening five lengths on August 9 left onlookers, and her owners, dazzled. Her time was a career-best 1:56.4, with the final quarter in an eye-catching :28.1 on a track rated off one second.
It was her first Gold Final victory in three tries, but she'd lost the previous one at Flamboro Downs by only a nose after another determined rally from the back of the pack after starting from the outside post eight.
“Amazing,” says Liverman, 66, who owns the filly with Mel Hartman, 68, of Ottawa and Florida-based David McDuffee, two others who seem to have the Midas touch.
Together, alone and with other partners, these three men have enjoyed a remarkable string of success in the sport. Almost every year, they seem to have a good horse. Some years, they've got a couple.
As it happens, Hartman is the co-owner (with Brittany Farms) of this year's upset winner of the $714,050 Hambletonian Oaks, Personal Style.
He, McDuffee and Liverman also own Ontario Sires Stakes three-year-old star Miss Paris, who won the OSS Superfinal at two and has banked well over $600,000 to date.
“Herb and I have done business together about 10 or 12 years, on the trotting side. We met through [trainer] Chuck Sylvester, a good friend of mine,” says McDuffee, 74. “Mel joined us a few years ago. They're good partners. I don't think we've ever had a disagreement over anything. That's unusual.”
Though they're close friends now, visiting each other's homes in Florida, Liverman and McDuffee were only passing acquaintances in the early days of their association.
“In the horse business, you're partners with a lot of people you don't know well,” says Liverman. “Usually, trainers put the partnerships together for expensive horses. I remember when we bought Bold Dreamer [dam of Pampered Princess] as a two-year-old. My share was $100,000 and I didn't have a cheque on me. David said not to worry, he wrote one out for $300,000 and said 'pay me when you get home'. Which I did. Our other partner was Tom Walsh, who I actually never did meet.”
Liverman knew Hartman from the days when Blue Bonnets racetrack in Montreal was still a harness-racing hotbed. Hartman was a regular at the track and co-owned pacer Boomer Drummond, one of the most talented and successful Quebec-breds ever. Liverman recalls Hartman inviting him once to the Meadowlands to watch Boomer Drummond compete in an overnight race.
They lost contact when Liverman moved from Montreal to Toronto to oversee (and eventually sell) his father's appliance business Super Electric, but still met occasionally at sales. Then a few years ago, Hartman - who owns a wholesale fruit and vegetable business - called and asked if they could use another partner.
McDuffee's journey to harness racing's upper echelon began on the small fair tracks of NewEngland, where he grew up,” says McDuffee, a native of Pepperell, Massachusetts. “My dad always had a couple of horses, which he raced at the fairs. He trained, he shoed. He even built a little half-mile track at our farm. I wasn't as hands-on as him; I just took a liking to the animal.”
After attending Boston University and doing a tour of duty in the military, McDuffee took a job in the insurance industry. He worked a decade for others, then opened his own agency in Pepperell, specializing in commercial insurance, and over the next 40 years grew it from a two-person office into the largest privately-held insurance company in the region. He sold the business in 2005 to a large U.S.insurer, Brown & Brown.
While insurance paid the bills, horseracing was his passion. “I probably got my first (racehorse) about the time I got out of school,” McDuffee laughs. “I had a horse before I had a car.”
There was no success to speak of until the early 1990s, when he happened into a partnership with the late Tom Walsh. “He was my first major partner; until then, I used to do it pretty much by myself. I had a couple of horses with the Haughtons in Florida and so did he. We struck up a good friendship and had a great deal of success together until his health failed a couple of years ago.”
Their stars included 1993 Adios Pace winner Miles McCool, and Magical Mike, who captured the Little Brown Jug in 1994.
McDuffee now has interests in about 40 horses, including yearlings, weanlings, racehorses and breeding stock.
Among them is Kadabra, the horse that cemented his friendship with Liverman. They were in the group of five partners recruited by Peter Heffering to buy the Illinois-bred for $800,000 at the end of a two-year-old campaign in which he'd won 10 of 14 starts.
Kadabra also excelled at three, winning the Canadian Trotting Classic and Breeders' Crown, and has proved even more prolific as a stallion after his retirement at four. This year, he was inducted to the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame.
“When Kadabra went to stud, Dave I started buying lots of trotters together,” Liverman said.
Their track record, especially with trotting fillies, is remarkable. The honour roll includes Her Culese, Victory My Way, Bold Dreamer, Behindclosedoors, Tight Pants and Poof She's Gone, a $180,000 Kadabra yearling who went on to win the Breeders' Crown at 2 and earned more than $1 million. Her only blemish was an uncharacteristic break as heavy favourite in the 2010 Hambletonian Oaks.
That's a painful memory for Liverman, because it's one of the few major races no Liverman horse has ever won.. They've got a Hambletonian (Muscles Yankee), Meadowlands Pace (Laughs), four Breeders' Crowns, even a Jugette (Handle With Care), but so far, no Hambletonian Oaks.
“That was my biggest heartbreak in the business, along with Britelite Lobell breaking at two when she was 3-5 in the Breeders Crown.”
The Oaks is a race he'd dearly love to win, especially with a Kadabra. He's the Ontario sire's largest single shareholder and also manages the stallion syndicate.
Wearing that hat, he's more than a little disturbed by what's happened in Ontario the last few months, with the provincial government abruptly shutting off racetracks' slot revenue streams. “I have 19 broodmares in Canada, and 18 are in foal to Kadabra. I have 14 Kadabra sucklings, five or six yearlings. I've taken a big hit. People won't bid as much [for horses] as before [Premier Dalton McGuinty] opened his mouth. Some people say we should move Kadabra out of Ontario. I'm reluctant, though I'm sure he'd be well accepted in the U.S. It would be heartbreaking to move the horse but anything can happen when government gets involved. If it comes to a vote and the majority [of shares] favour a move, that's what'll happen. “
To have lasting success in horseracing, you have to run it as a business, admits Liverman. That's how he and has father did it from the start. Good years on the racetrack meant extra money to reinvest in yearlings or quality broodmares.
Though the horses raced in his father's name and the breeding stock was registered in his, it was really one operation, Liverman said. “It all came out of the same pot. We only had one bank account.”
Standout horses like Silent Majority, Handle With Care and Windshield Wiper got the Livermans off to a flying start in the early 1970s, enabling the purchase of breeding rights to stallions like No Nukes, Super Bowl and Valley Victory, and the eventual creation of a breeding operation that now includes a blueblood broodmare band and significant positions in leading stallions Muscles Yankee and Kadabra.
“I have 21 trotting broodmares and I'll put them up against anyone else's top 21,” Liverman said. “Some cost close to $300,000.”
He said he gravitated to trotters exclusively, in part because he didn't like what “chemists” were doing to the sport. With trotters, conformation and basic horsemanship count more, he said.
McDuffee said he and Liverman see eye-to-eye on most things, and that's why they clicked as partners.
“Your partner has to be on the same wavelength, have the same philosophy and theory,” he said. We both like having young horses to race at two and three and then sell or breed. We're familiar with the various racing programs. We use good trainers, like Nifty Norman, and we're loyal to them; we don't bounce around. We go to the sales looking for the best and we're not bashful (about paying top dollar), because when you divide it two or three ways, it's not so bad.”
Having partners who honour their commitments also is essential.
“I remember a vet not wanting to work on a horse once because my partner in it - someone who is no longer in the business - owed him so much money. It happens,” Liverman said.
Though they keep in regular contact by telephone, the partners rarely turn up at the races at the same time. Winner's circle photos with all three are scarce.
With so many horses racing in so many different places, McDuffee finds it easier to follow their exploits on TV. “That way, you don't miss anything. And if they race bad, you can just go to bed instead of having to get in the car and drive for four hours.”