John Nerud turns 100 2/9/13

[Tonythepony]

You have to love the stories told by the "old timers" on how the game was back in the day. 2 Quotes stick out from Nerud and and 1 from the Chief Allen Jerkens about Nerud that are just priceless
1)
The best training advice he ever got, he said, came from Ben Jones when Nerud took over a string of horses for Herbert Woolf’s Woolford Farm. Jones had once trained for Woolf.

“I took over 32 or 33 horses, and Ben didn’t know I’d ever trained horses,” Nerud said. “He came down to the barn where I was, and he said, ‘John, you don’t have enough sense to train these horses, so I’ll tell you what to do. Keep ’em happy, keep ’em fat, feed ’em good, and work ’em a half a mile, and they’ll win in spite of you.’ I come to New York, and everybody worked their horses a mile and three-quarters, and I worked my horses a half a mile and run right past them. I was known as ‘that half-a-mile son of a female dog.’ ”

2) About his initial meeting with James McKnight { Tarten Farm}

Their first meeting in Miami, shoehorned into a 15-minute gap in McKnight’s schedule, lasted 3 1/2 hours.

“He asked me, ‘Can this game get beat?’ ” Nerud said. “I said, ‘Sure, Mr. McKnight.’ I didn’t know when I was talking to him that he had a billion dollars. I knew he was rich, but I didn’t know he had a billion. So I said, ‘Sure, we can do it, but we have to set up a factory. We’ll buy up some land and start raising horses. No one in the world is smart enough to buy yearlings.’ The hangers-on sitting around him, the most money they’d ever asked him for was $35,000 to buy a horse. I told him, ‘We’ll start out, you give me a million, and if that don’t work, you give me $2 million, and we’ll make it work.’ They about fell off their goddarned chairs. But I’m talking to a rich man, and you talk to them like that

" He always won a lot of races. He was good , there's no question about him being good.He always tells the story ,' get a horse half fir and run him.' He might of said that, but I don't ever remember him doing it. Didn't Dr.Fager win his first start? He said he learned it from Ben Jones, but Ben Jones didn't do it either. They used to win their first start all the time , too. They were big and fat, but they were so good they'd would win anyway.even if he was giving them a race."
-Allen Jerkens, Hall of Fame trainer

[Ocala Mike]

The man is a living legend down here. They have streets named after Tartan Farms. Here's a link to a fantastic site for him: http://www.johnnerud.com/

Happy Birthday!

[Reallyquiet]

"....and its Cozzene with Walter Guerra taking the BC Mile ". My first 100 dollar win bet.Never gonna forget that one.