Racing In The Sunshine

2012-02-22T06:57:00.003-08:00

Sharyn Wasiluk, President of the Race Track Chaplaincy of America, Tampa Division

Growing up in Jamestown, N.Y., Sharyn Wasiluk was unaware a Thoroughbred racetrack existed about three hours to the north in Canandaigua. A private secretary who competed in rodeos on the weekends – barrel racing, goat tying and steer undecorating – Sharyn was hooked on her first visit, and delighted to learn she could make a living by working on the track. She took a six-month leave of absence from her job to come to Tampa Bay Downs, where she earned $40 a week walking horses and cleaning tack. She never returned to her old job. Sharyn wears a variety of hats: She is an assistant to her husband, trainer Peter Wasiluk, Jr., rides a lead pony during the racing program and is a director on the board of the Tampa Bay Downs Chapter of the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association. The cause closest to her heart, though, is her role as president of the Tampa Bay Downs Division of the Race Track Chaplaincy of America. The Wasiluks have two children: Philip, 28, who works on the gate crew at Delaware Park, and Jaclyn, 26, a fifth-grade teacher. Jaclyn, who helps Tampa Bay Downs Group Sales Director Nicole McGill on weekends, will be married next month to Tim Reyes.

Our annual ‘Hearts Reaching Out’ Golf Tournament, Auction and Dinner, which is March 5, is always a good time to reflect on the progress of our chaplaincy at Tampa Bay Downs. But the work we do begins when grooms and stable hands and exercise riders begin arriving in November.

One of my goals with the chaplaincy is to make a better environment for everybody on the backside. I want them to enjoy coming to Tampa Bay Downs – to make them feel we are their home away from home. They can come into this building any time, whether it’s to get on a computer or play the guitar or just have a cup of coffee.

A lot of the workers don’t have cars or the ability to get out like I can. So the idea is, let’s make it more of a fun place and do things that encourage people to meet other people. On the racetrack, you usually don’t just walk over to somebody else’s barn, because those areas are kind of private. So my idea was to develop activities that make the backside more community-oriented.

The backstretch is like its own town, and the owners and trainers are the people who take care of the people who take care of the horses. When you think about it, the backside workers are the unsung heroes of our sport. They groom and walk the horses, feed and bathe them and muck their stalls, yet they rarely get any credit.

I believe we have made big strides in providing workers with an outlet when they are finished with their daily responsibilities. There are four brand-new computers in the office, and two have webcams, so people can keep in touch with their families wherever they live.

We have a well-organized soccer league and have hired outside officials to make sure the games run smoothly. Our co-ed softball games are very popular, and we’ve gotten some trainers and jockeys to participate. We also organized a fishing trip so people could get a day off, and most of the trainers have been receptive to letting that happen.

I feel that it’s important to organize fun activities, but we also want to help people with their spiritual well-being. Our chaplain, Rafael Santana, is deeply involved in the lives of many of the backside workers here. He spends a lot of time at the barns ministering to them.

Many are Hispanic, and he is somebody they can communicate with and confide in. His main goal, as is stated in our literature, is ‘to bring the word of God and his teachings to the people at the race track to bring them to God and to make the chaplaincy the brightest light in the barn area.’

I’ve really tried to go beyond just giving them people to talk to and activities for the dark days. A few years ago, the chaplaincy actually operated out of a small office behind the track kitchen. Now we’re in this comfortable double-wide building, where we offer English classes and computer classes that allow workers to keep in touch with their families. Just about everything you see in here, the computers and the desks and the couches and the drum set and the keyboard, have been donated.

We have a church service every Monday night, attended by anywhere from 40-70 people, and weekly Bible studies. If someone has a problem with drinking, we offer counseling. I believe if anyone on the backside has a problem, whether it be emotional, spiritual or physical, we are equipped to deal with it. Catholic Charities USA has provided us with a medical van, and we offer free examinations and referrals once a week by a licensed physician. We also provide health screenings once a year to anyone with a track license to check blood pressure, sugar, cholesterol and receive flu shots.

We’ve always been a racetrack family. Peter and I met at Penn National and have been together since. I’m from Jamestown, N.Y. and he’s from south Jersey, and we raced at a bunch of Northern tracks – Monmouth, Delaware, Finger Lakes, Penn National, Rockingham when it was open. We came here for a vacation in the fall of 2000, and shortly after we sold our house in Canandaigua and moved here.

I don’t have a trainer’s license any more; I have an owner’s license and a pony license. We have 23 horses, of which we own about seven or eight and have part ownership of a few others. One of our best horses when we raced up north was Tunbridge Wells. He broke his maiden at Aqueduct in 1993 and won the Old Ironsides Handicap at Suffolk in 1996. He raced until he was 9, won 18 times and earned more than $300,000.

That’s why I chuckle when people think Dinner in Odem, who is our mainstay, isn’t going to run any more now that he’s 8. Really, I think he has just hit a slump. He performed respectably in stakes company at Calder last fall and he still seems to enjoy training. He has won almost $400,000 and two stakes, including the Chris Thomas Turf Classic here a few years ago.

That is one thing Peter and I kind of pride ourselves on: having horses that last a long time. We don’t train on Bute (Butazolidin), which is an anti-inflammatory used to control pain and inflammation. Dinner in Odem has never had a shot of Bute since we’ve had him.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t give Bute to a horse to help it if it was hurt, and I have run horses on Bute on occasion, but I want to know where we are at with our horses. If a horse is sore today, I want to know if it is better tomorrow, and that’s difficult to tell if you are giving it something to mask the pain.

If I’m going to run him, I want to know how he is doing. I don’t want a horse or a jockey to get hurt if I can possibly help it because a horse I’m running on Bute breaks down. I realize there’s a fine line and it is a constant subject of discussion in the industry, because some people think you’re not trying to win hard enough if you aren’t running on Bute.

Don’t get me wrong; we’re not against using Lasix (a diuretic used to control bleeding). I think that is foolishness. Horses bleed from the exertion of a race, and which is worse: giving a horse Lasix or having it bleed to death?

Peter and I do a lot of the work at the barn ourselves. It is just the old way, the way we are used to doing it. We both rub horses, and he tacks everything in the morning. He puts the saddle on every horse and takes the bandages off and touches their legs so he knows what he’s got. I go to the track with as many as possible, so I can see how they go and how they are traveling and who gets along with which horses.

To me, it makes a huge difference if you have a happy horse. If you’ve got a rider jerking and snatching and not getting along, or that horse is getting too tough for that person and they’re not able to get it to do what they want, you’ve got to be able to get somebody else.

My pony is named Stillwell, after the character in the Movie ‘A League of Their Own.’ He is a 10-year-old Appaloosa gelding, but when we got him he was so fat I told people he was a Thelwell pony, like the drawings by Norman Thelwell, the English artist. But instead of Thelwell, my husband suggested Stillwell, and the name stuck.

I enjoy ponying horses to the gate before races. Certainly the weather here is a lot better than it was in New York, where it was snowing and blowing and 30 degrees. Some horses are worse than others, and you say ‘Hooboy, I’m glad that’s over,’ but I still love doing it.

I’ll be 65 next month, and if it gets to where I can’t do the job any more, I will make the decision to get off the pony. But I enjoy working with the horses and seeing them progress too much to stop now. It’s almost like bringing up your children – it really is. I’m more comfortable on a horse than I am doing anything else.

2012-02-16T06:50:00.003-08:00

Whitney Valls, Jockey

When apprentice jockey Whitney Valls scored her first Tampa Bay Downs victory Feb. 5 aboard 13-1 shot Dream Every Dream for trainer Anthony Pecoraro, she was doused with a bucket full of water by Rosemary Homeister, Jr. – the traditional greeting from veteran riders signaling a newcomer has arrived. Valls’ more formal initiation, which featured soap, baby powder and shaving cream, came at Thistledown outside Cleveland last September, when she earned her first lifetime win in her 10^th race on Optimistic Bullet for trainer Burton Sipp. The Alabama native has picked a tough meeting to continue her fledgling career. Her agent Mike Bish – who has handled the book the past three seasons for top Tampa Bay Downs apprentices Michael Straight, Kristina McManigell and Angel Moreno – says this is as tough a jockey colony as he has seen in Oldsmar. But the 22-year-old Valls, who keeps busy exercising horses for such top trainers as Pecoraro, Jonathan Sheppard and Dennis Ward on the days she has no mounts, is too immersed in the horses and the lifestyle to get discouraged.

I’m a positive, upbeat person. I don’t let a whole lot get me down. It took me a while to break in as an exercise rider – there were slow weeks and good weeks – and that is an aspect of the game. There are a bunch of good riders here, and a lot of trainers have their set riders. So I knew coming in it was going to be very, very tough to get mounts.

Obviously, I would ride the card if I had the opportunity. I know that is not realistic, and I also know that as an apprentice, it is going to take time for people to see me before they start using me, even with my 10-pound weight allowance. It is kind of a Catch-22 thing, but I’m sure by the end of the meeting I’m going to be riding plenty. I know when my break comes it will be big, and I’m all kinds of prepared to handle it.

When I’m in the room between races, I make a point of studying the other riders during a race. I watch how they’re sitting on their horse, their hands, where they’re positioning their horse, and when they start making a move. Then I’ll watch the replay and see where the winner ran on the track and which horses got the best trip.

After my races, some of the journeymen have pulled me aside to watch a replay and offer me advice. They’ll say ‘Try to do this better,’ or ‘You looked real good here.’ Rosemary has been very helpful, and so has Oriana Rossi. I’ve actually gotten quality feedback from a lot of veteran riders. If they see something they think will help me the next time, they’re quick to point it out.

During a race, it can get very heated. If another jockey thinks you messed them up or got in their way, they’ll come to you during the replay and ask, ‘What was that?’ But it is never in a mean way. They know that I’m a 10-pound bug, and that I’m learning, so everything is done in a helpful manner.

I’m eager and excited to learn, but sometimes the only way you are going to learn is by making mistakes. And the only way I am going to realize what I did wrong is for the older, more experienced jockeys to come and tell me.

I credit my parents, Karen and William Valls, for helping me to become a jockey. My dad’s parents had horses, and he went to Valley Forge Military Academy and played polo. My parents put me on little ponies at fair rides, and my dad would take me on trail rides around the city. They told me I was smiling from ear to ear the first time they put me on a pony when I was 2.

When I got older, my mom found out where one of my friends boarded her horse, and she sent me to summer camps there. I started taking lessons and loved everything about it. When I was 12, my parents surprised me at Christmas with a little gelding named General. That was around the same time I watched Funny Cide win the Kentucky Derby, and he looked a lot like my gelding.

General was a very good teacher. We made mistakes, but he was very forgiving and never tried to drop me. I did everything under the sun with that horse – messing around the barrels, pole bending, going to little shows around town. He colicked and died three years ago, but he will always have a place in my heart.

My mom, who lives in Mobile, Ala., helped me go to Bluegrass Community and Technical College, where I studied equine science and was able to gallop in my spare time at the Thoroughbred Center in Lexington.

I try calling Mom every day after I leave the track. She and my entire family are my biggest fans. They love every minute of it. My grandmother came to visit over the holidays, and she came to the track for the first time one day with my uncle and aunt.

I think I might have ridden one horse that day, and the poor filly tried but only beat one horse in the race. It didn’t matter to Nana. I told her I was sorry we didn’t hit the board, and she said ‘Oh, honey, I don’t care. You looked great.’ They were all ecstatic!

After I left Kentucky, I went to Ernest Oare’s EMO Stables in Ocala, which is where I polished my foundation for riding races. There were a lot of steeplechase horses and riders there, and they taught me to take a long hold and keep my hands down, because that’s how you get a horse to stay relaxed. You don’t just reach and grab if a horse starts getting tough with you – that will just make him want to go faster, too soon.

In the spring of 2010, a friend who was galloping for trainer Steve Asmussen told me they were giving out exercise riding licenses at Keeneland, and I might stumble onto something. Maybe that’s when I should have gotten nervous, but I guess it’s not in my makeup.

I started working horses for Michael Matz, and that led to an opportunity to work some for Barclay Tagg. I was just like ‘Hey, I’m Whitney Valls, an exercise rider, is there anything I can help you out with?’ You’ve got to be outgoing in this business. If a trainer tells you ‘No, we’re OK,’ I just say ‘OK, I’ll see you tomorrow,’ and come back!

I guess I didn’t really think much about the fact I was exercising horses for men who have trained Kentucky Derby winners – Barbaro for Mr. Matz and Funny Cide for Mr. Tagg.

It was the same way when I rode for Richard Small at Laurel in Maryland, right before I went to Cleveland and took out my jockey’s license. When I am at someone’s barn, I am there to do a job and I can’t worry about how famous anyone is. When I was working for Larry Murray, there was an ex-jockey who helped me on improving my technique, switching sticks, driving and developing a clock in my head. Like I said, everyone has been very helpful and I’m eager to learn.

It is a little hard sometimes, though, not to get excited. I was working for Mr. Matz when he had Nicanor. I didn’t get to ride him, but one day I was in the same set, which was cool because he is Barbaro’s brother. I texted some friends that night ‘I went out in a set with Nicanor.’ And they were like, no way!

Being a jockey doesn’t leave much time for hobbies, but I’ve doodled and drawn my whole life, and I consider myself a self-taught artist. I completed a pencil drawing of the graded stakes winner Any Given Saturday, which is one of my favorites. You can see it on the Internet at http://www.fineartamerica.com/.

I’ll draw some on a dark day, but it takes a lot of time and a lot of patience. People ask me why I bother with the horses when I’m so good at art. It’s flattering, but I enjoy the horses too much. Whatever it takes to succeed in this business, that’s what I’m going to do. I can’t see myself not working around horses.

2012-02-09T07:12:00.000-08:00

Scott Rhone, Blacksmith

To most people in their 20s, the world of horseshoeing might seem as old-fashioned as a trip to Grandma’s house in a horse-drawn sleigh. But it’s a fact Thoroughbreds need shoes, and horses’ feet are in good hands with 29-year-old blacksmith Scott Rhone, who fell into the business like a baby bird from its nest. The son of trainer Bernell Rhone and Cindy Rhone, Scott got his start holding the front end of horses for his dad’s farriers when he was 7. Scott, a Minnesota native, is married to Brittany, a jockey who is the daughter of owner-trainer Lonnie Arterburn and Doris Arterburn. In their spare time (which is limited and precious), Scott and Brittany enjoy fishing, boating and hunting. They are prime examples of horse racing’s ability to attract enthusiastic, hard-working, horse-loving young people to its ranks.

My dad always said what you need to be a blacksmith are a strong back and a weak mind. This is the only life I know, so it feels right. When I was at college – at Rainy River Community in International Falls, Minn. – being away from horses didn’t feel right. Being a trainer’s son, I guess I was kind of hooked from the beginning.

We are definitely a horse racing family. My older sister, LeAnn, is married to Dean Butler, the jockey. My dad’s brother Russ is a trainer. I grew up in Dad’s stable helping him at Canterbury, Hawthorne, Indiana, Hoosier, Remington – all over the Midwest. I held horses for the blacksmith when I was real little, then I was a hot walker. When I got older, I started grooming and galloping, then I was my dad’s assistant for a few years.

Once I decided I wanted to be a blacksmith, I dropped out of community college to go to the Cowtown Horseshoeing School in Miles City, Montana, run by Marlin Anderson. It’s an intense three-month school. Shoeing horses is like water skiing – you can only be told so many times how to do it, then you have to experience it.

I apprenticed with other blacksmiths for about a year, mostly at Canterbury and Hoosier, before I went out on my own. Mr. Anderson’s son Bruce, who shoes horses here at Tampa Bay Downs, helped me a lot. He showed me a lot of tricks, taught me how to glue shoes on a horse. He is a very good blacksmith and a good teacher.

My dad drove into me the importance of discipline and a strong work ethic, yet at the same time he made being around horses fun. His commitment is what taught me my commitment. My dad never misses a day of work and he doesn’t use an alarm clock to wake up. If you like what you do and have a strong enough commitment to it, it’s no big deal to go to work.

Are there occupational hazards to being a blacksmith? You bet. But it’s an accepted risk. If a horse is really acting up, we call a vet and tranquilize him, get him calmed down.

I’ve been kicked a few times, but not too bad. I got stepped on once and had a broken foot, but mainly it’s just black-and-blue marks and black toes. My back is usually stiff at the end of a day, but I don’t have a bad back. It’s like if you run longer than you’re used to running – your legs might get a little tired. That’s how I feel.

Some days are better than others. I have days where all the horses stand real still and it doesn’t feel like I did much. Other days, a few give me a real hard time, and it feels as if I did twice as much work as I actually did. I leave the track feeling like I should have done one or two more horses, but I didn’t have the energy or the time.

I’ve been with Tommy Danks, my assistant, for about three years. He holds the horses while I shoe them and keeps me safe. When a horse blows up, he makes sure they go away from me, not toward me.

You kind of control horses with their head; you can steer them in a certain direction. When one is bad, Tommy knows where I’m going to run and he sends the horse the opposite way and keeps me out of trouble.

I wouldn’t say you need to be fearless to do this job, but you have to be willing to accept you can’t control a 1,200-pound animal. They are going to do what they want, when they want to, and at times no one is going to do anything about it.

My dad told me before I left for college if he had it to do all over again, he’d be a blacksmith. Trainers have to worry about help showing up, about getting stalls, horses getting sick, owners getting tough to deal with.

Horseshoeing is kind of at our own pace. We don’t punch a clock. If I have family in town, we can make it an easy day, but if there is nothing going on I can shoe as many as a dozen. It works good for fishing when the weather is nice. And the money doesn’t hurt! Most of the time, it affords me a lot of freedom.

I met Brittany here at Tampa Bay Downs three years ago. She and I are into fishing and boating, and we like to swim and play tennis and soccer. We’re always doing something. She actually shoes horses at her family’s farm in Ocala and is kind of self-taught. I just helped her out a little.

Being married to a jockey might sound glamorous to people, but it’s just normal because we are both in the horse industry. She understands the hours and that you have to work on weekends and holidays. It would be tough being married to someone with no connection to the racetrack, but she understands following the work and moving at the end of a meeting.

As a general rule, a horse is re-shod every 4-to-6 weeks. Why do horses need shoes? Well, they act as a shock absorber to protect the foot, which is where it all starts for a Thoroughbred.

For me, changing a horse’s shoes is second nature, but that doesn’t mean you stop paying attention. You have to care about your job to be successful at it. Anybody can slap shoes on a horse, but you do a better job when you take pride in it.

If a horse loses a shoe in a race, someone might put a little heat on me. But that’s like being a jockey – if you don’t fall off, you aren’t riding very many.

If you haven’t been blamed by a horseman for making a mistake, you haven’t been shoeing horses very long. People make mistakes, and it is part of the job. You can cut too much foot off a horse when you’re trimming its hoof, or you can put a nail in the wrong spot. A bad nail is equivalent to you getting a splinter – it is not going to be a problem unless you leave it in there, because then it is probably going to get infected.

Sometimes I’ll be cutting with the hoof knife, and the horse will jerk just right and basically pull the knife right into its foot. Or you can take too much foot off, thinking it’s longer than it actually is. When that happens, it’s how you address it that makes the difference. You clean it and put a little antibiotic on it or something, and usually it is no big deal. But if you neglect it, then it can turn bad.

Usually it takes between 35-40 minutes to completely shoe a horse. I use a rasp to knock off the clinches, which are like a washer or a nut that holds the nails in place. That loosens the shoe so I’m able to pull it off with my shoe puller, which looks like a big wrench.

Then I take my hoof knife and clean out the sole of the foot. All that dead tissue pretty much falls right out. It doesn’t have any feeling; it’s like the part of the fingernail you cut off. Obviously, though, if you go too far the horse will feel it and will let you know its discomfort.

Horses’ feet generally stink, because they stand in mud and dirt and other good stuff, but you can smell it right away if the foot is infected. That’s called thrush. You know what it is when you’ve been shoeing long enough.

After I clean the sole, I nip the hoof wall with the nipper, which is basically like trimming your toenails. Once that is accomplished, I use my rasp to level off the foot. That is one of the main parts of the job, because you want the horse to land equally on each foot when it is racing. That way, they are not putting unequal stress on the inside or outside of the foot. Quarter cracks are not common, but a good blacksmith can see them when they occur.

Race horses wear aluminum shoes, and I use a rounding hammer to shape them to the shape of the horse’s foot. I usually use six nails for each shoe. You don’t want to put nails in all the holes, because if they lose a shoe, the clinch can tear right through the hoof wall.

People who are not around horses a lot might not understand that everything you are nailing through is dead structure, so the horse doesn’t feel it at all. The last step is finishing – cleaning the foot up, making it look nice and not shaggy.

I’m very fortunate to work for many top trainers here: Jamie Ness, Jane Cibelli, Greg Griffith, Joan Scott, Jorge Navarro and Forrest Kaelin. And of course my dad – that’s good job security there! Seeing the horses I shoe run well and win races is pretty rewarding, because I know I played a part. To me, it’s like being a part-owner because I got to work with them.

A good blacksmith can straighten out a horse’s feet and get them moving along a little better. I can prevent a quarter crack from happening, or if the foot is too long I can change the angle they stand at and help improve the horse’s stride.

If a horse’s feet hit each other when it runs, I can tweak the shoe and make the foot higher in a certain spot and affect the way the feet move, or spread the feet out so they don’t interfere with each other.

There are a lot of little tricks we use, but we aren’t making big differences with the majority of horses. Mainly we are here for maintenance and occasionally you’ve got to help one. This is not a glorious job, but it’s a very important job. You can hurt a horse way easier than you can help a horse.

2012-02-05T09:11:00.000-08:00

Stu and Betty Owlett, Mutuel Tellers

When Stu and Betty Owlett vacationed on the west coast of Florida in the 1960s and early ‘70s, they would enjoy a day at Tampa Bay Downs – then Florida Downs – with Stu’s father, who lived in Tarpon Springs. In 1975, they decided to take the plunge themselves, selling their successful grocery business in Wellsboro, Pa. and moving to the Tampa Bay area. On his next visit to the track, Stu approached the mutuels manager, Al Carrero, about getting a job as a teller. The rest, as they say, is history: Stu and Betty Owlett have spent the past 35 years selling and cashing tickets at the Oldsmar oval and numerous other tracks across the country, including Churchill Downs and Pimlico during the Triple Crown. The Owletts, who will be married 65 years in June, have two children, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Stu: We sold Owlett’s Supermarket in 1975 when I was 46. I had started working in the store when I was 6 and had been partners with my dad since 1950, then I bought it from him in 1965. We were sort of a precursor to Walmart, but on a much smaller scale. We sold groceries, but we also sold sheets, towels, blue jeans, underwear, shoes and gasoline.

We sold the store because it was too successful. We employed about 20 clerks, but I thought I had to have my finger in all the work, so I got there early and stayed late. It was doing very well, but it got to be too much for me. I didn’t want to die of a heart attack at 50.

Betty: Stu had put his hard years in. We lived at the store – after we ate dinner, he would go back in and work some more. It was time for us to make a change.

Stu: After the length of time we’ve been married, Betty and I think alike. When you’ve been together 65 years, your habits get to be the same. I know up north, I could tell sometimes when a husband and wife walked into the store together, because they sort of looked alike. But nobody has any trouble telling us apart.

Betty: The No. 1 thing that has kept us together is love. I started going with Stuart in the ninth grade, and he was the only boyfriend I ever had. We just like each other. He is a real gentleman and a real Christian guy, and that is a big part of any marriage. You hate to hear anyone say, ‘We don’t ever fight’ – but we don’t!

Stu: We’ve always enjoyed working here. When Sam F. Davis was the President of the track, he would gather all the tellers in the middle of the grandstand on Opening Day and give us a pep talk and remind us this was the friendliest track in the country. He used to say ‘If people don’t say anything else about this track, I want them to leave here saying they were treated well.’

When we started working here it wasn’t computerized like it is now. Tellers on one side sold the tickets and those on the other side cashed. I worked the ‘$50 Only’ window, and it was a dangerous job from the standpoint that if you were short at the end of the day, it came out of your pocket.

There were 4,000 or 5,000 people here my first day and I was paying out on winning tickets. Al Carrero told me I could watch the guy next to me and get the feel for it. I got $5,000 out of the back room, Al said ‘You’ll be alright,’ and he threw me to the wolves and I just commenced to perspire.

When you get $5,000 you think, that’s a lot of money, and in an hour or so it was gone. And back then, you didn’t know until the next day if you were right. If you made a mistake in the $50 window, it could kill you.

Betty: They used to have what they called pigeons, where the No. 2 horse might win the second race and pay $4. Then, a bettor might hold that ticket until the No. 2 came in again, say in the eighth race, and pay $22. So someone would get in the line with their ticket from the second race with No. 2 on it that was really worth only $4, and try to cash it for $22. The tellers would say, ‘The pigeon just flew in.’ You’d try to watch your ticket codes, but sometimes you’d get stuck with a pigeon.

I was nervous when I first started, but I’d always been a cashier at the store and had experience handling money. So far, I’ve had alright luck.

Stu: Many years ago, I got stuck for $270 by a guy from the backside. Instead of selling him $10 win-place-show tickets, which is what he’d asked for, I hit the button for $100 across the board. I knew it immediately and came out into the grandstand, but I couldn’t find him. The tickets ended up being worth $500, and I told his friends he could have his profit, just please return the balance. He had cashed them as soon as the race ended and wouldn’t come back in, but management found out and he ended up being fired for it.

But I’ve had so many times when I went out and told a bettor I made a mistake, and he returned the money because he knew I wouldn’t cheat him. If you’re honest, it comes back to bless you.

Betty: The biggest ticket I ever paid out was $123,000 at Albuquerque Downs in New Mexico. Believe me, it was an experience. There were nine people sharing the ticket, so I had to fill out nine separate tax forms. It was all paid out in $100 bills – 1,230 of them. I paid it out and let them divide it up.

Stu: From 1980-94, we worked the New Mexico circuit. We started at Santa Fe after Tampa Bay Downs closed and worked there until Labor Day, then we worked a 25-day meeting at the New Mexico State Fair. It was a huge meeting. That was when the Texas oilmen would fly into Santa Fe in their Piper Cubs and come to the track with stacks of $100 bills. I was a $50 cashier, and some days I would cash and sell more than $100,000 in tickets.

I was handling a lot of money under pressure, but it was fun if you liked people. Then all of a sudden the price of oil dropped, and they were gone.

Betty: We like to work and we like people, so we don’t talk about retiring. We’re happier working than when we’re sitting at home. We enjoy our customers. We usually take a vacation every year, and this year we’re planning to go back to Pennsylvania and stay in a home we’re renting.

Stu: We have been fortunate to travel all over the world. We’ve been to Japan twice, Australia, New Zealand, Alaska, Thailand and Singapore. We got permission to go to Russia during the Cold War. We were on safari in Africa during the 1970s.

We traveled in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. We were not scared at the time, but since then I’ve thought we should have been. We toured the Serengeti with our own driver in a four-wheel drive Volkswagen with a rollaway roof, and we crossed 15 miles of solid wildlife migration – zebras, wildebeests and antelopes, as far as the eye can see.

We were going 30 miles per hour across grassy terrain – there were no roads – and the zebras would go as fast as our vehicle, then run across our path and stop, just playing with us. It was absolutely spectacular.

Betty: I really liked Japan. We had a guide who bowed and kissed all the ladies’ hands. He was very polite and made the American men look, well. …

Stu: This job never gets old because every day, something different happens. I had a guy come to my window recently who wanted to bet a four-horse dime superfecta box with the automatic teller machine, but he had never used it before. So I talked him through it and gave him a voucher for $12.

He came back the next day with five winning tickets that were each worth $750. I asked him what had happened, and he said ‘Well, you said the machine was easy to work, and I thought I had change coming from my bet. But instead of hitting the return voucher button, I kept hitting repeat ticket.’ Talk about beginner’s luck!

2012-02-01T06:49:00.000-08:00

Carlos Garcia, Trainer

From 1989-95, trainer Carlos Garcia saddled 438 winners and accumulated almost $8 million in purse earnings, his face almost as familiar to Maryland sports fans as Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. A few years earlier Garcia trained Squan Song, who won 18 of 36 starts, including 14 stakes, and was voted top Maryland-bred filly or mare four consecutive years. He also was responsible for the development of Breeders’ Cup champions Safely Kept and Countess Diana. After spending last season as a jockey’s agent for Jesse Garcia – his first break from training in 40 years – the Argentinean conditioner returned with a flourish at Tampa Bay Downs, winning the Jan. 7 Pelican Stakes with Robert Gerczak’s 5-year-old gelding Action Andy. The triumph was doubly rewarding for Action Andy’s connections, since the horse had almost succumbed as a 2-year-old to wobbler’s syndrome, a spinal cord malformation. Garcia has three sons and a daughter and two granddaughters.

Before I was a jockey’s agent for Jesse Garcia (no relation) and Brian Pedroza, who is also here at Tampa, I’d had every job on the racetrack other than working in the racing office. In the late 1960s I was a groom for Laz Barrera, who trained the last Triple Crown winner, Affirmed. He was a teacher and he didn’t mind me asking questions.

He had a tremendous eye for the horses and if one was sore or a little off, he usually knew where the problem was. Sometimes he was more accurate than the vet. One of the biggest things I learned from him was to use my eyesight – to make a figure in my mind the way the horse is supposed to travel across the ground, and judge from that.

Every horse is an individual and they all have a different way of going. Once you put that picture in your mind and know how that horse is supposed to go, and you see something is not going that way, you know something is wrong. And if the rider tells me something, I listen because sometimes the rider is the best judge.

My father, Sabas Garcia, was a successful trainer at Palermo and San Isidro in Buenos Aires. I spent a lot of time with him at the track growing up. A lot of things are different about racing there. Races would have 20-horse fields and it was very competitive. They prefer longer distances. I remember my father winning a race that was 4,000 meters, about 2 ¼ miles. In Argentina, we like to train horses to go the classic distances, which we don’t have much of any more in this country.

People think a mile-and-an-eighth is a long race, and it’s really not. Here, there are a lot of people who can only train a horse to go five or six furlongs. They don’t know how to stretch a horse out. That just makes it easier for me to win the longer races.

Seriously, though, we breed so much for speed that not many horses can go longer than a mile. And when you have a horse that can go a mile-and-a-quarter, unless he wins a classic or a Grade I race, he’s not that good a sire prospect because breeders need speed, speed, speed.

I just think there is too much emphasis on speed in the breeding industry and we need to swing back toward breeding more horses for endurance. Ideally, you want to combine speed and stamina.

But the other side of the coin is, people want to bet on large fields, and your longer stakes races often don’t draw many entries. How many horses run in the Belmont Stakes, which is a mile-and-a-half? And you look at the quality of the fields, there are not many truly good ones. Even in Argentina, they are not running as many longer races as they used to.

Horatio Luro, the ‘Grand Senor’ who trained Kentucky Derby winners Decidedly and Northern Dancer, was an inspiration to me as a fellow Argentine trainer. He was my neighbor at Belmont Park for a few years, and he would talk to me in Spanish while he was riding the pony. He was a very nice gentleman. He always called me ‘El Pibe’ – ‘The Kid.’

One of his quotes that has always stuck with me is ‘Don’t squeeze the lemon dry.’ These horses are only going to be as good to you as you are to them. You have to know when it’s time to back off and give them a chance to recuperate. Mr. Luro also told me more than once, ‘Keep the horse in the company that is suitable for him – and keep yourself in good company, as well.’

I have 10 horses here now; they are all owned by Mr. Gerczak. I don’t want a large stable because I like to pay attention to details. When you have too many, you can’t train all of them yourself, and I don’t like to leave too much to my employees. Right now, I have two grooms, two hot walkers and one exercise rider, Jesse.

But I do enjoy passing along what I’ve learned. Two of the trainers I trained in Maryland, Dove Houghton and Robin Graham, have won a lot of races. I am very proud of what they have accomplished, and they deserve a chance to get better horses. Patrick Manuel, who since moved to Louisiana, is another good trainer I mentored.

I thought I could be a jockey when I was a young man in Argentina. Then, I broke my back in a riding accident and was disabled for six months. After I came to this country in the mid-1960s, I was able to gallop some horses for Oscar Barrera, Laz’s brother, but I hurt my back again and was not able to ride. That is why I cannot say enough about the jockeys. They might be the best athletes of any sport.

Last year, I was getting a little bored – I have been training on my own 40 years – so I took a year off from training and became Jesse’s agent. Anyone who knows him knows he’s a very good guy, which is the main reason we get along pretty good. So it was very rewarding to me to have him win on Action Andy in the Pelican Stakes.

Jesse is 52, but he is a worker. He gallops two or three horses for me every morning to stay fit and he works horses for other people. He takes care of himself and he’s very light, so he doesn’t have to reduce. He’s a strong rider, he has a good mind and he can win on the front or from behind, depending on what you want him to do.

I’ve never been a guy who liked to make a big deal about one race, because the next race you can be down again. I feel as though I’ve been very lucky. Gustave Ring, who was a New York owner, invited me to train for him at Belmont Park after I went out on my own, and he taught me a lot about the business part of racing.

I don’t make any money for what I charge training unless I win, and for an owner to break even, they need to make about $30,000 a year with a horse. So you’re trying to protect your owners so they stay in the business longer.

I enjoy what I’m doing. I use my knowledge, I’m very patient with the horses and I’m good with 2-year-olds. For me, the pride in developing a young horse is very important. I have proven myself over and over again that I can develop a horse to be the best that it can be. Just look at my stakes record – 136 stakes victories, from Kentucky to all over the East Coast.

That keeps it fun – the chance to prove myself again with another horse I can develop.

2012-01-27T06:20:00.000-08:00

Kathleen O'Connell, Trainer

Kathleen O’Connell has been a mainstay at Tampa Bay Downs since she arrived in 1976 to gallop horses for trainer W.R. Harp. Since starting her own stable in 1981, she has saddled 1,398 winners with purse earnings in excess of $22.5 million, but more impressive is her consistency: her runners have earned more than $1 million for 13 consecutive years. Known as one of the hardest workers on the track, she shows no signs of slowing her breakneck pace. O’Connell splits time between Tampa Bay Downs, where she has about 30 horses, and Gulfstream, where she trains about 15. Last March, she won the Grade II, $350,000 Tampa Bay Derby with 43-1 shot Watch Me Go for her long-time client, Florida owner-breeder Gilbert Campbell. Other top O’Connell horses include Grade II winner Blazing Sword, the precocious filly Ivanavinalot, Shananie’s Beat, Lindsay Lane, Shananie’s Finale, Sheer Bliss and Fly by Phil. O’Connell won the 1998-99 Tampa Bay Downs training title and shared it two seasons ago with Jamie Ness. Also in 2009-10, she became the first woman to capture a training title in the 39-year history of Calder Race Course in Miami.

I have to agree with the guy who said ‘Until you go to Kentucky and with your own eyes behold the Derby, you ain’t never been nowhere and you ain’t never seen nothing.’ Going there with Watch Me Go was a wonderful experience, something I know I’ll never forget.

I was really happy for the owners, Mr. Campbell and his wife, because they’ve been in the business a long time and raised a lot of good horses. Even though the outcome wasn’t what we wanted, it was a phenomenal eight or nine days.

I can’t believe how quickly the week went. It sounds ridiculous now, but I thought I was going to have all this free time because I was dealing with one horse. I even brought a book with me, but I never opened it, because there was so much going on.

It’s non-stop action all week – the media, events and dinners for the trainers, just getting back and forth between the track and everywhere else. I saw people at Churchill Downs I hadn’t seen in 20 years, folks who used to work for me. And I was still doing the entering and scratching at Tampa Bay Downs and Calder via telephone, so that part of my world didn’t change.

The Derby walk is everything I thought it would be, and then some. You look at the grandstand packed to the rafters, and it’s like a sea of heads. You just can’t believe there can be that many people packed into a space like that. I worried about my horse acting up, but he was a pro. And there was such a small area to saddle the horses in the paddock – I think God protects all, because they are still 3-year-old horses that are not used to massive crowds and prone to act up.

You have to have a lot of luck in this business just to win a race, much less to get a horse to the Kentucky Derby. First, your horse has to stay healthy to get to the gate. Then you need a decent post, the pace has to unfold right and the jockey has to help your horse.

There is so much that goes into it that it is amazing to contemplate. This is the only business where you can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week and do things right and still not get lucky.

I’m pretty sure the day is long gone when people refer to me as a ‘female trainer.’ But it sure wasn’t like that when I started in the business. I still have my first racetrack license from Detroit Race Course in 1970, and it says ‘Pony Boy.’ There were no women jockeys or exercise riders. The business has come a long way, but things used to be a lot different.

Even though I had a 3.8 grade-point average in high school and graduated in the top 15 percent of my class, and had four years of 4-H experience, I got turned down when I applied to veterinarian school at Michigan State. It never crossed my mind I wouldn’t be accepted, but I learned they only took two girls a year. I tried community college and took a job with Guardian Photos developing 8 millimeter movies, and I hated it.

So I decided I would go to the racetrack until I figured out what I wanted to do. Here it is 40 years later, and I’m still here.

You give up a lot when you work with Thoroughbreds. I used to get on 8-to-10 horses a morning, but I’ve got so much arthritis in my neck and back that I can hardly move from side to side. Blazing Sword, I galloped him his whole career. I’ve gotten on a lot of nice horses, and I really miss that aspect of training, getting up on my horses and exercising them on the racetrack.

Health is always an issue – both mine and the horses. I’ve had pneumonia three times, twice in Michigan and once in New Orleans. When you gallop in the winter, you breathe in all that cold air and it’s a struggle taking care of yourself.

The biggest sacrifices I’ve had to make, though, are my personal relationships. My parents are coming down from Michigan next month – my dad is 87 and my mom is 84 – and they don’t fly, so the trip is a concern. From this end, if I get home once a year for four days, that’s a miracle. And that’s just not right. They’re in pretty good shape for their age, but they are not going to be around forever. I wish I lived closer to spend more time with them.

Earlier in my career, I cut some corners to make a personal relationship work, and it didn’t work anyway. So as I got older, it was like ‘This is the way I am, this is what I do –if you’re happy with it, fine, and if you’re not, that’s fine too.’ You have to find somebody unique and very understanding to put up with the schedule of a horse trainer.

I was fortunate in 2002 to meet a gentleman who lives in south Florida who is a triathlete. If you’re going to swim two-and-a-half miles, bike 112 miles and run 26 miles after that, this is a person who is consumed with what they do, just like I am with what I do. He already got what I was doing, and we still are seeing each other.

I’ve been blessed in this business to be with Mr. Campbell for more than 20 years and with Mr. (John) Franks when he was alive, and now with Larry and Vicki Stumpf, clients down south who operate Blackacre Farms.

I think one reason Mr. Campbell and I have such a lasting relationship is that he understands every aspect of the business.

He knows horses are going to get sick or hurt and things are going to happen. Some people, I think, get in this business and don’t understand you are dealing with flesh and bone and blood. You might be the best caretaker, the best feeder, have the best blacksmith and everything else, and something unforeseen happens and they get hurt. In this business, the highs are very high and the lows are very low.

I remember when we had Blazing Sword on the Kentucky Derby trail in 1997 for Mr. Campbell. He had finished second to Pulpit in the Fountain of Youth and we were on our way. Then, two days later, he became sick and instead of prepping him for the Derby, I was taking him to a veterinarian clinic. To this day, we don’t know what it was, but he almost died.

But he was an amazing horse. Later that summer, we took him to the Remington Park Derby in Oklahoma and he ran second, and he was fourth in the Travers at Saratoga. Then, he finished third in the Super Derby, the Hawthorne Derby and Hollywood Derby, and he won the Calder Derby that fall.

And as a 6-year-old, he rewarded us by winning the Widener at Gulfstream and the Washington Park Handicap at Arlington, which were both graded races. I still can’t believe all the places Blazing Sword took us.

Another great horse of Mr. Campbell’s was Ivanavinalot, who won five of her first six races. She won the Florida Stallion My Dear Girl Stakes by almost 14 lengths, and we were ready to take her to Arlington in Chicago for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies.

We had made the airplane reservations and everything was on ‘Go.’ Then, two days after the My Dear Girl, I came into the barn and she had maybe a quarter-scoop of grain left in her tub. And she had never missed an oat the whole time I had her, even when she had a slight cold.

She didn’t have a temperature, but when we took her to the track and jogged her, she didn’t seem her usual self. So we ran a blood test, and her white cell count was all out of whack and she was starting to get an infection. Even though we caught it right away and nothing devastating had happened, we couldn’t get on that plane and make that race.

That is one of the toughest calls I’ve ever had to make. Nobody associated with Ivanavinalot wanted to believe she was not going to make the dance, not the way she’d been running. But you have to do right by your horses, and I was very proud the next season when she ran second in the Davona Dale Stakes and won the Grade II Bonnie Miss at Gulfstream.

I am lucky to have people working for me who understand that every detail is important. Brian Smeak, my assistant, has been with me 12 or 13 years, and I have exercise people down south who I’ve used for more than 10 years. And I have seasonal employees here at Tampa Bay Downs who come back every year, so I feel very blessed to have such a good support team.

It’s a big wheel to churn. You’re not always going to agree on everything and it is not always going to be wonderful, but everybody respects each other and that’s what is needed.

I try to match horses with the right grooms, exercise riders and jockeys, because horses have minds, too. You try to make everything click. They are out of these stalls maybe an hour-and-a-half every day, so they had better be happy because if they’re not happy, they’re not going to be productive.

I’m proud of all the people I train for – not only the Campbells and the Stumpfs, but some of the other people who have been with me for years. Those relationships are so rewarding. The Derby was a wonderful deal, and I want to take a horse to the Breeders’ Cup.

But at the end of the day, if it’s a $12,500 claiming horse that goes out and hits the board every time it runs, I mean, what else can you ask for? That’s very fulfilling too.

I want the best for all my clients, because they are also my friends. And nobody goes over there with the idea of losing – everybody wants to win.

2012-01-22T07:43:00.000-08:00

Carol Siciliano, Stewards' Assistant and Claims Clerk

When you’ve worked at one place almost 30 years, like Tampa Bay Downs stewards’ assistant and claims clerk Carol Siciliano, it’s hard not to trip over the memories. Yet Carol and her husband Sam Siciliano, the track’s paddock judge and a former jockey, bring an energy level to their jobs that others strive to match. Carol works in tandem with the stewards to uphold the integrity of the claims process and files the reports, notices and rulings that accompany each day’s performance. Along the way, she has made enough friends and encountered enough characters to fill several scrapbooks.

I don’t know how the jockeys’ wives feel these days, but I never had a problem with Sam’s career choice. I always knew that he knew what he was doing, that he could take care of himself on the racetrack. He had a couple of pretty bad spills, but he survived and we made it through, thanks to prayer and our faith in God.

Sam rode for about 25 years at all the major Midwestern tracks: Arlington, Hawthorne, Washington Park, Sportsman’s, Keeneland, Latonia, Detroit, River Downs and Beulah Park in Ohio and, of course, Churchill Downs. He competed against the top jockeys – (Bill) Shoemaker, (Eddie) Arcaro, (Bill) Hartack. They were all good friends and good people.

I watched his races when I could, but we had three sons who were all into sports and I was following them, so I didn’t get out to the track as much as I should have. A lot of us wives used to meet on Saturdays. We’d corral around the paddock, take the kids and have a good afternoon.

Sam used to ride a horse named I Been Robbed, but we called him ‘The Thief.’ Sam actually won quite a few races on him and I used to make sure I went to the races on those days, because I loved that horse.

When my youngest son turned 16, I took my first job on the track, in the tack shop at River Downs outside Cincinnati. I sold saddles, horseshoes, racing equipment and other supplies. I loved every minute of it and that prepared me for our life after Sam was ready to retire as a jockey.

Like so many jockeys, it was always Sam’s goal to ride in the Kentucky Derby. I thought he might get there in 1984 with a horse trained by Gerry Russell named So Vague, but Sam was in a bad spill at Beulah Park less than three weeks before the Derby. He broke his collarbone and five ribs, punctured his lung and damaged his spleen. He was in pretty bad shape; it took him about 6-to-8 weeks to recover.

Patti Cooksey ended up riding So Vague (who finished 11^th). Around that time, I knew Sam really didn’t want to go back to riding.

We had talked about retiring before then, but at no time did I ever think about asking Sam to quit or saying ‘I don’t want you to do that any more.’ I think every person needs to choose for themselves what to do with their lives. I wouldn’t have wanted him, or anyone, to say to me ‘Carol, you need to quit your job and do something else.’ We knew when he was ready.

Warren Wolf, who used to be the racing secretary here and at River Downs, helped Sam transition into working as a racing official. When we came to Tampa Bay Downs in 1982, I started working in the gift shop, which at that time was actually a novelty stand. About two years later, Mrs. (Lorraine) King, the general manager, said they needed somebody for the claims job, so I went and interviewed with (then-racing secretary) Bob Clark and got the job. I have been doing it ever since.

As fate would have it, our friend Bill Hartack was one of the stewards here then, along with John Hanley and Bill Ellis. We used to go to Bill Hartack’s house all the time to play cards, and I would help cook. We were good friends with the Hanleys, and I still keep in contact with John’s wife Jean.

Hartack, who won the Kentucky Derby five times, was a very private person. He was happy to autograph his book, but he didn’t like being bothered by a bunch of people, so he usually would sign it and have me hand it out to people who asked for it.

I have an excellent relationship with our present stewards: John Morrissey, Dennis Lima, William Keen and Charlie Miranda. They are all gentlemen, but we joke around a lot.

Sometimes I tell them the most important part of my job is to have fresh coffee ready, because they can be very grumpy in the morning. They know I’m joking. But the main reason everything seems to run so smoothly in this office is because we get along well and help each other.

The stewards are under a lot of stress, but they can handle it. They’re tough guys. In here, you do what needs to be done and try to enjoy every day. To me, every day is a blessed one and I try to make the best of it.

I’ve worked with so many good stewards here – the ones I’ve already mentioned, and men such as Bob Clark, Mike Anifantis, Dick Kinsey, Arthur Pedregal, Jr. and Heriberto Rivera, Jr., the former jockey. Charlie Miranda and Arthur, who unfortunately is no longer with us, used to be trainers here and were both training at River Downs when I started in the tack shop.

In the mornings on race days, I do all my paperwork – daily reports for the Internet, hearing notices, rulings, and owner and trainer transfers that have to be documented and sent to the racing office. If a horse is beaten more than 35 lengths, we put it on the stewards’ list and it has to work for the clocker before it is allowed to race again.

There are several steps I need to follow for a claim. First, I call the track bookkeeper to make sure there is enough money in the account. Then I call the stewards to advise them of the claim.

Next, I call the jockeys’ room and inform the clerk of scales, because he has to tell the valet. Then I tell Richard, the announcer, so he can tell the public, and then I call Equibase so it is included in the chart.

Plus, if the horse finishes first or second, I have to call the ‘spit barn’ because the claimed horse has to be tested. Finally, I have to fax my transfer paper over to Allison De Luca in the racing office.

It can get pretty hectic when more than one claim is put in on a certain horse and we have to perform a shake to determine who gets the horse, or when two or more horses are claimed from the same race. I remember one race when we had eight claims on one horse and three or four on another.

I called Margo (Flynn, the Tampa Bay Downs Vice President of Marketing) and she called the bookkeeper and helped me out. Teamwork means everything in a situation like that.

Once the horse breaks the gate in a race, it means the claim is official and the horse has a new owner. One of the saddest things for me is when a horse is injured or breaks down after it has been claimed. I don’t care if it’s $5,000 or $32,000, that is a lot of money to most of these trainers. Through the years, most of the horsemen have become like family, and that is always a difficult situation.

Sam and I really haven’t thought about retiring, maybe because the meet is only a few months out of the year and we enjoy being here so much and seeing all our friends. We used to work at the fair meets in Massachusetts for about eight years before they started closing. Sam was racing secretary one year and an assistant the other years, and I was an entry clerk and placing judge.

We miss being a part of that scene, but now when the live meeting here ends we head up to our place in Beverly Hills (Fla.) and rest and relax and swim in the pool.

We do a lot of walking and hiking in the summer, work in the yard a lot. We go and aggravate our kids once in a while, go to visit our grandkids. Sometimes we take little side trips, looking for a new adventure.

What’s always in the back of our minds is the start of the next season at Tampa Bay Downs. And every year, it seems to get here quicker.

2012-01-18T06:50:00.000-08:00

Mark Guidry, Jockey

When jockey Mark Guidry retired at 48 after the 2007 fall meeting at Churchill Downs, his accomplishments included 5,043 victories, more than $100 million in purses, about two dozen riding titles (mostly in the Midwest) and wins in such prestigious races as the Kentucky Oaks and Santa Anita Derby. The Lafayette, La. native also won the 2006 George Woolf Award – presented annually to a rider whose career and personal character earn esteem for himself and the sport of Thoroughbred racing – both for his feats in the saddle and his efforts assisting victims of Hurricane Katrina in his home state. After hanging up his tack, Guidry tried to get a job as a racing official and worked as a trainer, but when he began exercising horses last year for trainer Dale Romans, he regained the urge to compete. After launching his comeback last summer at Ellis Park, Guidry soon won a stakes at Kentucky Downs aboard Snow Top Mountain for trainer Tom Proctor – proof four years had done little to dull his skill and instincts. At Tampa Bay Downs, he currently is eighth in the standings with 10 victories and has finished first or second with 41.3 percent of his mounts. Guidry and his wife Tina have three grown children: sons Marcus and Mecus and daughter Fallon.

My biggest fear about coming back was I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. I don’t think that fear has evaporated yet, I really don’t. I didn’t want to deflate anything that I have accomplished in my career. That was the No. 1 thing.

I’ve always been my worst critic. I don’t blame nobody but myself when I don’t win a race. I don’t blame the other riders, because I feel like I should have known better, maybe put myself in a better position. Whatever happens, I’ve got the reins. I’ve got control. So nobody has to be hard on me because there ain’t nobody harder on me than I am on myself.

The last couple of years before I retired, I was at a point where maybe I was burned out after riding for 32 years. It seemed like every time I talked to a trainer after a race about how things went, I was defending myself, defending my actions. Now, it’s not like that.

I think I’m more competitive now than I was before I retired. I’m feeling real good, so we’re just going to go as long as we can. I’m going day by day, and I’m very grateful for the opportunities everyone is giving me.

When I came back at Ellis Park in August, it was kind of like having the bug again. I didn’t know what kind of response I was going to get; heck, I didn’t know how many of the riders knew who I was. But I was always comfortable around my peers and they made it really cool. Like Jon Court, he said ‘Gid, it’s so nice to have you in here.’ Corey Lanerie, Little Brian (Hernandez), Calvin (Borel), it was basically all my homeboys from Louisiana, and Jon Court. They helped to pick me up.It’s taken me a long time to get fit, maybe because I’m 52. It’s been a grind, and there have been a few times when I got disgusted with running a lot of seconds. But I just tell myself how much I’ve had to dedicate to get where I am right now. When I started galloping for Dale Romans at Churchill, I was getting on 10 or 11 in the mornings, coming down from 152 pounds, so it was tough, but I was enjoying it.

I rode in that race for retired jockeys at Arlington and didn’t do any good, but that was my platform on my comeback. It’s been slow, but it’s been good. Tom Proctor’s been really good to me since I’ve been back. He told me ‘take it easy, take it easy, it’s going to come.’ Like with Dale Romans, I’ve got a real good relationship with Tom outside of racing, so if he’s got something on his mind he lets me know, and the same for me.

Getting the George Woolf Award was my biggest accomplishment. I never even dreamed it was possible because it is so prestigious, and knowing my peers voted for me made it even more meaningful. I was riding in Chicago the summer when Katrina hit, and myself and a couple of other riders were torn up seeing the devastation in our state and not being able to do anything about it.

We decided we were going to start collections for the victims, and I organized our relief efforts at Arlington Park – food, money, clothing for all the little kids. A lot of what we did was just horsemen helping horsemen. My mother, who passed away in October, did a lot of relief work back home through the Catholic Church. When we got everything together in Chicago, I drove the truck to Louisiana and helped distribute the supplies.

To get an award like the George Woolf for doing something you believe in, it was cool and it helped out a whole lot. But it was doing something for the people I felt for. I would have done it for others as well.

I’d shipped in here to Tampa Bay Downs a few times in past years and won some races. In 2003, I won the Florida Oaks for George Steinbrenner and Billy Mott on a filly named Ebony Breeze. But I’d never been here before for an extended stay. I really love it – it’s laid-back, the weather is beautiful and I play golf with my friends here.

It’s a strong jockey colony. There are a lot of seasoned riders here like Ronnie Allen Jr., Jesse Garcia, now we have Scott Spieth here. Leandro (Goncalves) is a good rider and Willie (Martinez) will get the job done. Rosemary (Homeister Jr.) is always competitive, always consistent. Pablo Morales, I admire his style. I think he is going to be an up-and-coming rider.

Just like anywhere else, there are going to be a few riders who aren’t bad, they just aren’t seasoned. Some older riders don’t take the time to talk to the younger jockeys and try to make them better, but if I see a young kid needs a couple of things straightened out, I’m quick to do it. If I’m riding with him, I’m going to keep him aware of his mistakes to make it safer for myself and the rest of the riders. You want to ride safely. That’s No. 1.

My hat is off to all the trainers. That is probably the hardest gig they got on the backside. Dealing with the owners, the help, getting paid on time so they can pay everybody else. I won about 30 races training, but I found out it’s just really, really tough. Sometimes when I was riding and I’d get beat for third, I didn’t really think too much about it, but I found out for the trainers that could be a guy’s only percentage for the month. I’ve got a whole different outlook on the training part of it now.

I’m getting inducted this summer into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, which is a big thrill. People always ask me why so many top jockeys seem to come from Louisiana. Well, in my era and with the guys older than me – Eddie D. (Delahoussaye), Randy Romero, Craig Perret, Ray Sibille, Ronald Ardoin – we had so many opportunities.

I was riding show horses when I was 4, so being on a horse was just natural. We didn’t have no bicycles. We just rode our horses in the ditch wherever we wanted to go, so it was pretty cool. It was a great, great upbringing.

I really miss those days. We had six or seven bush tracks running on any given Sunday. Heck, I was riding match races when I was 9 and anything went. My momma didn’t want me to ride, so we didn’t tell her. She didn’t know about it until I broke my wrist when I was 10 ½. I walked through the door holding my wrist, and my dad had to tell her. I’ve got five sisters and I was the only son, so momma kind of babied me, God bless her.

But the big thing was, we had a whole lot of chances. And horsemen didn’t just put you up on a horse right away. You learned the game first. You cleaned the stalls, put on the wraps, did everything to get the horse ready. They taught you to be a horseman first and a jockey second, and that helped all of us tremendously. That training helped a young jockey in knowing where a young horse was hurting or whatever, because we had been riding five or six years already.

I’ve ridden a lot of great horses in my career – Black Tie Affair, Buck’s Boy, Perfect Drift, Balto Star, Roses in May, Offlee Wild, Meafara, Buzzard’s Bay – the list goes on and on. I rode my 5,000^th winner for D. Wayne Lukas. I tell you what, he’s one of the biggest motivators you’ll find. You’d be on one of his horses that was 30-1, didn’t fit a race whatsoever and he’d tell you ‘This horse is doing so good,’ you’d leave his barn knowing there was no way you were going to get beat.

My biggest win might have been in the Kentucky Oaks in 2006 for Dallas Stewart. It was near the end of my career – OK, the first end of my career – and I won on Lemons Forever, who was 47-1.

But I think the biggest race I won, because it came at such a great time, was on Buzzards Bay in the 2005 Santa Anita Derby for Jeff Mullins. A few months earlier, a bunch of riders had stood up in Kentucky because we believed our insurance policy was inadequate. Tony D’Amico had been hurt in a spill, and he reached the $100,000 policy limit in about four days. A few of us said, that’s not right, and we chose not to accept mounts at Churchill. At that point, we were ejected from the track.

To make a long story short, I went to California to ride for Mullins, and the first three or four weeks everything went good. Then Pat Valenzuela came back and took a lot of my horses, but I was still riding Buzzards Bay. I won the Golden Gate Derby on him, then we won the Santa Anita Derby at 30-1.

To have that opportunity, to me, was huge. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed in Kentucky. Then, the very next spring I’m back at Churchill and winning the Oaks with Lemons Forever. I guess it proves everything comes full circle and – I know it’s a bad pun – when you get lemons, you should make lemonade.

2012-01-14T07:42:00.000-08:00

Dick Toda, Director of Food Services

From the Shrimp & Lobster Pasta in the Skye Terrace to the chicken wings in the Sports Gallery, Dick Toda is the point man for culinary delights that dull the pain of a photo finish beat at Tampa Bay Downs. Since joining the track as Director of Food Services in 1996, Toda has focused on dining quality. His philosophy is that no racetrack visitor, from the $2 bettor to the millionaire owner, should have to stop on their way to the track for a good meal. In his first two years, the Skye Terrace kitchen was completely rebuilt and the Sports Gallery underwent a massive overhaul. Continual upgrades have solidified the track’s reputation for haute cuisine and given Toda a cult following among food connoisseurs. Dick and Lucille Toda have been married 35 years and have five children: Rene, Richard, Michael, Lisa and Michelle, and six grandchildren.

When somebody comes up to me and says ‘I just had the greatest meal here,’ I get a high from that. Food is a delicate thing. You are never going to please everybody, and sometimes it is just a matter of taste. But we set our standards here as high as possible. If something is not right, we are not going to sell it.

I don’t know if I’ve been lucky or good, but I’m fortunate to have the nucleus of people we possess. My assistant, Roger Inman, moved here from Las Vegas with a background in food management and hospitality service. The rest of my team has been with me since I arrived. They are all very dedicated and do their jobs well.

My executive chef, Bob Schwertz, was with the Clearwater Hilton for a time. Cliff Adams, Bob’s first assistant, coordinates all the parties. I have a great Maitre d’ in the Skye Terrace, Pam Satory, who is very good about remembering people’s names. Keith Frank is my commissary person. It is his responsibility to see the stands get their needed supplies every day.

On a big day, we could have six or eight parties going on at any time – from the pavilion to the garden area, upstairs and downstairs in both buildings. It is work, but it is a lot of fun. We meet at least once a week to touch base, and we keep a lot of records. If we have a large function, we want to know how we handled it the last time so we can strive to do it even better.

Sometimes patrons suggest something that needs changing, and I have to take that with the compliments. We send out survey review sheets to all our group sales parties so that when they are returned, we can tell what kind of job we are doing. We work hard at the hospitality end of things. In the Skye Terrace, our entire wait staff is in tuxedo wear, with linen on the table and stainless-steel flatware.

I’ve been a friend of Mrs. (Stella) Thayer (owner of Tampa Bay Downs) for 30 years. She used to eat at our Ole Style Deli restaurant a lot, and we would talk about the horses. She would always give me a yearly pass, and I made a habit of coming to the races just about every Saturday. When she decided to hire me, I made a lot of changes, which were all for the betterment of the food and beverage service.

I brought in Nathan’s Hot Dogs, arguably the best on the market, and Boar’s Head meats. We put in some fun places, like the center of the grandstand, where we have cappuccinos and sell fresh pastries. Matt and Tanya’s Ice Cream is the best available because it is made fresh and delivered that week.

I believe when you get a sandwich here, you should thoroughly enjoy it. We have a very nice menu in the Skye Terrace, which is medium-priced and offers excellent food. We have some items in the Sports Gallery and Silks Poker Room you aren’t going to find anyplace else.

Our Sunday brunches have become very popular. They attract sort of a different crowd. We will put our brunch spread up against anybody else. We make omelets and everything else to order, and it is all prepared here at the track. Kim, our baker, has quite a reputation for the sweets she makes.

People love to talk about food, but we also sell a lot of coffee throughout the track, especially during the winter. We sell Colombian coffee, which is a little more expensive, but again our goal is to provide the best.

I used to own some horses with a group in the 1980s, and I owned some with Mr. (George) Steinbrenner when he was a regular here. It was fun to watch my horses run, but the expenses were always greater than the profits. I think maybe I needed better luck or better skill – or deeper pockets!

About 10 or 11 years ago, I flew with George in his Lear jet to watch his filly, Dream Supreme, run at Saratoga. It was a very festive mood going up. We listened to Frank Sinatra, enjoyed fresh rolls and fruit and were literally on Cloud 9.

But after she lost, things were totally different. His personality could change very quickly. As everyone knows, he was a very good winner, but he didn’t like losing.

George would call me three or four times a week and bounce different things off me, get my advice on trainers and jockeys. He actually gave me some voice in his organization. He would ask me about ballplayers, and we would talk about life. He had a lot more good about him than bad. There was a side to him that was very giving.

My late father owned a few riding horses in our hometown of Warren, Ohio, and when I was younger, I thought about becoming a jockey. By the time I was 16 or 17, I was too big. Since I left college at Youngstown State, I’ve been in food.

We had the rights to seven Southern cities for Arby’s. I thought I was going to be the next millionaire, but the franchisor imploded. I took a job in Detroit heading up a chain of supermarkets, but Lucille and I still hated the cold, so we came here for good and opened the Ole Style Deli.

Lucille still works at the restaurant in downtown Tampa that we’ve owned for more than 30 years. She cooks hot meals there every day, things like meatloaf and lasagna. Lucille has always told me that you should do everything as well as you can. Any time I’ve thought I can’t, she has been there to reaffirm ‘Yes, you can.’ She would never allow me not to do my best and has always been my inspiration.

On my days off, I love cooking gourmet meals for Lucille. Mediterranean foods are my specialties, all the foods of France and Italy. I’ll prepare lamb a lot of different ways, and I’ll usually make a Greek salad to go with it. The vegetable usually is whatever is fresh at the produce market.

I played tennis as an amateur, and I’ve been to Wimbledon, Roland Garros in France and to the U.S. Open in Flushing, N.Y. several times. At home, I enjoy playing the piano. Lucille and I are members of Cheval Golf & Country Club, and I try to play golf once a week.

I’m also on the board of the Race Track Chaplaincy of America-Tampa Bay Downs Division, and we do the food service for their big fundraising day every February.

Back in Ohio, my father and several of my uncles had a very unusual hobby: they were pigeon racers. Most people wouldn’t know that a pigeon race can have a purse of $100,000, more than a lot of horse races. I would help to feed them and clean their coops. They are no different than horses in that sense – you have to keep their environment clean and train them.

That was an interesting part of my life. The people who raced pigeons could be bank presidents, or a bank robber just out of prison. The only commonality was the birds and whose were fastest.

2012-01-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

Brian Moore, Instuctor at the Downs Golf Practice Facility

Tampa Bay Downs’ quest to stand at the forefront of the multidimensional leisure and entertainment market is reflected by today’s blogger, PGA Class A professional Brian Moore. The 38-year-old Moore is the newest member of the Downs Golf Practice Facility staff, bringing with him more than 10 years of teaching experience. Moore is a former Master Instructor at the Jim McLean Golf School at Doral Golf Resort & Spa in south Florida. He recently worked in Hilton Head, S.C. as Director of Instruction at The Junior Players Golf Academy, which is designed to prepare students for collegiate golf. Moore spent about a year teaching at the Professional Golfers Career College and Golf Digest Schools in Orlando. As a player, he won the PGA of America Hilton Head Chapter Championship two years ago.

There are not many places I know where you can practice golf, then come into the shop and watch and wager on live horse racing. Personally, I wouldn’t know how to place a bet, but there is one guy who comes here and seems to do pretty well, and he has taken the time to try to explain the racing program to me.

It still looks like a Greek dictionary to me, though, so I believe I’m going to proceed with caution. I don’t think you become an expert horse handicapper in one day. It’s sort of like golf – it becomes a full-time hobby, not something you pick up just once in a while.

My dream is to create a regional learning center for the best young players in the area to come and get top instruction. This whole Tampa Bay area is sort of an untapped market. There are not any fantastic learning centers here where leading juniors congregate, like in Orlando.

(Fellow instructor) Matt Mitchell and I have spoken about the idea of creating such a center for the top area high school players here at the Downs. We’ve got a great range and putting green and a couple of excellent short-game areas. Other than a golf course, I think we’ve got it all.

Everybody has a dream growing up. For me – like most little kids who take up golf – I wanted to play on the PGA Tour. I had a pretty good high school career in Birmingham, Mich., and I came down here and played at St. Petersburg Junior College for one semester. But I decided school wasn’t for me, so I started playing the mini-tours in 1993.

I guess I did reasonably well in stretches. I won a couple of one-day Tommy Armour Tour events, which is not saying much. You could say my playing career started off very mediocre and tapered off from there.

When I reached my 24^th birthday, my dad – who is a retired brain surgeon – said ‘You know, this tour thing is a great plan, but what happens if you don’t make it? What’s your backup plan?’ It sounds funny now, but the thought of not making it had never crossed my mind. My dad said he would continue to sponsor me, but only if he felt I was doing the right things. He also said he thought it would be a good idea if I took the steps necessary to become a PGA of America member.

I just never really got good enough to play on tour, but it has almost been a blessing in disguise. It has allowed me to ask ‘Why?’ and go back and analyze what I didn’t do. By not making it, I became more curious about what it takes to excel.

I quit playing the mini-tours at the end of 1997 and went to work in the business. My first job was in 1998 in the cart barn at Wyndemere, a private club in Naples. Next, I started working in golf shops as an assistant pro, but I didn’t like answering the telephone 6,000 times a day and folding shirts. I realized then that teaching was going to be my thing. I just wasn’t quite sure how I was going to get there.

I started traveling and asked several top instructors if it was OK to watch them teach. Most of them were very receptive. I took notes and when they finished, I asked lots of questions. It turned out to be a good way to get a first-hand education on how to teach. Lew Smither, who used to run the teaching program at Innisbrook, took me under his wing and let me get close. After a while, I could look into his eyes and know what he was going to say next.

When it comes to teaching golf, there is a lot of stuff I’m still trying to figure out. I try to absorb as much new information as I can. I once heard Butch Harmon, Tiger Woods’ former instructor, say ‘It’s the stuff you learn after you think you know everything that is really important,’ and that really hit home.

Form, to me, is not too important. The ball goes where it goes for a specific reason, and if we can fix the reason it is not going straight, that is what is going to make golfers happy. They are not really interested in making their swings look better if they can hit the ball better.

Swing tips have a shelf life. They work for a while, then they expire. They sort of dry out, and you have to go in a different direction.

Even though golf has been my passion, I played ice hockey avidly until I was 18 and still follow it. I’m into health and fitness and work out regularly. I’m currently single, but at my 20-year high school reunion last August I met a girl I knew from school named Dani. We got to talking, I sent her a text the next day and things have progressed from there, so I could be off the market soon.

When you’re a golf pro, everyone wants to ask about Tiger Woods. Now that he is healthy and has had a chance to work on the things he’s been working on, I think he is going to come back strong. I don’t know if he’ll win a major, but I think he’s going to win a couple tournaments this year.

Women’s professional golf in the United States needs a shot in the arm, and (16-year-old) Lexi Thompson could be the answer. She has been working with Jim McLean since she was a little kid and is exciting to watch. She would be a great ambassador for the game. I’m pulling for her as much as anybody.

Matt Mitchell and Jon Johnson are great guys to work with. We have a relaxed environment, but the best days are when our books are full. The other day I was here from 8:30 a.m.-8:30 p.m. teaching, and I hope to have a lot more 12-hour days.

As an instructor, one of the best things that can happen is when someone says ‘I’m playing so much better. Thanks so much, I never would have figured that out on my own.’ Or when one of their friends comes by and tells me ‘Bob has been playing great lately; I need to see if you can help me, too.’ Those kind of testimonials make my day.

2012-01-06T07:08:00.000-08:00

Willie Martinez, Jockey

Today’s blogger is jockey Willie Martinez, who has been a familiar face to area fans since setting a Tampa Bay Downs record with 123 victories during the 1991-92 season (the mark stood for 15 years). On Aug. 12 at Presque Isle Downs in Erie, Pa., the 40-year-old rider earned career victory No. 3,000 aboard Squeaky Ceci, then delivered one of the best sports quotes of this or any year: “I won my 2,000^th in the year 2000 and I was hoping and praying I could win my 3,000^th before the year 3000!” Martinez has won a record nine jockey titles at Turfway in Kentucky, and he once rode seven winners at Ellis Park in a single day. He captured the 1997 Keeneland title against the likes of Jerry Bailey and Pat Day. Yet Martinez knows all too well the dangers and unpredictability of his profession. Two weeks after his milestone triumph, he broke his collarbone and four ribs and suffered a punctured lung in a spill at Presque Isle.

I turned 40 in March, but to me that is just a number. I enjoy going to LA Fitness and working out. I try to focus on my cardio more than anything. I don’t care very much about the looks, I just like to stay fit. I do some running and play basketball, but my favorite things are the punching bags, the speed bag and the heavy bag.

I used to do a little bit of boxing training in Puerto Rico when I was younger. I liked the exercises and the programs, and I’m a big fan of kickboxing and boxing. I might try to see if Manny Pacquiao will take a fight with me. He can send me into retirement.

My girlfriend Genevieve and I have been together three and a half years. We are not engaged yet, but we are working toward that. She is the daughter of a jockey, Omar Londono, and she is an exercise rider for Joan Scott Racing Stable and also ponies in the afternoons.

This business can get you really stressed out, but I tell Genevieve when you think you’re having a bad day, it is really just a bad moment. You have the rest of the day to patch it up. We both know when we leave the house there is never a guarantee of us coming back in one piece. So we say our prayers and plan to have a good day and enjoy what is ahead of us. There is always tomorrow.

Everybody deals with things differently, but I’ve been doing this long enough to know how to conduct myself as a professional. Genevieve relates to most of that. I greatly admire how she handles herself. She is known as a good worker and puts a lot of time and passion into what she does.

In 2010, I came pretty close to achieving what every jockey dreams of: winning the Kentucky Derby. It was my fourth Derby and I was riding Noble’s Promise for trainer Ken McPeek. I knew in my heart Noble’s Promise was more of a miler and the mile-and-a-quarter was probably a bit too much to ask, but I had won the Dixiana Breeders’ Futurity on him as a 2-year-old and we finished third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, so he was deserving of a shot.

Around the middle of the backside, I started thinking this might be possible. He was in the race without being asked. I knew the buttons I needed to push. I was very comfortable where I was. Then, at the three-eighths pole, I was getting excited, and all I could do in my head was try to block out the noise from the crowd, because I knew as soon as we turned for home the crowd can get the best or the worst out of you in a race like that.

Turning for home, I knew this was my best shot out of all my Derby mounts. Then, just as I was switching my goggles – it was very muddy that day – Calvin Borel (aboard Super Saver) came sneaking up the fence. Before I knew it, he was already there and on his way. Noble’s Promise finished fifth, but it was a great effort on his part.

Mike Moran, who was once a leading rider here, is my agent this year. He has me and Pablo Morales, and the three of us get along fine. I’m a fan of Pablo. He’s 23 and not even close to his prime, but he has such a bright future ahead of him. I try to stay on his butt if I see something that I know he can fix. He is his own man and his own rider, and I hope he finds his own path to success.

The big thing I try to impress upon Pablo is to present himself the right way with people and to communicate with them, because jockeys have to connect with the person who is going to pay your bills.

That being said, the No. 1 thing I tell any young rider is to never forget that our sport is all about the horse. They are the biggest stars. Our names are on the programs and our faces are on TV, but if it wasn’t for the horses, we wouldn’t leave the paddock. As a rider, you have to be a good passenger and that horse has to be a good pilot.

My main goal when I was a young rider was buying my mom a house and bringing my sister and my brother and my niece here from Puerto Rico, and I did all that. Everything that came after that was just a plus. My sister lives in Kentucky now and is a general manager at a bank, and my brother is in music and dancing and entertainment. He’s been a backup dancer for the Black Eyed Peas and travels the world doing what he loves.

My mom is my biggest inspiration and motivation. She raised three kids as a single parent working two jobs. We never had a whole lot, but we always had enough to get by, and she made sure there was food for us and that we had clean clothes and brand new shoes.

My mom is 5-feet-3 and weighs 105 pounds, about my size. It is hard to believe, when you look at her, that she was an undercover narcotics agent in Puerto Rico and Policewoman of the Year two years in a row. To be able to do all that, to me, was amazing. She is an incredible human being. I built her a home 20 years ago before I left to go ride in Kentucky and she lives in the area.

My parents split up when I was 11. My father had his demons, but I like to look at the best of everyone. When he was 13, he lost both his parents and had to provide for all the others. He started laying bricks and tile and became a builder. You think you have it rough, try to support your family when you are 13. He was a handyman and later became a scuba diving instructor.

He was also my biggest fan and encouraged me to become a jockey. Just because he wasn’t a good husband doesn’t mean he isn’t a good dad and a great man.

The racetrack is a very supportive environment, and I have been very fortunate to have met many wonderful people who helped me along. At Finger Lakes in New York when I was just getting started, I became friends with a groom who would tack me up and help me sneak onto the training track at 4:30 a.m. One day, though, the horse I was riding got loose and it turned into a big mess. The outriders were on their way to open up the training track and all they could see was a loose horse and me walking out of there, all dirty. They kicked me out of the track.

I was young, and I said ‘OK, I never wanted to be a jockey, anyway.’ But soon after, I met a wonderful person, a jockey named Jose Rivera II, who was pretty much my savior. He is the one who put the blueprint in front of me, who told me ‘I can tell that you are going to be good.’ He made me believe in myself , and he helped me find a farm where I could break babies and get more involved with horses. That was the understanding I needed to get with it, and within six months I was riding races.

(Tampa Bay Downs steward) Charlie Miranda is another big influence. He is my mentor and the dad I never had at the track. Jose has been my big brother.

There are a handful of people who claim to have put me on my very first winner. Officially, though, I broke my maiden on a filly named La Glace for trainer Bill Noriega. But before that, I actually won two races here at Tampa Bay Downs and got disqualified twice. The second time, I looked at Charlie Miranda like ‘If you want to take my number down again, fine, but still pay me, because I’m broke!’

When I finally did it, Richard Grunder, the track announcer, said ‘And this one is going to count for Martinez’ because I led at every pole.

I was in the hospital for five or six days after I went down at Presque Isle last summer. They put a tube in my lung to drain it and make sure it wasn’t leaking. For a week or so, it was rough going, but after that I had a quick recovery and within 26 days, I was back riding. Mary Bennett, Gerald Bennett’s wife, helped me recover. I would spend 40 minutes at the barn every morning using the infrared laser machine they have for the horses, and within a week I could feel a big difference in how quick I was healing.

That very first spill a jockey takes separates you from being a little boy to a man, right off the bat. When you wake up in an ambulance and your collarbone is over here and there is blood all over, you can’t describe it. It’s like being a boxer – no matter what way you look at it, you’re going to hit that ground sooner or later.

After it happens a few times, you start thinking, is this what I really want to do? Then you realize this is what comes with it. This is what I signed up for.

I’ve ridden with the best and I have accomplished things that were beyond my imagination before I started. Just to ride in four Kentucky Derbies and to be able to go and ride in the Dubai World Cup (second in 2006, aboard Brass Hat). … I have won quite a few stakes, and in those kind of races I always find a way to shine somehow. God has blessed me in a lot of ways.

2011-12-31T08:49:00.000-08:00

Leigh and Arnaud Delacour, Trainers

Today’s blogger is trainer Leigh Delacour, who runs Delacour Stable with her husband, Arnaud. They currently campaign 30 horses at Tampa Bay Downs. A University of Virginia graduate with degrees in biology and economics, Leigh won 25 races as a jockey (with 25 seconds and 25 thirds) before working as an assistant under Kentucky Derby-winning trainers Barclay Tagg and Graham Motion. The Delacours were married in 2007 and immediately began their own stable. She trained Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint third-place finisher Her Smile last year at Tampa Bay Downs before Her Smile was sold.

When you’ve grown up working on the grounds and working so hard with every horse every day, you realize how so much effort by so many people is put into each horse before it gets to the races. We employ between 15-20 people here full time, and we have five or six more guys as contract labor. Arnaud and I get here around 5:30 every morning and check the legs and temperatures of every horse and have a good look before the boys put the tack on to go to the track.

We take all the horses out every day for some form of exercise. Each of our riders gets on six horses in the morning. That includes me. We have five or six horses in each set. We walk up together to the track, stand for a few minutes and kind of talk about who’s going to do what – ‘Tony, gallop a mile and a quarter,’ ‘Leigh, you’re going to jog once around because that filly breezed the day before.’ We work as a team together, which makes it nice.

By the time we get back to the barn, the second set of horses is already tacked up. We don’t have much time in between. Gosh forbid you drink too much coffee, because you don’t have time to ride to the ladies room.

Most trainers have a system of what they like to do with a horse. A standard regimen would include breezing approximately once a week, having an easy day jogging or walking the day after a breeze, and racing about once a month.

After they run, we’ll give them a couple of easy days where they walk a day and jog a day, then we’ll jog them for a week or so and give them some easy gallops until we bring them back to a breeze. How far and how strenuous the breezes are depends on where the horse is in its fitness level.

Right now, every horse we train is owned by a client. The only horse we own is our pony, and we left him at home in Fair Hill, Md. at our training center. We may occasionally buy into a partnership, but that usually is more a goodwill gesture than a financial decision.

We’re finished training most days by 10 a.m., when the track closes. I am supposed to help clean the tack with the guys, but they are all very helpful and usually do it for me. Guys like Pablo and Erasmo know what to do and make my job easier. There is a lot of organizational work to be done. We update all our charts on the computer and keep individual files on each horse. When I was working for Graham Motion, I would travel with a small string of 12 or less and could keep the information in my head, but once you get to 15 or more horses you have to have it very organized.

Schooling horses is a very important part of our training, and we’ll school horses a couple of days a week. First, we ask the paddock judge, Sam Siciliano, for permission to take horses up and school them during the first race while our grooms are still here. They walk up with the runners, walk around in the paddock during the race and walk back.

So they don’t actually run, but they get the experience of going to the races. Then, when it comes time for them to run, they’re not nervous about going to the paddock. They go there very self-confident, they don’t sweat or wash out and they have less likelihood of misbehaving.

I am very much a horse person. By nature, I’m kind of introverted if I’m allowed to be. I really like animals, horses in particular. I know that sounds kind of girly, but horses have always been there for me. I think my parents, who live in Annapolis, think I’m a dairy farmer because we are at the barn all the time.

Arnaud makes fun of me when I push the feed cart, because I get distracted so often. It must weigh 1,000 pounds when it’s full, so it takes two people – one to push it and the other to dole out the food. Arnaud says it doesn’t work very well when I push it, because I’m thinking of things I want to do for each horse and it takes forever to get down the shed row. So that’s one thing we don’t do together.

We’re usually back at the barns at 3:30 in the afternoon to walk the horses, let them have a pick of grass. We pay hot walkers to come back in the afternoon and help, but we are here pretty much all the time. That is the way it should be – trust, but verify. Things always go wrong when you aren’t here, but when you’re here they go wrong less.

Arnaud is the most influential person in my career. I already had a very good work ethic because I care so much about the animals, but his work ethic has been a major influence. This is a job that requires your attention all day, every day. When you have a bad situation, you figure out how to fix it and move on. There is no point stressing out about something. You may have a problem with one horse, but you can’t lose sight of the fact there are 29 others depending on you to steer the ship.

Honestly, I’m not in horse racing because I really love the sport. I do realize it’s a fun adventure for people to wager on the races, but that is not why I do it. I do it because I like the animals and you can make a living in horse racing, where if you are an event rider you need to have a sponsor or beg, borrow and steal enough money just to feed your string.

Between the purse structure and owners being able to afford to race horses – realizing they are a luxury commodity – Arnaud and I don’t have to starve to make sure we can take care of the horses properly.

If there is one thing I would change about my job, we would have a vacation. Still, when I am able to get away for a day or two, I feel as if I haven’t done any exercise because I didn’t ride. If I go see my parents for Christmas or something, in two days I am ready to come back. Arnaud and I jump out of bed at 4:30 every morning, and that is hard to say about any job.

For us, it is always about doing the right thing for the horse and the right thing for our clients, and the right thing for our employees. We are very minimally influenced by what other people think. Arnaud has a very strong sense of ethics, and that is something that is coveted in any business.

At the end of the morning, I usually have the sensation of ‘that day went well.’ No one fell off, no one went lame, no big disasters struck. The breezes went well and according to plan and no owner fired you. That’s when we look at each other and say, ‘That was a pretty good day.’

Allison DeLuca, Racing Secretary

2011-12-27T12:20:00.001-08:00

Our first blogger is Allison De Luca, the director of racing and racing secretary since the 2006-07 season. In addition to her duties at Tampa Bay Downs, De Luca is the stakes coordinator at Keeneland in the fall and at Churchill Downs after the Kentucky Derby. In 1987, she became the first female racing secretary at a recognized meet when she was hired at Sportsman’s Park in Illinois.

When you’re a racing secretary, you end up saying ‘No’ a lot. Turning people down who would like to come here or having to tell them we don’t have extra stalls is difficult, but it’s part of my job. Or, someone may come in and ask for a race and I have to turn them down because it’s coming up in the book later or it’s just a race we don’t write.

You hate to be the bearer of bad news, but most people are very nice about it. I try to stay calm and state my case and not get someone any more upset than they already may be. I’m not saying I’m perfect at it, but that’s what I try to do.

I think all racing secretaries get accused of favoritism. It is just a natural thing, if you think about it. People especially think that of the leading trainers, that I get everything done for them. Really, it’s laughable. Jamie Ness has been leading trainer here for quite a while, and I rarely talk to him.

Sure, everybody has people they get along with better – that’s human nature. But actually, if you are a friend of mine, I probably treat you worse than someone I don’t know because I don’t want anyone to say I’m doing you a favor.

I’ve given up trying to be liked by everybody. I guess I’ve kind of matured in that sense. The people who I need to like me are my friends and my family. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a people person, and I try to be fair and not be mean to anybody. And I don’t feel I’m in a position of power to lord over anyone. The bottom line is, I want to try to make things work, and if I can help you, I will.

I just want you to call me back if I call you. I don’t care if you say ‘no,’ but we need you to say it so we can move on.

Filling the entries and writing the condition book are the two aspects of my job that take the most time. I always end up doing the book at home, because there are people in and out of the office all day and you just can’t concentrate. You kind of need to step away and let your mind relax before you start on it.

It probably takes a few days to write; you just do it in bits and pieces and work on it when you can. Ask any racing secretary – when they finish that book, it is like the weight of the world is off of you. But before you know it, three or four days later you have to start the next one.

The most hectic time of the day for us is from 9-11 a.m., when we’re taking entries and trying to fill the races. There comes a point when you can see certain races are not going to fill and that’s when we start calling people on the phone. If we need to fill more than one race, I start handing them out to everybody to start making calls.

It’s not always fun, but it’s an accomplishment when you get it done. What feels best is when you ask someone to run their horse in a race and they win. It’s already happened a few times this meet.

What I’ve always liked best about my job is the camaraderie with my fellow officials, both around the country and the ones I work with. My closest friends are racing officials, and we’re a very tight-knit group here at Tampa Bay Downs! Stanley Shina, Judy Clark, Gerry Stanislawzyk, Henry Cambone, Eddie Cantlon, Diana Pimental, Jennifer Moore, Lawrence Waite, Pat Bovenzi, Sam and Carol Siciliano, Pete Antonucci, Joe Waunsch, Ron Dill – they are all important to me and vital to the day-to-day operation.

I have had many influences on my career. (Current Tampa Bay Downs steward and former racing secretary) John Morrissey and I have always stayed in touch. I worked for him at Keystone, and he helped me get my first major assistant’s job at Hawthorne. A lot of people are always calling him for advice. He pretty much knows the answers to what every racing secretary needs to know.

My son, Henry Montgomery, is my inspiration. I would say he is the reason I get up in the morning. Henry is a college graduate from the University of Kentucky, where he majored in political science. He is an avid sports fan. He’s 23 now and is trying to be a professional poker player. He is very smart and quiet, which is probably one of the reasons he’s so good at poker – people don’t know what he is thinking! I am also very close to my two brothers and two sisters.

This job doesn’t leave much time for hobbies. I am very interested in politics, sometimes too much so. If I retired, I would like to be the person in the neighborhood who takes people to their doctor appointments, things like that. I love older people, and I would like to do more of those type of things.

I will never be on Facebook. Remember I said that. I know social media can be used for good and evil, but I think people are putting too much of their personal information out there, and I don’t think that’s healthy. The Internet can be a good thing, but too often some nitwit will say something and have it catch fire and be accepted as truth, when it’s not.

I know I’ve done a good job when I’ve tried my hardest and finished what I set out to do. When I finish my tasks, try to put together a good card and am able to help someone in the process, I feel like I’ve had a good day.