California Series: Art Sherman, Part II

In part one, Art Sherman discussed his foundational years as a horseman and trainer. Here, he talks California Chrome, managing injuries and the evolving nature of the industry.

The large, cobwebbed and straw-scattered stall brimmed floor to ceiling with a pirate's bounty of backstretch riches.

Towers of scrubbed feed buckets, a soldier's row of saddle horses stacked high with sheepskin pads and saddles worn thin at the knees, electric fans lacquered with thick dust, patched-up horse blankets chewed at the shoulders, girth sleeves tossed over doors, bridles and martingales and nosebands enough to equip a cavalry, a thick wedge of stall doors like old metal skeletons, Dali-drooped webbings draped here and there, bundles of rope and re-used feed bags and bottles of vitamins.

All Art Sherman's. All for sale. A livelihood on offer to the highest bidder.

It's fitting, then, that the Los Alamitos display case for these items–two stalls knocked into one–was once home to the horse that did more than any other to enrich a training career that is now at an end after more than four decades at the plough.

“I remember when I went back for the Preakness, a lady that breeds horses there–a big breeder in the Maryland industry–she came up to me and said, 'Art, you don't know what you've done for this business. You made people want to stay in it. It's getting to where, all of a sudden, the little guy's getting pushed out. But you came up with a horse that is the people's horse,'” Sherman said, of his two-time Horse of the Year, California Chrome.

“I'm still getting letters. I got a stack of letters the other day thanking me for all the good times. I didn't realize that many people remembered that horse that much, and from all over the world. Unbelievable.”

In spinning the offspring of an $8,000 mare and a stallion with a $2,500 stud fee into a near $15-million money maker, Sherman performed one of the most remarkable–and quite frankly, satisfying–magic acts in racing.

He didn't achieve it through sleight of hand–the smoke and mirrors of a cosseted campaign engineered to produce maximum rewards from the minimum expenditures. “He just loved to train, loved to run, that horse,” Sherman said. Indeed, California Chrome's competitive resume was busier than any other Kentucky Derby winning colt since 1991.

“He just kept getting better and better and better,” Sherman said. “I didn't expect him to blossom like he did–not into a Kentucky Derby-like horse. Not to begin with. But when I started him as a 3-year-old and he kept winning this one, and another, winning them races. Then…”
Aggressively campaigned, certainly, but judiciously handled when it came to his training, keeping the lid on very much the order of the day. “He was a natural type of horse. I tell you, he'd go a minute and change or 1:01 like–he would do anything like that so easy.”

The virtues of Sherman's less-is-more approach to the mornings can be evinced by the way he tossed tradition aside, deciding not to breeze California Chrome after arriving at Churchill Downs in the lead-up to the race.

“Because I know that track is hard and cuppy, I didn't breeze him. And a lot of the other trainers, they said, 'Well, he didn't even work, so we're not afraid of him.' No, really! Hard-boots think you have to work in :59 to be in with a shout [in the Derby]. I had a lot of apologies after that.”

Apologies would have been forthcoming, too, subsequent to the Derby of 1955, after a wet-behind-the-ears Sherman arrived at Churchill Downs with the Californian trainee, Swaps, and a few unusual tricks up his sleeve as the horse's exercise rider.

“They went crazy when we brought Swaps back there because I got on him and figure-eighted him between the barns bareback,” said Sherman, chuckling at the memory. “We'd do that all the time. I'd jump on them and figure-eight them bareback for about 15 minutes the day after working.”

Later that same year, of course, Swaps and Nashua–the horse Swaps held comfortably at bay in the Derby–met in a fabled match-race at Washington Park, a race Sherman maintains his horse should never have competed in.

“He had a hole in his frog. He had a hole in his frog like that,” Sherman said, making a gob-stopper sized circle with his thumb and fore-finger.

“They cleaned out the frog, put iodine on it, put a leather patch on it which made him go sound. But the pressure of that bad track, you know what I mean, the horse I could tell he wasn't happy on it. He was trying to get out a little bit going into his first turn. And in a match race you have to–look, speed horses always win in a match race.”

That Swaps still performed so credibly, said Sherman, was a testament to how much of a “freak” he was. “He was something else. He was a monster.”

Which leads the conversation to the current regulatory environment in California, where heightened veterinary scrutiny is bound and tied with this Gordian knot of a question: When should an issue be ignored and when should it be addressed?

On the one hand, taken as a whole, California's efforts “are better for the horses,” said Sherman. But then, the sometimes binary nature of the official veterinarian's role–either a horse is allowed to run or it's not, for instance–can mean important context that should underpin diagnostic decision-making gets lost.

“Horses can be arthritic. They're crabby. They're old. Don't just scratch him because you took him out the stall and jogged him for 20 feet and say, 'Oh, well, he looks off to me,'” Sherman said, with the frustration of someone who has spent a lifetime watching equine athletes deal with their requisite aches and pains as imaginatively as their human counterparts.

“When you ask them to run for all they've got, you're going to have horses that are going to have problems. All horses are different,” he said, turning memories from his jockey days. “I've never had a crippled horse fall with me. It's the sound ones I always got hurt on, and that's no lie. Sound ones, they don't protect themselves.”

And so, the question evolves into even more of an intangible: How do you manage horses with different pain thresholds?

“I was riding a horse once–brave horse. Bad knees. He had a knee that you could put your foot on, looked like a step stool,” he said. “After he raced, he laid down for three days. Couldn't get up. They would never let you run these horses now.”
Should a horse like that be allowed to run these days?

“Oh Christ, no,” Sherman replied. Still, Sherman wonders how some of his heavy-hitters would fare if running today.

“He always had quarter cracks. He drove me crazy. Had them all the time, all four feet,” Sherman said of Lykatill Hil, his 13-time stakes winner who ran with aplomb for eight consecutive seasons.

“I never ran a horse with four bar shoes–you never hear that. That's the kind of horse he was. He was just that tough. He ran through anything. When you sent him down there and raced him, you got tied on because he was going to run,” he said.

All too often in horses, however, the spirit may be willing, but the frame is often wanting.

“He was so big and massive, when he hit the ground the vibration from the compaction of the dirt, [his hoof] started splitting into little layers.”
By keeping Lykatill Hil's feet on the softer side of hard, Sherman, once more, abjured tradition.

“We would pack him full of mud, keep him like that all day. Tried to keep his foot soft and not brittle, like he could get. His feet just dried out so bad. It was a challenge.”

“I kept him running for a long time,” Sherman added, proudly.

Talk of the longevity–or not–of the average racing career among modern Thoroughbreds leads to an axe that Sherman is keen to put to the round stone.

“We don't have the older horses like we used to–they were the drawing cards,” said Sherman, who knows a thing or two about the magnetic attraction of the horse.

“You can't stop and breed them horses the minute they make X amount of dollars. You've got to keep them around so we can have stars to play with, you know what I mean? You take the football players and the quarterbacks–they're draws. People come to see these people.”

Another “pet peeve”? The rise in recent decades of the numerical super trainer, which he sees as having bought to the role something of a clinical distance.

In explanation, Sherman tells the story of a friend who had a horse with an unnamed trainer on the East Coast.

“The guy went to [Belmont Park] to see his horse and he said, 'Oh, I thought my horse was here.' The trainer said, “Oh no, we shipped him to Jersey. I'll let you know how he's doing.' So, [the trainer] got on the computer. 'Oh yeah, he just galloped and he's doing really well.'”

“My friend, he shook his head when he was talking to me and he says, 'Boy, that hands-on training is no more, is it?' I said, 'No.'”
Sherman took a moment, glanced through the screen over his office door at a shedrow with more empty stalls than horses.

“I love it when I can just go and see my horses, go through and feed them some cookies and look at them and ask the groom, 'How's the temperature? How'd they eat up last night?' This is something that you see less of these days because you can't when you've got 200-300 to command. You can't do that.

“Our era is the Last of the Mohicans almost, you know what I mean? I'm getting to the point where all my friends are gone now. All the trainers I knew and was raised with and everything, that era is gone. So, I'm kind of the last of the old timers,” he said, not with a sense of nostalgia but with a hard pragmatism.

“It's a fun game. I'm going to miss it. I'm going to miss the horses.”

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Sadler Charts Derby Course with Rock Your World

The spoils of victory typically come with a nice polish. Gleaming trophies. Glossy plagues. But not always.

“He offered me an egg roll at Clocker's Corner on Sunday morning,” said trainer John Sadler, on Ron McAnally's act of largesse the day after Rock Your World (Candy Ride {Arg}), the horse the veteran conditioner bred, careened away with the GI Santa Anita Derby.

“It was pretty good, but I don't think it was breakfast food,” Sadler added, tongue firmly in cheek, before explaining that McAnally-who also trained both Rock Your World's sire and dam, Charm the Maker-offered more than just epicurean rewards. “He congratulated me, of course, said what a good job I've done.”

Sadler has known McAnally since his foundling days at the track, when, as veterinary assistant to Jack Robbins, Sadler's second stop during morning rounds was the Hall of Famer. “I've known him my whole career.”

And with Rock Your World maintaining his unbeaten record with such panache in the Santa Anita Derby, Sadler is in an enviable position to check a box that's missing on both men's resumes-a victory in the year's premier classic.

And how has Rock Your World-owned by Hronis Racing (brothers Kosta and Pete) and Michael Talla's Talla Racing-come out of his Derby prep? “He came out of it very well,” Sadler replied. “He looks great.”

Casual observers might have been taken aback by Rock Your World's performance earlier this month. The public's first glimpse of this rangy colt came the very first day of 2021, when he showed speed aplenty in dispatching a field of maidens going six furlongs on the turf with minimum fuss.

His next start-the Pasadena S. over a mile on the turf at Santa Anita towards the end of February-proved something of an expedited university course.

“He did everything wrong in the Pasadena, and he still won,” said Sadler, describing the race as a valuable teaching experience. “It started in the paddock. I could barely get the saddle on him. He just had that second race jitters.”

In the race itself, Rock Your World dwelt coming out of the gates, and at the top of the stretch took a moment or two to get organized before leveling off to win going away.

“After the Pasadena, we went to work a little bit harder on things that weren't working for him. We took him to the gate three times before the Santa Anita Derby, we did extra schooling in the paddock.”

These homework assignments weren't squandered. In the Santa Anita Derby, he was slick out the gates, promptly sent to the lead where he stayed, stretching clear towards the wire.

Much has been written about Rock Your World's germinal starts on the turf, with Sadler saying, for example, that the Pasadena was chosen in part to avoid Bob Baffert's latest phenom, Life is Good, in the GII San Felipe S. at Santa Anita.

“I also wanted to start on the grass because I thought it would be easier,” Sadler said. “He's a big horse-wanted to give him time to develop, grow up, mature into himself. He's done that.”

It helps, of course, that Rock Your World is bred to handle any surface, as Sid Fernando recently pointed out. And in Candy Ride, Sadler has a sire as familiar as a glance in the mirror. He trained the stallion's second ever top-flight winner-Evita Argentina, who claimed the 2009 La Brea S.-and has done arguably more than any trainer to embellish the sire's record at stud.

With just three starts, all within his 3-year-old season, Rock Your World has the sort of comet-like profile that until recently would have faced skeptical glances. Mind, it took 126 years for Justify to mimic Apollo's feat of winning the Derby without a 2-year-old start, and Sadler will be the first to admit Rock Your World's education is far from complete.

“He doesn't have a ton of seasoning. No question about that-it's a concern,” he admitted. “But I'm happy where I'm at, and it's one of those things you can't do much about.”

And how will he handle the rough-and-tumble of the Derby, kick-back an' all? “That's a hard question-you won't really know until it happens. We'll see where we draw. Who knows.”

But if inexperience is a mountain to climb, good temperament is the tool most useful to the task.

“He's lovely in the barn-on the track he's all business,” said Sadler, ticking off like a report card a string of desirable traits in a student: “Does whatever you want. Willing worker. Pretty nice horse to train. Good energy.”

“I'm doing it just the way I want to this year”

The support the Hronis Brothers have given Sadler the last decade or so has, like a gusty sea-breeze filling the sails, propelled the Sadler barn into rarely chartered waters, during which time, the California mainstay has secured a number of notable milestones:

First Breeders' Cup victory (Accelerate in the 2018 Classic), first GI Pacific Classic (Accelerate in 2018), first GI Santa Anita “Big Cap” H. (Accelerate in 2008, with Gift Box and Combatant repeating the dose in subsequent years).

Such contemporary accolades obscure what has been a career forged upon the anvil of consistency. Sadler enjoyed his first graded stakes victory in 1982, when Don Roberto won the GIII Rolling Green H. at Golden Gate Fields. Since then, he's sent out a further 172 graded stakes winners.

Given the trainer's longevity and stature, it's perhaps startling to think he's had only four prior starters in the nation's most famous race. But then again, consistency in horse racing can't be found among those who see in their horses children of exceptional talents.

“We've never been ones to force it,” Sadler said. “I've never really had a 3-year-old that I've said, 'okay, he's not that great, I'm going to try to get us some cheap points.'”

Thus far of Sadler's Derby four, the first shot flew the farthest. “We actually ran really well,” said Sadler, of his 1993 Derby runner-the Allen Paulson-owned Corby who finished 6th to Sea Hero in the Paul Mellon silks.

“Even though he didn't win, he ran a really good race,” said Sadler of Corby. “He loomed up at the quarter pole, looked a pretty good threat, and just got beat by better horses. It was a lot of fun.”

The next three attempts were less salutary, however. In 2010, the heavens opened before Line of David and Sidney's Candy's Derby bids, leaving them stuck in the mud. Four years later, Candy Boy “got wiped out at the first eighth of a mile,” said Sadler.

What have these prior experiences taught Sadler of the Churchill Downs gauntlet? “A lot can happen is what I've learned,” he said.

“I know one thing about the Derby-run in it a few times, watched it every year-you can't force it. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen. I'm not going to waste energy making myself crazy on what post we get-we'll deal with all the circumstances as they come up,” he said.

“I'm relaxed right now, but I'm not saying I'll be [relaxed] the week of the race.” What helps, he said, is that this year, “I'm doing it just the way I want, which is with a leading contender.”

Between now and that first Saturday in May, Rock Your World's preparations will have a distinctly California-flavor. “It's a program that works,” he said, alluding to other Derby winners-Giacomo, California Chrome, the Baffert stars-that arrived in Kentucky sporting bronzed winter tans.

Rock Your World is scheduled to work this weekend and again a week prior the race, before flying out the Sunday before.

“I'm very strong about staying in California because we know one thing we have here that they don't have there: We're not going to get rain in April,” he said.

“But maybe the racing gods will knock me down for saying that,” Sadler added, giving his wooden desk-positioned with an unimpeded view of the shed-row-a rap of his knuckles.

A little superstition can't hurt, therefore, even after a career that has brought more than the usual haul of trophies-egg rolls included.

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The California Series: John Shirreffs

In a new TDN series, we curry lessons and wise counsel from veteran Californian figures who, like gold nuggets panned from the Tuolomne River in the High Sierras, have unearthed career riches on arguably the toughest circuit in the States. We begin this series with John Shirreffs.

Born at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Shirreffs was raised around horses on his family farm, and was deployed to Vietnam with the Marine Corps before embarking on a career in racing, using a 10-year stint at the Loma Rica Horse Ranch in Northern California as a springboard to a training career that would see him sift one of the rarest jewels of all.

Part I

Amid the tall spiking pines and jutting mountain cathedrals of Northern California's Grass Valley back when the sprawling Loma Rica Horse Ranch still hummed with activity and where the transatlantic phenom Noor would later be interred–to haunt the barns, some say–one stubborn son-of-a-gun yearling colt gave a young John Shirreffs an abject lesson in obstinance.

“He's in the stall rearing up and striking and I can't get the bridle on him,” said Shirreffs, remembering the scene from the safe hindsight of some five decades. The memory remains sharp, however.

Rolling up his sleeves, the young Shirreffs sniffed a challenge, which quickly turned from a wily game of wits into a war of muscle. He jumped on the colt bareback. He grabbed his ears. “We're having this Battle Royale.”

After a fashion, though, Shirreffs waved the white flag and with ego deflated turned to Henry Freitas, the farm's storied manager, for pointers on a less adversarial approach.
“Henry said, 'John, just stop all the B.S. Just go down the stall and put the bridle on the horse and quit all that crap you're doing.'”

Shirreffs was unimpressed. “I'm walking down the shedrow thinking to myself, 'what kind of help was that?'” Still, the relationship between pupil and master was one of deference to experience–decades worth, in the case of Freitas–and so, Shirreffs dutifully obliged.

“I went in the stall, put the bridle on the horse–the horse never moved. It was over.”

And what was the main takeaway? “The value of a timeout with horses,” he replied. “When you're caught up in the moment and things aren't working out, the best thing to do is just stop and give yourself and the horse a chance to have a moment of thought to recover.”

Shirreffs after the Breeders' Cup Distaff with Zenyatta | Sarah Andrew

Shirreffs imparted the story one recent morning in his office at Santa Anita, the nearby San Gabriel Mountains draped in a cold, grey drizzle like a soggy blanket, as the veteran trainer reflected on a 45-year career looped into which is a Kentucky Derby win and multiple Breeders' Cups and the sort of horse in Zenyatta (Street Cry {Ire}) that comes along about as often as Halley's Comet.

This nugget of barn-spun wisdom also provides a useful barometer of the trainer's evolution as a horseman, familiar sounding to anyone long enough in the tooth to know that any career with racehorses is akin to a college course without end.

“When I was younger, I could dominate a horse, right? I could handle them pretty well through strength. But as I got older, horses started getting a lot stronger than I was. Most of them were starting to outsmart me. So, I learned over the years what a mental game it is.”

Indeed, from a world in which the economics of high-level competition has sprouted large military-run outfits–those where routine and repetition are bywords for necessity and thrift–the Shirreffs barn offers a refreshing alternative, where morning training is approached with the same certitude of an explorer setting foot on virgin terrain.

But while Cook and Columbus had in the North Star their guiding light, Shirreffs has for his something altogether more fluid and transactional.

“It's always about building the bond,” said Shirreffs, focusing in on what appears a central conceit of his.

“You have to build a bond between the horse and the person. I have to find a way where that horse has trust in whoever's handling him or doing something with them. So, it's always about the bond, because if that horse trusts the groom or trusts the person with them, then they will behave much better than if all they're thinking about is being nervous, being anxious about what's coming next.”

Big range of emotions

Wander down any shedrow and you'll hear horse behavior equated with everything from wayward teens to recalcitrant spouses to loving sweethearts. This isn't new–the instinct to anthropomorphize is as ancient as civilization itself.

What's unusual is to hear any trainer–especially those operating within the upper echelons of a sport where a business degree can sometimes feel like the most instructive qualification–talk of the complex emotional bandwidth of a racehorse, as Shirreffs does.

The foundations of this clearly stem from those early days under Freitas at Loma Rica Ranch, a 600-acre university for horsemanship, home as it was to stallion and mare, yearling and breaker, lay-up and foal.

“I think somebody should spend an hour in the stall with a stud, just to understand the range of emotion that an animal can have,” he said. “Sometimes, the thing that amazes me about horses is how much they are willing to communicate and how much they're studying us.

It's a matter of getting to know your horse: Shirreffs with Giacomo | Horsephotos

He added, “You have to realize that they are trying to make their environment as good as they can. And we are the biggest thing in their environment that they have to control. Right?” he added. “We're the ones that could endanger them. So, obviously they're studying what type of a relationship they're going to have with us.”

Like all relationships, the means define the ends. Of course, when it comes to understanding quirks and foibles, there are few substitutes for patience. “It's a matter of getting to know your horse,” he said.

“It's fun to watch the horses to pick up on their habits–I have the time to do that, when the work gets done and everyone's gone to lunch, I have that opportunity, when it's quiet, to watch the horses and see how they're behaving, see what's different about one or the other.”

This, he says, is particularly instructive to the early diagnosis of injury–arguably the biggest culprit of sleepless nights among insomniac license-holders.

“Horses are very stoic, right? You don't have an obvious sense of what's bothering them in the beginning [of injury], before there's any heat or any inflammation or anything like that,” he explained. “But how he eats is a good indication of how he's feeling, not only emotionally but also physically.

“Even then, by the time you notice that something's going on, he's probably been dealing with pain for probably quite some time.”

Such close scrutiny of behavior feeds into what he terms the “bio-rhythm” of a horse–the idea that a racehorse can be brought to peak performance only when, like a maestro vigilant of each section of the orchestra, they're mentally, physically and emotionally in balance.

“You have to figure out how to get things flowing together,” Shirreffs explained. “So, when they're physically at their peak they might not be mentally at their peak because you've trained them really hard, but mentally they're tired or emotionally they're off–you know, upset about being pushed so hard.

He continued, “So, you're going to have to lose a little bit of conditioning maybe to bring them up mentally and emotionally, right? It's always: How close you can get everything?

“That's the one great thing about campaigning a horse, because when they're campaigning they're conditioning–they're physically staying at a pretty high level. And as they campaign, and as they get used to the rigors of racing and training, mentally they're getting stronger, too. And then, if there's some sort of pleasure involved–some sort of reward for the horse–then they're emotionally getting better.

“So, it's all a question of balancing these three different things.”

The real pleasure a trainer gets

In those early days at Loma Rica Horse Ranch, Freitas came down with a nasty bout of flu, giving Shirreffs an early glimpse into the peculiar juggling act that operating a barn necessitates. Though perhaps baptism of fire would be more apropos.

“I knew the routine, right? I knew how everything ran. So, I was fine for about two or three days because I knew exactly what Henry would do.

“But suddenly, after about three or four days, I had to make new decisions based on ones I made a couple of days ago. That's when I got into trouble because I didn't have Henry to ask.”

Now, many an analogy befits a well-run stable, all shaped around a certain triangular hierarchy–an ant colony, for example, of an aforementioned branch of the military.

It's instructive then to hear Shirreffs explain the roles he's carved out for him and staff.

“I don't really need to know veterinary medicine, right? I don't need to know the name of drugs, all that kind of stuff,” he said. “[Veterinarians], they go to school, they know that. But I can learn what the shoer does, right? I can watch what they do.

“I can feel legs, and the difference between one leg and another and study those things. I can watch the horse and see if he's acting colicky or a little upset because of something else going on. So, I thought in the beginning that was where I would best spend my time to become a better trainer.”

Part of that process of self-evaluation has involved holding a mirror to his own failings–his own Achilles heels-as typified, for example, in the way he has, at times, placed individuals in charge of identifying soft tissue injuries.

“As a trainer, you go in and you're checking behind the saddle, but I'm always thinking it doesn't feel too bad because I want to train that horse, right? I have to have somebody put the brakes on. I have to have my own sort of checks and balances.”

At the same time, “You can't put demands on people, right? Because I think a certain way, and I react a certain way, I can't demand that other person be like me and react the way I would react.

“Let's take the exercise rider or jockey or whatever, you have to understand where they are [ability wise], what are their strong points and how you can best use them to accomplish what you need to accomplish with the horse.”

In an industry that often calibrates professional achievement and pleasure through the narrow aperture of race-day honors, it's refreshing, then, to hear someone no stranger to laurel wreath and garland talk of their other important metrics of success.

“It's so difficult to win a race–in California, especially. So somewhere along the way, if you're going to be in this business, you have to derive some pleasure from somewhere else, right?
“So, the real pleasure a trainer gets is seeing the growth in the horse. Or having somebody, like a rider, start to develop and understand his relationship with the horse, see what impact that person can make on how that horse is going to handle the stresses of racing.

“It's really a pleasure when you suddenly see a guy realize that if he didn't pull on this horse so hard and just kind of released the reins a little bit, the horse starts to relax. He realizes, 'Oh, it's not all muscle, it's a little bit of a finesse.'

“I think those are really fun things.”

Part II of this story will run in next week's TDN.

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