In 97 years, brushes with royalty and death

John Shear will celebrate his 97th birthday on Jan. 17. I know this because Shear mentioned the fact last weekend as he was performing his duties at the west end of the Santa Anita Park paddock, where he mans the ropes and rails as the official crossing guard who keeps the customers from getting tangled up with horses going back and forth from the receiving barn.

Shear wasn’t hustling for a card or a cake. He was citing the anniversary of his birth in the context of a conversation about his encounters with Queen Elizabeth II, six years his junior, when she was simply Princess Elizabeth, first in line to the British throne and known then around the royal household as simply Lilabet.

A few years ago, Shear recalled his first brush with royalty in this space:

“I was working for a trainer named Peter Thrale, and we were getting Three Cheers ready for the 1951 Cesarewitch Handicap,” Shear said. “He was being held at 13-2. The boss wanted to get a good trial into him at the distance, so we took him to the Royal Course at Windsor. I was at the back of the course on a rabbit, ready to tie in for the second mile and lead Three Cheers by five lengths or so, when two young women rode up.”

One of them was Elizabeth, the other her sister, Princess Margaret.

“Princess Elizabeth asked if we had permission to use the course, and I said we did, and what we were doing there,” Shear continued. “She said, ‘Really? Is he a bet?’ I told her he was as far as I was concerned. Then I had to go on. He went on and won the Cesarewitch, and I always hoped she bet. If she did, she kept mum about it, because we got our price.”

Three Cheers paid off at 17-2, as a matter of fact, beating Vidi Vici by a head at the end of the 18 furlongs. Not long after that, Shear was at Folkstone, cooling out a winner he’d brought over for the stable, when a phalanx of police rumbled past.

“It was Elizabeth,” Shear said. “She loved the races.”

And did she pause to offer a word of thanks for Three Cheers?

“No,” Shear said with a laugh. “But when she saw me she smiled.”

Shear is racing royalty in his own right, or at least a knight of the realm, because seven years ago he saved a child from dire consequences when a horse got loose in the walking ring prior to a race. It was a Saturday, so the crowd around the paddock was thick. The horse was making for the gap patroled by Shear, who responded by shielding the 5-year-old girl and pushing her aside. In so doing, Shear put himself in the direct path of the horse and took the full force of the blow. The girl, named Roxie, was terrified but unscathed.

Shear spent a month in the hospital dealing with a broken pelvis, ribs, and cheek bone, plus assorts cuts and abrasions. He also received a Medal of Valor from the California Firefighters Association, and he was back to work on Dec. 26, 2011, the opening day of the following season, his 50th for the track.

Shear left England for North America in 1954 and ended up in Southern California with a load of horses shipped by train from British Columbia. He worked for Tommy Doyle, one of the West’s leading trainers, before joining Santa Anita in 1962.

In one of the many interviews he gave after his recovery, Shear minimized the heroics of his action. That’s what heroes do.

“I’ve had a colorful lifetime, so I can’t complain,” Shear said. “But the little girl hadn’t even seen her life yet. There was no decision to be made. I had to try and save her. If I died, I’m 90 years old. So what?”

Shear’s birthday is on a dark day, but Santa Anita management will mark the event during the Martin Luther King holiday program this coming Monday. In the meantime, anyone at the track should wander over to the paddock and enjoy a moment with a true prince of a guy.

Horse diplomacy

The headline horses in the news over the weekend were led by the emerging 3-year-olds McKinzie and Midnight Bisou and the turf veteran Its in the post, all winners of the first graded stakes of the year at Santa Anita Park.

Come Monday morning, however, they were taking an international back seat to an 8-yearold gelding named Vesuvius, who was at that moment working his way through strict importation regulations as a gift from French president Emmanuel Macron to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Vesuvius was plucked from the mounted ranks of the French Republican Guard, an elite military cadre dating back to the time of Napoleon. Although there were no photos of Vesuvius displayed in the media, it was reported that he is brown. Then again, most of the media needs to be told which end eats.

Macron’s gesture, as part of a trade mission, echoed the experience of Vice President Joe Biden in 2011, when he visited Mongolia and was presented with a horse by the young boy who had just won a race demonstrating the local equine passion. Biden christened the horse “Celtic” and turned him over to a Mongolian caretaker.