Juan Carlos Avila - trainer of Kentucky Derby hopeful - King Guillermo - in profile
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By Bill Heller
Too often, dreams are derailed, deferred or dismissed. That doesn’t mean they never come true. Even if they’re delayed.
Before he emigrated from Venezuela to America in 2018, trainer Juan Carlos Avila had one dream: “To watch the Kentucky Derby as a fan,” he said.
Now he’s in it.
So is another dreamer—retired five-time All-Star baseball player Victor Martinez, a Venezuelan who followed through on his discussions with his wife about what they might do when he retired: buy a Thoroughbred. When that moment arrived, he told his trainer Juan Carlos Avila, “I don’t want a horse that can run in the Kentucky Derby, I want a horse to win the Derby.”
Avila replied, “You’re crazy.”
Not that crazy. Martinez is in it, too.
Yet another Venezuelan, Jockey Samy Camacho, dreamed of riding in the United States in major races. “That’s the dream of every jockey—like a baseball player—to move to the big time.” he said. “Everybody wants to ride here.”
He’s in the Derby, too.
All three—Avila, Martinez and Camacho—will have to wait a bit to realize that accomplishment as they and the entire world pray that the coronavirus pandemic, which led to Churchill Downs delaying the Derby from the first Saturday in May (May 2) to the first Saturday in September (September 5), has subsided by then.
The horse that has led to this incredible confluence of Venezuelan dreamers is King Guillermo, named for Martinez’s father who died when Martinez was seven years old. King Guillermo’s dominant 4 ¾ length victory in the Gr2 Tampa Bay Derby at odds of 49-1 March 7 made him a legitimate Derby contender. His winning time was the third fastest in the Tampa Bay Derby’s 40-year-history.
He followed that performance with a strong second to undefeated Nadal in the second division of the rescheduled Gr1 Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park on May 5. King Guillermo finished three lengths behind Nadal while a length and a half ahead of Finnick the Fierce in third.
“He put his heart out,” Martinez said May 7. “He showed a lot of people what he did in Tampa wasn’t a fluke. He’s got a big heart. I was really happy.”
Martinez, who watched the Arkansas Derby with his family on their ranch in Okeechobee, Fla., says King Guillermo would likely get another start before the Derby. He’s also hoping the coronavirus pandemic won’t cause Churchill Downs to change the September date. “Right now, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “It’s still a lot of questions with this virus going around. There’s nothing you can do about it. You hope it goes back to normal.”
Having a starter in the Derby is his new normal, and he couldn’t be happier about that. Making King Guillermo’s ascension even more unbelievable is that Martinez might not have stayed in the U.S. to become a baseball star had his mother not advised him at a critical point at the beginning of his career to not abandon his dreams and continue to work hard. He did and he prospered.
When he retired, Martinez bought two horses at the 2019 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Company’s April Two-Year-Olds in Training Sale and headed home to his family in Orlando. He purchased a colt, Tio Will, and a filly, Princess Coro, who have begun their careers while still seeking their first victory. That night, Martinez dreamt of owning a horse by Uncle Mo. The next morning, his wife gave him an okay to buy a third horse. When King Guillermo failed to reach his RNA, Martinez was able to purchase him for $150,000.
Camacho, who was the leading rider at Tampa Bay Downs in its 2018-2019 season and is currently second in the 2019-2020 jockey standings, only got the chance to ride King Guillermo—who he had never sat on in a race or workout—in the Tampa Bay Derby after Paco Lopez opted to ride Chance It (who went off the 5-2 second choice in the race and finished fifth).
Then there’s King Guillermo himself. In his only prior dirt race, he had finished sixth by 11 ¼ lengths in his maiden debut last September 29 at Gulfstream Park. He wouldn’t have been in the Tampa Bay Derby had Martinez not reminded Avila that he wanted a horse to win the Kentucky Derby; and he deserved a second chance to race on dirt. Avila caved and said okay. Then Martinez told his trainer he wanted that start to be in a race with qualifying points to get into the Derby. That was the Tampa Bay Derby. And King Guillermo delivered a sublime performance, prompting announcer Richard Grunder to call in the stretch, “Do you believe this?”
Minutes later in the winner’s circle, there were three delirious believers from Venezuela celebrating in utter joy—their ticket to the Kentucky Derby punched.
“We still don’t believe it,” Avila said.
Five days after the Tampa Bay Derby, Martinez said, “Man, we’re still talking about it. It’s 24/7 in my house, and we don’t get bored talking about it. We can’t believe it.”
They are hopefully headed to Louisville on the first Saturday in September—49 years after Canonero II (Venezuelan owned, trained and ridden) shocked the equine world by winning the Kentucky Derby and Preakness before finishing fourth in the 1971 Belmont Stakes.
Avila had decided to train King Guillermo up to the Derby without another prep race, before the news broke of the Derby Delay. He had given King Guillermo a week of R&R at Savannah Farms in Ocala after his extraordinary win in the Tampa Bay Derby. “He’s very intense in that every time he works out, he wants to make holes in the dirt,” Avila said. “He puts so much into his workouts. He works better than any horse I’ve trained in 30 years. We wanted him to relax for a week. At 6 a.m., he goes into the paddock. He’s just running around to 2 p.m. when they come out to get him.”
Avila, 56, was born in Caracas, Venezuela, without any family background in racing. He played baseball, then decided to go to the racetrack in Caracas, La Rinconada Hippodrome. “I never touched a horse before that,” he said. “I was looking. I was learning.” He began as a hotwalker, advanced to groom and ultimately to trainer—winning nine training titles, including seven straight, while compiling nearly 3,000 victories.
He thought long and hard about leaving troubled Venezuela for the United States and did so in 2018. “It was the situation in the country,” he said. “The insecurity we had over there. It was dangerous. It was tough to live there. If you went out of your house, you didn’t know if you’d come back.”
He showed up at Gulfstream Park in February 2018, and he began the arduous task of finding owners. It didn’t take him long to make an impression. On behalf of JCA Racing Stables, he purchased Trophy Chaser, a Twirling Candy colt out of European Union by Successful Appeal, for $42,000 at the March Ocala Breeders Two-Year-Olds-in Training Sale. Trophy Chaser made his debut on August 25 that year and won a maiden race by 15 ¾ lengths. He had one win, one second and one third from five starts in 2019, then won his four-year-old debut this year at Gulfstream Park in an allowance race at Gulfstream Park by 8 ¼ lengths. Then, on the Tampa Bay Derby undercard, he won the Gr3 Challenger Stakes by a head with Paco Lopez riding him for the first time.
Avila met Martinez a month before the 2019 Ocala Two-Year-Olds-in Training April Sale through Martinez’s baseball agent Wilfredo Polidor. Avila had trained Thoroughbreds for Polidor in Venezuela.
Born in Bolivar, Venezuela, on December 23, 1978, Martinez is forever grateful for how hard his mother worked, especially after his father died. “My mom was a nurse,” he said. “She used to make $100 a month to support four kids in Venezuela.”
The Cleveland Indians signed him as an amateur free agent in 1996. “I came to this country in 1997 with zero dollars in my pocket,” he said. …
