Trainer Robert Tiller and Canadian sprint legend Pink Lloyd both reached momentous milestones this year - Alex Campbell shares all.

By Alex Campbell

By now, you’ve likely heard of Pink Lloyd, one of the greatest Canadian sprinters of all time. He has won 26 of his 31 starts—23 of which have come in stakes events. He was named Canadian Horse of the Year for his 2017 campaign that saw him win all eight of his starts. In addition, he’s been the Canadian champion male sprinter the last three years from 2017 to 2019, and appears to be well on his way to earning that honor for a fourth time in 2020. This year, Pink Lloyd also hit a major earnings milestone, crossing C$2 million in career earnings with his victory in the Gr3 Vigil Stakes on September 5. Pink Lloyd’s trainer, 2008 Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame inductee, Robert Tiller, also recorded a personal milestone of his own back on June 19, when he captured his 2,000th career training victory.

Tiller didn’t come from a horse racing background but has devoted his life to the sport. Born in Amsterdam, Holland, 70-year-old Tiller immigrated to Canada with his family in 1960 when he was 11 years old. At 16, he found his way to the racetrack, responding to an ad in a newspaper from the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association of Ontario looking for grooms and hot walkers at Woodbine. Tiller took a summer job with John Calhoun walking hots in 1966, and never left the racetrack.

“I went straight from grade school to the University of Woodbine,” Tiller said. “I stuck after the summer was over. I basically got the upbringing on the racetrack, living in tack rooms. I always had a desire to be a horse trainer and started very young.” After a couple of years working for Calhoun, Tiller then went on to become a groom for trainer Glenn Magnusson. While working for Magnusson, Tiller had the opportunity to travel with horses to Blue Bonnets Raceway in Montreal, and while he was not officially a trainer at that time, Tiller said he was doing most of the training himself. He returned to Toronto at 21 to obtain his trainer’s license and quickly found success. He recorded 21 wins in his first year as a trainer in 1972, and 48 wins during the 1974 season after just a few years of being out on his own. In 1975, Tiller had his first Queen’s Plate starter, sending out long-shot Near the High Sea to a runner-up finish behind future Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame inductee L’Enjoleur.

Tiller has been Woodbine’s leading trainer four times (1994, 1997, 2001, and 2003), and has won three Sovereign Awards as Canada’s outstanding trainer in 2001, 2003, and 2004. Tiller has trained a number of Canadian champions over the years. Along with Pink Lloyd, Tiller also trained 2001 Canadian Horse of the Year and Canadian champion three-year-old, Win City, who won the Prince of Wales Stakes and finished second in the Queen’s Plate. Rare Friends was also named Canadian champion two-year-old male in 2001, and Simply Lovely was named Canadian champion two-year-old filly in 2004. Tiller has also trained a pair of Canadian champion female sprinters, including Indian Apple Is in 2010 and River Maid in 2016.

“I went through all of the stages that trainers go through,” Tiller said. “I was ‘wonder boy’ for a while. We got into the claiming game with some clients. I was leading trainer a few times or close to it. We’ve won a lot of races.

You’re only as good as your horses in this game. It’s like a good hockey coach if they have a bunch of bad players. I don’t care what anyone says: without talented horses, we have nothing.”

If a trainer is only as good as his or her horses, as Tiller says, then it must take a good eye to select those good horses. Tiller has done that, not only at the sales but in the claiming game as well. Tiller said his experience with different horses throughout his career has helped refine his horse selection process. “You learn from your mistakes,” he said. “I’ve bought a lot of good horses over the years. I enjoy going to the sales. I like to think of myself as an all-around horseman.”

Pink Lloyd was a $30,000 purchase at the 2013 Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society’s Canadian Premier Yearling Sale. Tiller said he and his clients, including Frank Di Giulio, Jr., went into the sale with a short list of horses and ended up purchasing six horses out of the sale. “We had a list of horses that year, as every other horseman does,” he said. “We liked the way [Pink Lloyd] walked and we liked the sire, Old Forester. We took a shot on him, and it’s all turned out great. Three of them ended up winning races, and two of them never made the races. This happens all of the time.” Tiller said there’s one piece of advice he learned early on in his career that he’s always remembered, and that advice has played a key role in Pink Lloyd’s achievements.

“There was a trainer, Lou Cavalaris Jr., who was well-respected,” he said. “He said to me ‘everybody trains horses son, but it’s a game of details.’

I never forgot that. It is a real game of details. Everything from shoes to feed, to how you train a horse. That to me is the most important thing—trying to figure out how to get that horse to that race happy and fit and wanting to run.”

Tiller’s attention to the details has helped the eight-year-old son of Old Forester stay at the top of his game over multiple campaigns. Pink Lloyd’s career even got off to a late start, as he didn’t make it to the races until his four-year-old year due to a number of issues along the way. Pink Lloyd won the first three starts of his career in 2016, but Tiller noticed that he seemed to be over-exerting himself in the mornings.

“In the early years, we used to take him out on the track when there were a lot of horses, and he just kept getting tougher and tougher,” he said. “He got to the point where he was in a very strong gallop all of the time. He was just burning himself out in the morning.” To help Pink Lloyd relax, Tiller decided that he would take the horse to the track very close to the end of training hours, around 10:30 a.m., when almost every other horse on the grounds had completed their training for the day. “In my past experience, it’s worked with a few horses, so I said ‘let’s take this guy out there when there’s nobody out there,’” he said. “Every day, he got more relaxed; and then we got to the point where we could actually hack him and do a slow, slow gallop. It was just a shot I took with him, and it worked with him.” Shortly after Tiller made that adjustment, Pink Lloyd went on to reel off a streak of 11 consecutive wins over a 13-month span between April 2017 and June 2018. He also went on another double-digit win streak between May 2019 and October 2020, and Tiller is hoping to run him twice more before the end of the 2020 season. In between, Tiller said Pink Lloyd has had his share of close calls.

“It’s amazing he’s still running as good as he is now as he was as a four-year-old,” he said. “He had incidents at the starting gate where he broke through the gate a few times. He had one major bleeding incident at the end of his 2018. …

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Jessica Buckley - Senior Vice President of Racing Operations - Woodbine and Woodbine Mohawk

By Alex Campbell

After the Woodbine Entertainment Group announced a reorganization of their senior leadership team in January, Jessica Buckley—the former president of the company’s Standardbred track, Woodbine Mohawk Park—was named Senior Vice President of Racing Operations for both Thoroughbred racing and Standardbred racing.

Buckley’s role of managing racing operations for two different breeds at the same time appears to be unique in North American racing. And while she has direct experience running a Standardbred racetrack, she also has strong roots in Thoroughbred racing in the province of Ontario. Buckley is the daughter of the late Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame inductee Robert Anderson, who operated leading breeding operation, Anderson Farms, in St. Thomas, Ontario for more than 40 years. Buckley said she has fond memories growing up on the farm that produced the likes of 1992 Preakness Stakes runner-up Alydeed, and Canadian champions Larkwhistle, Prince Avatar and Fifty Proof.

“I couldn’t help but be interested in the horses,” she said. “I always knew how lucky I was to have horses like that in my backyard. It was a really great childhood growing up with the mares in foal. My first job on the farm was doing my homework in the barn, on foal watching in the evenings. I always loved the horses.”

Despite her love of horses, Buckley did not plan on having a career in the racing industry. She graduated from Western University in nearby London, Ontario in 1994, and had aspirations of becoming a television producer.

“I found myself graduating in the nineties in a recession and couldn’t find a job in the field that I was interested in at the time,” Buckley said. “They were hiring at Woodbine, so I took a position for the summer and that’s where my career in racing began.”

Buckley’s summer position at Woodbine in 1994 was in customer service, providing racetrack tours and information on how to place bets. From there, Buckley helped manage the launch of HorsePlayer Interactive—Woodbine’s account wagering service—in 1997.

“I got into the operations of the racetrack and racing and realized how fascinating it was and all of the opportunities that were there,” she said. “It was on the cusp of technology in the nineties, and there were a lot of projects on the go that were new and exciting to be involved with.”

Buckley remained with Woodbine until 2001, when an opportunity came up for her and her family to move to Pasadena, Calif., to join The Stronach Group for the launch of Xpressbet’s account wagering service there. Buckley remained with Xpressbet as the Director of Account Wagering until 2003, when she moved into television as the Director of Marketing for HRTV.

“That was the serendipity to me,” she said. “I had always been interested in television, and then ended up getting involved with the launch of HRTV. I wasn’t a producer, but I was involved on the marketing side and affiliate sales and distribution and getting our product distributed across the United States.”

Buckley remained with HRTV for more than nine years before leaving The Stronach Group in 2011. Her father had passed away in 2010, and she managed Anderson Farms with her brother, David Anderson, for a short period of time before Anderson bought out Buckley’s share in the farm.

Buckley’s father Robert was inducted in 2015 to the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame.

“It was great working with my brother, and it certainly felt like we were closer with my dad and his legacy,” she said. “I was living in New Jersey at the time with my family. My brother was the brains on the breeding side and doing all of the work and making all of the really great decisions that he made back then that have now really paid off for him. He was the one really running with it and making the business succeed, and we just made the decision that he would buy me out and continue on running Anderson Farms.”

Buckley’s husband’s career wound up bringing the family back to Canada in 2013. Buckley was running a children’s winter accessory business when Woodbine offered her the role of Vice President of Community and Government relations in 2015.

“They were looking ahead to some exciting projects that were going to be happening,” she said. “They were working on a lot of things on the property development side and ways to sustain racing and create value and keep racing going for many, many years to come. I started speaking to them about it and then ended up coming back to help them initially with some government relations and community relations work, and things have evolved from there.”

In her role, Buckley was involved in a number of initiatives with all three levels of government as the horse racing industry in Ontario dealt with the fallout of the cancellation of the slots at racetracks program; and the evolving gaming landscape, as the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation sought to modernize their operations. Woodbine Entertainment was also looking to begin several development projects on their properties, including converting Woodbine Mohawk Park into a year-round Standardbred racing facility. In 2017, Buckley became the president of Woodbine Mohawk Park to lead that transition.

“The decision was made to move Standardbreds year-round to Mohawk, and there was gaming expansion happening as well with the new gaming partner,” she said. “We were creating a real destination for Standardbred racing, gaming and entertainment in the Halton Region.” 

Under Buckley’s leadership, Woodbine Mohawk Park successfully completed $10 million in capital improvements to allow for year-round racing, rebranded the track and hosted the 2018 Breeders’ Crown.

This past January saw Buckley change roles within the Woodbine senior leadership team. Buckley was named Senior Vice President of Standardbred Racing and Thoroughbred Racing, and will report directly to CEO Jim Lawson. Buckley said she is excited to be back involved with Thoroughbred racing again.

Training scenario under new regulations.

“It’s been a great challenge to take on the Thoroughbreds as well,” she said. “I’m much more familiar with Thoroughbred racing, and I feel much more comfortable in Thoroughbred racing than I certainly did in Standardbred racing when I first arrived at Mohawk. I had a very steep learning curve, but the people were absolutely fantastic.”

Buckley has been dealing with a unique challenge in just her first few months in her new role, as the horse racing industry and the world have dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic. Woodbine Mohawk Park was able to race without spectators for two racing dates in March before having to cancel races indefinitely, while opening day for the Thoroughbreds at Woodbine (originally scheduled for April 18) was postponed. While some tracks, most notably Gulfstream Park and Oaklawn Park, have been able to continue to race during the pandemic, Buckley said a state of emergency issued by the government of Ontario had prevented Woodbine from being able to do the same.

“In the state of emergency declaration, we’re a non-essential business,” she said. “We tried to continue to race as long as we could with all of the safety protocols in place without spectators. We were doing so successfully, but then when the state of emergency was declared, we did close.”

Buckley said 1,100 Thoroughbreds were stabled on the Woodbine backstretch at the time the state of emergency was declared, and the track opted to keep the backstretch open as opposed to forcing horses off of the grounds.

“We made the decision that we would continue to keep the backstretch open for the health and welfare of the horses but that we wouldn’t be conducting any non-essential business activities,” she said. “It has been difficult to strike the right balance, but Jim Lawson has been very focused on keeping people safe, number one; and number two, making sure the horses have the ability to get out of their stalls every day and do some jogging and galloping on the track.”…

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Ontario Breeding

By Alex Campbell

The Ontario breeding industry has experienced a number of twists and turns since the provincial government canceled the lucrative slots-at-racetracks program back in 2013. Prior to the cancelation of the program, the once robust industry had years where more than 1,600 mares were bred in the province, according to numbers published by The Jockey Club. In 2018, that number was down to 733.

While the cancelation of the program has impacted the majority of the province’s breeders, well-known breeding operations in Ontario have experienced success through all of the uncertainty. Sam-Son Farm won back-to-back Sovereign Awards as Canada’s top breeder in 2013 and 2014, while Frank Stronach’s Adena Springs won three straight Sovereign Awards between 2015 and 2017 when they bred two Queen’s Plate winners in that time, including Shaman Ghost in 2015 and Holy Helena in 2017. 

Along with these big operations, several other commercial breeders are also experiencing success, not only in Ontario but throughout North America and internationally as well. Ivan Dalos’ Tall Oaks Farm bred two Gr1 winners in 2018, including full brothers Channel Maker, who won the Joe Hirsch Turf Classic at Belmont Park, and Johnny Bear, who won the Gr1 Northern Dancer Turf Stakes at Woodbine for the second consecutive year. In addition, Dalos also bred Avie’s Flatter, Canada’s champion two-year-old in 2018; dam In Return, who produced Channel Maker; and Johnny Bear, which was Canada’s Outstanding Broodmare. As a result, Tall Oaks Farm won its first Sovereign Award for Outstanding Breeder in 2018 as well.

Horses bred by David Anderson’s Anderson Farms and Sean and Dorothy Fitzhenry also were big winners at last year’s Sovereign Awards. Anderson bred Queen’s Plate winner and 2018 Canadian Horse of the Year, Wonder Gadot, while Fitzhenry’s homebred, Mr Havercamp, was named champion older male and champion male turf horse. Both Anderson and Fitzhenry have also had success selling horses internationally, primarily at Keeneland. In 2017, Anderson sold Ontario-bred yearling, Sergei Prokofiev—a son of Scat Daddy—to Coolmore for $1.1 million. One of Fitzhenry’s success stories is that of Marketing Mix, who he sold for $150,000 to Glen Hill Farm at the 2009 Keeneland September Yearling Sale. Marketing Mix went on to win the Wonder Where Stakes at Woodbine as a three-year-old in 2011, and captured two Gr1 victories later on in her career in the 2012 Rodeo Drive Stakes at Santa Anita and the 2013 Gamely Stakes at Hollywood Park.

For Anderson, commercial breeding is all he’s ever known. The son of the late Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame inductee, Robert Anderson, David Anderson grew up around horses at his father’s farm in St. Thomas, Ontario. In the 1970s and 1980s, Anderson Farms was one of the biggest breeders and consignors in the province, breeding several graded stakes winners. In fact, in 1985, Anderson Farms was the leading consignor at both the Saratoga and Keeneland yearling sales.

“That’s what my father established years ago, and that’s what I grew up with was breeding and selling at all of the international sales,” David Anderson said. “We haven’t diverted from that philosophy in nearly 50 years. It’s what I learned growing up, and I try to buy the best quality mares that I can and breed to the best quality sires that I can.”

David Anderson (blue suit) with Peter Berringer

While Anderson closely watched his father build up the Thoroughbred side of the business, he got experience of his own breeding Standardbreds. After all, the farm’s location in Southwestern Ontario is in the heart of Standardbred racing in the province. Anderson said the Standardbred business had a number of success stories spanning more than a decade: breeding champions such as Pampered Princess, Southwind Allaire, Cabrini Hanover, and The Pres.

In 2010, Robert Anderson passed away from a heart attack, and the farm was taken over by David Anderson and his sister, Jessica Buckley, who is the current president of Woodbine Mohawk Park. Anderson went on to buy Buckley out of her share of the farm and took on full control. He also decided he wanted to focus exclusively on Thoroughbred breeding and racing.

“After my Dad died I decided I wanted to jump back into the Thoroughbreds,” he said. “I sold all the Standardbreds and put everything I had back into Thoroughbreds. I came full circle back to my roots, and this is where I really love it.”

It’s been a long-term project for Anderson to get the farm to where it is today. After taking control of the farm, Anderson sold off all of his father’s mares—with the exception of one—and began to build the business back up. Anderson said his broodmare band currently sits between 25 and 30, which is where he wants to keep it.

Fitzhenry, on the other hand, took a much different path to his current standing in the Thoroughbred breeding industry. Fitzhenry said his start in Thoroughbred racing came through a horse owned by friends Debbie and Dennis Brown. Fitzhenry and his wife, Dorothy, would follow the Brown’s horse, No Comprende, who won seven of his 30 starts in his career, including the Gr3 Woodbine Slots Cup Handicap in 2003.

The Fitzhenrys decided they wanted to get involved in ownership themselves and partnered with the Browns on a couple of horses. The more Fitzhenry got involved, the more the breeding industry appealed to him.

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Tony Gattellaro

By Alex Campbell

A love of pedigrees and buying horses eventually led Tony Gattellaro to a training career at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto, Ontario.

The 33-year-old native of Aurora, Ontario, got exposed to horse racing through family ties to the sport. Gattellaro’s grandfather is owner and breeder Mike Nosowenko, and Tony’s father, Joe Gattellaro, owned horses. Gattellaro got an inside look at the sport of horse racing through his family’s ownership of racehorses as a young child and would even pretend to buy horses himself out of sales catalogs.

“As a kid, seeing the jockeys in colors and being around the racetrack and experiencing all of the excitement, I just kind of caught the bug at a young age,” he said. “My grandpa and my dad would put a sales book in my hand. Literally, I was eight or nine years old and I was playing with a sales book, memorizing stallion names and what not. That’s where I got that side of the bug in terms of pedigrees, sales and purchasing horses. I was doing mock sales purchases and following the horses.”

Gattellaro admitted that he lost a bit of interest in the sport for a brief period of time while growing up, as he spent time engaged in other activities. Gattellaro was participating in several different sports throughout his childhood, including hockey, lacrosse and golf. He would eventually make his way back to the sport in high school, however, thanks to a couple of horses, his grandfather owned, including stakes-placed horses Tacky Affair and Tamara.

“It wasn’t until later in high school that my grandpa had a couple of good horses. I just loved going to the track at that point to watch them and I kind of re-caught the bug that I had a young age. It just never went away from that point,” he said.

After high school, Gattellaro attended Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, and upon graduation he moved out west to figure out what he wanted to do. As the 2009 Kentucky Derby drew closer, Gattellaro decided that he wanted to pursue a career in horse racing, and reached out to a representative from the Canadian branch of Adena Springs in his hometown of Aurora for work.

“I kind of had that ‘aha’ moment where I just said this is what I need to be doing,” Gattellaro said. “That day, I sent an email to Dermot Carty at Adena Springs and said I wanted to get into the game. He asked if I could get there on Monday and I was there on Monday. I just interviewed with them and explained myself. I told them my background and they gave me a chance.”

Gattellaro said he began working with broodmares when he first started at Adena Springs but wound up working in a number of different departments on the farm, including in the racing department, before moving over to the breeding side selling stallion seasons. While working in the racing department, Gattellaro had the chance to work closely with accomplished trainers Sean Smullen and Jim Day, who both had an impact on Gattellaro’s training methodology.

“Both are great horsemen, have unbelievable resumes and have been a lot of places,” Gattellaro said. “Sean gave me a lot of patience. He’s really good at nurturing his horses and dealing with owners. Jim was more aggressive in my pursuit in believing in myself. He saw that I had the bug. When we were done with work, he would spend an hour or two talking about the old days. Even though it was a short time with Jim, I learned a lot from him just based on those talks that I had with him.”

Gattellaro said his main motivation for beginning to train was to have an opportunity to purchase horses.

“Being in Canada, it’s a different market than a lot of other places in the world where bloodstock agents aren’t really commonly used,” he said. “There’s maybe a handful of guys that control the bigger stables and have the bigger clients. My focus was on buying horses, and I had this realization that a lot of trainers here purchase horses for their clients. It was at that point that I shifted focus on learning to train and kind of looking towards that.”

Gattellaro was getting set to move back to the west coast again to work on a project with Andy Stronach when Stronach presented him with an opportunity to get into training.

“It was in a car ride there that we had a discussion,” Gattellaro said. “He presented me with an opportunity to give me some horses to learn how to train. It was a good opportunity because I didn’t want to just step into the deep end here at Woodbine. It’s my belief that you only have one chance to do it right. It was actually a perfect storm where I was able to train horses on the west coast and learn how to take care of horses and build my trade.”

Gattellaro spent three years on the west coast training horses at Portland Meadows, Hastings Racecourse, and Emerald Downs, and recorded eight wins from 115 starts to go along with 19 runner-up finishes and 16 third-place finishes between 2014 and 2016. Among the more memorable horses Gattellaro trained while out west included Dynasheals, who was Gattellaro’s first winner.

Gattellaro’s plan was always to return to Woodbine, and in 2016, he made his way back east after setting up a small breeding operation a few years prior. Among the first horses Gattellaro raced back at Woodbine were a pair of homebreds out of mares he had purchased while working at Adena Springs. Gattellaro’s first Woodbine starter, Hockey Hair, was out of Tetherette, while Fresh Princess was out of Kamaina Rose, a mare Gattellaro had purchased for $800 at the 2011 Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society Ontario Division’s Winter Mixed Sale. At the time Gattellaro purchased her, Kamaina Rose was in foal to Macho Uno, and Gattellaro went on to sell that foal as a weanling for $20,000 at the Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale in 2013. Gattellaro said it was the sale of the weanling that really got his business off and running…

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