Behind The Blue: An In-Depth Look At Blue Cross Estates

[Brave]

“Behind The Blue: An In-Depth Look At Blue Cross Estates”
1st BCE Feature
In Attendance: Rosaline Myers

I N T R O D U C T I O N

It was with a snap, not a bang that Blue Cross Estates made their debut into the racing world only three months ago, where their newest dirt devil Predator had dominated the Ile-Du-Prince derby in-hand at The Wire track. It would be the first time any track anywhere would be graced with the rapidly familiarizing blue and white silks of BCE, and it would certainly not be the last. While Blue Cross Estates has certainly made themselves known as a serious stable in the racing world, they’ve kept nearly everything else to themselves. Now, with the stable rising to new levels of fame within the public eye, there are questions that can no longer go without answers. The Gallop sat down with Co-Owner Rosaline Myers in an attempt to answer who and what exactly is Blue Cross Estates.

T H E   O R I G I N S

While Blue Cross Estates is definitely new to the racing world, it has operated on a championship level for over twenty years. Originally based in the small town of Arlington, Tennessee, owner Oliver Myers worked and trained over sixty event horses, including sixteen top dressage champions that competed on the international level. “He was good at dressage, my father, but also just simply good with horses,” Rosaline Myers commented rather wistfully. “He always knew how to work in a way as to get exactly what he wanted out of them. If you were having a problem with one of the equines, you went and saw him and he fixed it right then and there.” Oliver Myers sent three different rider/horse combinations to the Olympics, as well as funded and won multiple international stakes and championships. Among his best horses was the notable Solstice Sonata, two time winner of the FEI Grand Prix, esteemed champion The Mount, veteran winner of the USEF Festival Of Champions, and perhaps his most famed horse Dance Darling, winner of the ‘06 and ‘08 Global Dressage Festival. Needless to say, BCE had been rolling on the top level of dressage for decades, and then seemingly decided to throw it all away. “In reality,” Started Rosaline Myers, “I think he was already getting bored of it when my mother fell ill. It was the same routine every day, every year on a nonstop repetition. He didn’t like the people he was dealing with anymore, and he didn’t like their horses. He was unhappy with the foal crop that our breeder’s had put out, and he was unhappy with the competition he was facing. His absolute favorite horse, one that he had carefully planned for and raised up from a baby, Kabari Kat, was injured in the pasture and forced into early retirement, right before the biggest, most impressionable year of his career. The death of my mother was just the icing on the cake.” And so, in 2008 Blue Cross Estates shut it’s doors permanently. The horses young enough were sold and those old enough retired to pasture or were given as gifts to low key riding stables.

 “At first the entire family was in disarray. My father was throwing away his life’s work and wasn’t getting anything for it. We thought he had lost his mind when he told us he was selling the stables and moving west to start racing. I had just graduated college at the time and was looking into a career in financing when my aunt and uncle called me back and yelled a bit that I had to talk to my father and ‘set him straight.’ Of course I just laughed at them too, there was no way to change Oliver Myer’s mind, especially not through his daughter,” Yet Rosaline Myers did return home, and with it started a father-daughter partnership that would soon become well known. “It all just really appealed to me. It was exciting, more exciting than financing anyways. I had always loved horse racing, a lot more than dressage, which was much too strict for me, and when I first came up my father took me to a track and we just sat and watched and loved it. By the end of the day he had asked me to come with him, to help him start his stable, and I wasn’t one to say no.” From there, the two would set out and eventually settle within the racing capitol of the country, to re-raise the name of Blue Cross in a way it never had been before. After purchasing a five star facility with the money from selling the dressage barn, they went on to collect three rookies from unknown lines as well as a handful of horses from multiple sales. The result? The now flourishing Blue Cross Estates, home to twenty two active horses and seven retirees working fluidly to become one of the best stables in the country. Whether or not they reach such status, however, will be entirely up to them.