by Aidan Turnage-Barney, Virginia Equine Alliance

Sometimes, love, in all its forms, creates a unique web of connections, bringing people together around their passions. Diana McClure (DMC Racing Stables) and Susan Cooney (Cooney Racing Stable) are long-time horsewomen in Northern Virginia who found domestic happiness through their love of horses. They both raise and train racehorses and have farms just eight miles apart. But they have something else in common. Each is married to one of the Cooney brothers, Pat and Michael, who came over from Ireland to the United States to ride steeplechase horses.

Susan met Pat Cooney on a blind date at Fox’s Den in Camden, South Carolina. Pat, who had been in the U.S. for less than a year, was there to ride steeplechase horses and Susan was there as an assistant trainer. Raised in the rich tradition of Irish hunt racing, Pat had grown tired of riding on the flat and wanted to find his way back into the jump race game.

“He shows up in town in a Le Car,” recalled Susan — laughing as she thought back on her first interactions with her husband. “The car was held together with wire and the muffler was pea cans.”

Pat jokes that he fell in love with Susan because she was driving a Porsche. “But her car wasn’t a Porsche, it was a Honda. It was new and bright red,” he said. “I thought I was marrying a rich girl with a new Porsche!”

As their relationship deepened, they felt the urge to put down roots in Northern Virginia since Pat was still riding for Paul Fout — who was based in Middleburg. Susan ended up getting a job in Middleburg working for George Ohrstrom at White Wood Farm. They secured a great farmhouse and a barn full of layups and babies to work with, pointing towards the racetrack. “That was Geroge’s ‘fourth string’ horses,” joked Susan.

Five years later, Susan moved from being a private trainer to a public one and secured her trainer’s license at Charles Town while she was working for Ohrstrom. They had a horse named “Fill My Card,” whom they brought to Virginia from Camden, South Carolina. They called the horse “Spinner” because he was such a bad stall-walking horse as a baby. They broke and trained the colt and started riding him at some of the hunt meets in Northern Virginia. After winning both over timber and hurdles they decided to give him a try on the flat at Garden State Park.

As young trainers new to the New Jersey racetrack, they entered the race with a jockey a friend had recommended. That jockey took off the horse just an hour before the race. The Clerk of Scales called Susan and asked who she wanted to ride. She checked her program and selected the leading jockey at the meet, Joe Bravo. Much to her surprise, he took the mount. In the paddock, before the race, Susan recalls Joe saying, “This horse can run for miles, he will be fine!” Much to their satisfaction, he was correct, winning the race by 17 1/2 lengths.

From there it was a learning curve for the couple. Pat’s experience as a jump rider in Ireland and now here in the States, combined with and Susan’s experience as a jump race trainer, was not the typical path for young trainers to come up and succeed in the flat racing game.

A career highlight for the couple came via their homebred filly, Embarr. She hit the starting gate in her first start as a 2-year-old and ended up with a tibial stress fracture which forced her to take the year off. She came back as a 3-year-old in a maiden claiming race at Colonial Downs and thrived. Embarr galloped out of the race, winning by eight lengths. They brought her back in the Brookmeade Stakes two starts later and after coming around the final turn into the homestretch, she turned on the jets and won.

Embarr ended up with career earnings of $358,247 and five stakes wins — the Brookmeade three times and the Dahlia at Pimlico twice. “She taught us about going to these bigger racetracks and getting the confidence to take on some of the bigger outfits,” said Susan. “She took us on a journey from Saratoga to Arlington and other tracks in between.”

As the years have progressed, things have gotten a little simpler for the Cooneys, who primarily race in Maryland and Virginia now. Susan also breeds English Labradors, something she has been involved with since she attended Texas A&M University pursuing a graduate degree. “In the early days, I was selling Labs to pay for racehorse stud fees,” she said. “A lot of our puppies have gone to racing families in Maryland.”

Down the road from Susan and Pat lives another Cooney family — Pat’s brother Mike and sister-in-law Diana. Pat and Susan first got to know Diana when they were renting stalls at Interhorse, which was located across the street from the Middleburg Training Center where Mike was based.

Diana McClure’s journey into horse racing started at Virginia Tech where she was in the pre-vet program and played collegiate field hockey. She met her first husband there, and they started their careers in the New Jersey race circuit. Diana’s father was a pilot and during her senior year, she spent the semester flying back and forth between classes and tending to her horses in New Jersey. That same year, they purchased four yearlings with the plan of selling them as 2-year-olds in a training age sale — which they did. That gave them a cushion moneywise to begin working as assistant trainers in New Jersey the following year.

After her marriage ended a few months later, Diana moved back to Virginia and, taking her mentor John Forbes’ advice, began running a training operation by herself for the first time, at Interhorse. In time, she found herself with a full stable of 20 horses. “Going out on my own might have been the best decision I ever made.”

In 1996 Diana met Michael and noticed how well he was galloping horses on the Middleburg track.

Michael, who is four years older than Pat, finished school at 14 and went straight to the Curragh area of Ireland — known for breeding and training champion horses and jockeys — to learn how to ride horses in a six-year apprenticeship. In 1979 he won the Apprentice championship and was runner-up in 1980. He found himself at a crossroads deciding where to ride next. He had an offer to ride races in England but instead decided to give the U.S. racing circuit a chance. He started riding in New York hustling races, and in time, people started to notice his skill and he got more and more mounts.

He returned home for a spell though and decided to give something outside of horse racing a chance. He quickly realized he missed it and wanted to return to the States to ride again. “I called my brother Pat about coming to Middleburg,” said Michael. “He said I’d have a place to stay there with our third brother, Jerry, and that he’d start asking around to get me some rides.”

After a cold day training her horses in the blizzard year of 1995-1996. Diana decided to meet a friend at a local cafe for a warm cider. She walked in, still in her barn clothes, and sat down next to Michael. They were introduced and Diana was excited to meet him because she loved the way he used his hands when he was riding. Diana’s jockey Peter Walsch was retiring that year, and she asked Michael if he would ride for her. He agreed to do so when the ground softened up. The evening was slowing down at the bar and everyone headed home. Diana asked Michael if he was going to stay around the bar long enough for her to run home, feed and water the horses, change clothes, and return. Michael agreed to do so. Diana went home, took care of her horses, and got ready. She called the bartender and asked if Michael was still at the bar. He had left. The time wasn’t quite right, but fate had plans for Diana and Michael.

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Diana had a friend and neighbor named Gordie Keys who asked her to clip a horse named Super Shot that Diana had sold him. While working on Super Shot, the horse kicked Diana in the back of the head. Gordie found her with blood shooting out of her ear. He threw her in the car and took her to the hospital in Leesburg. Diana had a fractured skull and had a seizure. She was transported to the Fairfax trauma center where she was put into a medically induced coma.

Eventually, Diana woke from her coma and found out from her assistant Albert that her friend had been bringing riders over to work the horses while she was away and one of them was Michael. Diana reached out to him and said, “I can’t drive, and I can’t ride, but I have to pay you for the riding you did while I was away.”

Michael came over and Diana asked him if he would help with the steeplechase horses. Michael agreed and, after a trip to the grocery store later that evening, he stopped by Diana’s to tell her he would be able to work the next day. “From that evening on he just never left,” said Diana. “I’m still waiting on my first date.”

That was the beginning of DMC Racing Stables. Michael and Diana were married six months later.

The two families have built successful farms just a few miles apart. When Susan and Pat’s stables are full, they often send new clients and owners to Diana and Michael. “Brother Michael” as Pat and Susan lovingly refer to him, returns the favor by helping with maintenance projects at Cooney Stables. While they are separate stables, they are always helping each other out and are always cheering each other on at the track.

The Cooneys, all four of them, have been prominent members of the Virginia horse world for three decades. Susan and Diana are both longtime board members of the Virginia Thoroughbred Association and the Virginia HBPA. They embody the camaraderie and sportsmanship that is representative of the Virginia horse industry. They both credit the Virginia-Certified Residency program in helping to sustain horse farms in the Commonwealth, especially during the five-year gap when Colonial Downs was dormant.

They are looking forward to extending their family’s engagement with racing in Virginia. Michael and Pat’s niece is in her first season riding races at Dundalk in Ireland, the same place the Cooney brothers learned to ride. She is only five wins behind the leading jockey in Ireland. The brothers plan on having her visit the United States soon to get a taste of racing in Maryland and Virginia. They hope she continues the family legacy in Virginia racing.