Cherie DeVaux has been among the sport's hottest trainers this month, with a winning streak that included three graded stakes wins on the Pimlico card the day prior to the GI Preakness. Those wins landed DeVaux the top prize of $50,000 in the Maryland Jockey Club's $100,000 trainer bonus that was offered to horsemen for their participation in stakes races over Preakness weekend.
DeVaux was no overnight sensation after going out on her own in 2018 after working for Chad Brown. She lost her first 28 races and it took her 10 1/2 months to record her first win. But she put that slow start behind her and is now recognized as one of the top trainers in the sport. How did she do it? Those where among the questions we asked when De Vaux joined our group on the TDN Writers' Room Podcast presented by Keeneland. De Vaux was the Green Group Guest of the Week.
“I just put a lot of pressure on myself to always be successful and to do things at a high level,” she said. “So, there was a lot of talking me off the ledge, and that was a joke when I first started. In August of 2017 I talked about this with my husband [bloodstock agent] David [Ingordo] when I told him he was going to have to take on a new role of Doctor Phil to just really help me stay focused and talk me off the ledge. And he's earned every penny. Now we joke about it. But he says, 'you can't say I didn't warn you.' I had to see if I had the constitution to keep going. Then like two years into this, COVID hit. So there were a lot of circumstances that were less than ideal. But I'm just a big believer. I believe it's a win when you just wake up, put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Eventually the water gets a little bit easier to tread. The first couple years, that's just how I got through it.”
Even after a big week like the one she had at Pimlico, DeVaux refuses to rest on her laurels. To her, every day is a new challenge.
“I'm the type of person where when we win, I'm already focused on what is the next task,” she said. “The next day we have runners and we have horses to breeze. One thing that I am working on is just trying to allow those milestones to sink in. I'm kind of a perfectionist by nature, so something else might be on my mind when I really should be paying attention to the bigger picture and how awesome this has been.”
Her goals moving forward?
“It's hard to answer that,” she said. “Not everyone's going to like you, but I want to be known as being a respectful person. I want to have a positive impact on the industry as a whole. I don't go out there and say, 'I'm a woman trainer, I'm here for women.' My parents were harness trainers, and they worked hard. I didn't come from a lot of means, so I just try to be positive. That's my goal, just to have a positive impact.”
The Writers' Room unveiled a new segment this week “News You Can Use with Emma Berry” which is sponsored by Darley. Berry, who is the TDN's European and international editor, will be focusing on news from overseas. This week she took a look at the upcoming G1 Betfred Derby at Epsom.
In our breeding spotlight section we took a look at the Coolmore stallion Jack Christopher and the WinStar stallion Country Grammer.
Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders' Association, Coolmore, 1/ST Racing, West Point Thoroughbreds, WinStar, Darley, the Penn Mile at Penn National and XBTV.com, the team of Randy Moss, Bill Finley and Zoe Cadman discussed the impressive debut of Eagles Flight (Curlin), the half-brother to Flightline (Tapit), and the other major races run over the weekend at Santa Anita.
Other topics included the decision to replace Tyler Gaffalione with Flavien Prat aboard Sierra Leone (Gun Runner) for the GI Belmont S. and the future of Maryland racing, which will include a new Pimlico.
To watch the podcast, click for the video. To listen to the podcast, click for the audio.
Not a subscriber? Click here to sign up for the daily PDF or alerts.
