David Cassidy in the News
Sweet-Voiced Cassidy Goes Horse
Former Teen Idol Has a 'Racetrack Mind'
By John Scheinman
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, March 26, 2005; Page D11
David Cassidy -- yes, that David Cassidy -- heard his colt, Mayan King, received morning-line odds of 15-1 for today's $500,000 Lane's End Stakes for 3-year-olds and positively lit up with glee.
"Oh, I'm in love. I love that!" said Cassidy, who once upon a time, long, long ago in the early 1970s played Keith, sweet-voiced heartthrob of the Partridge Family, whose shag haircut by itself triggered a worldwide pre-teen crush and bedroom poster epidemic.
David Cassidy is hoping that a victory in Saturday's Lane's End Stakes will lead his horse, Mayan King, to the Kentucky Derby. (Wilfredo Lee -- AP)
"Does Mike Battaglia do the morning line? I'd love to shake his hand. I generally don't as a rule gamble on my horses, but if he's anywhere near 10-1 or 15-1 . . . "
As hard as it is to break the news, Cassidy turns 55 next month, and while still sweet and boyish and into the music, his mind is on his horses.
It's a side few fans see -- there's not a peep about horse racing on his Web site -- but there likely isn't an entertainer in the world who has sold more than 25 million records that speaks more authoritatively on the sport.
Mayan King, undefeated in two starts and a horse Cassidy purchased with partners in Florida for $210,000, is the culmination of a lifetime fascination with thoroughbreds. Cassidy talks about "a vague recollection being three years old seeing Native Dancer," then he's off on a story about staying home from school as a kid in New Jersey with the measles watching reruns of the 1947 Cornel Wilde-Maureen O'Hara flick "The Homestretch" on the old "Million Dollar Movie," which ran the same film every day for a week.
Cassidy moved to California at age 11 to become ridiculously famous, with reportedly more fan club members than the Beatles and Elvis Presley combined. But while he was out there singing the smash hit "I Think I Love You" with his TV mom, Shirley Jones, he also was dragging his real mother to Santa Anita Park.
"There was a cameraman on the Partridge Family who had a ranch, and he used to drive two hours to Burbank, and he started bringing in The Blood-Horse and the Thoroughbred Record, and I started reading," Cassidy said. "In about two years, I went to the California Thoroughbred Breeders' Sale and bought my first horse. I was 23. It was something because I had done a lot of research. I wasn't interested in racing horses. I wanted to breed them."
Through the early 1980s, Cassidy says he had much success selling "a lot of very good, high-priced mares and yearlings." He and his ex-wife, South African horse-trainer Merle Tanz, raced and bred a mare named Neon, who produced a stakes winner then won around $850,000 in Europe. He sold Neon, pregnant with the future stakes star Sharp Cat, to a prominent breeder.
Cassidy got out of the horse business for more than 10 years in the late 1980s when his career and the breeding industry both turned down. Things picked up in 1994 when he appeared with his half-brother Shaun (another former teen idol) and Petula Clark on Broadway in "Blood Brothers." Then he signed a deal in Las Vegas that made him more than enough money to get back into breeding.
"I played in Las Vegas for six years and every night I did two shows, 50 weeks for six years," Cassidy said. "It's really a challenge there, but I'm happy not to be working that much. You're unable to go anywhere. It becomes, month after month, year after year, a real grind. I still gave it everything I had in my body. After six straight years . . . I had the opportunity to do concerts all over the world and work when I wanted. I wanted to have balance so I could be with my horses and my wife and son."
For the past five years, Cassidy, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has been dealing in bloodstock, buying and selling broodmares, mating them to stallions in Kentucky and Maryland and raising the foals at an associate's farm in New York.
He knows the game inside out, eagerly talking about everything from obscure pedigrees to fractured leadership in the sport to the quality of racing surfaces at different tracks.
Along with his breeding program, Cassidy races a few horses with a trainer in Florida and New York-based Gary Contessa, who trains Mayan King.
Contessa, 47, might be perfect for Cassidy because he has that certain New York salt of the earth quality that doesn't impress easily. (Contessa's media guide quote about how he got into racing: "My Uncle Louie used to take me to Belmont Park, and I just fell in love with it.") "I know Sam Shepard," Contessa said. "I know Jessica Lange. I don't treat them like celebrities. I treat David Cassidy like the horseman he is.
"I am impressed by who David Cassidy is, and I'm impressed by his knowledge. You could sit down with David Cassidy for an hour and talk about pedigrees and breeding and race mares. He has a phenomenal racetrack mind."
Mayan King, named after a street in Cassidy's neighborhood, is in deep in the Lane's End, light on experience and facing proven stakes winners. Still, Cassidy, who turned down a $1 million offer for the horse, hopes a win today will lead him to the Kentucky Derby.
Still, because of the demands of being David Cassidy, he won't be at Turfway Park in Kentucky to see the race. He is committed to two shows tonight at the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Conn.
"I couldn't move the dates. It's my profession," he said with bemused resignation. "When we booked the date seven or eight months ago, I wasn't looking at the calendar saying, 'That's the Lane's End Stakes.' "
