Revealing interview with Arthur B. Hancock III, who has recently published a warts-and-all autobiography of a notoriously colourful life featuring horses, music and family rows – and a public fight with alcoholism
Most families have their share of drama, but usually it is sorted out behind closed doors. For Arthur B. Hancock III, however, his family business became the talk of the Thoroughbred industry and beyond. As it happened, so did the horses he raised.
Known as a gifted storyteller, Hancock, who recently turned 82, has now penned the story of his life. It is titled Dark Horses: A Memoir of Redemption.
“I’ve wanted to do it for a long time, and I started writing it probably five years ago,” Hancock said. “The truth about how it was when I left Claiborne. The Sunday Silence story. So many people said you should put all that down, and honestly, I have been amazed by the response. It’s like writing a song. You keep working on it and working on it, until you get it like you want it.”
Hancock’s grandfather, Arthur B. Hancock, founded Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, in 1910. His father, Arthur B. ‘Bull’ Hancock Jr., who came by his nickname honestly, helped turn it into one of, if not the, most powerful breeding farms in the game. As the first-born, it was expected that Arthur B. Hancock III would one day take over.
Hancock loved working with horses, but he also had an ear for music. His father did not approve, and it caused strife between the two. His love of music, not school, was the driving force behind Hancock applying to Vanderbilt University, which is in Nashville
, Tennessee, the home of country music.
“I also applied to the University of Hawaii and to Colorado, I was kind of playboy really,” Hancock said. “But my grandmother was from Nashville, and that’s where I was born during the war.
The wrong Hancock
“They accepted me to Vanderbilt, and I was shocked. About a week or two later, I got something that said, ‘Sorry we accepted the wrong Arthur Hancock.’
“I had already told my family, and everybody was so excited. My Uncle David, who was a lawyer in Nashville, went to see the dean and said, ‘You have broken this boy’s heart.’ The dean said, ‘Well, we will give him an IQ test, and if he does alright on that, we will take him.’
“They gave me some kind of test, and I guess I did okay because they let me in. While I was there, I won the SEC championship in swimming. It was the only sport I was ever good at.”
Hancock’s collegiate career was not straightforward. He eventually dropped out but returned to graduate from Vanderbilt in January 1966.
His father wanted him to learn how to train, so Hancock then went to New York and worked under future Hall of Famer Eddie Neloy for a year. Neloy trained for the Phipps family, which had boarded their horses at Claiborne for decades, and one of the horses in Hancock’s care was Buckpasser.
As he details in the book, Hancock missed only one day of work that year, but he was still very much in his playboy phase. Once
, he was so hungover he had to stick his head in the champion’s water bucket.
Other loves
Being in Nashville had furthered Hancock’s love of music, and even after graduating, he continued to divide his time between his passions. He ended up signing a recording contract with Monument Records thanks to music legend Fred Foster.
Hancock has written songs that have been recorded by the likes of Grandpa Jones, Willie Nelson, and Ray Price, and a specific memory with Kris Kristofferson highlights what might have been.
“Kris and I were buddies,” Hancock said. “He came in with three new songs, and Fred said I had choice to record ‘Darby’s Castle’, ‘When I Loved Her’, or ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night’.
“Kris played them for me. Fred said, ‘I believe I would record ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night’.’ I looked up at him and said ‘Fred, I don’t need anybody to help me make it through the damn night.’
“That’s what I felt like at the time. I was young and dumb, and I had just broken up with this girl. I didn’t record it. A month or two later Sammi Smith came out with it, and not only was it a hit country song, it crossed over to pop. It’s like turning down a great horse at a sale.”
Smith’s version of ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night’ won a Grammy. In 1998, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and last May Rolling Stone ranked it as number 71 on its list of 200 Greatest Country Songs of All Time.
While that might fill some with regret, Hancock believes that if he had been the one to have a hit with the song, he would not have lived a long life. His battle with alcohol – which he details throughout the memoir – was already becoming a losing game.
“I was at a crossroads,” Hancock said. “I started to go into music, but it’s tough. One night I was singing in The Carousel Room in Nashville. No one was listening. They were all just smoking and drinking and talking. The Bluegrass was looking greener every day.”
Derby destiny
In 1970, Hancock’s father sent him to manage a small farm up the road from Claiborne to prepare him for future duties, which is how Arthur began leasing Stone Farm.
Although his struggles with alcoholism were not behind him, his tumultuous relationship with his father was improving. Then, in 1972, his father took ill. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died two weeks later. His will had not been updated since 1967.
Within that will, it appointed three trustees and decreed that they should follow the advice of three trusted advisors: Charlie Kenney, Bill Perry, and Ogden Phipps. Arthur disagreed with some of the decisions made by Perry and Phipps, and it all came to a head when the advisors, led by Phipps, decided to make his younger brother, Seth, the sole president of Claiborne. Arthur resigned on the spot and then purchased Stone Farm outright.
“When I left Claiborne, hell, people thought I was an absolute joke,” Hancock said. “But I did work hard, 24/7. You work and work, and God willing something good will happen. Good land, hard work, and being able to have good people with me, those are the reasons it has worked.”
In 1977, he eloped with his wife Staci, and a year later Ida Delia and Hawaiian Sound became the first two G1 winners to represent Stone Farm. Hawaiian Sound was runner-up in the Derby at Epsom and won the ultra-prestigious Benson and Hedges Gold Cup (now Juddmonte International). It was a hint of things to come.
In 1982, Gato Del Sol – named after a gray barn cat with a penchant for enjoying a good nap in the sun – helped Hancock achieve something even his father couldn’t do.
The gray horse, who was bred and raced by Hancock and Leone Peters, became Stone Farm’s first Kentucky Derby winner. It also marked the first Kentucky Derby win as owner for any member of the Hancock family.
Sam Ransom, one of Hancock’s most trusted employees, had liked the colt from the beginning. It was Ransom’s belief he would be a Derby horse that kept Hancock from selling him, and Ransom was rewarded with a new car of his choosing after that first Saturday in May.
Hancock and Peters were very successful together, and among the other horses they bred was Risen Star, winner of the 1988 Preakness and Belmont.
As for Gato Del Sol, he was not much of a stallion and eventually ended up in Germany. In 1999, the Hancocks bought their Derby champion back and pensioned him. He lived to be 28.
“Staci was worried about him and then insisted because of what happened to Exceller,” Hancock said. “We were able to bring him home, and he lived a very happy life here. I joke that you must be a redneck to bury your Derby winner in your backyard because that’s where he is buried. I try to put a little humor in the book, too.”
The ultimate dark horse
The best-known horse to come off Stone Farm was born there in 1986. Hancock bought out his breeder when he proved unpopular at auction, and the almost black colt was named by the Straw family, who mailed letters to several farms politely suggesting potential names for future racehorses. Stone Farm was the only one to respond, selecting Sunday Silence.
Sunday Silence’s 1989 Triple Crown run against Easy Goer, who was owned by the Phipps family and raised at Claiborne, remains one of the sport’s greatest rivalries. By the time the two met up again in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, Sports Illustrated did a full feature on the human drama behind the scenes in a piece titled ‘Blood Brothers and Bluegrass’.
“How ironic is it that the man who didn’t want me to head up Claiborne ended up having his best horse be Easy Goer,” Hancock said. “One thread you will find running through this book is fate, destiny, and coincidence. I am a bit superstitious, but I am not a nut. These things I have seen are like God winks!”
Although Sunday Silence won the Derby, Preakness, and Classic, Hancock struggled to convince American breeders to give him a chance as a stallion. His farm was massively in debt, and when the Yoshida family offered to buy the horse and stand him in Japan, Hancock felt he had no choice.
Sunday Silence could save Stone Farm, but only by leaving it. Hancock cried the day the horse was loaded on the van.
Redemption
Sunday Silence went on to become a breed-shaping stallion in Japan, and now his descendents are leaving their marks on international racing. Among them are the winners of the English 2,000 Guineas; the English, Irish, and French Derbies; and multiple Breeders’ Cup races. Last year, his great-grandson Forever Young came within a nose of winning the Kentucky Derby, and he won this year’s Saudi Cup.
As for Stone Farm, between homebreds and client horses, over 200 stakes winners have been raised there. Hancock also bred 2000 Kentucky Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus, and two others, Strodes Creek and Menifee, finished second in the Run for the Roses. European champions Rainbow View and Air Force Blue grew up there, and so did 2019 Horse of the Year Bricks And Mortar, to name a few.
Music never left Hancock, and he has recorded four albums. He and Staci have six children, and their son Arthur recorded one of those albums with him. The memoir is sprinkled with songs, poems, and famous names he crossed paths with, including stories about when Reba McEntire met Secretariat and how Hancock played a role in the popular Christmas song ‘Grandma Got Run Over by Reindeer’.
Importantly, Hancock had his last drink of alcohol New Year’s Day of 1989, but his memoir shows how close to the edge he came.
“I thought people would say I was a buffoon for writing this book because I talk about the horses in my life, but I also talk about some hard things,” Hancock said. “I talk about my alcoholism. Over the years, I have seen so many tragedies and seen what a night of frolicking can end up becoming for some people. I am lucky it didn’t happen to me.
“One of the reasons I wrote it is because if it saves one life, it is worth doing. It’s called a memoir of redemption because I went through a lot, and I talk about it as honestly as I could. The name of it is Dark Horses, and that’s me and Sunday Silence.”
Dark Horses: A Memoir of Redemption by Arthur B. Hancock III is published by Stone Publishing and can be purchased here for $35 hardback ($25 paperback)
• Visit the Stone Farm website and the Arthur Hancock website
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