Making a difference at WinStar - Elliott Walden
![ALDEN guided the careers of Distorted Humor, originally handled by Phil Gleaves, from his third start onward and Victory Gallop, previously trained by Mary Eppler, beginning with the colt’s threeyear-old debut. Racing for Prestonwood Farm and R.L. Reineman, Distorted Humor won four graded stakes races and set a new track record in the 7-furlong, Grade 2 Churchill Downs Handicap in 1998. “He had 15 Beyers over 100,” recalls Walden. Victory Gallop was even more successful. After runner-up efforts to Real Quiet in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, the son of Cryptoclearance denied his rival the Triple Crown by a nose in the 1998 Belmont Stakes. Walden says, “I think Victory Gallop deserved to win one, so I didn’t feel bad. He was a horse that, every time he ran, he just showed up. He was a real racehorse.” As a four-year-old, Victory Gallop won the Grade 1 Whitney and Grade 2 Stephen Foster Handicaps en route to earning the Eclipse Award for champion older male. So it was only natural that Walden, having been instrumental in the high points of two of W “I enjoyed my days of training greatly and we had a lot of success and a great team, but this is challenging in a different way” the partners’ new stallions, caught their eye, and he was sent the majority of WinStar’s racing stock, eventually becoming private trainer in early 2002. Then in the summer of 2005, he accepted the position of WinStar racing manager, signaling a big lifestyle change for someone who had been training for 20 years. Walden, who went on to be named vice president at the end of 2005 and president and CEO of WinStar in November, 2010, says, “You know, I get asked a lot if I would ever go back to training. I loved training and basically feel blessed to be doing anything in the horse business but so far as going back to training, it’s not something I’m thinking about. I’ve got the best job in the game, it feels like. I enjoyed my days of training greatly and we had a lot of success and a great team, but this is challenging in a different way. “The big difference,” he continues, “is just the different areas that I’m involved with. The focus of my thoughts and energy goes from mares in the spring to two-year-olds and then you transition into the Derby and it goes back to the racehorses, and in the late summer you start focusing on the yearlings, so I’m able to focus on different things, which keeps it really exciting and engaging.” Originally, Walden, whose brother is Ben Jr. and whose father Ben Sr. owned a horse farm, sought the excitement he craved on the racetrack. “I felt like the action there was more my style,” he says. “Farm life seemed a little slow at the time, but that was before I got involved with WinStar. There’s nothing slow about WinStar! A traditional farm with 30 mares and two stallions was a little bit slow for me so I gravitated towards the racetrack. I liked the atmosphere and the horses and decided early on that I wanted to be a trainer.” He worked under Dennis Ebert, who trained horses for Ben P. Walden Sr. and had been an assistant to Frank Whiteley; LeRoy Jolley, who at the time had Genuine Risk and General Assembly and was “the Todd Pletcher of his day”; and John Gosden, before going out on his own in 1985. One thing that was crucial to Walden as a trainer was good communication with his owners. He says, “I viewed it as a partnership, so I was very involved with my owners and really used that to my advantage to enhance the ownership experience for them, because I saw that there were a lot of good trainers that did not want to communicate well. I felt like owners wanted to be communicated with, and they had that right.” But in 2005 with a young family – he and wife Rebecca are parents to Will, now 23; twins Mac and Emily, 21; and Megan, 10 – the nomadic lifestyle wore thin. “I was always extremely excited to go to Saratoga, and I was always just as ecstatic to leave, because it got old being on the road and being away from home, and I’d just get drained towards the end of that meet. That was a big part of what my thought process was when Kenny offered the position of racing manager, was the home life and family life. I felt at peace with that decision. My days are different now; I travel quite a bit but not with the length that I had. It’s a nice change.” Clearly Elliott Walden’s perspective as a top trainer – he also saddled Grade 1 winners Awesome Humor, Brahms, Ecton Park, Hawk Attack, Menifee, and Plenty of Light – before taking over the management of WinStar is valuable in that he understands the business from every angle. He says, “Sitting on the other side of the desk here now, I have a unique position of having had that experience, so the trainers that I work with now – Todd Pletcher, Bill Mott, Mark Casse, Dale Romans, Shannon Ritter, Kellyn Gorder, Hugh McMahon has one in Maryland for us – I feel like it’s a good relationship and a good dialogue back and forth, and I think they can trust me to understand their side of the equation.” What has changed during Walden’s time in the industry? “You know,” he says, “we’ve definitely seen a real trend towards not running horses as much. That’s probably a byproduct of all the data that’s been accumulated on trainers and makes them reluctant to run unless they feel like they’ve got a really big chance. I think there’s a few factors to it. Do I think the horses are more fragile? I think that they’re a little more fragile. I think it’s exasperating to see trainers wanting to run their horses over a five- and sixweek period and feeling like they show up more consistently, because I think if you look at the numbers of horses that run back in three weeks now versus 20 years ago you would see the difference. Now, is that fragility or is that because of trainers deciding not to run? It’s more than that, actually: you don’t see near as many allowance races and opportunities for horses to run out of the claiming ranks like you used to. A horse used to go through an a other than, and then a two other than, and then a three other than. You just don’t see those two and three other than’s going anymore. Owners will drive trainers to run in stakes pretty much off the bat once they break their maidens, so you just don’t see the opportunity for horses to run, and then I think trainers are choosing their races more carefully.” Distorted Humor “ran every three weeks when he was in his rhythm.” Now, the Forty Niner stallion is established as one of the country’s leading sires, with 114 black-type stakes winners. He stood the 2013 season for $100,000, the third highest covering fee in North America, and is part of a powerful WinStar roster that includes proven sires Horse of the Year Tiznow, Congrats, Harlan’s Holiday, More Than Ready, Speightstown, and young guns Bodemeister, Colonel John, Drosselmeyer, Gemologist, Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver, and Take Charge Indy, who is new for 2014. The farm’s third-crop stallion Artie Schiller has suddenly exploded, getting his first and second North American Grade 1 wins with My Conquestadory in the Darley Alcibiades Stakes and We Miss Artie in the Dixiana Breeders’ Futurity over a two-day period at Keeneland in October. WinStar stood 22 stallions in 2013, breeding “a little under 2,500 mares” including about 100 of 154 WinStar-owned breeding stock. The farm also has 34 client mares belonging to Casner (who sold his interest in WinStar to Kenny Troutt in 2010), Mike Repole, Ben Leon’s Besilu Stables, and Scott Ford’s Westrock. What is amazing, considering that WinStar raced such standout homebred Grade 1-winning colts as Super Saver, Travers winner Colonel John, and Haskell Invitational Stakes winner Bluegrass Cat – a WinStar stallion based in New York – is that they endeavor to sell most of the crop, bolstering their racing stable with auction-bought foals, yearlings, and two-yearolds sired by home stallions, which is how Belmont Stakes and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Drosselmeyer (by Distorted Humor) and Wood Memorial winner Gemologist (Tiznow) came to race in WinStar’s colors. “We try to sell our best ones in order to maximize value as yearlings,” says Walden, “and then some of the ones we might keep are nice horses that got hurt or that maybe had a conformation defect that we didn’t think we were going to get a maximum value on. We sell most of our fillies, so typically we’ll end up with anywhere from 10-15 colts out of 150 mares that we breed.” This philosophy, he says, speaks to the with WinStar Farm and from that standpoint we’re blessed in a way that some people in this business aren’t.” Walden points out that WinStar has sold 14 Grade 1 winners, including European champion One Cool Cat. When Super Saver was a yearling, Walden says that “it was a very difficult time in the market, it was at a real low point.” The team liked the Maria’s Mon – Supercharger colt and appraised him at $100,000, but felt that the mare’s unexceptional produce record suggested he wouldn’t bring that amount. “We actually sent him down to the two-year-old sale in Florida and he was catalogued for OBS March. We were getting very good reports on him out of there and decided that because the market was in such doldrums, he wasn’t going to bring enough and that we would go ahead and try to race him. So we got lucky.” Whether it’s luck or a solid business plan, WinStar is doing it right, as evidenced by the Eclipse Award the farm received as leading owner in 2010. The training facility on some of WinStar’s 1,864 acres has 90 stalls and breaks in approximately 40 horses a year in addition to handling lay-ups, including for clients such as Dale Romans and Randy Gullatt’s Twin Creeks Farm. Farm trainer Richard Budge “lives and breathes these horses,” says Walden. This year’s Donn Handicap-G1 winner Graydar came off a six-month layoff to win the Grade 2 Kelso Handicap at Belmont Park six weeks after leaving WinStar. Walden says that Budge and the team “take great pride” in weekends like the one in September when Graydar won the Kelso and Little Mike, who also spent time at the farm this year, won the Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic Invitational Stakes at Belmont on the same day. One of the draws for owners and trainers looking for a rehab center is that WinStar – true to the “innovation” part of their mission statement – utilizes a hyperbaric chamber. “The hyperbaric chamber is something that we’ve become a believer in,” Walden says. “We’ve had one for the last ten years and have had over 10,000 treatments.” A second chamber, in the broodmare division, has been “very effective” on foals that may be “compromised” when they’re born or in helping mares to hold their pregnancies. WinStar, through the StableMates program, is recognized for its fan-friendly approach to the business, which Walden says was born of two visions: “One is that I feel like it’s important to have communication with the fans. And second – and even more importantly – is Bill Casner’s vision from when he owned a piece of the farm. Bill has been a great advocate for the fan and the people who can’t afford to do what we do on a daily basis. Part of that is his excitement and his passion for the game and how exciting it really is, he wants to share that with as many people as he possibly can and he understands that regular people that are fans of the horses they follow may not be able to afford to own them, “profitability” part of the farm’s mission statement: “WinStar Farm [is] focused on profitability, exists by maintaining excellence in horse care, integrity, innovation, and by doing the little things that make a big difference.” The drive to be profitable means that all of their horses are for sale at any point, which is how Any Given Saturday, a homebred son of Distorted Humor, came to win the Grade 1 Haskell for WinStar and Padua Stables, who had purchased an interest early in his three-year-old season. WinStar and Padua later sold the colt to stand at Darley. “Mr. Troutt loves horseracing, he loves being around the people, he loves the passion of it and has a passion for the farm, but if he felt like he couldn’t be successful at it then he wouldn’t do it. Success in his mind is being profitable. Obviously he doesn’t need to feed his family but they still care about them a great deal.” Eighteen thousand people are signed up for the free StableMates membership. StableMates also offers Grade 1, Grade 2, Grade 3, and Farm Cam memberships for a fee, starting with $24.95 for access to the 15 cameras placed in various locations on the farm. Walden pulls up images being streamed to his computer and says, “This is the clocker’s stand and here’s the shedrow [in the training barn]. It’s pretty cool in the morning when there’s a buzz of activity going on. We’re excited about it.” With an employee, Leanna Packard, dedicated to StableMates and costs of some $2,000 a month for bandwidth, there is significant financial investment, but to Walden, it’s a necessity. “I think it’s a responsibility on everybody in the industry to get people excited.” Ideally, WinStar would like to cover its costs on StableMates, not to make money from it. “We’re not even, but we want to make it accessible to the cost of going out to dinner once a year.” The farm held a party, restricted to 150 StableMates members, in the stallion complex in October, with Calvin Borel – who rode Super Saver in the Derby – in attendance. Natural horseman Dan James of Double Dan Horsemanship, who bre aks the WinStar yearlings, put on a demonstration. On Twitter, @Laureemj tweeted to @WinStarFarm: “Great time last night at the Stable Mates [sic] party! Thanks Winstar [sic] for the hospitality!!!” and @Dmc1115Michelle wrote, “The Stablemates [sic] party was GREAT we had a wonderful time. Kudos to the whole staff lost our position because we didn’t emphasize television, but with so many sports networks exploding now we’ve got opportunities to get on TV and see where it leads…And we need to transition between the Triple Crown and Breeders’ Cup. Whatever we gain in fans and excitement and exposure the first half of the year, we kind of lose through the second half of the year. “If we’re going to just stay within our world and our own little environment, we’re never going to grow and be more relevant. I think we need to figure out a better way to make horse ownership easier and more profitable than we have now. More fun. If we’re not thinking about those things and not trying to create fans then we’re thinking about the wrong thing, we’re just competing against ourselves and we’re never going to grow.” WinStar supports the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance (TAA). Walden says, “It’s a very difficult dilemma of what is enough, and with the support that we’re giving the TAA through our stallions, it’s a pretty big financial nut that we’re chewing off there. I think it’s something we need to continue to look after.” The farm bought and immediately retired Super Saver’s full brother Hedge Fund, who was bred by Ogden Mills Phipps and had not previously been owned by WinStar, privately as a seven-year-old after he won a $5,000 claiming race, his 57th start, at Mountaineer by 12¼ lengths in 2010. Hedge Fund’s happy ending reflects on one of WinStar’s core credos: doing the little things that make a big difference. n and Mr. Trout [sic] for doing this for the fans.” Grade 1 memberships are the most exclusive level and benefits include the ability to attend a foaling and name a yearling. “We have a special party at Saratoga at Mr. Troutt’s house,” says Walden, “and they get to come to that. Todd Pletcher, Bill Mott, and Johnny Velazquez were there this year. Members can get access to our suites on regular days. And then we educate them. We took them to the sale at Saratoga and they spent a morning looking at yearlings. One of them came to [Keeneland in September] looking around. He came in twice, actually, to try to buy something.” For the industry to flourish, Walden would like to see more racing on TV. He says, “Television exposure is something that we need to do a better job of. I think we missed the television boom 20 or 30 years ago and kind of](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/517636f8e4b0cb4f8c8697ba/t/5723347007eaa04b68585d74/1461925222116/)
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THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN - NORTH AMERICAN TRAINER - ISSUE 30
CLICK ON IMAGE TO READ ARTICLE
THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN - NORTH AMERICAN TRAINER - ISSUE 30