3 Burst results for "Chris Leman"
The Horse Racing Radio Network Podcast
"chris leman" Discussed on The Horse Racing Radio Network Podcast
"And getting ready. It was a lot of fun to be in across from them that winter. I remember. Yeah, I love that spring training analogy. That's just so perfect. We have about two minutes before we have to get to our commercial break here at the bottom of the hour damn, but I did want to go back to a comment you made when you were talking about learning from Jerry Mormon. You also talked about being around Chris Rogers, who was an excellent writer. And there was a story you told in the article that Chris leman had put out a couple of weeks ago about breezing horses with Chris and one day you were on a stakes horse. He was not. And that turned into a really fun story. Tell me more about that. Well, those guys back then, I mean, you know, when Chris started riding, I don't think there were cameras watching the races. Were there. So you learned to do things that you could get away with, I guess. You know, like I said, I was a bit before my time. By the time I started that we did have cameras and you learned to do things. And they used to tag onto a horse's saddle cloth. And you know, that the two horses would go along together. The one couldn't pull away from the other. And Chris was just full of all that kind of stuff. I remember another time I was breezing horse with him and I'm on a very fast Philly where I'm not training track at wood wine. And I'm on a fast Philly and he's on a really good horse this time. And the boss says to me, he says, set a pace for this horse and you know he'll go buy you somewhere in the stretch and you know that's your job today. So I break off and I'm going like a bat out a heck. I'm on a fleet Nash rule of Philly and I turn into the stretch and I still got some horse. Well, of course you're young and you're competitive and it's Chris Rogers. So you think maybe I'm going to give him a hard time here, right? So we straighten away and I look over my shoulder to the right and I don't see him and I look over my shoulder to the left and I don't see him running where the heck is he? You know? And I look back to where we started to see if something went wrong. And of course, he was sitting right in behind me. He was just tailgating me waiting till I looked around and then he's just dropped switch leaves, dropped her into the inside of me and just went by me. I assume, you know, and then of course you panic and you kind of throw your horses head away too much and he just went by me and just yeah, and he's giggling as he went by and it was fun and nice to holy mackerel, I said, you know, you may be look like an idiot. And he said Danny, I almost won a grade one in Chicago and beat Nashville, doing the same thing. He said, I tailgated that guy right till the very end and he said I ducked inside and the horse seeing me and he didn't and I got beat ahead, but he said, I've done that to a lot of people anyway. Yeah, he was a character and he was fun to work with and he was an absolute genius on a horse and it was fun being around those type of guys and they taught you a lot. Just by being around them, just realize that you had to learn things about horses that nowadays, I'm not sure that we understand that part of horses as much as they did. What a fantastic story visiting with trainer Dan vela here on trainer talk presented by phasic tipton. We're going to get to a short break when I come back in the second half of the program. We'll.
The Horse Racing Radio Network Podcast
"chris leman" Discussed on The Horse Racing Radio Network Podcast
"Good evening, or maybe even good morning, depending upon which part of the world you are tuning in to today's show on Sirius two 19 XM two O one and so many of you also now choosing to listen to trainer talk and many of our other weekly talk shows via podcast all over the world on our website at horse racing radio dot net and various major podcast platforms. And I really want to thank you first and foremost for being part of our HRM family each and every week. It is truly a pleasure to be able to bring these shows to you every week throughout the year. I of course, in Mike penna, baron in the backstretch, happy to have you in the saddle with me once again for the next hour on the show trainers listen to. It is trainer talking. It's all presented by our friends at phasic tipton here on the horse racing radio network. Well, you know, 50 years is a long time. And it's a really long time to be doing the same job. And when today's guest first started working on the racetrack, the year was 1972. And to put that in perspective for you, Richard Nixon was president of the United States. Don McLean's American pie topped the music charts all in the family and Sanford and son were the top two television shows, but godfather had just come out and was the most popular movie of that year. The cowboys under coach Tom Landry defeated Don Shula's dolphins in Super Bowl 6 and a gallon of gas about this cost 36 cents. Secretariat had yet to become secretariat. He was only a two year old while his stablemate revered was busy winning the 1972 Kentucky Derby. That was also the time when a very eager and very determined teenager first arrived on the woodbine backstretch. 50 years later, he still showing up at that same barn area and at 66 years young. He's as passionate as ever about the sport he loves. Please join me in welcoming trainer Dan Bella to train her talk presented by phasic tipton. Dan appreciate the visit, my friend. Hello, how are you? Doing really well and really excited to hear your story. You know, you think about what you have accomplished in these 50 years. 860 career winners. Nearly 30 $9 million in purse earnings and you're a two time sovereign award winner as Canada's leading trainer. Boy, could you ever imagine when you first walked on to the woodbine backstretch that things would end up where they have? No, not really. I mean, let's be honest, they start out as a kid, you're living on the back side, your work and your groom and your walking hot and you know you're getting on some horses and your work your way up. But the dream for everybody, that stage of your life is to win a queen's plate and to train some horses and to fulfill all those dreams and to be that lucky and to be around great horses. You exceed your expectations and you're very lucky to do that. You know, Chris leman over at woodbine, who is in the publicity department, wrote a really nice article about you and about your career it came out about two weeks ago or so. And one of the things that he pointed out was that your introduction to horse racing came through your uncle. Tell me a little more about that. Well, my best friend when I was a kid was my cousin Mike and his father was my uncle Jim. They were vegetable farmers outside of the city and we used to spend our Sundays out there on the farms and I used to spend my whole summer there working on the farm and we had a great time. And he was absolutely passionate about horse racing. You know, back then, the racing farm was only, you know, maybe ten sheets of paper, but he used to go out and get the farm during lunch time and then after dinner he'd sit down in his chair and he'd read before him and eat market and we used to shoot the board area for the races there in the summertime and it was a big deal for me. And that's kind of where my passion for the horses started. He would always own a piece of a horse or a horse or whatever he could afford. But that's where it all started. He loved horse racing. And I caught a bug right away back then. I've got pictures from, I don't know, the early 60s at fort Erie in the summertime. Yeah, it was a lot of fun and that's where I got started. As I was reading that and just listening to you now I was thinking about the relationships that I have with my uncles and I have a couple of uncles that really enjoy going to the races. We have gone to multiple racetracks together. And you know it's so special to be able to spend that time with your family and do it in an environment and participating in a sport, even if it's just handicapping and betting on the races to do it in a sport like horse racing is just so, so cool. Well, sports 50 years ago sports were different. Also, there were more characters in sports back then. The extremes were a little more we've gotten a little more placid with what we do in sports nowadays, maybe you could call it a little more professional, but we've lost maybe a tiny bit of our flares. Some of the characters back then some of the jocks, Chris Rogers and sandy Holly came along a bit later. Avelina, Gomez, who was one of the greatest riders that ever lived and they interacted with the people on the back side, much more than. And what the betters and yeah, there was a lot of flair to all sports then, but horse race it was a big deal then..
The Horse Racing Radio Network Podcast
"chris leman" Discussed on The Horse Racing Radio Network Podcast
"Persevere through a lot of those tough times in the beginning? You know, to be honest with you, your show helps, because if you listen to some of the big guys that have been on the show, they all had a lot of struggle starting off. And things like that give you motivation to know that some of the guys that are on the top right now where they had to go through to get to where they're at. It's not easy. Especially when I had such a passion for horse race and there was probably three to 5 different times in my career where I was thinking I wasn't going to be able to do this anymore. Because the horses were going bad and there was no new clients coming. And then you really get to understand how much of a privilege this job is when you're really faced with the fact that it could be taken away from you. And then that relates back to the question. You asked me, what would I do? I don't even have an answer. So there was times where that was like that was a real thought in my head. I mean, I hope that doesn't happen down the line, but there's definitely been more than one time in this industry where I've been there. And then how you persevere through it? There's a lot of people in the industry that have all had good times and bad times and guys try and tell you, listen, Steve, stick with whatever you were doing. It'll come around, you know, just keep working, don't try and change things. Just keep doing your thing. And fortunately enough for me, things have always came around or I've claimed the horse that kind of turned things around multiple times. So I've been very fortunate that way. You know, there was an article that I read as I was getting ready for the show. It was back in 2017 and I can't remember who maybe it was Chris leman or one of the folks of it would binary Ontario racing put this out there. And you had a quote at the end of that article where you said that you don't get to really enjoy all of it until you make time to think about it. And I thought that was very interesting. Do you take time to stop and think about where you've come from and where you are today? You know, I'm trying to, more and more now, I didn't at the time. I mean, my career, you know, I got very fortunate. So I had come to Penn national and I didn't come back with any of those three horses. They got claimed that I and I sold them. And I came back the following year. And I went back to work for Tino. He was in Gulfstream at the time. So I was running the show for him. I had some money to get some horses, but I had two stalls and I had no horses. And fortunately enough, I've had support for my uncle, he had put a group of guys together my uncle Joe, a different uncle who was close with my dad. But he put a group of guys together like a syndicate, I think it was like 5 guys, maybe they all from like 7 or $8000 each and he gave me the opportunity to claim a horse as he brought guys to Kevin when he started. So believe it or not, the first horse that I claimed was for $20,000 that later went a grade two. Which is unbelievable. And the second horse I cleaned was for 25,000 in partnership with my uncle and another guy that went on to win allowance raises. So everything just happened so fast and started snowballing. And then I started picking up clients and I had people asking me, can I do this? And I could do that. And then at that time, it was so hard to get stalled that would buy and you didn't want to tell people no because this is what you've been, this is where you've been driving for all this time. And then it was a situation where at one point I had horses and three different barns and you got to be careful when you're starting off of how much employees you can have and that just makes the work so much tougher. But I look back at it now like my second year of training, I was I was running in those graded races and it wasn't like it wasn't like Saratoga, but it was similar, you know, like with that one horse, I ran in a $1 million races three starts after claiming that horse for $20,000 we flew him to Edmonton to run in the Canadian Derby, which was worth $300,000 and we ran second. So I didn't appreciate it at the time, but oddly enough, one of the partners of that syndicate, I still have horses for them. We messaged each other in a group chat at Christmas time. And the guy brought up Keras orientation was the name of the horse. And I watched the race on YouTube and I just had some time at home just recently and just thinking about it. It's unbelievable. What we were able to do and to go from nothing to a great horse stakeholders was unbelievable. I mean, people are in the industry forever and don't get that opportunity. So I didn't realize how blessed I was because at the time your go go go. And I think it's something important to sit back and realize what you've done what you've accomplished because you know it's definitely definitely not something that comes by every day. Visiting with trainer Steve Cher cop here on trainer talk presented by facing tip. And we're going to talk more about Keras orientation who he just mentioned winner of the great two sky classic stakes in 2011. We'll talk more about Kara's orientation and some of the other top horses in the second half of the program. We're less than two minutes away from the bottom of the hour commercial break here, Steve, I guess about, well, inside of a minute now, believe it or not. So we'll do that. Let's go ahead and get to that break. We'll take a commercial break. We'll come back. We'll talk about the horses. We'll talk a little bit more about some of the other.