"A racehorse is an animal that can take several thousand people for a ride at the same time.” – Marjorie Johnson

Stand in the paddock on a given day at the races and you are surrounded by stories. Each horse that walks into a stall, stands for a saddle and rider, and walks onto the racetrack carries with them the hard work and hope of each person they are connected to. In Miracle Michael’s case, this New York-bred 2-year-old is the equine namesake of a special survivor.

Miracle Michael with his namesake (Valente family photo)

Named for Roddy Valente’s grandson, this son of Mind Control is a homebred for the New York-area businessman. He also bred both Miracle Michael’s dam, Stonezapper, and grandam, Stone Maker, making the colt the third generation for Valente and his family, who recently gathered at Saratoga Race Course for his debut. After acting up in the starting gate, Miracle Michael fended off late challenges to finish second in a 5 ½-furlong maiden special weight race for New York-breds.

“He has good temperament. He reminds me of his namesake,” Valente said. “I know he’s going to be a hard trier, and that’s what Michael is.”

Valente’s grandson Michael had to be a hard trier in his first year when he was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, a type of eye cancer that starts as a growth of cells in the retina, the light-sensitive lining on the inside of the eye, in both eyes. At 7 ½ months old, his family sought treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where doctors were able to save not only Michael’s life, but also his vision. A cancer diagnosis is scary at any age, but especially so in the case of someone so young.

“I mean, there’s no other way to say it: we were just heartbroken and scared more than anything. You get consumed by it,” Valente remembered. “Dr. Abramson told us, if this were 12 years ago, he said, I’d take his left eye out tomorrow, and I would hope to save his right eye. Michael really responded to the chemotherapy. I think it was like four treatments, and each month it just cleared up more and more.”

Now 13, Michael is a healthy young man, and according to his grandfather, “he’s a little horse buff. He likes to go to the races when I’m up there in Saratoga. He loves the game.”

Michael goes for annual tests to detect any possible recurrence of cancer, but since his initial diagnosis and treatment, Michael continues to be cancer-free.

“He’s a good little athlete. He plays basketball, and he has played football, but his best sport is basketball. He’s a very good point guard, I should say,” Valente said.

Michael has made a miraculous recovery (Valente family photos)

Miracle Michael is the second horse that the long-time breeder and owner has named for his grandson. The first was Eye Love Michael, a 2012 gelding sired by Valente’s own Bustin Stones, a Grade 1 winner by City Zip. A perfect 6-for-6 in his career, Bustin Stones won the 2008 Carter Handicap at Aqueduct before standing at stud at Waldorf Farm in the Empire State. He is a product of the same maternal family as Miracle Michael and shares the same trainer, Bruce Levine, who Valente has known for more than 30 years.

“Actually, we met when I tried to sell him a horse one time, and he didn’t buy it. Then, he had a horse with somebody else, and it wasn’t running any good,” Levine recalled. “He called me and asked me to take the horse, and I did. We did well together and then kind of never looked back from there.”

A Long Island native, Levine worked for John Russell and John Campo before going out on his own in 1979. In more than 40 years on the racetrack, he has taken home training titles at the Meadowlands and Monmouth Park and trained graded stakes winners Buddy’s Saint, Coyote Lakes, Restored Hope, and Valente’s Bustin Stones. Over the past three decades, the Levine and Valente families have formed a bond that makes them practically family.

“Our families are kind of close; we’ve gone away on vacations and all. I watched his kids grow up, and now I’m watching the grandkids grow up.” Levine said. “We’ve watched his kids grow; they were like maybe 8 years old and 10 when we first met them. Now they’ve got kids. We’ve watched the whole tree grow.”

Valente has 25 horses in training, mostly in New York, spread between trainers like Levine, Linda Rice, and Chad Summers. After seeing the colt’s potential, he sent Miracle Michael to Levine, who selected that maiden race at Saratoga. The colt’s performance in his debut leaves both owner and trainer confident that Miracle Michael has winning performances ahead of him.

Jockey Kendrick Carmouche with Michael (Valente family photo)

“I thought he ran hard. He was chasing the winner all the way through the stretch; he could have just spit the bit and folded, but he hung on there, and he was a good second,” Levine said.

“We’ll try to run him in a maiden race, hopefully about the first week or so of October. Long range, there’s a stallion stakes Nov. 27, I think, and he’s eligible for that. That’s definitely on the agenda.”

“We’re going to point for that race, and once we get a couple races in him, hopefully he goes forward,” Valente said. “We’ll deal with how he fares this year. He’s only two years and about three months old, a young horse. That’s why I don’t want to press on him too much right now either, but he’s very sound.”

Whatever the future has in store for Miracle Michael, he is already off to a nice start, a talented young horse named for a special young man. Wherever the colt goes next, he stands as a reminder of what love and faith can bring to even the darkest of times.

“We’ve been blessed with something that I refer to as a miracle. I am so thankful, as is our whole family, for this loving young man.” Valente said. “Don’t ever give up and have faith. I think he is living proof of that.”