A recent vacation in Manchester, Vt., by the writer and his wife led to a pleasant meeting with retired jockey Kenny Pruden, one of New England's best riders during the halcyon days when there were six Thoroughbred racetracks running throughout the region. A passionate rider during his career, Kenny was just as determined to meet with a visitor (your humble correspondent) who, with no cell service, couldn't find his residence in the woods of tiny Pownal, Vt.
“Look for my maroon car with the flashers on along Route 7,” Kenny told me over a land line held by the nice woman in charge of the local post office.
Now a spry 82, the trim Mr. Pruden still has the eye of a competitor and is as fit as the proverbial fiddle. He looks like he could still work a set in the morning for any trainer in America.
Kenny Pruden at home in Vermont
Kenneth Gene Pruden was born in 1938 in Albert Lea, Minn., a town just north of the Iowa state line. He was one of eight children (five brothers, two sisters) born to his farm family parents John and Helen. The children were small in stature like their mother, but none lacked for work ethic, key to any agricultural success. While Kenny thrived on the farm – he was a member of the Future Farmers of America (FFA) – by his own frank admission he was a “bad actor” prone to finding trouble in school.
After getting expelled from the local high school, he transferred to one in Alta, Iowa, from which he graduated. From there he roamed around county fairs in Iowa and Minnesota trying his hand at various endeavors, including driving in chuck wagon races. When he was 21, a farmer offered Kenny a chance to ride one of his horses in a county fair race. With borrowed tack, wearing a football helmet, and despite losing an iron, the young tyro grabbed a handful of mane and won the race. Out of a purse of $1,000, the winning rider earned all of $10 and a $2 “stake.”
Driving a 1949 Studebaker that barely ran (and in which he often slept), Kenny worked for a trainer with a serious drinking problem at Raceway Park in Toledo, Ohio. After doing all the work as a trainer, groom and exercise rider, Kenny was rewarded by getting fired. Undeterred, the itinerant rider-to-be galloped horses at Waterford Park (now Mountaineer Park) and defunct Wheeling Downs in West Virginia before ending up in South Florida where the “weather suited his clothes” as the song goes. There, he witnessed first-hand the ugly segregation of the deep South with separate restaurants and public facilities for “whites only” and “colored,” an experience he said he never forgot.
After almost being selected by the famous cosmetics queen Elizabeth Arden to ride her stable's horses at Hialeah Park as her first-call apprentice jockey, Kenny headed to Rockingham Park in Salem, N.H., a fortuitous move. There, at the prettiest racetrack in all of New England, Kenny finally rode in his first recognized race — and found himself in the starting gate next to a horse with Bill Shoemaker in the saddle. The “Shoe” was in town to ride several mounts throughout the track's “Futurity Day.” (Kenny finished a respectable fourth in the race.)
In 1963, when the new Green Mountain Park racetrack opened in Pownal, Vt., (the writer's grandfather, Leo O'Donnell, was one of the stewards), the ambitious Mr. Pruden was ready and pounced. Over the course of that picturesque racetrack's short 14-year lifespan (it closed in 1976), Kenny led the riders' standings for nearly all of that oval's spring, summer and fall meetings. His agent during those years was his older brother, Jerry, who later became an assistant trainer for some prominent outfits, and who hustled rides from local trainers like Leo H. Veitch, brother of Hall of Fame trainer Sylvester Veitch and uncle of Hall of Fame trainer John Veitch. Team Pruden competed with much success all over New England and at Penn National, Finger Lakes and other racetracks. They spent the winter months at Florida Downs, later renamed Tampa Bay Downs.
Pruden with Green Mountain general manager Vincent Bartimo
According to Equibase and Daily Racing Form's American Racing Manual, in a career that lasted over 34 years, Kenny won 1,416 races from 11,004 mounts for total purse money earned of $2,168,876. Those stats don't include many winners he rode at the fairs in Massachusetts — Berkshire Downs, Northhampton, and Brockton Fair among others.
Later in his career, Kenny rode first call for Kentucky trainer Jerry Romans, father of Eclipse Award-winning trainer Dale Romans. Kenny still gets excited talking about the mount he rode in the Debutante Stakes on the 1978 Kentucky Derby Day card at Churchill Downs in front of 131,004 fans. (The Derby was won that year by the Triple Crown winner Affirmed.) Dale Romans, although quite young at the time, remembers Kenny very well saying that he and Kenny's brother Jerry, an assistant trainer for Dale's father, “were good racetrack people who practically raised me. Kenny rode long enough that he eventually rode for me when I got my trainer's license.”
Green Mountain publicity photo shows fellow jockeys trying to cool off the red-hot Pruden
Kenny's most cherished memory of his New England riding career is the day he met Dolores Ianelli, the sister of jockey — and good friend — Frank Ianelli. Despite being stood up by Dolores on their first date, the determined suitor (that would be Kenny) persevered and true love eventually triumphed as it usually does. After winning three races at Green Mountain on June 20, 1964, the track's betrothed leading rider hopped in his car and sped to Cranston, R.I., where he and Dolores were married. In a 1/1A entry that has lasted 57 years, the Prudens have a son, Ken, and a daughter, Deborah, and two grandchildren, all of whom live nearby in southern Vermont.
Counting himself extremely lucky that in some 30 spills during his riding career, he never broke a bone, Kenny lives out his retirement helping his beloved Dolores through some health issues and occasionally traveling to his Minnesota hometown to see his siblings. As his legion of family, friends, and racing fans would agree, it's been a remarkable, well-lived life for Kenneth Gene Pruden, the undisputed king of the little racetrack they built in the foothills of the Vermont Green Mountains.
Bob Heleringer is a Louisville, Ky., attorney, former racing official and former Kentucky state Representative who, from 1970-1974, worked at Rockingham Park.
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