‘A twinkle in my parents’ eyes’ …..
The lifelong love affair (literally) between Ned Worthington IV and the 120-year-old Grand National Steeplechase
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Born the same year as Bob Hope and the Wright brothers’ first flight, the Grand National timber stake celebrates its 120th renewal this Saturday, April 22. First run in 1898, the three-mile classic has seen seven horses win the race three times – Inshore, Winton, Landing Party, Mountain Dew (who won it six times), Buck Jakes, Welter Weight (four) and Senior Senator.
We knew he’d barely have time during race week to chat, but we wanted to hear from the horse’s mouth – from race co-chair Ned Worthington about an exciting video launch on Monday called Maryland Equestrian Life. The pilot episode focuses on the Grand National.
The first installment features interviews with some of American steeplechasing’s leading lights – Willie Dowling, Todd McKenna, Kathy Neilson and more – highlighting film footage from last year’s race and lots of archival shots.
Here’s our “back of a cocktail napkin” interview with Worthington on this eve of the historic meet, one of the nation’s oldest.
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🏆 Temple Gwathmey Steeplechase Foundation: The short film is fantastic. The videography is great, the interviews are insightful, and you even got (Hall of Fame trainer) Jack Fisher to say more than two words in a row. Congratulations.
🏇 Edward “Ned” Worthington IV: We are very excited for Temple Gwathmey Steeplechase Foundation to debut “Timbered Tradition” to the American steeplechase community. This effort, currently housed on YouTube, is the pilot episode of a planned series titled Maryland Equestrian Life, hosted by Greg Shelton.
The pilot episode was created in the lead-up to the 2022 Grand National Steeplechase in partnership between Maryland Horse Industry Board, the Maryland Horse Breeders Association and the Grand National Steeplechase Association.
Host Greg Shelton is a Maryland native and creator of Historic Living, Modern World, also on YouTube. Greg and his wife, Dawn, have renovated their historic home, Poplar Hall, and Greg is also active in the Chesapeake City Holiday Horse Parade.
The production team for Maryland Equestrian Life is led by Jeff Archer, a media veteran with experience spanning from NFL games to HGTV.
Greg and Jeff are looking to the steeplechase community to help secure funding that will support an extended equine journey. Greg intends to travel throughout Maryland to uncover human interest stories about the intersection of horses and people.
And Jack Fisher totally lit up when we got him started. He may be (taciturn), but he was enthusiastic to talk about his first love, Maryland timber racing.
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In the show "Maryland Equestrian Life," Greg Shelton was asked to ride his motorcycle to different locations of the Maryland equine world as the cameras followed. If you're interested in supporting the production of future shows, please find more information HERE. | |
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🏆 TGSF: You’ve been race co-chair since 2019 – how’d it happen?
🏇 NW: You could say my “association” with the Grand National predates my birth – my parents lived in Maryland, and they actually met at the Grand National. So it’s always held a very close place in my heart. Sort of the "twinkle in their eyes" story.
I grew up in Glyndon and rode as a child but let horses slide when I got into baseball and ice hockey (while a student at Gilman.) I got back in the saddle when I moved back to the Baltimore area in 2017.
My family always went to the races. It was a rite of spring every year and something that everybody (in the area) did, everybody does.
This was, and is, such an important part of Maryland’s heritage, and a critical part of preserving open space and agricultural land. The Grand National runs to benefit The Valleys Planning Council, a conservation organization protecting open land in Maryland.
(Co-chair) Forrest Kelly and I learned under Peter Fenwick’s mentorship in 2019, but as you know, 2020 canceled (almost) the entire circuit, and 2021 we had to run under covid protocol.
We still get a lot of input from Peter (now race treasurer.) He’s such a good person to learn from – he was race chair for a couple decades. Everything you could have thought of to ask, he has a good answer.
My Lady’s Manor (run April 16), the Grand National and the Maryland Hunt Cup (set April 29) are all such a huge part of Maryland and Baltimore culture, a real chance for people who are engaged in a rural lifestyle to showcase it for others to participate in.
Timber racing is (emblematic) of all the things you hold dear living out in the rural countryside: Horses, racing, open space, preservation, a longstanding tradition. The hope is to get people to feel engagement with what we get all the time.
This is how these (historic) races will live on.
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Where would we be without land preservation?
Probably not watching the 120th running of the Grand National on a beautiful Saturday.
Land preservation allows landowners to keep their land open and undeveloped. Baltimore County has preserved more than 70,000 of its 435,000 acres and is aiming to preserve another 10,000 acres.
The Grand National Steeplechase Races are run on land preserved using programs available through the state, County, and local land trusts (map shows land preserved only by state and County programs, purple oval is racecourse and includes land preserved by a local land trust). The properties comprising the racecourse are part of a block of more than 20,000 preserved acres.
No preservation, no race!
(From the Grand National Instagram page)
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🏆 TGSF: You’re selling a lifestyle.
🏇 NW: Timber racing is exciting, no doubt about it. Forrest and I would agree that we want the focus on our day of racing to be the incredible action.
I mean, yes, we all love the bigger meets, like Iroquois (in Nashville, Tennessee, that draws 60,000-plus spectators) which is a huge southern party, and like the Carolina Cup (in Camden, South Carolina, with 30,000-plus racegoer-partygoers.)
And we love going to those, too, but what we offer at the Grand National is exciting in and of itself, a thing of beauty that cuts down on the distraction. We want the primary focus on the incredibly athletic horses and riders, a spectacle so majestic.
It’s a chance to watch these horses do what they love to do, do what they’re bred to do.
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Grand National co-chairs Ned Worthington (right) and Forrest Kelly (left) working on the course on New Year’s Day
Karen Kandra photo
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Get to know Ned Worthington
Ned Worthington IV, 35, graduated from the University of Virginia in 2010 with a degree in history and English literature. His favorite writers are the classic American expatriate authors – Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Henry Miller.
He joined Harbor Investment Advisory in 2019 as a vice-president and financial advisor. He’s a Certified Trust and Fiduciary Advisor.
Outside the office, Worthington is active in the Maryland’s equestrian community, on the boards of the Maryland Horse Foundation, Maryland Million and Maryland Steeplechase Association, where he’s also treasurer.
Other than horses – and his beloved Baltimore Orioles, Worthington says he identifies most with his inner waterfowl and wing shooter. “It’s yet another open space protection opportunity,” he says.
Worthington and his fiancé Katlyn Scarlett have a 1-year-old black Labrador retriever named BB. She, too, loves waterfowl hunting, Worthington says, and she’s in full training mode right now.
His family legacy isn’t horses, but an ancestor played a huge role in his fourth-generation love for field sports and the outdoors. Worthington’s father, Ned III, is a general contractor, residential and renovation construction work with the Signature Building Group.
His grandfather, Ned II, was a hardware executive.
Ned Worthington Senior was an east coast sales rep for the Winchester Repeating Arms.
Today, his great-grandson, Ned IV, says he “loves his Winchester SXP pump shotgun” best of all, as he calls it, "a 12-gauge masterpiece."
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Sunrise, this morning, on the Grand National Steeplechase grounds.
©Carol Fenwick
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