Perhaps the written word could only ever be adequate to such a milestone if Dr. Robert Copelan had himself persevered with his original course at Ohio State University, and instead become a journalist. As it is, TDN offers these meager paragraphs in joining countless others across our community saluting one of its most remarkable achievers on his 100th birthday.Inducted only last month into the sport's Hall of Fame, as a “Pillar of the Turf,” this slight, dapper figure–gentle yet incisive, modest yet firm–bestrides the equine veterinary profession as a true colossus.On Wednesday, Copelan will be joined by family and friends in celebrating a century in which he has not only witnessed epoch-making changes in the wider world, but also pioneered several within his own walk of life.Just think: on September 2, 1926, strictly his birth could not be toasted on account of Prohibition. Calvin Coolidge was President; the first talkie remained a year away; the Wall Street Crash, three years. Marilyn Monroe was in a cradle of her own, and La Troienne was a weanling.Well, however many champions have since featured that name in their pedigrees, Copelan has had his hands on more: 16 Kentucky Derby winners, for a start. His stepson Ryan Mahan, senior auctioneer at Keeneland, recalls holding the greatest of them all, Secretariat, on the end of a halter in Derby week. The horse had an abscess, and it looked as though they would have to scratch. Copelan took the teenaged Mahan to the backside every daybreak. “You couldn't put a bit in his mouth,” Mahan told TDN earlier this year. “Bob couldn't treat him with anything, because it was so close to the race. So, hot compresses–30 minutes on, 30 minutes off–all day, all night. And all of a sudden, he rolled his lip up and it just fell out. Next day he ate up and became Secretariat.”Copelan originally mistook his vocation as journalism in emulation of his father, managing editor of the Cincinnati Times-Sun for the Taft family. But he soon yielded to a more innate affinity.“Since my earliest days, I have loved the horse,” Copelan told the Hall of Fame ceremony via a video message. “From those pony rides at Coney Island to my grandparents' workhorse, which I would run alongside, reach up and get his mane and swing up on his back.”During veterinary school, he borrowed a fraternity brother's car and drove out to Darby Dan's Ohio farm to work with broodmares. But he was still dreaming of becoming a jockey–and there was a training track on the farm, strictly off limits.“I couldn't get my mind off it while I was rubbing those broodmares,” he told TDN a couple of years ago. “So one day, I waited until after everybody left at 4 p.m. They had this spotted pony there and I put a saddle on him and rode down between these paddocks. I remember one of the yearlings there was out of Bloodroot [1946 Broodmare of the Year]. Well, these yearlings had never seen a spotted pony. And so one of them came running, jumped out onto the road in front of me, jumped into the other paddock, then with that other yearling raced down to the end, they both jumped that fence, and down into Big Darby Creek.”Copelan, fearing them drowned, went shamefacedly to find the manager Will Corman.“So we went down there and by now it's getting dark,” he remembered. “It was eight or nine feet down into the Creek, but finally we saw their eyes in the flashlight. And we put shanks on them and didn't they just hop up that bank. We hosed them off, and Will said, 'These two S.O.B.s can't be worth a quarter. There's not a goddamned scratch on either of them!' And sure as the world, neither one broke their maiden.”Copelan also spent a couple of summers at Calumet, breaking yearlings, exercising older horses and assisting the farm vet–whose patients one summer included Citation, in for repairs. He also worked with Hill Gail, subsequently winner of the 1952 Kentucky Derby. These privileges heightened Copelan's precocious sense of professional responsibility. In fact, he was barely a year out of veterinary school when helping to found a ground-breaking trade association in December 1954, assembling 10 other colleagues in Louisville for the inaugural meeting of the American Association of Equine Practitioners.Copelan consolidated his reputation as racetrack vet before opening his own practice in Paris, Kentucky, ultimately opening a hospital at Sunnyside, the farm he operated in partnership with John Thornbury. Here he pioneered a number of surgical techniques, notably on joints.One of his pin-ups was Susan's Girl, who fractured a sesamoid in 1974. After a seven-month recuperation from surgery, the subsequent Hall of Famer stood up to a 17-race championship campaign as a 6-year-old, winning four Grade Is.Owner Fred W. Hooper later named her best foal, a son of Tri Jet delivered in 1980, in honor of the surgeon who had salvaged her career. The four-legged Copelan won three Grade Is as a juvenile and proceeded to sire 35 stakes winners.As the commercial market boomed, Copelan's expertise was also increasingly prized at the sales grounds, above all by William T. Young. As bloodstock advisor to Young's Overbrook Farm, Copelan is credited with recommending the emerging D. Wayne Lukas as trainer. Lukas in turn credited Copelan for the 1996 Derby success of Grindstone, on whose knees and ankles he had the previous summer performed arthroscopic surgery alongside Dr. Larry Bramlage.“He's a perfectionist,” Lukas said. “Remarkable in everything he does.”Bramlage, whose accession as a doyen of their profession is only one example of Copelan's living legacy, was aptly asked to represent his mentor at the Hall of Fame ceremony.“When those 11 people met in the Brown Hotel in Louisville, their purpose was to improve the reputation and reality of practice on the backside,” Bramlage said. “And from those 11 pillars have come the 10,000-member AAEP, which now reaches into all aspects of equine medicine and surgery.”Bramlage recalled the influence of this “pillar of integrity” on the succeeding generation at Ohio State. Long before HISA, long before regulatory vets, Copelan taught them that their first duty was to the horse: however important a client, however momentous the stakes, they should never be afraid to say “no.” Precious as it was to watch a master at work, however, perhaps nothing beat the opportunity of then sampling the master storyteller's repertoire over dinner.“Dr. Copelan was not only a pioneer in equine surgery but mentor to many young veterinarians,” Bramlage says. “He taught us who were surgeons, about surgery; who were other specialties, about veterinary medicine in general; and all of us, about the horse and about people. He cut a wide swath in equine practice and many of us were happy and honored to follow in his stead. His recent honor as a “Pillar of the Turf” could not have been better deserved. I am proud to be his friend and mentee!”Copelan practiced for exactly 65 years (12 June 1953 to 12 June 2018) before retiring at 91. Long before his induction at Saratoga, Copelan's stature had been measured by many formal accolades: from the Ohio State University Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1978; to the Kentucky Association of Equine Practitioners Distinguished Veterinarian Award in 2000; to invitation as the Thoroughbred Club of America's honor guest in 2007.But an even better gauge of the man would be found among the staff and regulars of Lil's Coffee House on Main Street, Paris. It was a huge honor, a couple of years ago, for TDN to share his favorite table there with Copelan and his much-missed friend, the late Ercel Ellis, and Arthur Hancock. Copelan had become such an institution here that he is even on the sandwich menu (“The Copelan”: grilled cheddar-and-onion on pumpernickel), and there was no mistaking the rapport and profound mutual affection he had built in this community.Mahan recently shared another vignette of his adolescence, instructive of his stepfather's character. Copelan took him to the Arlington backstretch the morning after Buckpasser broke the world record for a mile, and Mahan saw Eddie Neloy throw his racing plates in the muck pit.“So, I wandered over, picked them out, put them in the trunk,” Mahan recalled. “When we get back to the car Bob says, 'What's this?' 'Buckpasser's shoes.' 'Well, you can't put them in here. They're dirty.' And he threw them back in the muck pile. I was crushed.”Two weeks later, Mahan received the plates in the post: cleaned, and mounted on a plaque which still hangs on his wall at home.“Doc has been one of the greatest mentors and inspirations in my life,” Mahan says. “He's been a father to me since I was 12 years old and is the sole reason I got into the Thoroughbred industry. Doc's tireless work ethic, unshakable integrity, ingenuity, and devotion to perfecting his craft made an indelible impression on my life. He's a true pioneer and has certainly lived life to the fullest over the past 100 years.”The post 100 Years Young: Happy Birthday, Doc Copelan appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.