from Plainridge Park Casino

Plainville, MA — A total of $600,000 in purse monies will be on the line Monday (Oct. 24) when Plainridge Park Casino hosts the finals of the 2016 Massachusetts Sire Stakes.

Eight championship events will be contested for a purse of $75,000 each. The lucrative purses for the Standardbred breeding program in the commonwealth — they are more than four times 2014 levels — are the direct result of the success of Plainridge Park Casino’s first full year of operation.

Actually, the title Massachusetts Sire Stakes is a bit of a misnomer, a hold over from bye gone days. More than a decade ago, with the breeding industry in crisis, the Standardbred Owners of Massachusetts made the change from a program based upon stallions to one based upon dams. To be eligible to the Massachusetts stakes program, a broodmare must be in residence at a local farm when each delivers her foal. As a result, the Bay State program features horses bred in, and eligible to, stake programs from a variety of locales. And each and every one of those horses has its own unique story to tell.

Perhaps no story is as compelling as that of Primo’s Last Rodeo. For the past several years Donald Dickison, a regular on the Maine circuit, has sent a broodmare to Massachusetts to foal and become a dual eligible, entitled to participate in both state’s programs.

Roughly three years ago, Dickison once again sent the mare Primo Deluxe to Nancy Longobardi’s farm in Norfolk, Mass., just as he had done in previous seasons. However when it came time for the mare to deliver her foal, complications arose and Longobardi rushed the mare to Tufts Veterinary Hospital. Primo Deluxe was bleeding internally, and although a healthy colt was successfully delivered, the damage was too great to save the mare.

With an orphaned foal (who would be named Primo’s Last Rodeo) now on the ground, Longobardi and Dickison had a couple options to keep him alive and to raise him. One was to find a surrogate mare to nurse the youngster. Another was to do it themselves. They chose the latter.

So from his earliest minutes on earth, Primo’s Last Rodeo learned how to drink formula from a bucket held by a human being, rather than to nurse from his mother.

“It was just like feeding a baby,” Dickison said. “You had to mix it up and give it to him every four to six hours around the clock.”

Fortunately for all involved, the fledgling colt was a natural.

“He took to it right away and sucked it up just like a vacuum cleaner,” Dickison recalled.

After a few weeks at the Longobardi Farm with Nancy tending to the round the clock feedings, Primo’s Last Rodeo made the trip to the Windsor, Maine Fairgrounds, which is the summer headquarters for the Dickison Stable.

“We joke that he is part human,” Dickison remarked, noting that the colt has always seemed more comfortable with humans than horses.

Unlike virtually all other foals who spend much of their first year alongside a mother, Primo’s Last Rodeo never met another horse for the first three months of life.

“Odds” are an inherent part of the racing game. That’s the reason for the toteboard in the infield. But if you think cashing a mutuel ticket is tough, try raising a foal and getting it to the races, even under the best of circumstances.

Primo’s Last Rodeo beat the odds at birth, and it seems, has been beating them ever since, as much a natural on the racetrack as he was taking that formula from Nancy Longobardi and Donnie Dickison.

The gelding made the races in this his 2-year-old season, participating in stakes programs in two New England states. In Maine he was on the board in seven of the eight preliminary legs, only to be saddled with the eight hole in the $50,000 final.

“He definitely would have gotten a good piece of that if it weren’t for the post position,” Dickison said.

The Maine season complete, he headed back to the place of his eventful birth to race in the Massachusetts program. After third place finishes in the first two preliminary legs, Primo’s Last Rodeo, with Donnie Dickison in the bike, scored a victory in last week’s $24,000 event, and the duo was joined in the winner’s circle by many of those who have been part of his amazing story.

His freshman campaign comes to a close on Monday, though he doesn’t need to worry about the eight hole this time. Primo’s Last Rodeo drew the rail in the $75,000 championship final.

The Massachusetts Sire Stake finals are part of a 15-race card on Monday afternoon at Plainridge Park Casino. First post is at 1 p.m.