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By Betsy Burke Parker

Saturday's 101st running of the Far Hills Race Meeting in New Jersey is the one that's the measure of American steeplechase sport. Horsemen make it a target from the start of the year.

Follow the sometimes wandering horse-path from the flat track to the jumpers to find out how some of the new names show up on jump racing's biggest stage.

Interrogative pronouns – who, what, where, when, how and why – steer the story.

Jordan Wycoff's 3-year-old stake entry comes with a sterling pedigree, sire-side, dam-side and, not surprisingly, on the owners' side.

Solib, a daughter of Triple Crown champ American Pharoah and Harlan's Holiday-line mare Perfect Fit, makes her first start over fences in Saturday's Gladstone. It's only Wycoff's second jump starter after two decades operating his family's powerful Three Diamonds Farm.

With nearly $3 million in career earnings and almost countless black type in flat racing, owner Wycoff gets his conditions back in steeplechasing. His first jump starter, Ocean Air, finished third in a competitive distaff hurdle at Foxfield two weeks ago in Virginia.

Wycoff's trainer, Keri Brion says she hopes it'll draw the family in to the sport. “What Jordan is doing with these horses is way different than what normally people are doing with jumpers,” Brion says. “They are all dual-purpose horses as all of his horses are still going strong on the flat with conditions left. Solib (a NW-2 who broke her maiden on Belmont's inner turf a year ago) jumps very well and seems to want to go all day.

“(The Gladstone) is a nice purse and she gets weight off (141 to highweight, The Insider, at 154) so we'll take a shot here before she goes back on the flat at Aqueduct the end of the month.”

Three Diamonds started racing in the early 2000s mostly in Maryland with Mike Trombetta, then in New York with Mike Maker. Both Wycoff's parents started in the show jumping world. Debra Wycoff still shows amateur jumpers.

Kirk Wycoff's Three Diamonds Farm is named for his three children – Kirby, Ashley and Jordan. He's managing partner of the Philadelphia-based private equity firm Patriot Financial Partners.

Three Diamonds keeps as many as 70 horses, horses in training, mares, foals and 2-year-olds. They're active sellers and buyers, including playing in the claiming game. Jordan Wycoff was part of the $25,000 Saratoga claim of Gianna’s Dream in 2016. Gianna's Dream went on to win four stakes and place in two Grade 3 stakes.

Wycoff, 34, is based in Philadelphia. He runs BCC, a financial services company in addition to managing Three Diamonds' racing operations.

He likes the link between flat and jump racing.

“The fun part about this – what made me link them – me and my father have always talked about second careers for these horses,” Wycoff explains. Millionaire stakes winner Cross Border, entered for Three Diamonds in Saturday's $100,000, two-mile turf, for instance. “He's way too high energy to be turned out in a field after he retires (from flat racing.) He would not want a boring life.”

Brion says Cross Border “is an excellent jumper, a natural,” and that the plan is to run him over hurdles before the end of the 2022 season.

Jordan Wycoff's father-in-law, Frank Mullins, is president of the board of directors for the Aiken Steeplechase. “I think steeplechasing is at a pivotal point in its life span. I think if we can show you have a long turf route horse, there's no reason they can't do both – go jumping but also keep running on the flat.

“I think training off the farm, training on the turf up and down hills – it's got to be good for horses. There's only so many left-handed turns pounding on the dirt you can do.”

Academic and Breeders Cup handicapping award-winner Dr. Marshall Gramm jumped at the chance to jump into jump racing with regally-bred Awakened and Hall of Fame trainer Jack Fisher earlier this year.

Gramm (Carlos Guerrero photo, right) is a lifelong student of horse racing. He grew up in Washington, D.C., as he says, in the '80s when his main source of sports news came from the printed Washington Post newspaper.

“Like any kid, I was obsessed with sports,” Gramm traces how he went from allergic to horses to running on steeplechase's biggest day. “I got interested in baseball because of the statistics,” always having a mind for numbers, Gramm says. The Post's racing writer, Andy Beyer, was a statistics guy, too, Gramm says, further honing his interest in racing and gambling.

Gramm earned his PhD at Texas A and M, and took a job in the economics department at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. There was a greyhound track just across the river, and Oaklawn Park was just a couple hours away, so Gramm was able to continue following racing, as he says.

Gramm claimed his first horse in 2008.

He was managing partner of High Point Thoroughbred Partners, ninth leading owner in the U.S. in 2013.

He formed Ten Strike Racing in 2016 with former High Point partner Clay Sanders. They named it after Ten Strike, first winner of the Tennessee Derby, run at the Memphis Fairgrounds in 1884.

Ten Strike Racing has more than 275 wins at 24 tracks including his first steeplechase winner at Maryland's Shawan Downs in September.

Clancy pitched a partnership between Riverdee and Ten Strike on a Phipps-bred son of Curlin out of the A.P. Indy mare, Daydreaming. Awakened had $725,000 RNA'ed at Keeneland September in 2018. He was a big, good-looking horse, Clancy says, but slow to grow into his pedigree. Awakened broke his maiden at Ellis Park – 10 furlongs on the turf – in his 10th career start on the flat.

“I watched the race from our box in Saratoga and said for the fifth time, 'That's a jumper',” Clancy says. “I was able to make the deal with Phipps and Ten Strike went in with us.

“He's got pedigree, wants distance and comes from the right connections.”

And Gramm was game.

“Sean has a great reputation for picking out steeplechase runners from the flat track,” Gramm says.

It was finally time, Tom Rice says, to get back involved in the sport that was so important to him through the 1980s and early '90s.

Rice (left, with Paddy Young, ©Tod Marks) has a long connection to steeplechasing, growing up hunting with the old Pickering Hunt in southeast Pennsylvania's hunt and 'chase country. His collision body shop in Chester County took more of his time than he liked until recently, and horses went by the wayside. Rice says he'd long thought about getting back into racing.

Partner Van Cushny (Tod Marks photo, right) is a longtime racing horseman with roots in steeplechase, too. He's related to the Phipps and Bostwick families. Son Wyck was a steeplechase jockey; he died in 2017.

They didn't know each other until trainer Leslie Young brought them together with steeplechase prospect Booby Trap.

“I knew Leslie (Falini Young) from when she used to ride junior races,” Rice says. “She reached out to me to go in halves on Booby Trap,” a son of Hard Spun out of the Kitten's Joy mare, Bail Out Kitten. “I just love Snap Decision (grade 1 hurdle winner also by Hard Spun) and Booby Trap had some nice flat form, so it was an easy decision.”

Booby Trap won his last start on the flat at Charles Town in 2020. He pulled up in his first start over jumps at Tryon last June, but won his next two hurdle starts – last July at Colonial Downs at in September at Saratoga.

“That's the first time we'd met,” in the Saratoga winner's circle, Cushny told the Horse of the Delaware Valley. “What a great place to meet.” (Tod Marks photo, left)

Rice agrees, saying the partnership and the horse have been nothing but fun. He loves being involved with the sport again.

“We're having a blast.”

Daniel Denefrio has owned exactly one racehorse.

Saturday, he'll be trotted out on American jump racing's biggest stage.

How Denefrio got involved isn't as big a jump as it seems.

Denefrio grew up a half-hour south of the Saratoga Racecourse in Niskayuna, New York. His father, Fred, helped start and was, eventually, comptroller of the original Off-Track Betting business that formed in 1972.

The family spent a lot of time at the racetrack, Denefrio recalls, at New York thoroughbred tracks and at the local harness track where a cousin trained a few trotters.

He rode hunter-jumpers as a kid, making an early – and easy, connection between racehorses and sporthorses watching the every-Wednesday-and-Thursday hurdle races at Saratoga during the August meet.

“I think, at the time, I took it for what it was – good racing, but now, 30 years later, I realize the '90s were the golden age of steeplechase,” Denefrio says. He particularly admired Warm Spell and Lonesome Glory, two of the sport's top runners in the '90s. “I remember watching from the rail. I was struck by how beautiful the steeplechase horses were – big and gorgeous. And how elegant the people involved in jump racing were.

“I was inspired. You know how people say what they'd do if they won the lottery? They'd retire to an island or something.

“I used to say I'd own a steeplechase horse.”

So deep was Denefrio's love of racing, he'd designed his own silks at age 14. It was 25 years before he'd get a chance to use them, but he always had them at the ready.

Denefrio noticed the horse was being wheeled back at $6,250.

“I almost fell out of my chair when I realized the breeding,” he says. Fightinirishtabit was full-brother to 2009 Kentucky Derby starter (15th), multiple grade 1 hurdle winner – including the 2017 American Grand National at Far Hills and 2017 NSA leading earner Mr. Hot Stuff. “I pay attention to these things. I knew Mr. Hot Stuff was an excellent horse and a late developer. He won the Grand National at age 11.

“And here was this full brother, full brother, in for a tag.

“I knew it was the time. I knew Fightinirishtabit was the one. I didn't want to be looking back and thinking 'what if'.”

Denefrio got to work to chase his dream of owning a jumper.

“I found Ricky Hendriks' email address on the NSA website. I knew from following the game that Ricky's one of the best-connected horsemen in the industry, and he's made quite a good go of claiming horses and making them into jumpers.”

Hendriks got a friend of his father, Gulfstream trainer Larry Bates, to make the claim, and Fightinirishtabit was on a van to Camden two days later.

Denefrio says the horse was a quick study learning to jump, second in his second start over fences at Aiken in October, 2019, and won his next start – at Charleston in November. The pandemic helped earn Fightinirishtabit 2020 off, living pretty much as “a happy, hairy horse the whole year,” Denefrio says. “Ricky says this all the time – that you have to listen to the horse. And what this horse wanted was a little time off.”

Fightinirishtabit was winless in 2021 (pictured, above, at the 2021 Virginia Fall Races. ©Tod Marks), but he's won his last two jump starts, including a head-turning 14-length score at Colonial in mid-August.

“The most fun thing about the experience of owning this horse, is that every time we go racing it's a different experience,” Denefrio says. “I've been from the Rappahannock and Potomac point-to-points to Saratoga and Colonial Downs. Every time we go it's so much fun.”

For his next trick, Denefrio says he hopes to follow what he calls “the small handful of people that are involved in purpose-breeding for steeplechasing, like (the late) Sara Collette and Peggy Steinman.

“I have so much respect for those people because breeding is so financially exhausting. Including the year the mare is pregnant, then jump horses are 3 or 4 when they go the track, you're into it tens of thousands of dollars before you even get a chance at a return on investment.

“You do it because you love the game, you love the horses.”

Right now, Denefrio has a Sea Wizard colt born in May out of an Uncle Mo mare. When freshman sire Sea Wizard's first 2-year-old starter won at Monmouth this summer, Denefrio says he “was, like, pinch me. I'm hoping this horse can run (successfully) on the flat, then go jumping.

“That's the perfect scenario.

“People ask my why I'm drawn to this – is it the adreneline, the prestige, the status? Those may be all things that come with the territory, but, a few years ago they did a documentary on the Carolina Cup and they interviewed (Hall of Fame trainer) Jonathan Sheppard.

“He said, 'it's a love of the animal.' I thought his answer was so eloquent, because outside all those things, at the end of the day, we do this because of the love of the horse.

“Steeplechase is such a unique, perfect blend of racehorse and sporthorse. I'm so grateful that I was exposed to this at a young age, and thankful to Ricky Hendriks, and his whole team. It really does take a village, and I'm indebted to every, single person that's worked so hard to develop this horse.

I'm humbled and blessed.”

English footballer and longtime American soccer coach Steve Coxon understands the power of the media.

Social media.

This is why, after a decade and more than $1 million in earnings through dozens of partnerships with flat track horses, Coxon finally finds himself on the U.S. jumps circuit. With partner and fellow footballer James Sheridan, Coxon's CFC Stables will be represented by Spring Heeled Jim in the 4-year-old stake Saturday.

“I'd read about Keri in a newspaper article when she was in Ireland (training horses last winter),” Coxon explains. “I was taken aback at how gutsy was this American lady, taking on the establishment, pretty much, in Irish jumps racing.

“I found her (easily) on Twitter. Sent her a message. She responded immediately and I picked up the phone to call.

“We talked for a while and she said she had her eye on just the right horse (Undercover Rowdy) to bring to America.”

Coxon (pictured, right, with Going Country) believes social media gives a new twist to the trainer-owner relationship. “They don't treat you like a mushroom any more,” keeping you in the dark and feeding you a load of horse manure. Coxon says. “It makes it easy to share everything about your horse, real-time.

“It's a breath of fresh air, really, to know what's going on."

Coxon partnered with Atlantic Friends syndicate owner and fellow Newcastle, England native Paul Willis on Carolina Cup winner Historic Heart, and another two horses, Theocrat and Agitare (who both run tomorrow at Far Hills).

The Grand National will be broadcast live on America’s Day at the Races, produced by the New York Racing Association in partnership with Fox Sports. Coverage begins at 12:30 p.m. Fox NYRA host Acacia Clement will anchor the coverage from Far Hills joined by Joe Clancy and Richard Migliore.

America’s Day at the Races will air on FS2 from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m.

As always, you can alternately watch Saturday’s races via live stream from the link on the NSA homepage, www.NationalSteeplechase.com. The stream, sponsored by Brown Advisory, is offered through Mandolin, which hosted the NSA spring meets. There is a fee to watch the stream, and meets can be viewed and paid for individually or for the entire Fall season.

Outside of the NYRA circuit and a few hunt meets, pari-mutuel wagering on steeplechasing is a rarity, but on Saturday fans have the chance to bet on all their favorites through 4NJBets, which is partnered with TVG. To sign up, deposit, and wager, you’ll need to download the 4NJBets app or visit 4njbets.com. Fans are encouraged to sign up, and to download the app, in advance and be sure to use promo code 200FARHILLS. That way, you can place your first win wager up to $200 on a single horse and get it back as wagering credit if you don’t win. Note that there will not be mutuels tellers onsite for wagering.

For fans who live outside of the state of New Jersey, wagering can be done through either TVG or NYRABets.

More coverage can be found on the NSA website.