JOHNNY'S JOURNEY
As assistant rider for Olympic gold medalist Beezie Madden and her husband John, Becky Huestis works with remarkable horses every day. None, however, quite like the off-the-track Thoroughbred who’s gone from “nearly dead” early in 2020 to being readied for the Retired Racehorse Project’s Thoroughbred Makeover and National Symposium October 11-17, 2021.
Huestis was just about to buy a more typical hunter/jumper breed for herself when COVID-19 nixed the possibility of importing the horse she had her eye on. Scrolling through friend Abby Revoir’s Facebook feed around the same time, she saw an intriguing horse.
Revoir has her own farm in southern New Jersey, where she also operates Starfish Equine Rescue. Through the informal rescue network, Revoir got wind of an OTTB in dire straits at a kill pen in Louisiana. She arranged for Starfish to purchase that horse, then for a shipper to pick him up. On arrival at the kill pen in early February of 2020, the shipper alerted Revoir to two more OTTBs in equally bad shape. The rescue bought one more, and Revoir personally bought the third—You’ll Seeintime, aka Johnny, was the worst off.
“When Johnny got to New Jersey, he was so weak from muscle wasting, he almost didn’t make the trip,” Revoir explains. “When
