Trainer of the Quarter - Brendan Walsh

By Bill Heller

It’s an easy decision for a trainer to continue with his three-year-old on the road to the Kentucky Derby when he runs super in a key prep race. Imperial Court Racing’s three-year-old colt Plus Que Parfait was about as far away from super as a horse can get in the Gr2 Risen Star Stakes at The Fair Grounds on February 16, finishing 13th by 20 ¼ lengths under Julien Leparoux.

Trainer Brendan Walsh’s faith in Plus Que Parfait sent him halfway around the world to race in the $2.5 million UAE Derby in Dubai March 20. With blinkers added and a new rider in Jose Ortiz, Plus Que Parfait won, earning his spot in the starting gate for the Run for the Roses on May 4.

He will be the first Kentucky Derby starter for his 45-year-old Irish trainer whose success in the United States continues to build just eight years after he saddled his first starter at the end of 2011. “It’s been going great,” he said. “It’s a tough business, but I’ve been very lucky. It was pretty tough the first couple of years.”

He wasn’t kidding. He had just four winners in his first full year in 2012 and only eight the following year. More recently, he’s already clinched his fourth consecutive year with at least $2 million in earnings. That’s quite an accomplishment for a young man who fell in love with horses at a young age.

His father’s farm near the coastal village of Shanagarry in County Cork in southeast Ireland had a few dairy cows and sheep, but no horses. Regardless, Walsh said, “I loved horses since I was a kid. My dad bought me a pony when I was eight. He won 200 pounds in a raffle, and he bought the pony. That’s the kind of man he was.”

Walsh attended the Jockey School at The Curragh, then landed a job with Sheikh Mohammed’s Kildangan Stud. He then spent three-and-one-half years as an assistant to trainer Mark Wallace at Newmarket and three years with Eddie Keneally in the United States.

“I’ve worked around some great horsemen,” Walsh said. “I think you just take a little bit from everybody. You try to piece it all together.”

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Trainer of the Quarter - Simon Callaghan

By Bill Heller

Almost as if it were her New Year’s resolution to atone for her fourth-place finish as the favorite in the Gr1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Filly at Churchill Downs, November 2, Kaleem Shah’s three-year-old filly Bellafina delivered a jaw-dropping, 8 ½ length victory in the Gr2 Santa Ynez Stakes at Santa Anita, January 6, confirming her trainer Simon Callaghan’s faith in her. “It was a relief more than anything,” Callaghan said. “I knew in my mind that the Breeders’ Cup wasn’t her race. For some reason, she didn’t run her “A” race. You can’t win a Breeders’ Cup race without an “A” performance.”

Bellafina has had several A’s, posting four victories in her first six starts, including two Gr1 stakes and a pair of Gr2’s. “We’ve always felt from Day 1 that she could be potentially really good,” Callaghan said. “She’s the best filly I’ve trained.”

With her resounding victory in her three-year-old debut, she is back on track to tackle the Gr1 Santa Anita Oaks and the Gr1 Kentucky Oaks as Callaghan continues to prosper at the young training age of 35. His age is misleading. He has been living with horses his entire life—the son of a successful trainer growing up in the unique horse hub of Newmarket, England. “By the time I was 12, I knew what I wanted to do,” Callaghan said. “I was really passionate about it. It’s very special to see a horse out there trying, running in a race.”

His father, Neville, trained for 37 years before retiring in 2007. “He taught me not to cut any corner,” Callaghan said. “Feed them well. Get good help. He took a lot of pride in how his horses looked.”

After working for trainer Richard Hannon in England, Callaghan got two gigs with Todd Pletcher in America. “He’s extremely dedicated, very hard-working,” Callaghan said. “His horses looked fantastic. Obviously, he’s a very intelligent man. He just doesn’t miss anything. His attention to detail is second to none.”

Bellafina with Flavien Prat wins the Santa Ynez Stakes at Santa Anita Park on January 06, 2019 in Arcadia, California

Callaghan opened his own stable in England at the age of 24, but soon set his sights on America. “One of my clients, Anthony Ramsden, pitched the idea of me working there,” Callaghan said. “I spoke a lot with other clients I had, Michael Tabor and Coolmore, and they were much behind me. I felt I was so young at the time (26), if it didn’t work out, I could come back to England. In England, unless you had support from the top owners, it was very hard to come up with Gr1 horses. That’s what I always wanted to do: get horses to win at the top level. That was easier to do in America.”

And he has done it, quickly becoming a force at Santa Anita, where he keeps a stable of 50. His horses have earned more than $1 million for eight straight years and topped $2 million three times in 2015, 2017 and 2018. In 2015, his Firing Line finished second by one length to eventual Triple Crown Champion American Pharoah in the Gr1 Kentucky Derby.

Dubawi Heights gave Callaghan his first two Gr1 stakes victories in the Gamely Stakes at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita’s Yellow Ribbon Stakes. Slim Shadey won three stakes on turf and triple stakes winner Taris earned more than $1 million.

“We’re lucky we can have a living working around horses,” Callaghan said. “When you go out there and train a winner, it’s satisfying and rewarding.”

Bellafina may give him his most satisfying and rewarding year yet. After she won the Santa Ynez Stakes, Callaghan sent out a tweet: “Great start to 2019!”

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Trainer of the Quarter - Uriah St. Lewis

By Biller Heller

What could possibly be better for a trainer than winning his first Grade 1 stakes? Owning that horse and getting a free trip into the $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Three days after Uriah St. Lewis’ five-year-old Discreet Lover captured the $750,000 Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup by a neck at odds of 45-1, St. Lewis, who said he bet $200 across the board on him, was still smiling. Who wouldn’t?

“I really thought I could win the race,” St. Lewis said. “He always gives me everything he’s got.”

Now Discreet Lover, whom St. Lewis bought for $10,000 as a two-year-old in training at Timonium in Maryland, will take him to the biggest race of the year for older horses at Churchill Downs. This is heady stuff for St. Lewis, a 60-year-old native of Trinidad who used to literally run to Aqueduct to bet on a couple of races after he was done for the day at Clinton High School in Brooklyn, where he ran on the track team. “You can actually see the racetrack from the roof of the high school,” he said.

St. Lewis was 15 when his family moved to Brooklyn in 1973.

Ten years earlier, his older sister had taken him to the track for the first time. “I remember like it was yesterday,” St. Lewis said. “In Trinidad, they have Boxing Day a day after Christmas. I was five. She took me to the races, and I saw this gray horse. I fell in love with the gray horse. I was hooked.”

Eventually, he would work for AmTote as a computer technician and wager on Thoroughbreds regularly. He wasn’t doing well. “I didn’t have a clue. My wife says, `You’re just throwing your money away. Why don’t you learn about the business?’”

So he did. He went to Oklahoma with his family, purchased an 88-acre ranch and began to learn about training. He was instructed to buy his own horses to train, and that’s what he did. “I bought two horses for $5,000,” St. Lewis said.

He became a trainer in 1988. His family’s real estate business in Brooklyn and his wife’s job as a registered nurse financed their equine business, which they operate as a family, including their 23-year-old twin son and daughter. “We’re all hands on,” St. Lewis said. “We do everything ourselves, because I know it’s done right if I do it myself. We work a lot in the afternoons and evenings. We’ve been having success with it. We aren’t going to change.”

But he did take a near-sabbatical, winning just 14 races from 2006 to 2013 as he shepherded his twins through high school. “I stopped for a while to make sure my kids finished high school and got to college,” St Lewis said. “The day they went to college, I started back in. I really started to get serious about racing.”

Now they have 28 horses based at Parx led by a certified superstar. Discreet Lover had made more than $940,000 before the Jockey Club Gold Cup, when he cashed in on a hot pace. “When I saw :22, :45 and 1:09, I said, `Unless they’re super horses, they’re going to stop,’” St. Lewis said. “He picked them up real quick. He ran his heart out.”   

Asked why he had bought Discreet Lover, St. Lewis said, “He was the first baby from his dam. I like buying first foals. You don’t know what you’re going to get. What the hell? Take a chance.”

That chance had him standing in the winner’s circle after the Jockey Club Gold Cup and heading for the Breeders’ Cup Classic. That’s a long way from Trinidad.

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Trainer of the Quarter - Kellyn Gorder

The EQUITHRIVE Trainer of the Quarter has been won by Kellyn Gorder.

Kellyn and his team will receive a selection of EQUITHRIVE's clinically proven supplements for the barn.

Words - Bill Heller

When trainer Kellyn Gorder fell head-over-heels in love with horseracing as a kid growing up in Worthington, Minnesota, he had an idol. “I wanted to be a rider,” Gorder said. “Steve Cauthen was my hero. I wanted to be just like Steve. I read The Kid (Pete Axthelm’s brilliant biography of Cauthen) 10 times. I wore it out.”

Not only would Gorder go on work for Cauthen’s brother, Doug, at WinStar Farm, but he would meet Steve and train a couple of his horses. And that was before Gorder would train his first superstar, Sandra Sexton and Brandi Nicholson’s brilliant three-year-old filly Red Ruby.

Of course, Gorder had no idea that he’d make it as a Thoroughbred trainer, but he knew one thing at a very early age: he loved horses. And he didn’t get it from his father, a schoolteacher, nor his mother, an office worker. “I didn’t know where I got it, but I had the horse bug,” he said. “In grade school, I signed all my papers Cowboy Kell.”

Gorder was 10 when his parents bought him a pony and converted their garage into a stall. Two years later, he went to work with horses. His neighbor, Dale Peters, was the sheriff of the county and a Thoroughbred owner. “I told him when I was old enough, I wanted to start working for him,” Gorder said. “I did, when I was 12.”

Quickly, he got a break. When the young man galloping horses for Peters tore his ACL playing football, Peters asked Gorder, “Do you want to get up?” Gorder continued, “I remember it like it was yesterday,” he said. “I said, ‘Heck, yeah, put me on.’”

Gorder got his jockey’s license when he was 16. When he grew too big to continue riding, after graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Gorder turned his attention to training. He spent one year with Harris Farms in California, then had the great fortune of being hired by Hall of Fame trainer Jack Van Berg, which allowed him to return to the Midwest. Gorder survived a humiliating first day for Van Berg when his saddle slipped on the first horse he galloped, but stayed on with Van Berg for five years. “He was my racetrack dad,” Gorder said.

Gorder worked at the 505 Training Center (now Victory Haven) for five years in Lexington, Kentucky, then struck out on his own in 2001. He won his first race with his first starter, Grammarian, who won his maiden debut at odds of 55-1 at Kentucky Downs before going on to win the Grade 2 Sunset Handicap at Hollywood Park in 2002 at 29-1, providing the trainer with his first graded stakes win.

In 2003, Doug Cauthen called with an offer to work at WinStar Farm, which meant Gorder had to give up training on his own. “I had two young daughters at the time and it seemed like a good thing to do,” Gorder said. So he did.

But in 2007, Gorder decided to go back to training. “I was about to turn 40, and I was telling myself I didn’t want to wind up saying, ‘You should have tried it.’ If I was going to do it, I needed to get going,” he said.

He began with four Thoroughbreds. But with the support of WinStar, his stable grew to 60 horses at one point. He’s based at Keeneland now with 25 to 30 horses, led by star Red Ruby, who followed a 4¾ length victory in the Grade 2 Black-Eyed Susan with a jaw-dropping 13-length romp in the Grade 3 Delaware Oaks on July 7th.

“It was kind of shocking to see her that far in front,” Gorder said. “It was a great day, that’s for sure.”

Cowboy Kell has made it.

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Trainer of the Quarter - Peter Miller

FIRST PUBLISHED IN NORTH AMERICAN TRAINER AUGUST - OCTOBER 2017 ISSUE 45

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TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Rusty Arnold

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This article appeared in North American Trainer - issue 40 (May to July 2016)

TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Doug O'Neill

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