Julio, Donnie and Bobby

by Jude T. Feld

Breeders’ Cup 2004. It was a day to remember.

Sweet Catomine took the lead at the top of the Lone Star stretch in the Juvenile Fillies and thundered home on top, the familiar baby blue and white diamonds of Marty Wygod on Corey Nakatani’s back.

Enter Julio Canani. My old boss. A Peruvian-born horse trainer, who studied under Hurst Philpot and made so little money with his charges, that he sold carrots and reported the race results in Spanish on the radio to make enough money to eat and gamble.

I made the mistake of saying I was cold one Santa Anita winter morning early in 1979. It changed my life forever.

“Come and walk Kinalmeaky for me,” Julio said. “You’ll warm up.”

Kinalmeaky was a cool horse with a propensity for cinnamon rolls – a pain in the ass to walk and generally such a handful, that he was gelded after winning the Santa Catalina stakes. He was old and busted up by the time Julio got him, but he was the star of the three-horse Canani stable and his regular rider was William Shoemaker.

There are so many great Julio stories, but one of the best involved Kinalmeaky and the first time Julio ran him off the claim.

Shoemaker comes out of the jocks room at Santa Anita and walks over to Julio, who is putting a pair of brand new white blinkers that he “borrowed” from Noble Threewitt for the race. Julio attaches the Velcro straps, reaches into his pocket, pulls out a chart of Kinalmeaky’s Santa Catalina Stakes victory, and hands it to Shoe.

“Ride him like this.” Julio said to the world’s greatest rider.

Julio had a penchant for new equipment – usually Bobby Frankel’s or mine.

After a year of assisting Julio, I struck out on my own. The first time we ran a horse against one another was December 30, 1980. I was running Samdel’s Lark, an Oregon-bred filly, who had been competing at Exhibition Park in Canada. Julio had a Cal-bred named Pregunta owned by Kinalmeaky’s owner Larry Gleason.

Taking a page out of Julio’s book, I got a call with Shoemaker. Julio was livid and so was Mr. Gleason. They ended up with Tim Malgarini, an apprentice.

Julio wasn’t mad enough to not ask to borrow one of my new bridles for the race however.

“Sure, no problem,” I said.

Shoe took Samdel’s Lark right to the front and hit the wire on top, three-quarters of a length in front of Pregunta.

Back at barn 15, Julio drops off the dirty bridle.

“She would have won,” Julio says. “If this bridle wasn’t so heavy.”

Julio’s come a long way. Sweet Catomine’s victory was his third in the Breeders’ Cup and it probably won’t be his last. The jeans and t-shirts have been replaced by flashy sportcoats and dark glasses and the barn is full of stakes horses instead of rehab cases.

Hail Julio Caesar Canani.

One day at 5:00 a.m. at Santa Anita, a tall handsome kid appears at my door, as I am finishing up the morning’s set list.

“Do you need a groom or a hotwalker?” he asks.

This guy doesn’t look like a racetracker. He looks like an NBA star.

“I’m Don Chatlos,” he says. “My dad is a trainer in Chicago. I just moved here with my girlfriend and I need a job.”

Always a pushover for a good story or a starving girlfriend, I hire him.

Donnie isn’t in the NBA, but he is a star. He’s almost too good to be a horse trainer. He’s educated and well-read. He has an excellent vocabulary and good grammar – you’ll never here him say, “He run good.” Donnie’s classy. He always smiles. And both years he worked for me, he bought me a Christmas present – one was a really cool Olympic Sweatshirt that I finally wore out after at least a dozen years.

Truly a man who admires Thoroughbreds and loves the game, Donnie understands horses, and being from the south side of Chicago, he knows how to overcome adversity. That’s a powerful resume for running a small stable.

When Singletary took the lead at the top of the stretch, I was in the Keeneland video room doing voiceovers for the closing day replay show. As a rule, I don’t have much tolerance for guys like Ellis Starr, who root in the inner sanctum of the pressbox, but I was screaming down the lane.

“Hold on Donnie…Hold on Donnie…Hold on Donnie…Yes!”

How cool was that. Donnie Chatlos just won the NetJets Breeders’ Cup Mile. Amazing.

Laz Barrera, Charlie Whittingham, Ron McAnally and Richard Mandella – all Hall of Fame trainers I would call my friends. They have all made positive contributions to my life in one way or another.

Then there is Bobby Frankel. My idol.

Bobby is to horse training what Sinatra is to songs. He takes horses and bends them and molds them and sculpts them into the best they can possibly be – not just one horse, but every horse.

He’s been doing it for decades.

My favorite was Strong Award. I think he was nine when Bobby claimed him cheaply off a gynecologist turned horse trainer named George Shima. A Washington-bred with one eye and ugly legs, Strong Award blossomed under Bobby’s tutelage to win several races in a row including a stake or two.

There are probably at least a hundred horses that Bobby claimed and won stakes with, but it is not only his horsemanship that makes him great. He is a loyal guy too.

Julio and I used his help, his assistants, virtually all of his tack and a ton of his supplies and he never kevetched. He would come to our aid at a moment’s notice and even hustled us a client or two.

“You embarrass me,” he says, when I start singing his praises. But I will never forget the first time I was going to put in a claim.

We were down at Del Mar and trainer “Dancin’ Lou” Glauburg had Puppydogtails in the first race for $8000. I was at the paymaster’s office, asking for a claim slip when Bobby waltzed in for the same purpose.

“Who ya’ claimin’?” he asked.

“Puppydogtails,” I said.

“That’s who I was going for,” Bobby said as he ripped up his claim slip. “You need him more than I do. You’ll do good with him.”

I got outshook for Puppydogtails, but Bobby’s kindness that day cemented our 25-year friendship.

Other than Bobby, there was probably nobody happier than me when Ghostzapper opened up late in the Breeders’ Cup Classic – Powered by Dodge. All the sharp guys, save Andy Beyer, said he couldn’t get a mile and a quarter in a taxicab. Maybe in the hands of a mere mortal, but in the care of Frankel, the Stronach homebred son of Awesome Again rated perfectly and had plenty in the tank when jockey Javier Castellano asked him to run.

Ghostzapper proved himself the swiftest horse in the land on Saturday and now Bobby has only the Kentucky Derby left on his Bingo card.

Breeders’ Cup 2004 – for me, a day to remember.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2004 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Featured Articles. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.