There is something special about a “feel good” movie especially in today’s turbulent times. It’s good to see someone succeed. If the movie involves animals, then I am all in!  "Dark Horse" is a wonderful documentary that provides a fascinating story about a couple living in Wales who decided to breed a Thoroughbred. Born on a coal slagheap, the horse named Dream Alliance carried the hopes and dreams of their small syndicate from a gentlemen’s club in coal mining country to the Grand National horse race at Aintree.  

I met Jan and Brian Vokes at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. during Derby week. Jan has a calm intelligent demeanor about her and you instantly pick up on her analytical ways. Brian is a big man with numerous tattoos and a beguiling toothless smile. He is retired now but he was a road layer, a coal deliveryman and a nightclub bouncer. He has the word LOVE tattooed on his knuckles and even his earlobes sport tattoos. She has a coquettish smile that instantly puts you at ease. It’s evident that they are a team and they travel with that easy confidence of two people who love and respect each other. 

When he was twenty, Brian was in a car accident. He was just released from the hospital and went straight to see his horse. He had his leg in plaster and decided to ride. He saddled his horse and said to a young girl “Excuse me, Could you hold this horse for me?”  He put his good foot in the stirrup and somehow, the horse moved on without him. He ended up back in the hospital because the cast broke and it had to be reset. Jan (who was 15) took him to the hospital and thought he was nice but decided to play hard to get. He was smitten and just knew “that is the girl for me.” They have been married for 45 years after he courted her for three. 

Brian grew up riding horses. He wanted to be a jockey and laughs about that now. Jan is a dreamer and an achiever. She bred whippets and qualified for Crufts every year. Then she turned her attention to racing pigeons and bred a team of young birds. She won a national title the first time she raced them.  She was working in a factory and changed jobs which meant she couldn’t race her birds on the weekends anymore. While she was working as a bar maid and heard a story about a race horse. She thought “I like the idea of that” and started researching race horses. Jan didn’t ride and she knew nothing about horses other than the Welsh Cobbs that Brian had.  She had never been to a race track. 

At this point, Brian started to tell me about the Welsh Cobbs and how they were used by “Rag and Bone” men who gathered scrap metal in their carts. His eyes sparkled with delight when he asked me if I would like to hear the song they sang.  With a larger than life booming voice, he singularly brought the entire media center of Churchill Downs to a stop as he started singing “ANY OLD IRON?  ANY OLD IRON?” We laughed as I shushed him. But what a voice. One is so relaxed sitting with Jan and Brian that you start thinking how much fun it would be to sit down in their local pub and listen to their stories. 

Jan kept thinking about Thoroughbreds. She thought about her successes with whippets and racing pigeons and decided to apply the same principles to breeding a horse. Her eyes danced when she said “Same principle – just a different species. I look for the female of the species which has to be sound.” Brian said she came home one night from the club and said “I want to buy me a Thoroughbred mare.”  When he asked what for, she replied “I am going to breed a racehorse.”  He said “Don’t talk stupid” and thought it was done.

But it wasn’t.  He should have known better! Jan kept leaning into her dream. She told Brian “Buy me a Thoroughbred mare!” and off they went in search of one. Through friends, they found a mare and instantly decided they wanted her. “You could just tell class by looking at her!”  Brian decided that 1000 pounds was too much money. He turned to Jan and said “Shut up and I will do the talking.” I have a feeling that he is pretty good at negotiating as they purchased the 13 year old mare named Rewbell for 350 pounds. She had a foal the night before so they were going to have to wait six months before they brought her home. 

Now Jan had her Thoroughbred mare. She approached Howard Davis (a tax consultant) at the club where she worked and started talking to him about a syndicate. He kept telling her no based on a previous negative experience he had with racehorses. But Jan is one heck of a determined woman and said “I wasn’t having any of that” and she “talked him around.”  She posted a sign in the bar that said “Breed a Horse to Get on a Course - 10 pounds a week - See Jan behind the Bar.” They eventually ended up with a syndicate that included six tax consultants, four retired folks, a restauranteur, a taxi driver, a bailiff, three factory workers, a painter/decorator and a store man. They saved until they had enough money to cover the breeding. 

Jan contacted Weathersby’s and purchase the “Directory of the Turf” and also received a Stallion Book.  Now the planning began in earnest. She loved looking through the directory.  She eventually chose an American Stallion named Bien Bien who set a course record winning the 1993 Hollywood Turf Invitational Handicap.  He had also placed second in the 1993 Breeders’ Cup Turf.   

The syndicate met to vote on a name. Jan suggested Dream Alliance in honor of the syndicate and they loved it. He became simply known as Dream. The Vokes’ raised him on their slagheap allotment. They said that as a young horse he thought he was something special. He thought he was human. When it was time to go for supper, he would bang the gate. He had to be first out. When he saw a camera, his ears would prick and he would stand there all day posing. 

She thought if you got a really good horse and you go to a mediocre trainer, you can ruin it. So she decided to go to a good trainer to get the best out of it. They brought Dream to a trainer who advised them to have him gelded and put him away for a year, which they did. And he also said that Dream would make a nice national hunt (steeplechase racing) chaser. So they approached British horse trainer Phillip Boggs who specializes in National Hunt Races. He agreed to look at him and “as luck would have it, he took him.”  The Vokes’ didn’t know if he had the ability to jump but they already knew that he would jump to go visit the mares next door. 

The documentary traces Dream’s racing journey from his initial days of training throughout his racing career. What is compelling is the group of people he brought with him and their journey with Dream.  The movie captures the story and provides horse lovers with beautiful footage especially of the horses in training.  Director Louise Osmond provides fresh graphics tracing the history of racing that also makes the movie fun to watch. She didn’t use any professional extras. She filmed the movie in Cefn Fforest and in South Wales while the syndicate members and townsfolk played themselves.  Even Dream Alliance was the star of the film and not a movie horse! 

The Vokes and the syndicate had a blast going to the races. The documentary has some great footage of their visits to the winner’s circle. Dream had qualified for the Welsh Grand National. Unexpectedly, his dam Rewbell died while foaling before the race and the Vokes were bereft and stayed at home. The next day during Dream’s hurdle race, he had a near fatal accident. The horse in front of him hit the hurdle and as he tried to miss it, he concertinaed.  His back shoe caught his front shoe and he severed a tendon. Brian was watching on the television and trying to console Jan who was crying as they watched the screens going up.  Instead of putting him down, he went to the vet college in Liverpool. They said he would never race again, however they proposed stem cell surgery. The syndicate paid 20,000 pounds and had it done.   

Now Dream had to defy all odds and return to the track for a comeback.  Walt Disney himself couldn’t have come up with a finer story or a better cast of characters. Jan and Brian never gave up on Dream. He won the Welsh National and made headlines.  “Slumnag Millionaire!”  “Nags to Riches!”  The media picked up on the story and the people loved it. Just before the Grand National, the syndicate was offered 100,000 pounds for the horse by a local newspaper who was running a competition but the syndicate said no thank you. Brian grins broadly at the memory and says “It was about the love of the horse for us!” 

Dream has been retired and now lives life as a happy hacker where he is regularly ridden and hunted.    The Vokes showed me some photographs of their newest foal. They purchased a mare from Sheik Hamdan Bin Rashid Maktoum’s Shadwell Estate and bred her to German Derby winner Schiaparelli. Remarkably enough, the new foal is the spitting image of Dream Alliance. They have formed a new syndicate and named him Impossible Dream. Jan thinks he will make a “Darby horse” because of his breeding. She has told Brian that she wants to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup for their mantle.   

Jan is now 62 and Brian is 69.  As we walked around Churchill Downs to visit the paddock, they would look at each other and smile. That smile between them said it all. From the slagheap allotment in Wales to the pageantry of the Kentucky Derby, Jan’s dream opened the door to the world. She looked at the Derby horses schooling in the paddock and said “I wouldn’t mind having the goal of breeding a horse for the Kentucky Derby.”  Brian beamed at her and they turned around to watch the horses again. She looked back and said “It would be fabulous.  But you would have to go for all three races of the Triple Crown if you came all this way” and smiled.

There is something special about the eyes of a dreamer. They pull you into their dream. You can see how the dream can become reality. In the world of horse racing, you can feel it.  You can hear it. And despite all the odds, you know that often the longshot can win. They turned around arm in arm and strolled away from me. I had the strongest feeling I would see them again.  And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it was at Churchill Downs. The movie Dark Horse certainly proves that anything is possible no matter where you are from.  That is the beauty of horse racing.  Sometimes it only takes a dream.