Overcoming grief was no sure bet for horse racing's Craig Donnelly

Craig Donnelly scraped together nickels and dimes as a boy and begged his mother to place $2 bets for him at the track.

While his siblings went off to Dartmouth, Bryn Mawr, and Harvard Law, the Radnor High School graduate got his higher education at the local horse tracks, where he began a life-long career as a racing handicapper.

"If you're good at it," he says, "you'll still be wrong two-thirds of the time."

He was perfect early on with one pick - the young secretary working at Keystone Park in Bensalem, now Parx Racing.

He and Ann were married in 1981. They had three children, and she indulged his crazy love of horses and horse racing. She brought stability and sunlight to his life.

"I'm a guy who can tell you some lousy things about Mother Theresa," he said, "but she was always positive. She was the nicest person in the world."

In May 2006, Ann received a diagnosis of lung cancer. He remembers the first meeting with doctors. "There's no cure . . . "

She suffered through seven miserable, brutal months of chemo, radiation, indignity and decline.

"It becomes your identity," he says. "Your identity is cancer. How unfair is that?"

In July 2006, three months into this nightmare, Donnelly needed a diversion. He and his father decided to buy a thoroughbred.

Donnelly thought he picked out a good one and decided to "claim" her in a race for $7,500. "Regardless of what happens in the [claiming] race," he explained, "the horse is yours."

The filly, Bennington, fractured her ankle and was carried off the track in a truck. She would never race again.

Donnelly could not bring himself to euthanize the horse, so he decided to breed her.

Ann was aware of what had happened, and understood the ups and downs of horse racing. She was pleased with her husband's decision to spare the horse.

Ann died that December, six days before Christmas.

The pain and loneliness that followed nearly drove Donnelly mad.

Six months later, it was only worse. He was moody and depressed. He could barely work.

Donnelly still had his horse. He paid another $7,500 in stud fees and Bennington mated with Dances with Ravens.

Donnelly's father and son are also listed as the breeders of record. This would become a family affair - but, then, racing always has been for them. Everyone in the racing world knows him as Craig Donnelly, but his actual name is Craig Harris. His father, Russ Harris, was a famous horse handicapper. When Craig got into it, to avoid confusion with his father's work, he adopted the last name Donnelly from a maternal grandmother and has spent the last 42 years with a double identity.

A little over a year after his wife's death, in January of 2008, a woman telephoned Donnelly from a farm in Chester County to tell him a foal had been born.

"It's a filly," Donnelly said.

"Why do you say that?" she asked.

"Because it's Ann's Smart Dancer," he replied.

Donnelly just knew it would be a filly, as surely as he knew anything. And he also knew he would name her after his late wife.

He thought naming the horse in memory of Ann would honor her and somehow help him heal.

"She would have gotten a kick out of it," he said.

Donnelly would visit Ann's Smart Dancer on the farm in Chester County. She was calm and playful, a beautiful bay with a broad white blaze.

Donnelly was smitten with Ann's Smart Dancer, just as he'd been with her namesake.

From the first time she worked out on the racetrack, everyone involved had a good feeling about her.

"She just seems to know why she's here and what she's here for," said Mary Jo Brennan, her exercise rider. "She's so prideful, always wants to advance to the next level."

As a 3-year-old, Ann's Smart Dancer had her first race on April 2 at Parx. Donnelly couldn't eat all day, and he's 6-foot-4, 230 pounds. He also couldn't be around anybody and went off by himself at the track with a pair of binoculars.

Craig Donnelly had watched, by his own count, literally more than 100,000 horse races.

But this one was different.

He is an emotional man and the emotions within were swirling: He was like a parent nervous for his child. He wanted her to run well and to be safe. He wanted to bring honor to his wife's memory.

Ann's Smart Dancer didn't break well out of the gate, but soon jumped into the lead and won easily, going away.

Donnelly exhaled.

"By the time we got to the winner's circle," said trainer Butch Reid, "he was all smiles."

Ann's Smart Dancer won again, and again, and again - five victories in six races, and one second place. She's earned $260,000 in prize money and bonuses this season and will race again Saturday in the ninth race at Parx.

Donnelly, who worked for The Inquirer for 37 years before taking a buyout in 2008, knows caring for horses can be expensive, and he can't go crazy with the winnings.

But he is remodeling a bathroom at his home in Holland, Bucks County.

"I'm calling it the 'Ann's Smart Dancer Bathroom,' " he said. "She's paying for it."

Donnelly is no longer lonely. He's remarried now, to the buoyant, vibrant Carmen, a medical technician who knew nothing about racing before she met him.

He has been rejuvenated by his new marriage, and by this remarkable horse.

Donnelly can't say he feels Ann's spirit or presence in the stable or at the track, but he will acknowledge, "there's a little magic going on here, maybe."

People all around him, who know how much he loves the sport and how much he suffered after his first wife's death, are thrilled for him.

"He loves this filly," said Brennan, the exercise rider. "He talks about her incessantly. It's really wonderful. For this horse to do what she has in honor of his wife, it's a story of good things happening to good people."

Donnelly knows this experience has also been a tonic for his son, Jeff, a trainer who sends daily updates from Harrisburg about the little brother of Ann's Smart Dancer, perhaps next season's phenom.

"It's good that he's got something positive," Donnelly says.

Donnelly often stops by the stable to visit his favorite filly. He'll feed her cookies and carrots and stroke her nose or pat her long neck. She will be circling the inside of the barn on her cool down, after morning exercise, but keep looking back at him as she passes, knowing he probably has treats for her.

He loves to spoil her. And why not?