As a kid growing up in the Midwest, I'd entertain myself during the long winter months memorizing pitching and batting statistics for Major League Baseball players.
Trainer Leonard Powell had a similar hobby during his childhood in France. Except, instead of baseball players, Powell and his brother memorized pedigrees of important horses, or commit to memory every runner – including sire and dam – and where they finished in major races like the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp.
Decades later, those mental exercises are paying off for Powell, who is quietly and steadily ascending the trainer rankings on the Southern California circuit. In 2022, the 46-year-old won five graded stakes with four different runners and his 32 victories overall and $2,131,523 in earnings represented his best year to date.
Powell got off to a quick start at the Del Mar summer meet, winning three races from seven starters opening weekend. Anisette, a Great Britain-bred 3-year-old filly by Awtaad, was the stable star, winning the Grade 2 San Clemente Stakes impressively, drawing away from her 13 rivals by 2 ½ lengths under jockey Umberto Rispoli. Owned by Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, Anisette is unbeaten in her two U.S. stars this year after winning one of three in England as a 2-year-old. She will be pointed to the Del Mar Oaks on Aug. 19, a race that gave Powell his first Grade 1 victory in 2018 with French-bred Fatale Bere.
Like Fatale Bere and Anisette, many of Powell's best runners are European imports whose bloodlines trace back to those he memorized in the late 1980s and '90s.
“It's helped me quite a bit when I get horses from Europe,” Powell said. “When I look at prospects I know some of the first or second dams and always look at their traits – horses that did well on firm ground or had speed.”
This fascination with pedigrees and the traits of horses was passed on to Powell by his late father, David Powell, a U.S. citizen who was a man of the world by virtue of his own pedigree. David Powell's mother was a Jewish woman who fled Nazi Germany before World War II. His father was a U.S. citizen who worked at the U.S. Consulate in Argentina. David Powell was born in Buenos Aires as an American because of his father's citizenship.
The Powells eventually moved to the United States, but the marriage didn't last and David Powell went with his mother when she returned to her native Germany. There he began taking horse riding instructions from a native of France who would become his step-father. At the stables he met a young Frenchman whose father was a diplomat in Berlin; his name was Andre Fabre, who would go on to a legendary career training Thoroughbreds in France.
But it wasn't Fabre who influenced David Powell to move to France and embark on a career in Thoroughbred racing and breeding. After Powell moved with his family back to the U.S. he met another Frenchman, the famed Daily Racing Form cartoonist Pierre Bellocq, better known throughout the racing world as PEB, who convinced David Powell – then a student at Columbia University in New York – to move to France to learn more about the industry.
David Powell wore many hats: racing journalist, breeder, owner, racing manager, and trainer. He attended bloodstock sales around the world and took meticulous notes on every horse he saw go through the ring. Those notes on conformation and personality traits went onto index cards that became part of a voluminous library of pedigree and racing information at the Powell home in Normandy.
It was on the family's farm that young Leonard and his siblings learned the value of hard work. “We were raised with expectations,” Powell said. “When you're raised on a farm, it's very important to be there when needed.”
After high school, David Powell encouraged his son to hold off on college and instead set him up working for trainer Richard Mandella in California. It was a move that's had a long-lasting influence on Powell's career.
“I was 18 when I worked for Mandella, so I was very much a blank page,” he said. “He has a strong work ethic and is very rigorous. He really pays attention to details.”
Powell maintains a relatively small stable (usually 25-30 horses), which allows him to be hands on with his horses.
“During morning training it's important to stay very focused, because that's when you catch the small details that make a difference,” he said.
Following his 18 months with Mandella, he returned to France and served a compulsory term with the French army.
“And then I did a bit of university to make my mom happy,” he said with a laugh.
Following school, Powell took on another apprenticeship, this time working for John Hawkes in Australia, where he said trainers really push their horses hard to get them fit, but then give them time off periodically. “They treat the horses a bit like elastic bands,” he said. “You pull and give, pull and give, so it doesn't break.”
Late in 2003, Powell set up shop in Southern California with a handful of horses. He went over a year before recording his first win in March 2005, but patience has been the trainer's strong suit. Powell recorded his first graded stakes win in 2008, but his breakthrough came with the California-bred gelding Soi Phet, which he claimed for $16,000 at Hollywood Park in May 2013.
Soi Phet ran off four consecutive victories for his new connections, then ran third behind Mucho Macho Man while making his stakes debut in the Grade 1 Awesome Again Stakes. The popular gelding never could secure a graded stakes victory, but he'd win another 10 races for Powell from 2013 to 2019, retiring at age 11 with just over $1 million in earnings.
“Soi Phet was the horse that put me at a higher level,” Powell said. “It gave confidence to owners that we could do a good job with good horses. He won stakes on dirt, turf, and synthetic.”
How did Soi Phet remain sound and competitive in stakes competition for so long?
“We gave him breaks every year, about six weeks off at a farm,” Powell said. “We didn't wait for an injury or for something to go wrong.”
Powell said it's not always easy to convince owners that horses may need time off when they're going in good form, but that it's the right thing to do for the long-term benefit of the horse.
Married with three daughters, Powell said the days are long during the Del Mar meet, but the family takes advantage of the seaside location, spending time on the beach when time allows.
“I like getting on boogie boards and riding the waves with my daughters,” he said. “The races don't start until two o'clock, so you really get a chance to enjoy family time.”
When it comes time to celebrate victories like last weekend's San Clemente, it's usually a quiet family dinner at home with a “nice bottle of wine,” Powell said.
“Racing days end late in Del Mar,” he added. “By the time the horse is cooled out in can be 8:30 at night, and the alarm still goes on at 3:45 the next morning.”
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