Cody’s Wish was named Horse of the Year for 2023 at the Eclipse Awards on Thursday [Jan 25]. Here we republish a moving tribute from Steve Dennis following the tragic death of Cody Dorman the day after the Breeders’ Cup
• Originally published November 2023
This is not how fairytales are supposed to end. We are hard-wired to believe in the happy ever after, even as our growing stock of hard-won experience points us in the other direction. It is why fairytales are for children, before they know what the grown-ups know.
But this fairytale was for grown-ups too. This one was for all of us. That is why, on Monday, people all over the racing world, all over the world, were suddenly looking up from their screens, staring out into the unfocused middle distance with damp eyes, as the happy ever after dissolved forever between the stark words of a news bulletin.
The fairytale, so real just 48 hours earlier that we all felt as though we were part of it, peeking gleefully through the window at the happiest of scenes within, was over. Cody Dorman died. He was 17.
Cody lived the most remarkable life, constrained by his physical difficulties but freed by his indomitable spirit. When he was diagnosed with the rare genetic disease Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, doctors estimated that he might live two years.
That he beat the odds so thoroughly, so relentlessly, for so long, was in part down to his own inner will and partly due to the equally stubborn love of his family, father Kelly, mother Leslie, sister Kylie.
“The doctors wrote him off, said we should just make him comfortable. That wasn’t good enough for us,” said Kelly, last year. “We’ve all come a long way.”
Breeders’ Cup miracle: the tearjerking story of the racehorse and the boy who wished upon a star
Everyone knows the story of how the family took Cody to Gainsborough Farm as part of the Make-A-Wish Foundation’s good work, and a six-month-old foal walked up to Cody’s wheelchair and laid his lead in the boy’s lap.
“It was the biggest interaction between human and horse there’s ever been here,” said farm manager Danny Mulvihill.
There is more to the world than we know, than we can ever know, but Cody Dorman and the foal who became Cody’s Wish knew more of its hidden magic than us. They were connected by that magic, an eerie, shivery connection, perfectly natural to them, otherworldly to us, and through their connection we also were allowed to see beyond the veil of normal life.
Sometimes, Cody’s normal life was hard. When it became too hard, his family took him back to see Cody’s Wish. One friend reached out to another, and help came without question.
“Cody’s Wish locked his eyes on Cody and walked straight to him,” recalled Kelly. “They sorta rubbed noses, and then we all heard Cody laughing, a big belly laugh.
“That was such a rare thing to hear, and from that moment he began to dig his way out of the dark times. The flame inside him was burning again.”
Cody Dorman was lucky, in many ways. His life might have flickered out before that flame ever had a chance to take hold. He might have had to endure a life half-lived in quiet rooms, his flame doused by well-meant institutional kindness. Instead, buoyed up by the devotion of his family, borne on the broad back of his G1-winning soulmate, Cody’s life burned with the brightest flame.
“In a lot of ways, I think that horse probably saved Cody’s life,” said Kelly, after Saturday’s success in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile at Santa Anita. “I know him and the horse have made a lot of lives better.”
Cody became an inspiration to everyone who knew his story, the story that became a fairytale, an account of the unseen, unknown, unknowable possibilities of life. The epic saga grew with every telling and every race until it touched us all, and in so doing provoked a vast outpouring of warmth from racing fans towards Cody and his family.
“Cody has had mountains to climb all his life, and we all get so much pleasure from seeing how much this means to him, wrapped in a warm blanket of affection at the racetrack,” said Kelly Dorman, earlier this year.
“I can’t come close to doing it justice, what it means to us as a family. It’s like there’s a big hand on our back, supporting us, it won’t let us fall. That’s what it feels like to us.”
Last Saturday, did Cody’s Wish know? Did he know, with the same strange certainty that he knew Cody was his friend, that the hourglass was almost empty? Did he know that it was even more important than usual that the race was won?
He came down the stretch as though he was on a mission, got there by a nose, did his bit, did it for his friend, one last time.
The poet was right: what will survive of us is love. Cody’s Wish must go on alone, although when you have such a soulmate you are never truly alone, even if you are far apart.
In a few years’ time his progeny will reach the racetrack, and every time a Cody’s Wish colt or filly runs it will keep the spirit of Cody Dorman fresh, will bring his extraordinary life back into the present.
And when he, and you and I and everyone reading this, has followed Cody Dorman into eternity, there in the pages of the pedigree books will be the name of Cody’s Wish, his sons and daughters and their sons and daughters and so ad infinitum, memorialising Cody Dorman’s life like a million points of light.
Pedigree researchers as yet unborn will discover the name of Cody’s Wish, and learn anew about Cody Dorman, who was not with us very long, not nearly long enough, but in his time he made the most mighty impression upon those who loved him and on those who knew him only by his name.
Just a boy and his horse, really. A fairytale that sustains its power and its beauty even as the book is quietly, sorrowfully, finally closed.
• The Dorman family asks for donations be made to Make-A-Wish Ohio, Kentucky & Indiana in lieu of flowers. Please click here if you are interested in donating