Bob Hess Jr - keeping the Hess name in the Winner's Circle
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Joe Gorajec - The Indiana based racing regulator speaks out
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Young Trainers Starting Out - Abigail Adsit, Michael Wilson, Scott Young, Liam Benson
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Keith Desormeaux - Trainer of the 141st Preakness Stakes winner - Exaggerator
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Maryland legend, King T. Leatherbury in profile
The man in the blue jacket takes a sip from his drink, a Black-Eyed Susan. “Say,” he says, “there’s supposed to be booze in here! You don’t see anybody with one of those little flasks in their hip pocket, do you?”
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Barry Abrams - overcoming adversity
An old man goes to a doctor. “What’s the problem?” the doctor says. “I can’t pee,” the old man says. “How old are you?” the doctor says. “Eighty-four,” the old man says.
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Carlos Arias - the whip maker
One of Webster’s many descriptions of the word “whip” reads: “An instrument, either a flexible rod or a flexible thong or lash attached to a handle, used for driving animals or administering corporal punishment.”
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Rick Violette leading NY based trainer - in profile
Rick Violette Jr. thought about becoming a lawyer or entering politics when he was a student at Lowell University in his native Massachusetts. When he wasn't studying or attending class, he showed hunters and jumpers for a client who also owned racehorses. That was how his romance with the racetrack began.
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Wesley Ward Trainer Profile
Trainer Wesley Ward didn’t invent “thinking outside the box,” but he sure is living it—joyfully and successfully: racing fillies vs. colts in graded stakes, running an America-maiden claiming winner in a stakes race at Ascot, giving a 10-pound apprentice his first mount at prestigious Saratoga, and skipping the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita to watch his son in a cross country meet a couple thousand miles away in Florida.
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Jimmy 'The Hat' Allard
A self-proclaimed “professional horse player,” Allard is at once dogmatic, enigmatic, pragmatic, and, when it comes to playing the Pick 6, pretty much automatic. Even though he turns 61 on April 26, 2015, pose any question, and Allard’s curious and expansive mind zeroes in on total and accurate recall. Like Jeopardy’s Alex Trebek behind the podium, he’s got all the right answers before the buzzer sounds.
David Bernstein: rising above adversity
David Bernstein has suffered two tragedies: one a game changer, the other a life changer.
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Craig Lewis
Craig Anthony Lewis is a racetrack lifer. And at 67, if genealogy and longevity mean anything, he still has a long way to go as a trainer. His father, Seymour, is 92. His mother, Norma, is 90. They still live together in Seal Beach, California.
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Sean McCarthy comes out form under the radar
Sean McCarthy is a rarity among trainers. He speaks in complete sentences. Here’s what he said in a post-race interview after the biggest win of his career, Majestic Harbor’s 6 1/4-length upset at 14-1 in the Grade I Gold Cup at Santa Anita on June 28...
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Christophe Clement - The Belmont Stakes winning trainer profile
Frances Karon visits Christophe Clement and learns all about the foundations he developed in racing from such a young age starting from his french roots to his arrival in America. The successful trainer of Tonalist talks about his life on both sides of the pond and how he ended up at Belmont Park
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THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN - NORTH AMERICAN TRAINER - ISSUE 33
Ron McAnally - Still pumping out Gr1 winners
Described as the poster boy for the geriatric set and like a fine wine we meet Ron McAnally, the trainer that will never give up. Ron McAnally has just celebrated his 82yrs old and still churning out Gr 1 winners and here we find out about how it all began in 1948 working as a groom, lifelong long friends and owners.
“Like fine wine…” flowed the words from emcee Ted Bassett at the annual Eclipse Awards Dinner to announce that John Henry had been named 1984 Horse of the Year at the advanced age of 9. The same words today could describe octogenarian Ron McAnally, John Henry’s Hall of Fame trainer and poster boy for the geriatric set. McAnally, who celebrated his 82nd birthday on July 11, ages gracefully while continuing to pump out Grade 1 stakes winners. Seated at a Clocker’s Corner table one morning in June near the end of the extended Santa Anita Park meet and looking forward to Del Mar, McAnally made only a few minor concessions to Father Time while continuing his lifelong love affair with his job.
“As long as I’m alive, that’s all I know how to do,” said the soft-spoken trainer of the regimen that keeps him young: showing up at the track early every morning seven days a week. “I don’t play golf, tennis, or cards.” McAnally admitted that he does not move as smoothly as he did when he was 41, largely the result of partial knee replacement surgery in 2012, but the anticipation of his next stakes win keeps a bounce in his step and a glint in his eye. “Dan Landers, my assistant since 1995, has been my right arm, especially since the knee surgery,” said McAnally, who conditions 15 horses at Santa Anita and another four at Pomona with Jose Miranda, an employee for 42 years. Landers walked by and alerted McAnally to the arrival of Miss Serendipity on the track. The 6-year-old Argentine-bred mare had given McAnally his most recent Grade 1 score with a 13-to-1 upset in the $300,000 Gamely Stakes on the Santa Anita turf on May 26. McAnally has not lost his touch with South American imports, who gave him a series of earlier career highlights and have provided most of his success the past two years.
In addition to Miss Serendipity, the McAnally stable also boasts Quick Casablanca, a 6-year-old Chilean-bred horse which two days before the Gamely missed winning the Grade 1 Charles Whittingham Stakes on grass by two necks in a three-way photo. In 2013, McAnally won the Grade 1 Frank Kilroe Mile with Suggestive Boy, a 6-year-old Argentine-bred who remains in training, and the Grade II San Juan Capistrano Stakes with Interaction, another Argentine-bred who was retired to stud in his native land. McAnally said the secret to Miss Serendipity was the same as most of the two dozen other South American imports he has turned into graded stakes winners: patience. “Miss Serendipity took longer than most,” explained McAnally of the mare who arrived last summer at Del Mar but did not make her U.S. debut until January at Santa Anita. “She had a skin rash that we used medicated shampoo on to clear up.”
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THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN - NORTH AMERICAN TRAINER - ISSUE 33
Author: Steve Schuelein
Mike Maker - the leading Kentucky based trainer in profile
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THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN - NORTH AMERICAN TRAINER - ISSUE 33