Cox, El Tormenta Surge Into Mile

ARCADIA, CA–Back in the spring of 2017, trainer Gail Cox was approached by Tom Zwiesler, the racing manager for Sam-Son Farm, an outfit she was intimately familiar with going back to her formative years working in the horse business. Less than three years later, the burgeoning partnership will start ascendant gelding El Tormenta (Stormy Atlantic) as a legitimate contender in Saturday's GI TVG Breeders' Cup Mile.

Cox “didn't come from a real horse-y family,” as she put it while waiting for her star pupil to arrive from a cross-country ship at her temporary headquarters on the backstretch of Santa Anita this week. But she always loved the animal, and got her start as a rider outside of the racing world.

“I got quite involved with the hunters and jumpers,” Cox said. “It felt like I did that for my whole life.”

This was back when Ernie Samuel's legendary Sam-Son Farm owned show horses in addition to Thoroughbreds with Olympic show jumper and trainer Jimmy Day, some of whom Cox would ride. But as Day started to move more into the racing world, so too did Cox start to feel the pull of the track.

“Jimmy had migrated to the racetrack and some of my friends had too and I thought, well, maybe it would be fun to gallop racehorses and still do the show horses,” she said. “So I did that for a while. It's just, racehorses seem to take over, and eventually you get all the way involved. I was in a little partnership that bought a horse and from then on, I wanted to be at the racetrack all the time.”

Getting her start with Thoroughbreds for Canadian Hall of Fame trainer Jim Bentley, Cox also assisted Christophe Clement and was a mainstay with Clement's string at Florida's Payson Park in the winter. Working as an exercise rider for the Dan Vella barn in the mid-2000s, she decided to go out on her own, and saddled her first winner in 2006. Steadily climbing up the earnings list, she had a career year in 2011, when her starters racked up nearly $900,000 and she sent out her first Breeders' Cup participant in future MGISW Hard Not to Like (Hard Spun), who ran a strong fifth in the GI Juvenile Fillies Turf after making an early, wide move. She also campaigned millionaire grass sprinter Something Extra (Indian Charlie), who started twice in the GI Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint, including here, in 2014.

Stabled at Keeneland in April of 2017, Cox was approached by Zwiesler.

“They had decided to separate their horses a little bit,” she remembered. “They have a couple of people who train for them in the States, mainly Neil Howard and Graham Motion. They were looking for a smaller barn to give a couple of horses to. I met Tom in Kentucky when I was at Keeneland. He came over to the barn, looked at the barn, liked it and asked if I would take a couple of horses for them.”

Happily obliging, Cox was starting runners in Sam-Son's iconic red and gold silks by that summer. One of them was El Tormenta, a turf-meant juvenile long on talent and speed but short on maturity. After two unsuccessful tries in his 2-year-old season, Cox put El Tormenta away for the winter and he returned the following spring as a new gelding. Promptly breaking his maiden on the Woodbine turf in May, he was second in the Charlie Barley S. there next out. Not quite able to build on that momentum in three more outings as a sophomore, Cox again gave him the winter off and brought him back this spring, when he turned the corner as a 4-year-old.

“He showed talent right away, he just had a little bit of a different running style as a 2 and 3-year-old,” she said. “He just seemed to want to be on the lead and didn't do much settling, but was a talented speed horse. This year, he's been a lot more mature and has settled off the lead really nicely. I've always thought highly of him.”

Picking up his first stakes win in the GII Connaught Cup S., the dark bay was fourth in the GI Highlander S. and GII Play the King S., finding stymieing traffic trouble in the stretch both times. Undeterred, Cox entered the hometown hope in the GI Ricoh Woodbine Mile S. Turning into the lane, it appeared as though El Tormenta would get boxed in again, but jockey Eurico Rosa Da Silva found an inside seam, and the pair darted through to score a 44-1 upset. It was Cox's first Grade I success, in a million-dollar race, coming at her home track, with a homebred from the farm who she worked for decades ago when she first started in the equine world.

“It was unbelievable,” she said. “It's what everybody strives for. The excitement was over the top, plus for the owners, they bred the horse and this is only my second [full] year training for them, so they've had confidence in me to leave the horse with me. It was great. The feeling lasted for a good couple of weeks.”

Now comes the opportunity for another milestone, as Cox returns to the Breeders' Cup one more time. El Tormenta, Spanish for “the storm”, drew post eight in the $2-million event as a 12-1 chance, which if it holds, will be a significantly shorter price than Cox's previous entrants in the World Championships. With the Samuel family's legacy inexorably intertwined, she will try to write the next chapter in her own.