V86®: A racehorse against all odds
He is blind in one eye and became an orphan early on.
But a warmblood mare adopted the coldblood Zargo who today is a big talent on the track - a racehorse against all odds.
Marine Holmgren runs a small training stable together with her boyfriend Leif Andersson. They are located in Bjästa, near Solänget racetrack and they have four horses in training. One of them is the four-year-old coldblood horse Zargo. He now makes an interesting start in V86-3, this Wednesday at Bergsåker.
Zargo has won five times in nineteen starts and in ten starts he has finished top three, despite a troublesome childhood and a huge handicap.
Marine explains why Zargo means so much to her.
"I bred Zargo and he looked well when he came out. I still got the feeling that something wasn't right and then I saw it. His eye! One of his eyes was very small. He was blind in that eye. His mother got sick around that time too and not even the strongest painkillers helped her. When Zargo was ten days old, he lost his mother".
"We finally found a mare who had lost her foal, but she wouldn't accept Zargo. What were we going to do? Luckily I have a friend, Christina Larsson, from Bollnäs. She had a mare ready to foal and we planned to trick the mare into believing she had twins, where Zargo would be one of them. Zargo was going to be a twin, with a filly as a sibling. A warmblood filly".
While waiting for the mare to foal, the couple found another mare for Zargo to suckle.
"One evening when we were out at a restaurant, it happened. The mare was ready to foal. We went home quickly, just to suffer a huge setback. Zargo's twin was stillborn and our plans fell apart. We took a shot. We rubbed the dead foal's amniotic sac all over Zargo, making the mare accept Zargo as her own foal".
How have things gone for Zargo after that?
"It has gone well. We took him home when he was a yearling and we also bought another one, a training buddy. It was a bit troublesome in the fall when we broke him, but after that everything has been fine. He carries his head high and a bit to the side, due to his handicap with the eye. He has ended up in the ditch several times. He was very good in his baby race as a two-year-old and when he qualified as a three-year-old. After that, things have moved along well. The only time he has been injured is when he ran into another horse's paddock and they started fighting. We found the other horse at a neighbor's place, so I guess things got pretty wild".
Zargo obviously means a lot to Marine and Leif. The horse has a special place in Marine's heart.
"He is our little baby. I would say that Zargo is pretty much everything to us".
What do you think of the task ahead, this Wednesday?
"Zargo made his V75 debut in his last start and I was happy with him even if he got tired after a tough trip on a sticky track. Henrik Svensson does such a good job with Zargo and he didn't push him too hard. After that start, Zargo has been very happy and energetic and he gallops around playfully in his paddock. I think the top form is there. We are not making any changes and he still races with heavy shoes and with both earplugs and an ear hood. He reacts a lot to different sounds and we like to keep him quiet. There are lots of gears saved for the future. Just imagine if he could get to the lead. That would be great".