Horses are instinctively drawn to assistant trainer Julie Clark, looking to her for reassurance and guidance as she oversees their training and care on behalf of trainer Keith Desormeaux. Her quiet, firm hands have helped to guide the likes of Preakness winner Exaggerator and Breeders' Cup winner Texas Red, and soon she'll head to Churchill Downs to help prepare Call Me Midnight for his turn in the spotlight.
Winner of the Grade 3 Lecomte Stakes at the Fair Grounds, Call Me Midnight is on target for the G2 Louisiana Derby on March 26. The late-running son of Midnight Lute easily defeated Epicenter, next-out winner of the G2 Risen Star, but will likely require at least a third-place finish to ensure he has enough points to make the starting gate for the Kentucky Derby.
Until Call Me Midnight heads to Churchill, however, the universe has other plans for Clark. Worsening old injuries to her spinal cord, including a pair of fractures, have forced her out of the barn on a day-to-day basis.
“I've always had a bad back since I was a kid, and doctors told me never to ski or to ride horses,” Clark said. “Of course, I did both, and it gave me so much core strength. When I stopped riding, I lost all that core strength.
“I fractured the wings on two different vertebrae, so it basically pinches on my spinal cord. Now, if I'm at the barn all the time I do way too much.”
Clark took a step back and now handles the logistical side of Desormeaux's business, handling travel arrangements and paperwork for the trainer. She has also been developing a travel blog, adding together her passions for photography and seeing the world.
One such excursion saw her taking a swamp tour in Louisiana by kayak.
“I've never been so terrified in my life,” said Clark. “I floated by a gator that was longer than my kayak, and since you sit below the water line in a kayak, his eyeball was even with my elbow. I saw like five poisonous snakes, too. I did get some awesome photos, though!”
Still, Clark is definitely looking forward to when the horses head up to Churchill Downs, when she can get back in the barn.
“When it comes to horses, you're not going to hold me up for very long,” she quipped.
Clark remembers making scrapbooks of horse racing from the time she was three years old. However, the Ontario native did not get her early equine exposure from her family.
“The first time I took a horse near my grandmother, she peed her pants!” Clark remembered. “We were city people; we didn't even have a goldfish. You know how in kindergarten you get to take the hamsters home from school? Well, when they came to our house they drowned in our basement sump pump.”
Instead, the horse experience came from her fourth cousins, who lived on a Quarter Horse breeding and showing operation. Clark moved in with the family for three years, showing at the local fairs, helping with breeding, foaling, training, and riding.
“It was a full immersion into horses,” she said. “We did everything, and I loved it.”
At 17, Clark followed her equine passion to Vancouver after she saw an ad for a polo club. She talked her way onto the team and shortly began playing polo professionally. Clark fashioned a career in the polo industry that included traveling with the circuit across North America, from Jackson Hole to Aspen as well as Palm Springs.
She never forgot that early love of horse racing, and occasionally dabbled in pinhooking at the sales, buying a weanling to re-sell as a yearling or a yearling to sell at the 2-year-old sales. It was at a Fasig-Tipton October sale that Clark first met Desormeaux.
“We got to talking about Zenyatta and how she got beat (by Blame in the Breeders' Cup Classic),” Clark recalled. “His insights were so cool… Two weeks later he called and asked me to go to lunch because he happened to be in Houston, where I lived. I said, 'No.' Eventually he talked me into it, and here we are!”
The first group of horses Clark oversaw for Desormeaux included Texas Red, though Exaggerator is easily one of her favorites. She drove the horse trailer hauling him from California to Delta Downs in Vinton, La. for the Delta Downs Jackpot, which Exaggerator won, and was with him throughout the Triple Crown.
Clark kept the colt calm in Kentucky ahead of his second-place finish in the Kentucky Derby, stayed by his side through his win in the Preakness, and even hauled him from Pimlico to Belmont.
“The worst part was the tolls!” Clark said of that journey from Pimlico to Belmont Park. “It cost $800 in tolls, and they didn't take checks or cards. I was shocked. It was a good thing I'd bet a little bit on Exaggerator so I had some cash!”
Looking back on those experiences, Clark relishes the time she got to spend looking after such talented animals.
“We've been super blessed, and had so many fun horses,” Clark said. “(Keith is) so protective of the horses, and he thinks it's most important for the horses to rest. I'm kind of a mother hen myself. I may be super shy, but I would tell the president of the United States to get away from my horse's stall when he's trying to eat.
“He also doesn't think that the horses have to go to the track every day; we always walk on Thursdays and Sundays. It's so funny to be on the road with a good horse, and all the media come back to the barn and freak out that our horse didn't go to the track that day. It took years for people to get it.”
While Clark had some Thoroughbred sales experience prior to meeting Desormeaux, the two took each other to the next level when they got together.
Desormeaux has become well known for his success at picking out talented prospects with inexpensive price tags. Texas Red cost $17,000 and earned over $1.7 million; Exaggerator was purchased for $110,000 and earned over $3.5 million; and Call Me Midnight was an $80,000 buy who has earned $220,000 thus far.
“We look at totally different things,” Clark explained. “I learned a ton from him, but I think I also taught him some things. In polo we never take a horse that ties in, and I can't stand one that's over at the knees; there are little things that each of us doesn't like.
“The thing with Keith is that he does not look at the catalog – never. He looks at them coming up in the far back ring, if they catch his eye and he wants to see when they go inside, then he looks at the book. He likes to go around the barns in the mornings just to refocus his eye, get it recentered on babies instead of racehorses.
“He doesn't short list or anything. It's so frustrating sometimes! The one year I went with him to OBS and I wanted to buy a horse, it was a horse I absolutely loved that went for like $100 over what I said I'd spend, but he wouldn't buy it. Once he sets his mind that a horse is worth this much, he doesn't want it when the price goes over that.”
Clark explained that another commonality between Texas Red, Exaggerator, and Call Me Midnight is that all three are groomed by Victor Vargas, who Clark claims has a “sixth sense” about which horses are truly special.
“One of the first times I met Keith on the track, he sent one to Sam Houston to run and my friends and I met him on the backstretch,” she remembered. “I saw a light on in a stall that looked like it was one of Keith's, so I walked up to look and Victor had the horse on the wall, braiding his forelock, and I watched as he stroked him and kissed him on the nose. He didn't know I was there, and that's how he was treating the horse. Victor really loves his horses.”
With Vargas and Clark in his corner, Call Me Midnight has all the right tools to put in a big performance on the first Saturday in May. No matter what happens on the track, however, Clark will be there to tell the colt he's done his job well on the walk back to the barn.
“I love them like they're my own,” she said.
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