HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – It was 20 years ago this week that Chindi came roaring down the Oaklawn Park stretch to win the Grade 3 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap during the 1998 Racing Festival of the South. The gelding, now 24, has been part of the local action in some fashion every year since, whether racing at the meet or working as a stable pony for trainer Steve Hobby. Chindi has been immensely popular with racing fans and horsemen for his longevity and personality as well as the deep-closing style he employed. And it does not hurt that he now looks like a 1,200-pound snowball, a Rubenesque gray gone white who can regularly be found watching morning training at Oaklawn. “Everybody wants to see Chindi,” said his owner, Carol Ricks. “He should have been in the movies. I think he could have been another Trigger.” Chindi has been Hobby’s riding partner for some 20 years. Hobby not only galloped the horse when he was racing but now rides Chindi out with most sets of workers each morning at Oaklawn. That’s been the regular schedule for the horse since he retired in 2005. Chindi did not care for being turned out to pasture. “He walks faster to the track than he does back to the barn – every set,” Hobby said. “From all these years going to the track, it just amazes me he can’t wait to get up to the track. Now, he doesn’t really want to do anything once he’s up there but stand around and look, let everyone holler his name, and feed him candy. But he loves to go to the track.” Chindi does get time off each season, but it tends to be in the fall, when turnout conditions would be favorable. Plus, he has obligations to his public. “He’s got to be here the last half of the meet for the Festival and everything, otherwise people drive me crazy asking me where he is,” Hobby said with a laugh. “It’s fun to have him Derby week at Churchill because same thing – everyone wants to know where he’s at.” Chindi was a private purchase as a yearling, said Ricks. He is by El Prado and out of the Alydar mare Rousing, who brought $600,000 at auction as a 2-year-old in training in 1987. Chindi won 18 of 81 starts – including five stakes – for earnings of $1 million. “He’s such a special horse in every way, and part of things are beyond anybody’s control but the man upstairs,” said Ran Leonard, grandson of Carol Ricks and the late owner Ran Ricks. “He was the last horse purchased by my grandfather before he passed away. He never got to see him run. To me, and more so to my grandma, he was an extension of my grandfather, a way for her to connect with him.” Carol Ricks said there was indeed a special connection through Chindi. “I felt like my husband did see him, was riding him coming from 20 lengths behind,” she said. “He loved a closer.” Chindi developed his Silky Sullivan style not long after he won his career debut on the front end in a 1997 maiden race at Oaklawn. “He did that all by himself,” Hobby said. “Actually, what happened was we took him to Lone Star, and he stumbled real bad leaving the gate and was way back and came running like crazy. He ran second, and it was like he liked that, so from then on he did that on his own. It was an accident how it started.” Or, Chindi might have been reading the Form. He has that kind of personality, said Hobby. “The groom that groomed him all his life used to say, ‘There’s a human inside this horse,’ ” Hobby said. “Chindi’s very smart. He’s got a mind of his own. I mean, he’s not a horse that wants to be loved on. You can feed him things – peppermints, carrots, or anything like that – but he doesn’t like to be petted on or rubbed on and stuff like that.” Chindi does, however, make a few exceptions. “To children and old ladies, he’s very kind,” Ricks said. “He’s very sweet and very careful around them.” Chindi raced for nine consecutive seasons at Oaklawn and was retired at age 11. The track coordinated a retirement party in his honor, feting him between races with one of his regular riders Tim Doocy aboard as the horse paraded before the grandstand. Chindi loved every minute of the attention, just as he’s loved by so many. “He’s just been the joy of my life, a once-in-a-lifetime horse,” said Ricks.