The 1 1/4-mile distance of the Kentucky Derby (G1) can pose a challenge to any horse that makes it to the starting gate on the first Saturday in May. But it's a stroll compared with the distance 1983 winner Sunny's Halo traveled just to make it to the gate.
Not to mention a different kind of return to Churchill Downs many years later.
It took Sunny's Halo (Halo—Mostly Sunny, by Sunny) 13 races at six different tracks in two different countries with five different jockeys aboard before he could square off with 19 other starters and win the 1983 classic by two lengths. Along the way to that Derby 40 years ago, Sunny's Halo suffered from shin splints, a wrenched ankle, and some embarrassing defeats.
David J. Foster, patriarch of the family, bred Sunny's Halo, and owned and operated D.J. Foster Racing Stable. His son, Garry Foster, and Garry's sisters—Gayle Spetter and Mona Diamond—kept the stable in operation until just a few years ago. Garry Foster, 71, a retired accountant, recently noted his father's love for racing.
"Let me tell you about the kind of guy my father was," Garry Foster said about the man nicknamed "Pud," who died at age 82 on June 3, 1988. "After the Derby, he couldn't claim horses. He said 'I won the Kentucky Derby. How can I take some guy's $5,000 claimer away from him? I just couldn't do that.'"
His father loved the claiming game and cheap claimers when he got into racing ownership in the late 1960s. In the early 1970s, trainer David Cross stepped into the picture, and Foster eventually stepped out of the claiming game. Sunny's Halo would take them to a new level.
"This is going to sound strange, but it was exciting until after we won the Kentucky Derby. Then it kind of went from fun to a business," Garry Foster said.
The fun started early for David Foster. The Foster family took root in Toronto with a lineage planted in Eastern Europe.
"My grandparents had a little—I'll call it a hotel—but it wasn't really a hotel," Garry Foster said. "It was more a tavern with a few rooms on top."
David Foster's parents would make sandwiches for him to sell at Dufferin Park racetrack not far from their tavern in downtown Toronto.
"My father used to take a wagon full of sandwiches over to the racetrack," Foster said. "He'd sell the sandwiches, but he would go the racetrack and bet the money."
David Foster found his wealth not in sandwiches but as a successful stockbroker. Sunny's Halo would come into his life in part thanks to Canadian Hall of Fame Thoroughbred trainer Yonnie Starr, sports columnist and racing enthusiast Jim Proudfoot, and E.P. Taylor, breeder and Canadian racing industry icon.
Foster had purchased the dam of Sunny's Halo, Mostly Sunny, for $3,900 as a yearling at auction in Canada. She would race 48 times during her three-year career with six wins, five seconds, and nine thirds, and earnings of $30,162.
"She was a very game horse, but again, a cheap claimer," Garry Foster said.
But David Foster loved Mostly Sunny's gameness and decided to breed her. Her first foal jumped a fence as a yearling and broke its collarbone. Then she was barren. She was bred to Vice Regent and produced twins. David Foster all but decided to give up on breeding Mostly Sunny but Starr convinced him to breed her one more time.
Foster read in a column by Proudfoot that Queen Elizabeth II was going to send one of her mares to Halo (Hail to Reason—Cosmah, by Cosmic Bomb), a stallion at Taylor's Windfields Farm. Foster and Cross figured if Halo was good enough for the queen, he was good enough for them. Halo, of course, would prove to be one of the breed's important sires, finishing as leading sire in 1983 and 1989.
So Mostly Sunny was sent to Halo, and their namesake became Sunny's Halo.
"Sunny's Halo was a good and precocious 2-year-old," Garry Foster said. "We got him ready early."
After winning two of his first four starts at Woodbine, followed by good efforts in stakes at Belmont Park and Saratoga Race Course, Ontario-bred Sunny's Halo hit his stride as he stretched out in distance. In September and early October he posted a three-race win streak at Woodbine, taking the Swynford Stakes, Grey Stakes, and Coronation Futurity.
"At that point in time, we thought we had a good horse," Garry Foster said. "We thought he could be Derby-ready."
More starts at 2 followed and he developed shin splints. In the Laurel Futurity (G1), he finished ninth, beaten 14 lengths. At the Meadowlands on Nov. 4, he ran sixth beaten nine lengths in the Young America Stakes (G1). Sunny's Halo ended his 2-year-old season with a record of 11-5-2-1.
"I'll be honest with you," Garry Foster said of those final juvenile starts of 1982. "We got greedy."
Cross and David Foster decided to send Sunny's Halo to sunny California for some "R and R." Hollywood Park had added a swimming pool for horses with sore legs, a way for them to build strength without pounding the racetrack. Sunny's Halo used the equine pool two or three times a week to build up muscle tone and stamina, while relieving pressure on his healing shins.
"They actually named it the 'Sunny's Halo Pool' after his Derby win," Garry Foster said.
The colt grew and filled out, and the swimming regimen restored confidence in the colt's connections.
"They (Cross and his father) went to Vegas and bet the horse at 100-1 in the winter books," Garry Foster said. (News outlets reported Cross and his wife Patty bet $200 on Sunny's Halo with a Las Vegas bookmaker.)
He would be rested through the winter, then, to start his 3-year-old campaign, Cross deemed the California racing surfaces too hard for Sunny's Halo and moved him to Oaklawn Park to use its more forgiving surface. He won the one-mile Rebel Handicap March 26, a three-length victory, and the 1 1/8-mile Arkansas Derby (G1) April 16 by four lengths.
"The rest is history, right?" Garry Foster said. "David (Cross) and my father had a bond. David was a tough guy but never with my father."
Maybe it was Cross' humble roots that solidified the bond. Cross worked his way from hot walker and stable hand to galloping horses at Willows Fairgrounds in Victoria, British Columbia, and even rode for a short time. He became a trainer and operated a public stable with about 35 head. When Sunny's Halo came along, Cross shifted most of his attention to his Derby horse.
"David went through a lot of owners," Foster said. "I heard stories where if (an owner) went to criticize David he would put the shank on the horse, take him out of the stall, and tell the owner, 'Get your horse out of here.' But never ever (with my father). They never had an argument or disagreement."
Cross would spend his entire life with horses. As a favor to former Arkansas jockey and trainer Sandra "Kaye" Bell, trainer William "Jinks" Fires hired the aging Cross. And at the behest of Fires, Cross went to work for Roxanne Martin in 2018. Martin and her husband, retired veterinarian Norman Umphenour, have owned and operated Highcroft Farm in Lexington for 62 years.
Martin said Cross showed up for work every day at 4:30 a.m. He spent 90 minutes two times a day walking a retired jumper, despite Cross' ailing knees and failing eyesight. The farm had leaf blowers, but Cross always swept the stable area, Martin said.
"He was an old racetracker," she said.
Cross talked a lot about Sunny's Halo as a stallion and that led Martin to purchase an unraced broodmare named Felicita (More Than Ready—Gottahaveadream, by Indian Charlie). Halo was Felicita's great-grandsire and Southern Halo her grandsire. Felicita produced a yearling that Martin sold, and she sold Felicita, both sales financial successes.
"Felicita was David's gift to me," Martin said.
Cross died at age 84 in May 2019.
"I saw him in Lexington the night before he passed," said Fires, 83, who still runs a stable of 12 at Oaklawn. "Toward the end (of his training career), nothing seemed to work for him. But he was a class act."
Sunny's Halo was a class act in the Kentucky Derby May 7, 1983, a day that Cross's plan would come together. He broke from post 10, stalked from second in the 20-horse field, grabbed the lead at six furlongs, and cruised to a two-length win over Desert Wine.
"It was somewhat pressure, but we knew the horse belonged there," Foster said. "The post-race excitement was crazy, and it started pouring as soon as the horse crossed the finish line. We were all drenched."
Sunny's Halo, draped in a blanket of roses, completed the dream for Cross and the Fosters.
But his trip to the Preakness Stakes (G1) at Pimlico Race Course May 21 dampened the euphoria. The news around the race focused on a rash that Sunny's Halo developed. When Sunny's Halo finished sixth, beaten 11 lengths, many surmised the rash caused the poor performance.
Garry Foster blames a rash decision at the starting gate.
"They told the starters, 'Just put him in the gate—don't touch him—and he'll break straight,'" Foster said. "Even if his head is cocked, he'll break straight. His head started to cock, and they grabbed his ear. He turned his head and started looking at the starter, and they popped the gate."
Suuny's Halo raced five more time after the Preakness with his best efforts coming in the July 30 Whitney Handicap (G1) at Saratoga, where he ran a strong third, and a 10-length win in the Super Derby (G1) at Louisiana Downs, where he set a track record for the 1 1/4-mile distance (2:01 3/5).
Sunny's Halo ended his racing career on the turf in the Volante Handicap (G3T) at Santa Anita Park in October 1983, where he finished second to Mamaison.
The 3-year-old season record for Sunny's Halo stood at 9-4-1-1. His lifetime record of 20-9-3-2 and $1,247,791 in earnings led to a host of honors for the second Canadian-bred to win the Kentucky Derby. The first 3-year-old Thoroughbred in North America to earn more than $1 million in a single season would be awarded a Special Sovereign Award (1983). He would be inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in 1986.
Despite not winning a classic, Slew o' Gold would register three grade 1 wins in New York to secure the 1983 Eclipse for 3-year-old male.
The "fun" that became a business for the Fosters became big business when Sunny's Halo was retired at age 3 to stand at Domino Stud in Kentucky in 1984. The Fosters syndicated him for $7.1 million and kept a 51% share. But the traveling days for Sunny's Halo did not end.
In 1998, he was purchased by a partnership and moved to Texas, and he also shuttled to Brazil several times during his stud career. He last stood at Double S Thoroughbred Farm in Bullard, Texas. At the time of his death at age 23 in June 2003, Sunny's Halo was the all-time leading Texas-based stallion by progeny earnings.
Sunny's Halo succumbed to old age and was euthanized June 3, 2003, five years to the day when David Foster died. Sunny's Halo was buried on the Double S Thoroughbred Farm. The farm eventually closed, and the property went to real estate developers.
In June 2006 Rita Nugent, a self-described horse lover, heard about the Double S Thoroughbred Farm's pending development. She wanted to save Sunny's Halo's remains. He was exhumed June 20, 2006, and the remains were cremated and placed in an urn and sent to the Kentucky Derby Museum next to Churchill Downs July 15, 2006. Garry Foster sent his son, Eric, to represent the Foster family. Cross also attended.
His gravestone and remains rest in the middle of five Kentucky Derby winners buried at the museum—Dust Commander (1970) and Carry Back (1961) to his left and Brokers Tip (1933) and Swaps (1955) to his right.
Garry Foster's memories about Sunny's Halo and his "Run for the Roses" in 1983 always include his father's love for racing and for his family. After Sunny's Halo won the Grey Stakes, there were about 25 people—family and friends—in the winner's circle.
"(The track) knew he would win the (Coronation) and asked my father, 'Could you have a few less people in the winner's circle?'"
Foster said his father replied:
"If you don't want my family, then you don't want my horse."
