Meet Doug O'Neill and his team - with their 2016 Kentucky Derby winner Nyquist | Trainer Magazine | North American Article Index

Feb 3

Feb 3 Meet Doug O'Neill and his team - with their 2016 Kentucky Derby winner Nyquist

ON any given morning at Santa Anita, Doug O’Neill can be seen watching his horses train, perched several rows up in the grandstand, hard by the eighth pole, ensconced in a ramshackle seat that was there in Seabiscuit’s time, nearly eight decades ago They include brother Dennis (Irish), former trainer Steve Rothblum (Jewish), assistant trainer Leandro Mora (Mexican), assistant Jack Sisterson (English), Noe Garcia (Guatemalan), Ashton Bamberry (Jamaican, mon), and contributors from Columbia and Panama. The atmosphere is often light-hearted, right out of Saturday Night Live, political correctness be damned. Success takes a team effort. Otherwise, training can become somewhat discombobulating, like watching TV without a remote. But when it comes to horses, the mood is strictly business. You don’t win Triple Crown classics, Breeders’ Cup races, and more than 2,000 in your career without a serious mindset. “I get up at 4:15, 4:30, without an alarm clock and I’m usually at Santa Anita by 5:45 or so,” O’Neill said. “It’s about a 35-minute drive from Santa Monica, with no traffic, of course. “I’ll meet with my assistants, feel the horses’ legs, see if they ate well, and anyone that didn’t, we’ll discuss that. The grooms take the temperatures and hopefully they’re all good. If not, we get the vet involved. It’s a routine that I love and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” If O’Neill has a horse running in the eighth race on a weekday, it could keep him at the track until 4:30 or five in the afternoon. Counting drive time, that’s a 14-hour day, but O’Neill has a safe haven, at least when he’s training and racing at Santa Anita. “Fortunately, my mom (Dixie) lives in Arcadia near an In-N-Out Burger off of Santa Anita Avenue,” O’Neill said, “so if I do find myself with an hour or two to invest in something good, it’s grabbing a burger and hanging with my mom. “Like every other family, you have your lucks and unlucks, but definitely I’d say one of the luckiest things in my life would be having my mom. She’s 77, and mentally and physically she’s fantastic, so we’re very blessed.” But it hasn’t always been thus. Some days, you hit all the lights. O’Neill lost two brothers, Danny and Dave, to cancer, and his father to a heart attack. Dennis himself is a cancer survivor. Danny died in 1998 at the age of 37, David on June 25, 2015. He was 56. Today, Dennis is absent of cancer, but there are no free lunches with such a lethal disease. “I had non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2007, so it’s been quite a while,” said Dennis, 52. “I go to the doctor every eight weeks for an infusion and I’ll have to do that for the rest of my life. I continue to do a lot of maintenance. My bloodwork is constantly being monitored for fear of other cancers popping up. “It’s a pain in the butt, but it’s a lot better than the alternative, that’s for sure. We were a very, very tight Catholic family growing up. There were six of us, and we’re down to three right now: me, Doug and my mom. It’s just amazing when you look back at what happened, but you have to go on.” “It’s hard to explain what a gut-shot those losses were,” Doug said, understandably gathering himself momentarily. “That’s where having a good family both at work and at home is so important for so many reasons, but definitely when there’s an illness or death. I turned to a lot of friends and family to help me get through with the passing of my brothers. “Both were tremendous guys and I do believe that spiritually, they’re still with us. Much of my personality, whether it’s good or bad, stems from Danny and Dave. Both were very instrumental and very supportive. “If there were occasions when I didn’t believe in myself or others didn’t, they were always there for me, telling me they believed in me and that they always had my back.” O’Neill offered no significant connection to mom Dixie giving her four sons first names that begin with the letter “D,” explaining, “After the second one, I think she was kind of getting used to it and wanted to keep it going. My dad was the only one who screwed up. His name was Patrick O’Neill but we always said he was Dad O’Neill.” O’Neill credits his father with kick-starting his interest in racing. The patriarch of the clan brought his brood from their hometown of Dearborn, Michigan, to California in 1979. The rest, as they say, is history. Doug didn’t have to be dragged kicking and screaming into horseracing. In the overall scheme of things, that would have been as unnecessary as self-closing drawers. “My father had retired from Michigan Bell when the whole telecommunications industry was starting to deregulate and companies began subbing off GTE,” Doug related. “He was always an avid fan and loved watching and betting on the races. He and his brothers even owned a piece of some cheap harness horses in Detroit, but from my memory, the first weekend we were in California, we didn’t go to Magic Mountain, we didn’t go to Disneyland; we went to Santa Anita. “It was before ADW (Advance Deposit Wagering), and there were 40,000 people there. In Michigan back then, I think you had to be at least 14 to go to the track, so I had heard all about the races, but had never been inside a track or inside a barn area until we got to California, and then I knew exactly why my dad loved the sport, and I loved it from day one as well.” O’Neill attended Saint Monica High School in Santa Monica, where he resides today with his wife, Linette, and their two children, Daniel, 13, and Kaylin Dixie, 11. “Two alumni from that school,” O’Neill pointed out in a trivial aside, “are trainer Roger Stein and former NBA player Leon Wood, who’s now a referee in the league.” After finishing high school and before taking out his trainer’s license in 1994, O’Neill began working at the track in 1986 with trainers Jude Feld, Hector Palma, Richard Mandella, and the late Doug Peterson, who conditioned Seattle Slew in his four-year-old season. “I have to thank Jude the most, because he’s the one who put a shank in my hand at age 18 and let me get my feet wet doing something I knew in my head and heart that I wanted to do, but didn’t really know if it was for me until I actually did it,” O’Neill said. “It didn’t take long to realize, ‘OK. I’ve got to find a way to make a living working with these horses,’ so I think Jude would be the No. One guy who helped get me started.” Once past the nascent phase, O’Neill reached racing’s apex in 2012 when, after winning the Santa Anita Derby with I’ll Have Another for principal owners Paul and Zillah Reddam, the upstart three-year-old went on to capture the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. Three weeks later, I’ll Have Another was in prime pouncing position to win the Belmont and capture the Triple Crown, but tendinitis forced him to be scratched on the eve of the race and he was retired to stud. Today, O’Neill is a major force not only in Southern California, where he has won multiple training titles, but internationally, having won Grade 1 stakes in Dubai and Japan. It’s the exception when O’Neill doesn’t have a horse entered on a Southern California card, as rare as locating the last person to be fined for littering in the Golden State. At Del Mar on November 19, 2015, he had nine horses entered on the eight-race program. He won with five of six entered there on July 29, setting a Del Mar record for most wins in a day by a trainer. The only horse that didn’t win was Housemaker, who finished second behind stablemate Lookin for Money in the seventh race. For good measure, O’Neill won four races at Del Mar on November 15. “Currently, I have about 90 horses in training, 35 or 40 at Los Alamitos and probably 40 or so at Santa Anita and about 15 at Del Mar,” O’Neill said. “We got away from claiming for a while and now we’ve kind of stepped back into it. I love the claiming game, the only trouble is, you piss a lot of people off, so as I’ve gotten longer in the tooth (at 47, in training years, he’s not much past the pubescent stage), I just want to be around my horses, take good care of them, and compete with what I have. ” “Sometimes when you claim, not only can you upset owners, but especially fellow trainers you have to work alongside every day, so although we’ve been claiming a bit lately and I kind of survived on claiming for a long time, I’ve gotten away from that.” Far and away O’Neill’s most notable claim and one of the greatest in racing history is Lava Man, who was taken for $50,000 in August of 2004 for owners Steve, Tracy, and Dave Kenly (STD Racing) and Jason Wood. The dark bay gelded son of the Seattle Slew stallion Slew City Slew would go on to earn $5,170,103 after O’Neill took him, a record for an ex-claimer. Born at Poplar Meadows Ranch near Sanger, California, on March 20, 2001, Lava Man’s story is the stuff of legend. He lost his first three starts in 2005 before O’Neill made an equipment change, adding blinkers. He won a $100,000 optional claiming race in May, then the Grade 2 Californian in June for his first Graded stakes victory. In his next start, he won the Grade 1, $750,000 Hollywood Gold Cup by a stakesrecord margin of 8¾-lengths. He won the Hollywood Gold Cup an unprecedented three consecutive years (2005, 2006, and 2007) and the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap in 2006 and 2007. Lava Man became the first horse since Triple Crown winner Affirmed in 1979 to win the Santa Anita Handicap and the Hollywood Gold Cup in the same year. Overall, he had 47 races, winning 17 and earning $5,268,706 before being retired for good, at least from racing, on January 5, 2010. Named for a triathlon on the Big Island of Hawaii by one of his breeders, Eve Kuhlmann, who competes in triathlons, Lava Man was inducted into racing’s Hall of Fame in 2015. Not bad for a two-year-old that finished fourth in his first start, a $12,500 maiden claiming race at the San Joaquin County Fair in June of 2003. “He looks phenomenal,” O’Neill said of Lava Man, primarily based at Los Alamitos with assistant Sabas Rivera. “Wherever Sabas is, that’s where Lava Man is,” O’Neill said. “The two are inseparable.” Today, Lava Man, who turned 15 on January 1, remains an integral part of the day-to-day regimen, serving as a stable pony, with his long-time groom, Noe Garcia, still at the ready, despite suffering a catastrophic injury more than eight years ago that now limits him to walking hots at Santa Anita. On July 23, 2007, Garcia lost his left arm in a car accident near Del Mar, where Lava Man was being readied for the Pacific Classic. “He’s lucky to be alive and he’s got a lot to live for,” O’Neill said at the time. “He’s got a job with this stable forever.” Added Mora, 57, now in his 14th year with O’Neill: “Noe’s position is permanent. He’s going to be working with us as long as Doug O’Neill exists.” The 64-year-old Rothblum, who trained on his own for 30 years, is not a paid member of O’Neill’s staff, although seemingly attached at the hip on a daily basis since 2007. “I was managing horses for different clients and one of four different trainers I had for them was Doug,” Rothblum said. “I was so impressed with how he treated owners, the horses, and his crew, I gave all the horses to Doug. “He’s so great at putting together a team that we just hit it off right away . . . I became part of the team. I’ve never been on payroll with Doug. I don’t accept a penny from him, ever. My income comes from buying and selling horses for my clients when we do well. “But when Leandro had a stroke last September and missed time at Santa Anita, Doug had to be at both Los Al and Santa Anita, so I stayed at Del Mar and watched over everything there. Thankfully, Doug has the confidence in me to know that if something needs to be done, I’ll do it. We always stay in contact. “We have an amazing group of guys. We have weekly team meetings and everybody gets in tune with every horse, gives his opinion, and Doug weighs them. With 80 to 100 horses, it’s impossible to know every horse’s condition intimately. “Dennis has interest in the two-year-olds he’s bought at training sales; me with the Euros and the older horses I bought. Doug’s great at filtering through all the information and making the right decisions.” Dennis has been going to sales “since I was a little kid, when my dad used to take us to DRC (Detroit Race Course) in the mornings for workouts. I grew up loving the sport and got involved in ownership right out of high school. I went to the sales all the time and hung around with Hector Palma, who Doug worked with. “Hopefully you get better at things you have a passion for, and over time, that’s what happened to me, although I made a lot of mistakes along the way. I feel pretty confident now going to sales, but I don’t do a lot of yearling stuff, mostly two-year-olds. I think we bought only four or five yearlings in 2015.” Among the more prominent stakes winners Dennis selected were Stevie Wonderboy (winner of the 2005 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile); Cobalt Blue (owned by the late “Jeopardy” creator, Merv Griffin), winner of the Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes in 2007; I’ll Have Another; and Nyquist. “Pedigree goes into buying, but I really don’t pay that much attention to that,” Dennis said. “We paid $35,000 for I’ll Have Another and $400,000 for Nyquist. In between would be a filly like Land Over Sea, $130,000, and Gomo, $75,000.” At 31, Sisterson is the youngest of the group, having come on board early in 2012 after graduating from the University of Louisville’s equine program and working for Todd Pletcher and Eddie Kenneally. “Doug is a fantastic trainer and horseman,” said Sisterson, a native of Durham, England. “It’s a pleasure to work for someone who’s approachable and you can learn from. For someone young in the game, that’s ideal, and Doug’s kind of a coach for me.” Nyquist’s owner, Paul Reddam, who turned 60 on July 28, was born in Windsor, Ontario, earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Windsor, a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Toronto and a PhD in the same field at USC, later teaching philosophy at Cal State Los Angeles. He got into the mortgage business to supplement his income, founding Ditech.com in 1995 to offer mortgage loans, and sold it in 1999 to General Motors. He is the founding president of CashCall, a consumer lender. He became interested in racing through a high school friend who worked as a groom at Windsor Raceway, played the ponies at Los Alamitos while teaching, and bought his first horse, Ocean Warrior, in 1988. It never won. Things have changed since. “I had been claiming horses with a friend of mine, Mark Schlessinger, and he was friends with Reddam, who he thought might want to take a piece of a claim,” O’Neill said. “Mark was my link to Paul, and never in my wildest dreams did I think we’d be where we are now. I never really knew much about (Paul), how successful he was or anything. “As hard as he works at what he does for a living, he’s equally involved and as competitive in the racing world. He picks up everybody’s game when you’re around him. It’s contagious. You want to work harder because you want to do better.” O’Neill is the antithesis of the quote attributed to Leo Durocher that “Nice guys finish last,” at least according to Reddam, who has been O’Neill’s client for a dozen years. “Doug is very misunderstood,” Reddam said. “People have a stereotypical image of him because he has run such a large stable over many years. He is actually a ‘pleaser,’ as he is always bending over backwards to be overly deferential to everyone, including his owners. “He is very gentle with his horses and gives them the benefit of the doubt. The business is very streaky and we have had some very cold periods which have been offset by the hot streaks. Although he is a claiming trainer, he has won so many races at the top level, it gets confusing.” Another reason for O’Neill’s success is jockey Mario Gutierrez, who rode I’ll Have Another to victories in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. The 29-year-old native of Mexico has been the go-to rider for Reddam ever since he won the Run for the Roses in 2012. “There’s nothing in writing with Mario as far as a contract, to my knowledge, but Paul is like that,” O’Neill said. “If you’re part of the team, you’d have to do something seriously wrong to get kicked off. “Paul is a tough leader, but he’s as loyal as any human being I’ve ever met. Mario, like the rest of us, struggled from time to time, but Paul will never use any of his team as an excuse for a horse performing poorly. Paul’s a horse lover who realizes, like Trevor Denman says, ‘They’re not machines,’ and when you work for someone like that, it makes you stronger and better. Mario could put the saddle on backwards, but he’s the number one rider for Paul, for sure.” O’Neill had these encouraging words for young trainers who have lower quality horses currently campaigning under increased pressures to medicate: “In the 29 years I’ve been in the game, the claiming environment now is the best ever. The new claim rule, which I think is fantastic, protects the horse, which we all should. We’re here to serve them, not vice-versa. God forbid, if the horse comes out of the race a little sore, the claim is void. The claiming world is a buyer’s market right now and I see it doing nothing but getting better and better.” California Horse Racing Board rule 1658, Vesting of Title to Claimed Horse, reads in part under section (b), “The stewards shall void the claim and return the horse to the original owner if: (1) The horse suffers a fatality during the running of the race . . . or (2) The racing or official veterinarian determines the horse will be placed on the Veterinarian’s List as unsound or lame before the horse is released to the successful claimant . . .” Added O’Neill: “My advice to someone new to the claiming game is take horses that are ready made. Then it’s a matter of caring for them and doing all the right things, like putting them in a spot where you think they can be competitive. The new owners will be happy because their horse is up and running very quickly and hopefully will bring a quick return on their investment. “I think horseracing has done a terrific job for the horses. We provide the best prerace and post-race vet checks. If horses could talk, they’d say, ‘Hallelujah!’ It’s a wonderful environment and horses are gone over thoroughly by top veterinarians before and after the race. “The environment right now for horse safety is the best it’s ever been. “Every morning I realize how blessed I am to be doing what I do. It’s a daily appreciation for the sport and of everyone who helped me do this for a living. “I think as you get older in this sport you provide great care for each horse and do what you think is the right thing on a daily basis. You communicate with the owners as best you can, and whether things go well or not, you’ve just got to deal with it.” Down the road, O’Neill sees light at the end of the tunnel. “There are so many positive things going in California, with some of the best horsemen in the world and Santa Anita and Del Mar offering two of the greatest historical venues,” he said. “Now it comes down to bringing people back in the stands. I always say we need a Lee Iacocca of horseracing to show up. “If someone gave me a liquor license and a gambling license, I know I could bring people in. It’s a matter of adding enough value so that people will leave their office and their home to come out and enjoy a great sport.” O’Neill has put behind him a New York contamination case which was more than two-and-a-half years ago. His focus is on the present and the future, which appears as bright as the lights on Broadway, with undefeated Nyquist gleaming on maximum wattage. Named for 26-year-old Swede Gustav Nyquist of the Detroit Red Wings hockey team, Reddam’s bay son of Uncle Mo is five-for-five. Nyquist registered Grade 1 victories in his last three starts, the Del Mar Futurity, the FrontRunner Stakes, and the Juvenile to clinch an Eclipse Award as champion twoyear-old male of 2015. Reddam is partnered with Erik Johnson of the National Hockey League’s Colorado Avalanche on a couple of horses. “I had been teasing Erik that he should sign with the Wings; in turn he has said how much he wants to beat them,” Reddam said. “To tease him further, I named a couple of horses after their players and that’s how Nyquist got his name.” “Nyquist is like a first-round draft pick,” O’Neill said of the Kentucky-bred who was purchased at the Florida Fasig-Tipton sale in March of 2015. “He’s a handsome, athletic, and classy individual. We hope he achieves what I’ll Have Another did, but he’s a betterlooking horse. He’s different, I should say. He’s a little taller and a little longer. He’s more of a power forward, where I’ll Have Another was kind of a point guard.” Best case scenario, sounds like Nyquist could be that rare combination of both, sort of an equine Michael Jordan. That said, for Doug O’Neill, the future is whatever he can make of it.

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