Glorious Empire went from claiming horse in June to Eclipse Award finalist in January. That’s a road rarely traveled, yet only the latest leg in a long, winding journey.
From England to Hong Kong, back to England and on to America, Glorious Empire’s career has spanned the globe. He has struggled with exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage (bleeding), but under the care of trainer James L. “Chuck” Lawrence II, Glorious Empire somehow rose to the top of the East Coast turf-route division during 2018.
Rose so high, in fact, that he is one of three finalists to be champion older turf male of 2018.
Glorious Empire’s candidacy rests in great part on the Grade 1 Sword Dancer at Saratoga, where on Aug. 25 he beat a strong field by the season’s standards and beat them comfortably, leading all the way under Julien Leparoux to post a 1 3/4-length victory. It was the first Grade 1 for Lawrence, a former jump-racing jockey who quietly plies his trade on the mid-Atlantic circuit and whose gentle touched pushed Glorious Empire to heights no one could have imagined early in 2018.
In addition to the Sword Dancer, Glorious Empire dead-heated with Channel Maker for first in the Grade 2 Bowling Green and made a late-season Eclipse surge by winning the Grade 2 Fort Lauderdale on Dec. 15 at Gulfstream Park by more than two lengths.
Sandwiched among those three wins was a dud in the Breeders’ Cup Turf, which Glorious Empire led early before fading to last of 13.
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By Holy Roman Emperor out of the Pivotal mare Humble and Proud, Glorious Empire was bred in Ireland and began his career late in 2013, winning his debut at Kempton Park in England for trainer Ed Walker, who thought he had a budding star in his stable. He won three times in four starts at age 4, attracting interest from Hong Kong connections who purchased and imported Glorious Empire for the 2014-15 Hong Kong racing season.
In April 2015, Glorious Empire won his first race in Hong Kong, but already had experienced a bleeding episode during a training race a few months earlier. When he bled again in his second Hong Kong start, he was banned from racing in a jurisdiction that forbids the use of the anti-bleeder medication Lasix or any other race-day drug.
Walker got him back in England, but Glorious Empire bled again in a race and was exported to America. The gelding kicked usefully about allowance and lower stakes competition in 2016 and 2017 before Matt Schera claimed him for $62,500 in May 2017. Glorious Empire won his first start for Schera and trainer Carlos Martin before his old problem resurfaced and he was eased in a Laurel stakes race that September.
It was at that point Schera, a Connecticut-based commodities trader, gave Lawrence a chance at Glorious Empire, and while the gelding began his 2018 campaign with a sixth-place finish in the Henry Clark Stakes, he at least stayed on stoutly enough to the finish and pulled up without incident. Schera and Lawrence dropped Glorious Empire in for a $62,500 claiming tag in June at Delaware Park, and if the aim was to build confidence, the plan worked better than anyone could have expected. Glorious Empire won easily that day before returning to stakes competition in the Bowling Green, finally living up to all the promise he’d shown more than four years earlier. The reclamation project is the best horse his owner and trainer have campaigned – and was among the best turf horses in North America last year.