Private Attack

Nina Siepel on Steppenwolfer, out with the Cheshire hounds this year

Consider the happy life of Steppenwolfer (by Aptitude out of Wolfer): lots of treats; a big field with clover and buddies; and, from September to March, running around the countryside with a lot of other horses chasing a pack of hounds. A far distance from running third to Barbaro (by Dynaformer out of La Ville Rouge) in the Kentucky Derby and second in the Arkansas Derby in 2006.

Gelded and purchased by Gail and Dixon Thayer as a steeplechase prospect, his short steeplechase career wasn’t as stellar as hoped for. But he’s one happy puppy now. And Nina Siepel, who hunts him with Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds (PA), always wears a big grin, as if she still can’t really believe her good fortune. I’m not sure who is the luckier of the two.

Blythe Miller-Davies on Private Attack is congratulated by husband Joe Davies after winning the Maryland Hunt Cup. Michael Wharton leads the winner.First the Grand National on April 23, then the Maryland Hunt Cup on April 30. Two winning performances for Blythe Miller-Davies and Private Attack. Yet the circumstances made it all the more dramatic.

Miller-Davies—former champion jump jock, mother, and trainer—had retired from riding races more than eight years ago. Mark Beecher was to ride Sportsmans Hall’s Private Attack in the Grand National for trainer Alicia Murphy, but was having visa problems in Ireland. Murphy turned to Miller-Davies, and the pair won by a neck.

Meanwhile, Miller-Davies had been training her husband’s horse Fort Henry which she had intended to ride in the Maryland Hunt Cup one week later. The Grand National win changed those plans, and husband Joe Davies, a former three-time winner of the Maryland Hunt Cup, graciously scratched his horse so his wife could ride Private Attack in that race.