FATE OF THE STALLION … THE MAKING OF A TV DOCUMENTARY

by Ron Hevener

Have you ever noticed how Fate has a way of stepping in and taking over your life? That’s how it felt when I hung up the phone. We were in the middle of production plans for the TV documentary of my novel, “Fate of the Stallion,” and things were falling apart.

It wasn’t like everybody had just folded their tents and walked away. Not like that at all. What happened, is that my great friend, Bolden Abrams, Jr., had just died and I was counting on him for the music.

It had been a few years since Bolden and I had collaborated on anything. But, we had always said we would make a movie together — and this was going to be it. Some of Philadelphia’s finest and most talented people were set to work on this project. People like John Roberts, the camera man, Mike Lemon and his talent agency, Maxine Bochnia for editing, Russ Diamond and his company for DVD production, Axiom WebWorks and Todd Burgard for graphic design … the list goes on. It isn’t easy pulling together such a team. And, when you’re working in television, where the stakes are high, any changes in the creative team can collapse a project like a house of cards.

What was I going to do?

Without the right musical genius beside me, how could I hold the feeling and tone of this film together? Scared, I decided to go back to the place where it all began . . . back to the horse that started it all.

It was 1984, and the Michigan horse community was in a period of growth. Hunter-Jumper stables were starting up, Arabian horse racing was stirring, Jim Andreson, of Selket Arabians fame, was just a few years away from finding his World Champion stallion, Furno Khamal, and some people by the name of Ellis were admiring a bay colt just born.
“What do you think of the new guy?”

I wasn’t anywhere near Michigan in those days, so I didn’t see the colt or know some of the people who would later play an important part in my life. I was in Philadelphia, recording songs with my producer and friend, Bolden, on his independent label, Coffee And Cream Music. As anyone could tell you, though, I was thinking about horses and how
much I missed having one. Maybe I thought about having a farm some day and all the horses I’d have, after I won a few Grammies. Funny, how things work out. Remember the name Jim Andreson and Selket Arabians.

The bay colt in Michigan would grow to be a beautiful winner in the show ring.  Because of his European bloodlines and racing ancestry, a group of investors pooled their money and decided to back him. Arabian horse racing was really taking off in this country and it was a great time to get in on the ground floor. Anyone who could establish a successful breeding program of Arabian racehorses could put their farm on the map. The key to such an enviable and potentially lucrative position was having a successful racing stallion. The colt was not only beautiful and classy, he was a born athlete.

His racing career started off well. Third, second and first, in that order at Michigan’s Mt. Pleasant racetrack. The racing ability rang true and he was shipped to Florida, where Arabian horses were racing at Tampa. Delaware Park was next on the circuit and as the Florida racing meet came to a close, he was shipped North to become one of the stallions racing for glory at what would (eventually) become the premier Arabian racetrack in the country. Things were looking good. They were looking very good.

Anyone who frequents the Delaware Park Racetrack knows that Philadelphia isn’t very far away. As fate would have it, I wasn’t the only horse lover in Philadelphia back then. Just a few blocks away from my place was a tall, lanky man named Jim Andreson who kept a breeding herd of Arabian mares on a farm across the Jersey line, and he was on the verge of a discovery that would shift the direction of his whole life. Mine too, as it turned out. Each of us was about to meet a horse that would change our lives forever.

Jim had started his herd, known as Selket Arabians, as a young man all the way back in North Dakota. By the early 90’s, he was living the high life, starting successful nightclubs around the country and he could afford some pretty good horses. Being a tall man, over 6 foot-three, Jim needed a taller-than-average horse to ride and Arabians of that size weren’t easy to come by. It was on a trip to a Florida racing stable, where he was searching for athletic horses, that he saw a young bay stallion that blew him away. Not only was the horse athletic, but he was exotic and expressive like the Arabian horses of Jim’s greatest dreams. He was exactly the kind of horse Jim wanted to breed for, and he was over 16 Hands tall.  Jim didn’t know it, but he was facing the most recent World Champion Jr. Stallion of the famed Salon du Cheval, exported from Holland to the United States with plans to conquer the booming Arabian racing scene here.

This horse was the great and, in some circles, legendary Furno Khamal. And Jim booked every one of his mares to Khamal right on the spot.

I didn’t know about grand horses like Khamal back then because my own eyes were filled with the sight of another bay stallion who came into my life — or smashed into it — with a force so strong that it yanked me right out of my recording career in Philadelphia and into the country life of rural Lancaster County, where I had grown up. That horse, as many readers have come to know, was the beautiful, Michigan-born stallion I came to call Nahgua, and was being whisked
off into the night from Delaware Park racetrack to the place where I would see him. Unlike Jim, who found the cornerstone of his breeding program at a racing farm in Florida, I came face-to-face with mine at a country horse sale where he had been sold for slaughter.

How he came to that sale, and what happened for some of the people who loved him, is what brought about my novel, “Fate of the Stallion.” As anyone who loves horses can tell you, though, horses aren’t just something you own. If you go with the flow, they can transform your love for them into a lifestyle.

It shouldn’t be surprising that — sooner or later — I would hear about Furno Khamal. By now, Jim had left Philly, moved his horse breeding operation to a farm near Hickory Corners, Michigan, and the international Arabian horse world was at his feet. Million-dollar offers were coming in, and he was turning them down. He had found the stallion that would put Selket Arabians on the map and Khamal would live with him forever. Like many others, I was hoping for mares good
enough to breed to this world-class stallion and I hoped they would be daughters of my own, magical Nahgua.

Funny, how things turn out when it comes to “horse magic.”

It was somewhere around 2005 and Nahgua was near the end of his life. His story had been circulated in over sixty countries and I had been lucky enough to purchase some good racing mares for him from a sheikh. It has been a few years since Nahgua had sired any foals and, somehow, I knew these would be the last mares for him. One of them, a
grey mare named ELD Bee Arin, was unusually tall for an Arabian and my thoughts went immediately to Furno Khamal. Naturally, I had kept in touch with Jim over the years, and it’s interesting that we were both working to create the same kind of Arabian horse — tall, exotic and powerful. Finally, I had a mare big enough to breed to Khamal and I
called right away!  Although Khamal was gone by now, I was sure Jim had frozen semen in storage . . . To my disappointment, the last, precious straws of Khamal’s life stored for the future of Selket Arabians had been lost when the nitrogen tank in which they were stored, failed.

However . . . there was a bay grandson of Khamal; just a three-year old. Would I consider breeding the mare to him, instead? His name was Selket Louchiano and he was out of a 16.1 hand mare whose dam had produced seven National champions around the world.  Would he be good enough for my mare?

As the breeding season went on, Nahgua covered three mares and I was happy. I also became very curious about this young stallion, Louchiano, and Jim offered him to me right around the time when plans were being made for a TV documentary about Nahgua’s story.

Louchiano had just won Supreme Champion Sport Horse in Hand at the Michigan Futurity and he was competing in the Sweepstakes Stallion class at the Arabian Horse Nationals, in Kentucky. It was a glamorous, stimulating event featuring some of the best Arabian horses in the country, but I only had eyes for the big, bay horse in front of me that night. Watching Louchiano in that arena, towering calmly over more than twenty other stallions under bright lights, to the sound of loud music and applause, I knew that if I had been asked by a movie studio to find a horse to play the part of Nahgua in “Fate of the Stallion,” there would be no doubt in my mind that I had found him.

Who can explain the mystery of Life and how things work out? Some time around the Nationals, it made sense for Selket Arabians and the racing stable of Hevener Farms to merge our horse breeding operations. Louchiano entered training for filming and promotion of “Fate of the Stallion” and Jim and I announced our merger to the international Arabian horse community via Arabhorse.com, on our web sites and in many other publications. Along the way, Naghua left this world and joined forces with Khamal. Somewhere in the great beyond, I know it isn’t the raucous music of the show ring they’re dancing to, but a shimmering symphony played by my friend, Bolden.

What’s ahead for the rest of us? That’s up to Selket Louchiano now, and some bright new foals scampering around the farm that look an awfully lot like their daddy.

You came back to me, Nahgua. You came back in spades . . . .

“FATE OF THE STALLION” by Ron Hevener

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