John Sadler: Four Decades In, and Always Looking Forward

From behind his Santa Anita desk, John Sadler mapped the world beyond the four walls of his office, pointing out, barn by barn, the route he took when assistant back in the 1970s to Dr. Jack Robbins, veterinarian extraordinaire who brought to equine medicine at that time what Don Henley and company brought to the West Coast rock scene.

“We would start at Noble Threewitt's barn, great trainer and a good guy. Ralph West. Gene Cleveland. [Tom] Pratt was here, and in this barn here was Keith Stucki. Joe Arena. [Ron] McAnally. Joe Manzi. Gary Jones. Warren Stute. You know, a lot of really strong characters,” Sadler added, not so much wandering memory lane as taking a starry-eyed tour along racing's walk of fame. “Good trainers, all of them.”

Things have since changed a lot in California. “When I came along, Whittingham was the gold mark,” said Sadler. “As he got a little older, that shifted to [Wayne] Lukas, then [Bobby] Frankel, and then [Bob] Baffert.”

Personalities have evolved, too.

Back when Hotel California wafted daily over the airwaves, those “old time trainers liked to drink heavy and smoke a lot,” said Sadler. Nowadays, things like social media, occupational health and safety and warning labels have had an altogether sanitizing effect. “Seems like things are more corporate now-smoother,” Sadler admitted.

And yet, it's clear those early years left on him a lasting impression. “I think, because you're young, you're most impressed with the guys who are directly ahead of you,” he recollected.

Like those hard-boiled trainers he visited with Robbins, he doesn't much see the point of shipping out of state with races to be won on his doorstep. “I want to be able to win here and then ship out when we want to go out.”

Like them, he's at the barn before the first roosters crow.

“I think there's three of us of left here, myself, [Jerry] Hollendorfer, Bill Spawr, who come in early,” Sadler said. “I mean, there was an era when I came around, [trainers] would make fun of the ones who wouldn't come in early. Joe Manzi lived in Arcadia. He'd drive to Hollywood Park, take a nap, then go to work. I don't know what time he left. Two in the morning?”

And like them, his own profile as a trainer means zilch if the horses aren't performing to par. “In this era of social media, I want to be old school,” he said. “I want the horses to be the stars.” That said, “people in the industry know the kind of work I do, and I do feel appreciated. I think, if you said to someone back East, 'What about John Sadler?' They'd say, 'This guy's a professional.'”

His theory holds water.

“Enormously consistent,” said Jimmy Jerkens, when asked about Sadler. “Very well-rounded…very thorough.”

According to Shug McGaughey, his West Coast counterpart is “very, very good at racing and placing them…it's not an easy game.”

Now into his 40th year with a license, Sadler is helming a bit of a stable reconfiguration. His big numbers period between 2007 and 2014, when he mopped up 13 California training titles, has been whittled down in size, replaced by what he describes as a focus more on quality, so that there'll be “more opportunity for us to run out of state.”

Indeed, Sadler's annual win haul has taken on a vintage gloss over the past few years. Hard Aces (Hard Spun) snagged him a first GI Gold Cup (this one at Santa Anita). Champion Stellar Wind (Curlin) stamped herself one of the best race-mares of modern times.

“Those races with Beholder were real gems. Classic type races,” said Sadler, singling out three Grade Is during the summer of 2016: the Vanity Mile S., the Clement L. Hirsh S., and the Zenyatta S. “If you watch those, it's just her and Beholder all the way, and for Stellar Wind to beat her a couple of times, those were just really fun wins. As good as any races you'll see.”

This year has seen the ascension into rarified air of Lane's End-bound Accelerate (Lookin At Lucky), who recently completed the California Triple Crown: the GI Santa Anita H., the GI Gold Cup, and the GI Pacific Classic S. Sadler also has the hugely exciting Catalina Cruiser (Union Rags) to go to war with. Both are being readied for separate Breeders' Cup assignments. After that, health willing, they could cross swords for the first time in next January's GI Pegasus World Cup.

“I've just got a horse who I think will be a good horse in the handicap division next year,” said Sadler about 'TDN Rising Star' Gift Box, a Twirling Candy ridgling who finished fourth in the 2016 GI Travers S. for Chad Brown. “He came out of New York. You'll know him next year.”

As for Sadler, we could have known him for another equine discipline entirely, had he passed, when just a teenager, the screening trials for the U.S. Olympic show jumping team.

“I wasn't picked and was disappointed,” he said, sounding amused more than disappointed nowadays. But show jumping's loss was racing's gain. In fact, the seeds of his future endeavors had been planted long before that by his parents, who purchased a $1,000 share in a new racing venture, Impossible Stables Incorporated.

“A guy in Pasadena called Mike Morphy put this group together. He was way ahead of his time,” said Sadler. “I started going racing with my folks. It went for seven or eight years, they made a few successful claims, and they never had to pay a bill. When it all stopped, everybody got back $3,000.”

At 22, when most young adults are wet-behind-the-ears college grads, unsure of which road to take, less travelled or not, Sadler took out his training license, the words of Santa Anita racing executive, Frank E. Kilroe, in his ears, telling him to run “a balanced stable.” And though it took a year or two for the balance to lean towards quality (in the form of a one top-notch lickety-split sprinter after another), “I've never had an issue of needing more horses,” Sadler admitted. “People knew I was a good trainer and sent me horses to train.”

Four decades later, there's little retrospection on those intervening years. His office holds a lonely win picture, from the early 1990's. Pride of place in his living room are the eight silver cups signifying his stakes victories from Del Mar this summer.

“Of course, I was very proud. But that's as close as I get to being very proud,” and he admits that most of his trophies are packed away in boxes.

Yes, those formative years run deep. Nevertheless, “I'm always thinking ahead, thinking about what's coming up,” he said. “As you get older, you start to look back on that stuff a little bit, but not a lot. Training racehorses, it's all about tomorrow. There's an old expression: 'Any trainer with 2-year-olds in the barn never commits suicide.'”

If Sadler has any regrets, it's starting out as early as he did, before he could take “a trip around the world,” or one of those life affirming things you do before the hooks of adult life sink in deep.

“Once you're here, you're here,” he added. “The irony is that it would have been a better time to travel back then–half the world's not safe now.”

That's because, as Sadler has downsized his stable, he has recently discovered “more balance” in his life. “More time to myself.” Three years ago, he visited Cuba. “I like cultures that don't have televisions. People who talk to each other.”

Last year, he went to Spain–Barcelona and Valencia. It's tough though, to disengage from life as a trainer.

“You never totally can, even if everything's going well.”

And for any California trainer with their eyes on the future, dark clouds hover over the industry in the state.

“My concern is the decline in infrastructure in California. We don't have the tracks we used to have, the training centers and the farms,” he said. “A lot of the solutions are not difficult. If we left Del Mar open year-round for training, that would move us up a million miles. More horse farms. If you did that, the other thing would be to get another revenue stream through something like sports betting, hopefully get in on that and get a good deal.”

Nevertheless, the “positive and the surprising part” is “how well we're doing,” he said. “We're still going strong.”

Going strong–those have been bywords of Sadler's career the past 40 years. Week-in, week-out, the winners at all levels have arrived with the precision frequency of a Swiss clock. “I do take a lot of pride in being consistent,” he said. “That's been my hallmark throughout my career, consistency.”

So, what is it that drives him towards that?

“The part that has never wavered is the creative process,” he replied. “You get a 2-year-old, it's a raw piece of clay. You form it and you work with it and you see how it develops and where it goes. That's the part I've always loved the most, the creative process.”

Another neat part of the job, he said, is seeing the horses train early on a morning, when the first watery rays of sunlight have yet to creep over the lid of the San Gabriel Mountains, and the track, dotted with a handful of solitary horses only, has yet to become a congested highway.

“You're here, you're looking at the horses before everybody else gets yapping at you, before anybody else is out there,” Sadler said. “You can be quiet and reflective, and have those moments to yourself, time to think.”

“About what?” I asked, and he considered the question.

“About what I'm going to be doing with the horses going forward.”