Tag: People

Throughout the 2022 – 2023 meet at Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots, Reylu Gutierrez, Jareth Loveberry, and James Graham have been at the top of jockey colony, battling for the riding title.

With 14 race cards left in the meet, Gutierrez leads all with 59 wins. Loveberry has won 46 races but is sidelined for at least another week with a hairline fracture in his fibula. The four-time Fair Grounds title-winner James Graham has 46 as well, and though not impossible, he would need to rack up several multi-win days to overtake Gutierrez.

Gutierrez is so close to winning his first jockey title he can smell it. He made a big splash in the racing world early on as an apprentice at Aqueduct, and was a finalist for an Eclipse Award as outstanding apprentice jockey. After moving his tack to the Kentucky and Fair Grounds circuit and a full six years in the saddle, he still needs something he can hang his hat on and a riding title could be just that.

Talking with the 27-year-old son of longtime Finger Lakes trainer Luis Gutierrez, there are two things that drive Reylu on a daily basis: winning for every barn on the Fair Grounds backside and developing as a rider.

“Jose (Santos, agent) sent me the stall list before the meet started and he gave me a set of names we were trying to ride for, and I looked at that stall list quite a bit,” Gutierrez said. “I try to have that approach of winning for everybody. Jose told me before the meet that we have an opportunity to (to win the title), and that we were going to stay here more this year than last year.”

Both Gutierrez and Loveberry proved their mettle in 2021 – 2022, their first season riding at Fair Grounds. Gutierrez finished fifth by wins with 51 and Loveberry finished 9th with 36. With the closing of Arlington Park, Loveberry, supported by his longtime agent Steve “The Architect” Leving, has had to prove himself in the eyes of new trainers and owners. On the other hand, Gutierrez arrived at Fair Grounds with a key player in his corner, Bret Calhoun.

“Obviously my biggest supporter is Bret (Calhoun),” Gutierrez said. “He's had a great year, and I feed off of Bret, and I've been lucky to ride the majority of Bret's horses.”

Calhoun has led the trainer standings for the majority of the meet. As of Wednesday, March 8, the barn has 31 wins behind Brad Cox's 32.

“(Gutierrez and Santos) came down here with that mentality (to try to win the title),” Calhoun said. “But we don't talk much about it. I think jocks are more interested in it than trainers. Rey's young, up-and-coming, aggressive, and I think that's on his mind.”

While riding for Calhoun amounts for approximately half of Gutierrez' wins, the rest prove the hustle has paid off, winning for a host of different trainers.

“I've won for Steve (Asmussen), Brendan Walsh, Ron (Faucheux)–there are a lot of other barns who have supported me and I'm grateful for it,” Gutierrez said. “Being here for my second year and meeting the locals more, like Courtney Dandridge, Joe Duhon, Shane Wilson–these are people who are giving me a chance this year that I didn't get a chance to ride for last year.”

A lot of the horses Gutierrez brought home last year were overlooked by the bettors, but this meet is different. His mounts are live, and if not the favorite in the morning line, at post time it's a different story.

“Part of my development this meet has been to carry those expectations that come with being the favorite in a lot of races,” Gutierrez said. “To manage that, and be better every day and hold myself accountable to get the job done.”

Gutierrez has been successful developing as a rider and diversifying the barns he rides for, and if he earns the title because of it, he knows there's people in his corner who would be more excited than him.

“It would mean a lot to my family, and my dad especially,” Gutierrez said. “I think he would be extremely proud of it, especially when he goes to the simulcast room at Fingers Lakes. My dad has always wanted that but I don't necessarily think about it every day.”

On the other hand, both Jareth Loveberry and James Graham are deep into their riding careers and have the titles to back up their talents. If Loveberry comes out on top, it would be his first title at Fair Grounds, but the seventh of his 19-year career, having won two each at Arlington Park, Hawthorne, and Mountaineer, and one at Canterbury Park.

“For me, it is one day, one race at a time,” Loveberry said. “Don't get me wrong, (winning the title) would be awesome, but we're not aiming for it. That's not what motivates me every morning. It's not what drives me. It would be cool to have my name in the history of Fair Grounds, like at Arlington, they can't take that away from me.”

When Loveberry won his first title at Mountaineer in 2012, he had to beat out Deshawn Parker who had been the leading rider by wins across North America in 2010 and 2011. Parker sits 19th all-time with 6,103 wins, and is also in the middle of his second successful season based at Fair Grounds.

“My goal has always been just to win races,” Loveberry said. “I was the first rider to beat Deshawn (Parker) at Mountaineer in years. I wasn't aiming for it. People told me I had a shot and I just wasn't worried about it. My goal at that time was to get to 200 wins on the year. If I got to 200, then the rest would take care of itself.”

James Graham has four Fair Grounds' riding titles to his name, but with 1,323 career wins at the local track, he has something bigger in mind than a fifth title.

“My motivation is to be the all-time leading rider,” Graham said. “I know I'm not very far back from Ronald Ardoin and Robby Albarado. Before I retire I'd like to be the all-time leading rider. It wasn't the plan when I set out, but when it came to my attention a couple years ago, it became my goal to not only get there but for my record to never be equaled again.”

For now, it is Gutierrez leading the pack at the top of the homestretch; anyone else would have to pull off a Zenyatta-like closing effort to catch him.

The post Fair Grounds: ‘Up-And-Coming’ Jockey Reylu Gutierrez Closing In On First Riding Title appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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A forgotten racehorse trainer who was the first woman in the UK to be issued with a training licence in 1886 is to have a race at The QIPCO Guineas Festival renamed in her honour, The Jockey Club announced Wednesday, March 8 – International Women's Day.

Ellen Chaloner (nee Osborne), who died aged 98, made history by being the first woman to be granted a training permit following the death of her Derby-winning jockey and trainer husband Tom in 1886, some 80 years before the High Court gave female racehorse trainers legal recognition.

Ellen applied for permission to train the family's string of horses herself, at which time she also had seven young children to look after. When the request was granted by The Jockey Club, then the regulator and governing body for racing, it marked a significant point in the history of the sport.

The pioneering trainer went on to have a number of successes, including at Royal Ascot when her filly Jersey Lily won the Triennial Stakes in 1887.

Though there are gaps in Ellen's history, her family, along with historians Dr. Esther Harper and Tim Cox, have pieced together much of what her life looked like. Daughter of racehorse trainer Johnny Osborne Sr, Ellen's brother Johnny Jnr was a 12-time Classic-winning jockey who had won the Derby in 1869.

She passed away in 1944 having outlived all seven of her children.

Ellen Chaloner has laid in an unmarked grave in Newmarket Cemetery since her death, with much of her extraordinary life story unrecorded and forgotten with the passage of time.

But now, thanks to a campaign launched by her descendants and supported by The Jockey Club, the “First Lady of the Turf” will have her name deservedly etched into the history books.

At an event hosted at The Jockey Club Rooms in Newmarket on March 6 to commemorate Ellen ahead of International Women's Day, it was announced that the trailblazing trainer's contribution to the sport would be marked with the permanent renaming of a race on QIPCO 2000 Guineas Day, Saturday, May 6.

The campaign has also enabled the purchase of two new headstones to mark where Ellen and other members of the Chaloner family are buried in Newmarket Cemetery, and will make a contribution to Women In Racing's Bursary Fund to support the professional development of women working in racing today.

Ellen's family travelled from all corners of the United Kingdom and Ireland to attend the occasion, where a special episode of Stephen Wallis' podcast, The Paddock and the Pavillion, was recorded in front of a live audience.

Among those in attendance was retired Irish Champion Jump Jockey Charlie Swan, Ellen's great-great grandson, who said: “When I started riding my mum kept telling me that my great-great grandmother and father used to ride and train horses, but it sort of went over my head a little bit when I was that age. I didn't really think about it.

“It's only in the last few years that I suddenly realised where my riding talents probably came from.”

Swan added: “It's fantastic that Ellen is getting some recognition and hopefully we'll make it there on the day.”

During the event to honour Ellen's place in the history of British Racing, a portrait was unveiled which will be on display at Newmarket's Rowley Mile racecourse.

Osborne House, where Ellen trained, is now home to longstanding trainer Sir Mark Prescott who attended the event and commented: “She was a remarkable woman and she lived in some style. Osborne House, which is there and named after the family, has 10 bedrooms and the cellars are massive.”

He added: “I'm very proud of her. I always tell everybody when they look round at the stables.”

Susie Wilks, Ellen's great granddaughter was also interviewed during the podcast and said: “She was a very formidable lady but very deaf in her later years – my mother used to say it was always quite embarrassing having conversations with her because most of the racecourse could hear!

“I believe when she was in her later years and in a wheelchair, the racecourse built a plinth for her so she could watch the racing from there.

“We are all very grateful to The Jockey Club and everyone who has made all this possible. It is very humbling and an honour to have a race named after her, especially on QIPCO 2000 Guineas Day.”

Gay Kelleway, the Newmarket trainer who was the first female jockey to ever win a race at Royal Ascot in 1987, said: “It is fantastic and it's not just an ordinary race, It's on Guineas Day and it's a race for filles, so it is very appropriate.

“To name a race after her is a great privilege and we mustn't lose our heritage in horse racing, particularly in Newmarket.”

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With a strong and passionate commitment to Texas Thoroughbred racing, trainers Mindy Willis and Karen Jacks have risen in the ranks to become two of the state's most prominent trainers. Both are currently in the top six in the standings for wins during this year's Thoroughbred race meet at Sam Houston Race Park.

Willis' 14 wins place her in fourth in the Sam Houston standings, while Jacks is tied for sixth with 10 wins. Ahead of them in victories this meet are the powerful stables of J.R. Caldwell, Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen and Bret Calhoun.

Willis and Jacks not only both won a stakes on Sam Houston's Texas Preview Day on Feb. 18, but each also took second in those wins with a stablemate out of the same mare as the winner.

The Willis-trained odds-on favorite Sunlit Song captured the $75,000 Houston Turf Stakes by three lengths over Truly Danzig. Owned by Carolyn Barnett and Becky Harding, both geldings are out of the Early Flyer mare Fly So True. Sunlit Song was sired by the deceased Valor Farm stallion My Golden Song, with Truly Danzig a son of Etesaal, a $1 million yearling by the legendary sire Danzig.

Three races later, Jacks went 1-2 in the $75,000 Miss Bluebonnet Turf as the 4-year-old filly Imaluckycharm held off her favored stablemate and 6-year-old half-sister No Mas Tequila, who had swept Sam Houston and Lone Star Park's four-stakes series for Texas-breds in 2022. Both horses are out of the Street Boss mare Foxy Boss, with Carl Moore's Imaluckycharm by My Golden Song and James Sills' No Mas Tequila by the late Northern Afleet.

All four horses are expected to run in Sam Houston's Texas Champions Day on March 25.

“Would I love to be a leading trainer at some point in my life? Sure,” said Willis, who began training in 1982. “But it's not something that fixates in my brain. Just being up there, and being a woman in the standings, I'd like to be a consistent fixture wherever I try to run. Like when people look through the form and go, 'Well, you got Asmussen, got Calhoun, got Caldwell and then you got Mindy' — … a force to be reckoned with. That's all I want. I don't want them to blow me off, 'Oh, she never wins.' I'm just real serious about my horses.”

Jacks, who is married to veterinarian Dean Jacks, started her Texas-based stable in 2011 with just a couple of horses she owned. Today she trains 44, the most of her career, including about a dozen for prominent owner Carl Moore.

“When we were first getting our feet wet, we'd think, 'Hey, we beat (Karl) Broberg.' Or 'we beat Asmussen.' We were all proud of ourselves,” Karen Jacks said. “But we don't really look at it that way now. It's such a big job, you don't have time to look at it. Whenever you get five minutes and you're having a margarita or something you might go, 'Hey, look. We made it into the standings! This is cool! Look who we're next to! Isn't that fun?' For about a day, then it goes back down to 12th or something. When it's all over, yeah, you can turn around and say, 'OK, we're progressing. That's good.'

“We just kind of do our thing day to day, put them where they belong, keep them happy. That's really a full-time job.”

Texas legislation helped spark career-best seasons

Willis has won 40 races and more than $1 million in purses each of the past two years, career-bests for earnings. That also coincides with increased purses in Texas thanks to state lawmakers in 2019 creating the Horse Industry Escrow Account (HIEA), with revenue derived from taxes on
horse-related products channeled into supporting racing and breeding.

“That really helped us a lot,” Willis said. “Boy, there were no more appreciative people than the horsemen. We buy a lot of feed and hay and grain. Anything agriculture that we use for our horses, we are getting that back. It was like a big sigh of relief. It really helped supplement our purses. People kind of stopped breeding in Texas for a while. With this, people started breeding back.”

Jacks had a career-best 2022 with 28 wins — six coming in stakes — and just shy of $1 million in purses. She said the legislation did what it was supposed to do in improving racing.

“The state-bred purse money helps a lot,” she said. “When you go up against the Texas-bred 3-year-olds this year, there are so many good ones. It's not easy.”

Mindy Willis: A very patient trainer – and so are her owners

Willis grew up in Southern California, the daughter of Grade 1-winning trainer Barney Willis, for whom she worked as an assistant before opening her own stable in 1982 with three horses owned by her dad's client Sam Roffe.

“I got my trainer's license when I was 18,” she said. “I went training on my own in '82 at Longacres (then a prominent track in Washington). I was very fortunate that my dad was a good trainer and I got to be around guys like Charlie Whittingham and Noble Threewitt, a lot of really good trainers I could watch and learn from, (Laz) Barrera. You become a sponge.

“One of the things I decided is that I am a very patient trainer, and you have to have the same type of owners, people who are willing to give horses time to develop and grow up. I don't push 2-year-olds much. I really liked the way Charlie Whittingham trained. He developed older horses, got them to where they were at their best at 4, 5, 6, 7. I watched how he got horses ready to run off of workouts for long races. You have this mental memory bank that you try to see what works and what doesn't work.

“The first two horses I started I won,” she continued, joking that it made her – very briefly — think, “'You know, that's easy!' Then I slowly grew and grew…. (Fellow trainers) know now that they can't mess with me. Most of them respect me because they know I work hard. I tell them, 'Look, you might not like me. That's your own business. All I want you to do is respect me for the effort and time I put in and the job I try to do.'”

Willis, already at Remington in Oklahoma, added Texas to her circuit in 1994, the year Sam Houston opened. She said she has access to “65-70” horses, including babies not yet at the track and that she wouldn't want to train more than 50 horses because it would hinder her hands-on style.

“Over the last few years, I've had very, very – and I'm underlining that – very good clients who totally believe in me,” she said. “They leave the decision-making process to me. I tell them what the options are. I always lean toward the preservative, conservative. I'm proactive, not reactive.”

A case in point is the 8-year-old Sunlit Song, whom she gave 6 1/2 months off to let his hooves grow out from a quarter crack. Upon his return last September, he finished second in the Remington Green by a half-length and has been unbeaten in three starts since, including winning the Houston Turf for the first time after three seconds and a third in four attempts.

“When he came back, he's been just awesome,” Willis said. “He loves to race, and he's been very, very honest.”

Sunlit Song marks the fifth generation in a line that started with Barnett's first horse, the stakes-placed filly My Sunlit. Barnett sent Sunlit Song to Willis in 2018 after the horse had acted badly in the paddock and at the gate in its first two starts.

“I've been in this business 47 years, therefore I've had a lot of trainers,” Barnett said. “I told her how bad he was. She worked with that horse more than any trainer I've had. She took him to the paddock I don't know how many times and the starting gate.

“She's been fantastic for me,” Barnett said, noting that Willis trained Truly Danzig to a victory last year off a seven-month layoff. “I just can't say enough about her patience, determination. I mean she works at this. Her whole life is these horses. I'm sure she was raised in a barn…
She has really climbed up in the ranks here lately, so I think more people will start watching her better.”

Karen Jacks: A serious business, but 'if it's not fun, we're not doing it'

Jacks, whose parents Gordon and Mary Shankland owned and bred racehorses, grew up in Maryland and Illinois, her family buying a farm not far from Arlington Park. She graduated with a B.S. in equine science from Southern Illinois University and began training the family's horses. Her first winner in 1992 at Arlington Park was her dad's homebred Decimate, who paid an even $100 to win.

Among the Shanklands' prior trainers was prominent Chicago horsewoman Christine Janks.

When young Karen asked her dad what her job was, “He said, 'Your job is to observe everything because eventually you'll be a trainer,'” Jacks recalled. “I used to pout, and he said 'go to Ocala and put your license in.' He hand-walked me down there. He was there when I passed my trainer's test at Calder. But I aced it, and went back to Arlington and started training. The next year he got killed in a car accident.”

The death rocked the family and pretty much ended the racing stable. Jacks worked in Ocala and eventually came to Texas, where she met her husband.

“Then I just gathered up one horse and started building my stable,” she said. “We'd just buy cheap horses. We'd have like three, then five. I remember when we had eight we thought we had a big stable. Now we're neighbors with Carl Moore because we bought a house near his farm. (Dean) was his vet for a long time. So that's how I ended up training for Carl.”

Now at 44 horses, the most she's ever had, Jacks said that while “it's turned into a serious business now,” she and her husband keep their motto that “'If it's not fun, we're not doing it.' We want it to be fun for the horses, fun for us and fun for Carl. All our crew is still the same. It's grown, of course, but I still have my original gallop boy. But everybody we had to have when we had eight horses still works for us. It's like a family.

“You keep it light-hearted, you want the horses happy and they're spoiled rotten. Everything seems to go well when you're not under the gun. So that's the way we like to keep it… I do love it. I never get sick of it. When you're here every single day, as most of us are, you better love it.”

Dean Jacks pays his wife a compliment about her success the past couple of years. “He calls me Little Mindy,” Karen Jacks said. “I like that. I'll take that.”

Willis and Jacks are now targeting the next big day of racing at Sam Houston: the Texas Champions Day on March 25 featuring seven $100,000 stakes for Texas-breds. Willis will attempt another half-brothers' exacta with Sunlit Song and Truly Danzig back in the Richard King Turf (won by Sunlit Song in 2021). Jacks will have the half-sisters Imaluckycharm and No Mas Tequila (last year's winner) squaring off again in the San Jacinto Turf, Stans Hookin Bull (third in the Houston Turf at 20-1 odds) in the Richard King and Sam Houston debut winner Cajun Eddie in the Texas Thoroughbred Association Derby.

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Veteran jockey Kent Desormeaux and his mount, veteran 5-year-old gelding Stilleto Boy, were the perfect pair when they entered the gate on Saturday in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap. With the Hall of Famer Desormeaux in the midst of resurrecting his career and Stilleto Boy frequently a major player in graded races but rarely the winner, the duo proved an inspired combination to score the upset win in a thrilling renewal of the marque event for older horses on the Santa Anita calendar.

The win led the panel of racing experts to vote Desormeaux Jockey of the Week for Feb. 27 through March 5. The award recognizes jockeys for riding accomplishments and who are members of the Jockeys' Guild, the organization which represents more than 1050 active, retired and permanently disabled jockeys in the United States.

Trainer Ed Moger, Jr. reconnected with Desormeaux for the Santa Anita Handicap after Mike Smith, who had ridden Stilleto Boy in the Pegasus World Cup Invitational on Jan. 28, chose to ride Hopper in the Big Cap. Desormeaux had ridden Stilleto Boy in five stakes races in the second half of 2021.

Breaking sharply from post position four in the field of nine, Stilleto Boy raced a close fourth at the rail behind There Goes Harvard, race favorite Defunded and Hopper as they ran into the far turn. Turning for home, Stilleto Boy had There Goes Harvard to his inside with Defunded and Hopper in front of him. Stilleto Boy collared Defunded in the final sixteenth and held off a late charge from Fair Grounds invader Proxy to win by a neck. He Completed the 1 1/4-mile course in 2:01.96, paying $29.80 for the win.

“I just wanted to let him run out front, but they shut me off and we had to settle back,” said Desormeaux. “Everything else, I followed Ed Moger's instructions. He wasn't enjoying himself, so we moved out and he kept going,”

The win was Desormeaux's third in the Big Cap after Best Pal in 1992 and Milwaukee Brew in 2002.

The multiple Eclipse-award winner Desormeaux, 53, has been back riding since November, restarting his career after his well-chronicled off-track troubles. Desormeaux was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2004 and has won seven Triple Crown races and six Breeders' Cup races. His 598 wins in 1989 is a record that still stands today.

Other contenders for Jockey of the Week included Kazushi Kimura who won the G1 Kilroe Mile, Jose Lezcano who won the G2 Gotham, Irad Ortiz, Jr. who was the leading rider for the week by wins with 14 as well as total and stakes purse earnings, and Flavien Prat with two graded stakes wins.

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