Covering the 2009 Kentucky Derby has given me an opportunity to get my foot back in the horseracing door. I had been in the racehorse business from 1971 to 1987, but I opted for a more sedentary life after my children were born and I very tearfully walked away from it. Fortunately I had a backround in landscaping, so I worked a couple of years for a big firm and then went into business for myself. It really was a shame that I left the horse business because I had quite a bit of success in the time I was in it. I started out as a hotwalker and groom at Suffolk Downs, Lincoln Downs, and old Narraganset Racetrack working with $1,500 claimers. Working with horses of that ilk allowed me to learn every single ailment that a horse can get, yet still continue to race. I worked on horses as old as 12 year olds, some with over 200 starts in their careers. In fact, some of those venerable old geldings once were stakes horses but gradually descended the ladder and ended up at those tracks and even the fairs, and yes, I worked the fairs too. I saw some incredibly good horsemanship but unfortunately some horrible and inhumane practices too. I was determined to work with better horses, so first chance I got I jumped on a horse van to Florida and worked at Calder, Gulfstream and Hialeah.

 

There I worked for several excellent New York trainers and hooked up with much better horses. It all changed for the better when I drove out to California and started working for Loren Rettele at Santa Anita. Loren was a former pupil of the great horseman Jack Van Berg, and he learned his lessons well. When I got there, he had a 50 horse stable with about a dozen stakes horses. I started as a groom but soon become stable foreman and then assistant trainer. We had one horse in particular ,Golden Act, who I took up to Golden Gate Fields and ran second in the California Derby. From there we flew to New Orleans and won the Louisiana Derby. A few weeks later we won the Arkansas Derby, and then it was on to Kentucky for the Kentucky Derby. The only problem, we now had to face, and I quote Buddy Delp "the greatest horse to ever lok through a bridle" in Spectacular Bid. We ran a respectable third to Bid in the Kentucky Derby, then ran a dynamite second to him in the Preakness, and we were anxious to try him again in the Belmont. I had gotten very friendly with Bid's groom Mo Hall, and we routinely exchanged stories,and sometimes even some equipment. In fact 2 days before the Belmont Stakes, Mo came over and having missplaced a few horse pins used for the standing bandages, asked to borrow four of them. Well, race day came and there was a story circulating the barn area that Delp might scratch Spectacular Bid because he was sore on a front foot the day before, having stepped on a pin. (Could that have been my pin?)

 

After frantic work on the foot with epsom salt soaks, etc. the horse bounced back and would run. We were extremly confident because Golden Act came from way off the pace and loved a distance so the mile and a half would suit him perfectly. There was a fresh horse in the race , Coastal, who skipped the first two legs, and with a ground saving ride, he won the Belmont impressively.

 

Golden Act closed with a rush and nosed out Spectacular Bid for second, but our luster was greatly diminished because we did not win the race. We did beat the Bid, however.

 

We went back to California for a freshener and after a dull fourth in the Swaps Stakes at Hollywood Park, we went back on the road and onto the grass. We went on to win the Secretariat Stakes at a mile and a half at Arlington Park, the Lawrence Realization Stakes at Belmont, The Canadian International at Woodbine, along with a second in the Round Table Handicap,also at Arlington Park. We had to scratch out of the Man O War Handicap at Belmont the morning of the race with heat in an ankle, and closed out the season with a dissapointing fifth in the Washington DC International after the grass course was turned soggy and dangerous with torrential rains. Had we won that race, I'm sure we would have garnered an Eclipse Award for Champion Grass Horse.

 

With Loren Rettele I had many more years of success, winning many more big stakes races with various other horses. As for Golden Act, he never quite duplicated his 3 year old form as a 4 year old, and I think wrenching an ankle in the Washington DC quagmire had a lot to do with it.

 

He was subsequently retired to stud in Kentucky, then later moved back to California, and was a moderate success as a sire, and passed on a few years back.

 

When I left the track I was heartbroken, but continued to follow it on TV, and now I've come full circle with these Kentucky Derby stories that I write.

 

Mark O'Leary