Glyshaw, en route to Breeders' Cup, was not far from abyss

Tim Glyshaw was riding shotgun Monday morning, with about 10 hours left to travel in a truck headed from Woodbine Racecourse near Toronto to Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. Behind him, in the dimness of an attached horse trailer, was Bullards Alley. It had been 16 hours or so since Bullards Alley not only scored a 42-1 shocker in the Grade 1 Canadian International, but ran his eyeballs out in so doing. His win margin of 10 3/4 lengths was the largest in the race’s grand history, and the 114 Beyer Speed Figure his performance produced is the highest turf number in North America this year.

“We knew he loved the soft turf and he was training great,” Glyshaw said. “We knew he was going to run a big race. That kind of performance? I don’t know. I’ve read some things on social media saying he’ll never run that race again. That’s fine. We’ll take it.”

Not a lot of Grade 1-winning trainers ride back home with their horse. But Glyshaw is not like a lot of Grade 1-winning trainers.

“We don’t really have enough grooms to spare,” he said. “When we’ve been shipping around for stakes, I just ride with the horse and help take care of him.”

Glyshaw, 48, runs a stable that numbers 26 right now and is split between Indiana Grand and Churchill Downs. His wife and assistant, Natalie, runs the Churchill string, with which Bullards Alley is based.

“He’s kind of been her pet project,” Glyshaw said.

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The International was the first Grade 1 win of Glyshaw’s training career, which dates to 2004 and includes 2,765 starters. Bullards Alley’s win in the Grade 3 Louisville Handicap in 2016 was Glyshaw’s only graded-stakes win until this month. On Oct. 7 at Keeneland, Glyshaw sent out the Indiana-bred Bucchero to win the Grade 2 Woodford Stakes at Keeneland.

So there you go: It took Glyshaw 12 years to win one graded race and eight days to get his next two.

That alone is odd enough, but the sudden run of big-race success comes just months after Glyshaw wondered if his training career had hit a dead end.

Glyshaw’s barn at Fair Grounds was among the hardest hit this winter by an EHV-1 outbreak that caused more serious problems for horsemen than horses. None of Glyshaw’s horses took seriously ill, but his barn was under quarantine longer than most in New Orleans, and after he was permitted to start racing again, eight of his horses were claimed before meet’s end.

“People didn’t quite understand we were really close to going out of business,” Glyshaw said. “Some of our vendors, we just got caught up paying bills about two months ago. We were under quarantine 30 days on the calendar, but it cost us almost two months. We went back to Kentucky with a shell of our operation, and it seemed like the writing was on the wall, that we weren’t meant to do this.”

Coming north for the spring and summer, Glyshaw picked up his Indiana-bred stock and tried to settle back into a rhythm again. By mid-summer, the operation had stabilized. Now, it is flying.

Plans for Bullards Alley, who is owned by Wayne Spalding and Faron McCubbins, aren’t set. But Glyshaw soon will be back on the national stage when Bucchero, who campaigns for Ironhorse Racing Stable, starts in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint. Glyshaw hasn’t run a horse in the Breeders’ Cup, though he came close. Taptowne was a vet scratch from the 2013 Dirt Mile the morning of the race because of a foot bruise.

“We wouldn’t have beat Goldencents that day, but I think we might have run second,” Glyshaw said.

Bucchero will be the first horse to start in a Breeders’ Cup race after shipping from Indiana Grand. Glyshaw will return there to oversee his training later this week after returning Bullards Alley to Churchill, back under his wife’s day-to-day care.

“She’s been going through some of the doldrums of the business as well,” he said. “Having owners tell you they’re going to send you horses and don’t, having stalls cut. Days like yesterday show you it’s all worth it.”