Even today, when so much of racing is centered on getting the most you can out of horses when they’re two and three years old, having patience and doing the right thing with your horses can still pay off big time. It sure has for Stella Perdomo, who continues to have success with horses others might think were well past their prime.
Forte Dei Marmi’s third consecutive graded stakes victory in the Northern Dancer Turf Stakes at Woodbine pushed his earnings over the $1 million mark at the age of seven. “He’s at the best he’s ever been,” his trainer, Roger Attfield, said after the race. Having a horse peak at seven certainly reflects positively on Attfield and Perdomo. But Forte Dei Marmi isn’t close to being the oldest horse to go over the $1 million mark for Perdomo. Last year, Musketier did so as a ten-year-old, thanks to his third victory in the Grade 3 Singspiel Stakes at Woodbine.
Musketier, too, was trained by Attfield, who began training for Perdomo four and a half years ago. Attfield has yet to meet Perdomo in person.
Perdomo is the wife of trainer Pico Perdomo, a 71-year-old native of Uruguay. Perdomo was a successful jockey in Uruguay, winning that country’s Triple Crown, and in Argentina before becoming a trainer. He began training in the United States at Santa Anita in 1977. “My friends told me to go somewhere smaller and get my feet wet,” he said. “But I have survived. Just don’t ask me how.”
Perdomo trained in the United States for a long time before returning to Uruguay. He came back to the U.S. in 2010, but then took a job as racing manager for Rancho San Paesea, S.A. When he did, he leased three horses with Santa Anita trainer Humberto Ascanio to Stella, including multiple stakes winner Proudinsky and Philatelist. Ascanio was a former assistant to the late Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel.
