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Trainer Magazine - the horse racing magazine for the training and development of the thoroughbred racehorse. Europe and North America.
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Apr
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Apr 8
NICK ZITO - the racehorse trainer speaks about the game that will humble kings
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PROFILE
CLICK ON IMAGE TO READ ARTICLE
(08 April 2009 - Issue Number: 12)
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![F IRMLY established now as a Hall of Fame trainer, Zito hasn’t always had clarity that he would succeed. “I’ll tell you a very good story. In the fall of ’89, I was walking back from the receiving barn at Aqueduct. You know where that is? It’s a real trip, it’s a real treat.” His tone indicates that the location of Aqueduct’s receiving barn is anything but a treat. “I was going back and forth, and I didn’t think I was going to make it. And then I looked over by where the airport is and I walked over. The sun was just coming down and, I don’t know, something hit me. And this may sound corny but it’s never corny when it’s the truth, and what I’m about to tell you is far from corny, but to some people it still may be.” He fidgets, scraping methodically at the label on a root beer bottle, peeling it off partially before smoothing it back into place. “I had some inexpensive horse I was running in the last race. ‘Well you know,’ I said, ‘I don’t know if I’m gonna make it,’ and I looked up there,” indicating the heavens with his eyes, “and I said, ‘You know, it’s okay, God, if I’m not gonna make it. I’m still blessed,’ and then I swear, believe it or not, something came over me and said, ‘Oh no, you’re going to make it.’ You’re gonna make it. And here comes Thirty Six Red, right after that,” referring to his Wood MemorialGotham winner who also placed in the Belmont and Breeders’ Cup Classic in 1990. Zito’s breakthrough was no lucky spin at the roulette table. On the heels of Thirty Six Red was 1991 Kentucky Derby winner Strike the Gold, “and the rest is history. Here comes [1994 Derby winner] Go for Gin, and everything else,” followed in 1996 by the first of three Eclipse champions, Storm Song. “So there is something to that. A satanic person might not believe that. That’s why I say it’s corny, but, yeah, I didn’t think I was gonna make it, but I was told I was so I kept going. It wasn’t easy. Like everybody else, it looks good on the surface.” Along the way, Zito learned to “be thankful for little things, getting up in the morning. I listen to a lot of creatures. I’m very lucky that way.” Chief among those “little things” are the calm afternoons, when the trainer spends time “just hanging out” with his horses. After a recent visit to Palm Meadows, Zito’s son Alex says, “When no one was watching, he walked past Da’ Tara’s stall and stopped to give him a pet and a little pep talk. It was just a small moment that illustrates how he really loves his horses. When you come from the sales you see how much of a business racing is. The pressure can be tremendous, so it is easy to see how someone could get burnt out after twenty or thirty years. It may appear to be obvious or over-simplistic, but I think the key reason he has been able to stay at an elite level and to work as hard as he did PROFILE 16 TRAINERMAGAZINE.com ISSUE 12 N when he was in his twenties is because he just loves to be with his horses.” “He’s right,” Zito responds. “Don Shula told me you’re never burnt out when you have something that you really love and really care about. So, I guess that’s true. And he was the coach of the Dolphins for how many years!” Zito’s frames of reference are frequently sports-related – another saying, “there’s no substitute for excellence,” is borrowed from former Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry – so it’s no surprise that his roster of clients past and present includes Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, for whom he trained Bellamy Road to win the Wood Memorial by 17 1 / 2 lengths, and coach Rick Pitino, whose University of Louisville Cardinals suffered a shock defeat in the NCAA basketball tournament in March. In what Zito would call divine intervention, Pitino’s Halory Hunter won Keeneland’s marquee Derby prep, the Blue Grass, in the spring of 1998 shortly after James McIngvale had removed his horses, leaving the trainer with many empty stalls. If not for Halory Hunter, “I’d have been in trouble.” He lets out a long whistle. “Rick’s been a good owner, very helpful, very supportive. Rick Pitino’s been very good to Nick Zito, because he’s introduced me to a lot of good people in the business, so I really appreciate him. ‘Course, we do good for him, too.” Pitino led the future owner of champion and Breeder’s Cup Juvenile winner War Pass, Da’ Tara and The Cliff’s Edge, all purchased by Zito, to the trainer. “You know it’s funny, every time I start thinking about Robert LaPenta I just shake my head. I’m going to buy ten horses and five are going to be bad. Let’s face it. That’s life, right? Except LaPenta. When I buy horses for him, he goes 100%.” Zito, whose emotions are as easy to read as a pop-up book, gets animated, his voice shooting up several decibels. “You make me brag all of a sudden. I never freakin’ brag in my life!” WHEN pressed, he estimates his percentage of humility versus cockiness at 60/40. A quick adjustment changes the ratio to 70/30. “I sure hope so.” He says, “I use this expression a lot: this game will humble kings. And that means we’re all humbled by the game. I’ll tell you something that I thought was very, very interesting that happened in November. We had Wanderin Boy in his last race of his life. Everybody was raving about him for the Cigar Mile, and he took a bad step and it was sad, terrible,” referring to the fatality of his multiple graded stakes-winning millionaire at Aqueduct. “Then that filly Indyanne [trained by Bob Baffert] runs in the La Brea on this synthetic surface in California, and she breaks down, loses her life. Go Between was at Payson Park and he gets a heart attack. So you’ve got Wanderin Boy in New York; you’ve got Indyanne in California; and then you’ve got Go Between, Bill Mott’s horse, in Florida. We went all around the country! In a month! And they all died.” He thumps the empty bottle on the wooden bar across the gap in the barn, reining in his emotion before repeating, “It’ll humble kings. When you say about ‘your cockiness’ and ‘your humbleness,’ I have to stay somewhat humbled because God makes us all humble in this game. And let me tell you what else He does, and whether you disagree or not, it’s a good thing: He doesn’t pick any favorites. In this game there’s no prejudice. So the cockiness is a little bit because you have to be competitive, but the humbleness is first because everybody is humbled by this game. Everybody.” Come across Zito putting a wrap on a horse’s leg and he’ll tell you that “once in a while you have to. That’s where the humble comes in, right? I have to get on my hands and knees once in a while.” The night Marylou Whitney’s Birdstone won the Travers, Zito recalls that he and his wife Kim had a quiet dinner. “And that win was for the Whitneys, in Saratoga! We could have gone anywhere, and we just went and had a pizza. So it ain’t the money, it ain’t the glory. I think it’s the intensity that keeps us going that way. We like that part.” It’s a Tuesday morning, with none of Zito’s horses scheduled to breeze. Pennsylvania Derby winner Anak Nakal, Da’ Tara and Commentator, who won his second Whitney last year at seven, stretch their legs. As another group heads out for a routine tune-up, he announces, “We’ve got a heck of a lineup going out now,” making his way to the rail to watch. “Look ahead,” he says, focusing intently on a colt under an NPZ-emblazoned saddlepad. As each goes by, Zito takes mental notes, then talks to the riders as they head back to the barn. Only one, set to school in the gate, has yet to appear. He sighs. “This is a mystery. We certainly didn’t miss him [going by us], that’s for sure.” The irony is impossible to resist: the colt’s name is Nowhere to Hide. After a few more minutes in suspense, Zito calls the barn and learns that Nowhere to Hide was in and out of the gate before the trainer had reached the track. After talking to the three-year-old’s rider Maxine Correa, Zito checks in with one of the gate guys, who confirms Correa’s report that Nowhere to Hide was perfect. Later, in the stillness of the afternoon, Zito and Nowhere to Hide will no doubt have a heart-to-heart about the morning session. Zito said in 2004 that he learned late in life that “you really have to be grateful for what you have.” He reflects now: “You’ve got to remember that unfortunately, not everything is so easy. Not everything is just handed to you. Not everything is without a sacrifice. You know? Not everything is without problems or pressure or whatever. Unfortunately, sometimes you have no control over things. I’m a sensitive person, and I think as you learn, you say, yeah, you know what, you can’t control everything, and you’ve got to be careful and grateful and be thankful for everything you have.” On the track, Zito’s mentors were Buddy Jacobson, Robert Lake, Woods Garth, Johnny Campo and LeRoy Jolley. It was while working for Jolley that he branched out and bought a racehorse at auction, training Big Red Devil and running his boss’ shedrow. Jolley, the Hall of Fame trainer of six champions from Foolish Pleasure to Meadow Star, says it’s hard to separate Zito then from Zito now. “I think he was very much the same. He was an aggressive, bright young guy and a hard worker, and he went out and found himself a guy to buy a horse. I think the biggest change is in the color of his hair,” which, once upon a time, was jet black. Nick Zito was raised with faith, which translated to faith in himself and his horses, and credits his mother as having been his greatest influence. You can see her personality in her son from this story: When proponents of the Dosage Index vocalized Strike the Gold’s inability to win the Derby, her attitude was, “Look, you’re either a good person or a bad person.” Zito says, “So I guess Strike the Gold was a good person. You know what I mean? In other words, it was interesting but that was her theory why he was going to beat the Dosage. So there you go.” That faith and common sense instilled in his childhood served Zito well. “Do you know how many stocks I bought in my life? None. I’m my own stock market. I buy the horses, I try to get involved in breeding, pinhooking, selling – every aspect of the game, I try to be involved in. You know why? Because if you don’t know it, then you can’t know everything.” You’d be foolish to dispute him when he explains that in assessing a horse’s potential, “I can tell right away.” He puffs up and runs down the list, which includes almost all of the horses mentioned throughout here, plus Albert the Great, A P Valentine, Mr. Greeley, etc., and some of the good ones he didn’t train, like Court Vision and Pomeroy. “The lineup goes from here to Chicago!” Zito has had many major coups, two of the biggest of these in the Belmont Stakes, both achieved with another horse’s Triple Crown on the line, when Birdstone defeated Smarty Jones in 2004 at 36-1, and in 2008, where 38-1 Da’ Tara ran off with the race while Big Brown languished behind. Champion Bird Town (a half-sister to Birdstone) won the Kentucky Oaks at 18-1, Go for Gin paid $20.20 to win his Kentucky Derby, and Louis Quatorze $19 in the stakes record-tying 1996 Preakness. His Classic winners may have been longshots, but to Zito, they all had legitimate chances. “I have a different way of training, I think, than most people,” he contends. “I know it sounds crazy, but even when the horses get beat, I don’t lose focus on the big race. And I think one of the reasons is, if I think they can do it once, then I think, well maybe they can do it again. So I try to never lose focus that way. It’s frustrating because I don’t own the horses, and I have some great owners, but it’s frustrating the way I talk to them because it doesn’t sound like a business plan. It doesn’t sound like it makes any sense, but at the end I do rectify it, because it’s the way we do it.” PROFILE 20 TRAINERMAGAZINE.com ISSUE 12 “God makes us all humble in this game. And let me tell you what else He does: He doesn’t pick any favorites” Asked in 2003 if he thought banning slaughter would lead to more horses being treated inhumanely, Zito said, “No, when that day comes we’ll all be surprised. There are a lot of people out there with good hearts.” Does he still believe this, six years down the line? “I’m hoping there’s people out there with good hearts,” he answers. “No matter how bad things are you never say never. You have to keep hoping for the best. There are a lot of people that still love the horses and still love the game. I think the game will survive.” While in these times that may sound like a page straight out of Anne Frank’s diary, he is encouraged by the compassion he sees on a first-hand basis. Horse welfare is a cause for which Nick and Kim Zito are very active. On the day of the interview, he is pleased that Kim has received a call in response to the sticker she puts on all their horses’ Jockey Club certificates and that serves as a lifeline for them after they’ve left Zito’s care, but he acknowledges that it remains an uphill battle. “There are a lot of horses around and the issue today is where do you put them? There are a lot of great people starting new things, and they’re always trying to help these horses and that’s great, but obviously there’s so many. You can’t subsidize all those horses, so no one’s telling you not to euthanize one. The horse slaughter is totally wrong. What they do to them is absolutely disgusting. There’s no need, for a couple hundred bucks, to put one through that.” Zito, the spokesman for the National Horse Protection Coalition, brings up Exceller and Ferdinand, a pair of Grade 1 winners who shared the same trainer, jockey and gruesome fate. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Charlie Whittingham, Bill Shoemaker? Talk about tradition. Right or wrong? You mean to tell me we had to do that? It’s an inhumane thing.” Zito is also on the advisory board of ThoroFan, a not-for-profit fan-based organization. In almost a whisper, he admits, “Once in a while,” when asked how frequently he’s approached by fans. “Once in a while,” he repeats. “I like walking down the street and somebody sees me and says something. Now, that’s big to me.” His suggestion to improve the racing experience for fans is “to create, a place where, when you go to the racetrack, you could take your kids, your wife, your grandpa, and actually have good food, where you could actually have different places to sit, where you could actually have different choices. Even if you operate at a loss. That’s what they do in Las Vegas, that’s what they do in Atlantic City, that’s what they do around the country with the slots, and you have to apply that.” For the horsemen, Zito’s advice is a bit different. “Here’s the question that should be asked. How much is put into the tracks for the safety of the horses? How much?! Horsemen need to see the books on every racetrack. I’m not saying that you tell them what to do with their property. I just want to know because owners own those horses, and other trainers train those horses, so it’s an honest question. That’s either right or wrong. ‘How much do you put into the track?’ Period.” Zito has swapped out the root beer bottle for a riding whip, flicking it on my leg absentmindedly in tandem with his escalating emotion, without even noticing. “Get outta here!” he says, genuinely surprised, making an effort to stop. “See, the one thing about our sport is, it’s always apologizing.” The tapping resumes. Apologizing to who? “You tell me to who! They’re doing all these good things – with drugs or whatever – for horses, supposedly, and you commend them for that. You don’t have to be apologetic.” ZITO fields an increasing number of phone calls as the day progresses. One prompts him to make a couple of calls himself, beeping through a seemingly infinite list of names on his phone as he searches. At the suggestion that he upgrade to an iPhone, he says, with humor, “I don’t even know how to work this, and you want me to get an iPhone?” The beeping continues. “Kim calls me the boy in the bubble.” He laughs good-naturedly as he settles on a name and hits send, and again when he realizes he has dialed the wrong person. “That’s a good one for the magazine. Right or wrong, right?” That he is so human only contributes to making him so likeable. Nick Zito is about feeling and emotion, not machines and gadgets. Perhaps that is why he’s one of the best trainers in the business, THE best, even? “Oh, it’s nice you say that. I take it as a tremendous compliment. I don’t think anybody is the best. That’s a situation that’s like Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays or Hank Aaron, Joe DiMaggio or Frank Robinson. Who’s the best? So if you say Allen Jerkens or Charlie Whittingham or Bobby Frankel or Frank Whiteley, if you want to put us somewhere, it’s a big compliment. We certainly like what you said about us.” “We” is a word many trainers use in place of “I.” Acknowledging that he has “incredible” assistants in Tim Poole; Stacy Pryor; Max Correa, whose husband Carlos also works for Zito; Ricardo Troncoso; and Tara Murty, he singles out long-time staffers Leroy Ross (30 years), Rod Moran (28 years) and Gustavo Sanchez (13 years). He says, “When I first started with horses I used to tell my help, ‘Look, if I’m right 90% of the time – no one’s perfect – that’s a pretty good percentage. That’s why you have to listen to me.’ Sometimes, believe it or not, you’ve got to convince the assistant. Forget the owner! You’ve got to convince the people that work for you. You shouldn’t have to, but sometimes you do because you’re close to them. They’re going to do exactly what you said and they’re going to do exactly what you say, because they work for you and they respect you. But in my head, I like to convince them that we’re doing right. We’re all together. We’re all a team.” What’s left for the trainer who’s scaled the heights? “I don’t know if there’s any more Derbys, if there’s any more Preaknesses, if there’s any more Belmonts – whatever races we’re supposed to do. I think the one thing I want people to know is that at least there’s hope for people like us, who came from where we came from, if they really apply themselves. I would say probably that I was the guy that got an opportunity and made the most of it, more than most people. I think a lot of people could say that now, that they know I made the most of it. Right?” Right. ■](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/517636f8e4b0cb4f8c8697ba/t/5767ce3a6a49633b4495f9dc/1466420984678/)