Alex Brown

Last year, Christmas Day was rainy, foggy and unseasonably warm. At about 1:00 PM, I got in my car and headed out to New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, PA, about a 45 minute drive. It was eerily quiet on the roads so I got there in record time. It was beginning to drizzle when I went into the reception area of the hospital.

Aside from the decorations, including a Christmas tree decorated in Barbaro colors (green and blue), the mounds of red and green peppermints and tables bursting with Christmas goodies, the hospital was fully operational. There were vans pulling up with nervous owners admitting sick horses, doctors bustling back and forth and one lone telephone operator on duty.

I checked in with her and settled in to wait for my interview. I was meeting Alex Brown, the web master of the Time Woolley Racing site that became the voice of the Fans of Barbaro and the source for all news about the celebrity patient who at that time was doing well. Alex had come in for the afternoon to walk Barbaro, hand graze him and groom him and we were scheduled to chat when he was finished. Although we had spoken many times on the phone, I had never met him in person and I was looking forward to meeting him. We chose Christmas Day because I knew he would be at New Bolton and it promised to be relatively quiet.

Alex Brown is a fascinating figure in the Barbaro tale. He is British and came over here about fifteen years ago to go to school. While earning an MBA at the University of Delaware, he also exercised race horses for his pal Tim Woolley who ran a modest training operation at Fair Hill. In between he worked at Wharton at the Univ. of Pa helping them set up their electronic admissions functions, linking alums and applicants from around the world. He is smart, quiet, insightful and loves horses--the essence of horses--and simply by being attentive and in the right place at the right time, launched what he calls a fascinating study of an internet based fan group, the Fans of Barbaro. To this group of Barbaro-maniacs, he is nothing short of God--no joke.

To me, Alex Brown is a wonderful friend and our friendship really took off last Christmas Day. He told me that Gretchen had told him about me--that I was the one she had chosen to write the book (this was before I had received a signed contract, so that was news to me)--and he pledged undying loyalty and access to all of his blogs archives, which are kept off site. He is incredibly sensitive and thoughtful and he does what he does out of nothing more than a love for a special horse, Barbaro and the sport of racing.

Today, Alex Brown is traveling around the country, gathering material for a book he plans to write about the Barbaro effect. He begins his story with Barbaro and then traces the origins of the grass roots movement that has become a political force in the anti-slaughter legislature. He still posts a blog that reads like a travelogue of his adventures racing across America. Yesterday he noted that the message board on his site had eclipsed 500,000 posts!!!! That is quite a fan base...(are you listening Madison Ave?)

So one year later, Alex and I are still plugging away, each determined in our own way to tell the story of this horse, and yet linked through the information network that he created. Dare I say, we both have books in us?