Somewhere, in some other world we don’t know about, there’s a well-run steeplechase meet taking shape.
Will O’Keefe and Margaret Worrall, two people who devoted much of their lives to American steeplechasing, died within two days of each other late last year. An announcer, meet director, record keeper, leader and doer, O’Keefe died Dec. 18. He was 76. A writer, owner, historian, meet director and trailblazer, Worrall passed Dec. 20. She was 81.
Even if their roles had diminished in recent years, both will be missed as nobody cared more about American jump racing than O’Keefe and Worrall.
O’Keefe’s connection to racing came via his parents Frank and Lillian, who bred 1966 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Kauai King and were consignors at the Saratoga yearling sale for many years. Will watched Kauai King from Episcopal School in Washington, D.C., and later went to the University of Virginia and managed the family’s Pine Brook Farm near Warrenton, Va. A foxhunter with Casanova, he found himself in charge of the annual point-to-point races there in 1980 and filled in as the announcer. He would go on to call races in Virginia and beyond for the next 40 years. He was the first announcer at the Maryland Hunt Cup, called all six of Saluter’s Virginia Gold Cup victories and made “in hand and in command” somewhat of a cliché for a handy steeplechase winner.
Beyond the announcer’s stand, he created a uniform entry process for point-to-points – saving time, money, work and mistakes for organizers and horsemen – and pieced together an online database of 50 years of records. Now managed by the Temple Gwathmey Steeplechase Foundation, the central entry office, its data and its processes are still in use. O’Keefe oversaw several point-to-points and National Steeplechase Association meets, served on the NSA handicap ratings committee and for 17 years was the executive director of the Westmoreland Davis Memorial Foundation which included a 1,200 acre property, historic mansion and equestrian center at Morven Park in Virginia.
Beyond horses and racing, O’Keefe was a historian, an environmentalist and a preservationist. He’ll be missed by someone in jump racing every day.
The same could be said about Worrall. Like O’Keefe, she left various marks beyond horses on land preservation causes, high-school English students, churches and historic properties.
Born on Maryland Hunt Cup Day 1942 (Winton won the first of his three, though the race was canceled in 1943, 1944 and 1945 because of World War II), Worrall had a seemingly lifelong connection to the race. She wrote about the race, and others, for the Maryland Horse magazine and later Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred. Her first byline, as best we can tell, appeared in the August 1982 edition atop an article about an orphaned fox kit adopted by Hunt Cup executive secretary Cuppy Fenwick and his wife Betty.
Bigger assignments followed, as did a spot on the Hunt Cup committee (she was the first woman member) in 1995. Three years later, she succeeded Fenwick as the executive secretary (again the first woman to hold the post). She stayed in that role until 2006, and the race is now steered by Liz McKnight and Nancy Roberts. In 2015, Worrall received the S. Bryce Wing Award from the Maryland Hunt Cup Association for outstanding contributions to Maryland timber racing.
Worrall wrote two books about the Maryland Hunt Cup – the first in 1997 and the second in 2018. Worrall also published books about the histories of the Green Spring Valley Hunt Club, the My Lady’s Manor Races and Maryland’s Grand National Races.
Despite all the bylines, her unquestioned highlight of a life with horses and the Maryland countryside came in 1992 when Von Csadek – trained by her husband Doug, ridden by their son Patrick and owned by Margaret and her uncle Herb Sheppard – won the Hunt Cup after losing his rider at the fourth fence in 1989 and at the 21st (while in front) in 1990. The race, always the last Saturday in April but not necessarily the same date, occupied a special time for Worrall, who paid credit to the horse in the From the Author note in her first book.
“And last but not least, thanks to Von Csadek for making my dreams come true – and on my birthday no less!”
O’Keefe wasn’t announcing that day, as the Hunt Cup didn’t have one yet, but would have loved it.
An Opportunity for Maryland
January brought a much-anticipated report from the Maryland Thoroughbred Racetrack Operating Authority, which crafted a future business model called Pimlico Plus with a new racetrack, training center and operations model all backed by the state. The concept keeps the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, forms a solid foundation for the industry and sets up a stable future.
But . . . there’s always a but, right? None of it happens if the industry gets bogged down in details, individual interests, out-of-left-field complaints and non-collaborative thinking. Remember that as Pimlico Plus unfolds over the next few months.
