santa anita | Horse Racing Free Tips

Bruce Headley: A Legacy Dating Back To Seabiscuit And Kayak II

The racing world and Santa Anita in particular mourn the passing of Bruce Headley, who died Friday, just a month short of his 87th birthday on Feb. 17.

A no-nonsense stickler who adhered to a pristine philosophy when it came to training, Headley was born on Feb. 17, 1934, 10 months before Santa Anita opened on Christmas Day, 1934. More than eight decades later, Headley had remained close to his home away from home, Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif.

I had one of the last interviews with Headley in his waning days at Clockers' Corner. It appeared in Santa Anita's Stable Notes on April 14, 2019, and as it concisely captures the essence of the man and the horseman, it seems appropriate to reprint it here in his memory:

Headley, best remembered as the trainer of Kona Gold, is still a fixture at Santa Anita, where his Aunt Flora brought him as a kid when he was five years old.

“I saw Seabiscuit and Kayak II run here,” Headley said, referring to the winners of the 1939 and 1940 Santa Anita Handicap, trained by 'Silent' Tom Smith. “That's how I got hooked on racing. My Uncle Ted was a security guard here. I was born in a house in nearby Baldwin Park that's still there.”

Kona Gold was pure race horse. A Kentucky-bred son of Java Gold from the Slew o' Gold dam Double Sunrise, the bay gelding owned in part by Headley won nearly half his starts, 14 of 30, with seven seconds and two thirds, earning $2,293,384.

Sold as a yearling for $35,000, he was the champion sprinter of 2000, winning an Eclipse Award that year in which he captured the Breeders' Cup Sprint at Churchill Downs in a dazzling 1:07.60 for six furlongs. He raced until he was nine years old.

“He could run faster than anybody and stayed sound,” Headley recalled. “He had real good bone structure. He was just an honest race horse and when he ran, he ran.

“When he got too old to race, he became a very good pony. He'd lead the horses back and forth to the track, and even though some of them had a wild brain, he knew he had a job to do and he did it.

“When he got too old to pony, I retired him to the Kentucky Horse Park so everybody could visit him.”

Kona Gold was euthanized at the age of 15 on Sept. 25, 2009, after fracturing his left front leg while exercising in his paddock. But for Bruce Headley and others of his ilk who sanctify the equine ghosts of Santa Anita, Kona Gold lives on in perpetuity.

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Santa Anita: Cal Cup Day To Have $1-Million Jackpot Guarantee In Single Ticket Rainbow Pick 6

Santa Anita Park has announced it will guarantee a $1-million Jackpot pool in Saturday's 20-cent Single Ticket Rainbow Pick 6. Saturday is California Cup Day at at the Arcadia, Calif, track, with special early first post time for a 10-race card at 12 noon PT.

The Rainbow Six will be comprised of races five through 10, with assigned post time for race five at 2:02 p.m. PT. With 66 horses entered and eligible to run in the sequence, average field size for Saturday's Rainbow Six is 11 runners per race.

Friday's Single Ticket Rainbow Pick Six went unsolved, with eight consolation tickets with six winners returning $7,439.90 each.

The Rainbow Six Jackpot pool is paid out when there is a single unique ticket sold with all six winners. On days when there is no unique ticket, 70 percent of that day's pool goes back to those bettors holding consolation tickets with the most winners, while 30 percent is carried over to the Jackpot pool.

Saturday's $1-million Jackpot pool guarantee will apply to Cal Cup Day only.

For additional information, including entries with morning line for all of Saturday's races, please visit santaanita.com.

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‘Pure Horseman Through And Through,’ Bruce Headley, 86, Passes; Trained Champion Kona Gold

Veteran California-based trainer Bruce Headley, the developer of 2000 Eclipse Champion Sprinter Kona Gold and many other stakes winners, died Friday morning at Arcadia Methodist Hospital in Arcadia, Calif., from the effects of a stroke at age 86.

Born Feb. 17, 1934, in nearby Baldwin Park, Headley was first introduced to racing at Santa Anita by an aunt at age six. At age 14, he was mucking stalls and walking hots alongside a diminutive 16-year-old from El Monte named Willie Shoemaker at the Suzy Q Ranch in La Puente and from there, it was all racetrack – Santa Anita, Hollywood Park, Del Mar, the LA County Fairgrounds, Bay Meadows, Tanforan, Golden Gate Fields and more.

“I started out with nothing and grew up learning under great horsemen,” said Headley in an interview with Dan Ross of Thoroughbred Racing Commentary in April 2015. “I grew up watching trainers like Charlie Whittingham, Buster Millerick, Les Holt and Ralph West. … But the only difference between me and other great trainers is that they train for other people and I've always trained for myself.”

Headley, whose barn was always replete with chickens, country music and plenty of Headley-bred and raised California-breds, may have “started out with nothing,” but his street smart instincts and the 59-year marriage to his wife Aase (Oh-sah) resulted in considerable wealth that included local real estate holdings and a sizable art and automobile collection.

Headley, who never graduated high school, met Aase at Golden Gate Fields in 1959, married in 1962, and was always quick to credit her for any success he may have had.

“If I didn't marry this beautiful genius, I wouldn't have managed what I did,” he said in the same interview. “She always would save money for us to buy horses at the sales. … I think I married a wife who loved racing even more than I did.

“I've always invested my own money since I've started and owned the majority of my horses, which gives you the purse as well as everything you make when you sell them,” continued Headley in his interview with Ross. “No other trainer today has done what I've done.”

One resounding hallmark of Headley's training career was that he was never in a hurry with any horse. Derby Fever was not an affliction from which he suffered and due to his patience and tremendous instincts, he developed stakes winners from pedigrees that many “experts” scoffed at. Another hallmark was that Headley believed in the power of Mother Nature when it came to developing a Thoroughbred.

“I did it completely on hay, oats and water,” he told Ross. “I don't have sore horses. If I do, I turn them out … I rest them. That's why I've had stakes winners aged five, six, seven, eight and nine. That's why there's only four horses that have won graded stakes races at nine years of age at Santa Anita, and I've trained two of them—Kona Gold (2003 Grade 3 El Conejo Handicap) and Softshoe Sure Shot (1995 Grade 2 San Carlos Handicap). My horses last, you see.”

Bruce Headley rode many of his own horses during training hours

A natural athlete, Headley got on as many as 10 to 15 of his own horses each morning at Santa Anita until about 10 years ago when health issues relegated him to being afoot. Slowed the past couple of years by cardiac issues, Headley's stable had been greatly reduced in number as daughter Karen and son Gus are now training horses at both Santa Anita and Los Alamitos.

A licensed trainer at age 25, Headley's first winner came at the LA County Fair's half mile bullring in Pomona, as his very first horse, Thorium, purchased for $500, broke her maiden on Sept. 29, 1959.

Hall of Fame retired jockey Chris McCarron, who enjoyed tremendous success when paired with Headley over the course of more than 20 years, encapsulated the feelings of many in the racetrack community via this afternoon.

“He's a throwback to the old days, a pure horseman through and through,” McCarron said. “An excellent caretaker, a great family man, and a heck of a human being.”

With 123 career stakes victories, the highlight of Headley's career came when Kona Gold, who he owned in partnership with Irwin and Andrew Molasky, won the 2000 Breeders' Cup Sprint at Churchill Downs. Kona Gold debuted at age four and amassed a career mark of 30-14-7-2, earning $2,293,384. The Java Gold gelding, purchased by Headley at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale for $35,000, ran in a record five consecutive Breeders' Cup Sprints, his final Sprint appearance being a fourth-place finish at Arlington Park at age eight in 2002.

Third with his only starter this year, Equibase lists Headey with 902 wins from 6,121 career starters that amassed earnings of $38,682,030.

Headley's many stakes winners included California-bred stars such as Silveyville, Softshoe Sure Shot, Variety Road, Variety Baby, Variety Queen, Her Royalty, Stylish Winner, Bertrando, Halo Folks and others.

A racetracker to his core, Bruce Headley could be coarse, funny and disarming. A poet, songwriter and blue-collar philosopher, anyone who knew Bruce knew he believed in all things natural, including practicing backstretch chiropractic for countless exercise riders and grooms for decades. A man who was well ahead of the national movement to normalize the use of hemp, he often referred to it with a wry smile as “Dry whiskey.”

Survived by his wife Aase, daughter Karen and son Gus, Headley leaves a rich legacy that will never be replicated. Memorial services are pending.

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Trainer Bruce Headley Dead at 86

The California racing circuit lost one of its most charismatic, storied and successful training institutions and purveyors of good old-fashioned horsemanship when Bruce Headley passed away Friday at the age of 86, his family confirmed.

Earlier this week, Headley, whose health has been failing for a number of years, suffered bleeding to the brain, complications from which he eventually succumbed.

Few individuals have left such an indelible impression on the racing industry in the state–fewer still can boast such a steep climb within the sport from such relative obscurity.

Headley grew up on a small-holding in the City of Upland, nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, to parents who had no connection to horseracing.

But that didn’t stop a 14-year-old Headley from making his way to the Suzie Q Ranch in Southern California–where he first met a baby-faced Bill Shoemaker–to embark on a race-riding career that was as brief as it was inauspicious due to a losing battle with the scales.

In 1959, Headley took out his training license, using $500 worth of WWII bonds to purchase a horse called Thorium–“a bucking son-of-a-bitch,” Headley once said–who would prove to be his first winner at Pomona Racetrack in September of that year.

It was Headley’s working relationship with owner Kjell Qvale, a car executive and long-time president of Golden Gate Fields, that catapulted the trainer towards a glittering career built upon lickety-split speedballs and youngsters with working class pedigrees that he fashioned into record-setters and champions, some over many seasons.

The duo struck out fast and early with the first horse they bought together, a precocious juvenile called Trondheim who in May and June of 1967 claimed three stakes, including the Dinner S. at Golden Gate and the Haggin and Cabrillo S. at Hollywood Park.

In all, Headley trained seven individual Grade I winners, including Street Boss, Variety Road, Kalookan Queen, Bertrando, Got Koko, and M One Rifle. Arguably his greatest day in the sun came at Churchill Downs in November of 2000, when the 6-year-old Kona Gold (Java Gold) gritted out a tenacious victory in record time in the GI Breeders’ Cup Sprint under Alex Solis.

That Kona Gold would remarkably claim his final graded stakes at the grand of age of nine wasn’t the trainer’s first time capturing lightening in a bottle. Eight years prior, Headley’s Softshoe Sure Shot achieved the same feat when winning the GII San Carlos H. at Santa Anita (in the process beating Bertrando, a horse he had formerly conditioned to become California champion 2-year-old colt).

Achievements like these are a testament to the trainer’s ethos of minimal veterinary intervention, and a hay, oats and water approach to the health and well-being of his trainees. If the horse was wrong, he’d turn them out. If the horse needed time, he’d give them all that and more.

But beyond achievements etched into the record books, Headley’s legacy is shaped in other important ways.

One was his sheer work ethic–a reputation borne from decades of exercising the horses himself, even when his career soared. When training was over at Santa Anita, often he could be found at the nearby Fairplex racetrack, exercising the string he maintained there. Nor could you describe his training techniques as proforma.

Rather than jog to warm up, Headley’s horses would launch into a gallop from a walk–a method he attributed to trainer R.H. [Red] McDaniels. You’d often see Headley’s horses jog to and from the barn and the track–a technique, he said, to stop them from getting hot.

Horses were happiest and at their most relaxed, Headley believed, when skipping around the track of a morning, a big loop in the rider’s reins. These are lessons this writer had the good fortune of picking up when working as a freelance rider briefly for the great trainer.

“He was practically a father to me,” said Solis, with whom Headley forged such a formidable partnership over many years. “He took me under his wing when I first came to California and helped me out. He was a really loyal guy.

“He rode his own horses and he knew what he was talking about. I rode for him for some twenty-odd years and he yelled at me probably once in that whole time, unhappy with the way I rode,” said Solis. “It was a lot of fun riding for him and spending time with him as he was such an incredible character.”

The last horse Headley officially started under his name was Zillinda, who finished third at Santa Anita Jan. 8. He leaves behind his wife, Aase, and two children, Karen and Gus, both of whom followed their father footsteps into the training business.

“He not only was a great person but an incredible horseman, and he always did the right thing by the horses,” said Solis. “There are some incredible horses that he bought and broke himself. And they ran forever,” he added.

“He was a great all-around man.”

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