Patience Pays For Correas And His Horses Alike

Returning to New York from a winter working in Louisiana, the first since his emigration, Ignacio Correas appeared literally a shadow of his former self. His former vet came from the old country and found that Correas, this blueblood of the Argentinian Turf, had lost around 30 lbs.

“What are you doing here?” his visitor asked. “Why don't you go back? I mean, look at you.”

“Don't worry,” Correas replied. “I'm going to be okay.”

Now, 23 years later, he sits outside the Keeneland barn that houses the leading turf mare in America.

“And I was,” he says. “It was a long road. But I was okay.”

The GI New York Stakes success of Didia (Arg) (Orpen) was her first at the elite level since her arrival from their mutual homeland two years ago. It's a breakthrough that evokes the pattern set by Blue Prize (Pure Prize), who similarly took some time to adapt to her new environment before achieving full bloom in 2019, signing off with the GI Breeders' Cup Distaff. And now another exceptional mare is on her way from the Southern Hemisphere, this time from Australia, with John Stewart's Resolute Racing sending Aus$3.2 million recruit Tutta La Vita to join Didia (co-owned since April).

Yet surely Correas must have had moments of doubt, somewhere along the road? After all, he was already 42 when abandoning a successful training career at home, virtually his birthright as a descendant of the family that imported Diamond Jubilee, the 1900 Epsom Derby winner, to the Pampas. And suddenly he found himself back to square one, a nobody having to make his name anew. Did he never ask himself what he had done?

“Not me,” he insists. “Probably a lot of people that knew me, yes, but not me. I was always sure that at some point I'm going to do well. This well? No, not in my biggest dreams. Never. But, you know, this country is very generous with opportunities. When you think, okay, I'm hitting my ceiling, another opportunity comes. If you work hard, and do things right, there's always someone looking at you, willing to give you an opportunity.”

But the most important faith had come from within. As he says, “If you don't believe in yourself, you can't go anywhere.”

Blue Prize | Horsephotos

And what he did in 2001 took dauntless belief, not to mention nerve. A man raised with a secure sense of who he was, and what his family stood for, cast himself adrift: a rootless nomad. After getting a start under Billy Badgett in New York, he had stints as a veterinary assistant; on a farm for Barclay Tagg in Virginia; as an assistant trainer in Lexington. But nothing stable, nothing secure, until Californian trainer Bill Curran finally recognized his diligence and flair with a position that lasted over five years.

“It was very tough,” he admits, looking back down all those blind alleys. “If I had to do it again, I don't know if I would–even if you grant me the results. But, you know, it wasn't the racing side of my country that brought me here: it was frustration with a lot of [other] things. I was doing well, I had 40-something horses. But I guess I needed something new. I decided to try the hard way. I was ignorant! I mean, it was very difficult to climb.”

Starting in New York was good, he says, because the quickest way to learn is in the toughest environment. But there have been so many people along the way that gave him help or experience or both: Curran, most obviously, and there were also a few years at Sagamore, as farm and then private trainer. At various stages of his odyssey, he notes wryly, some people believed in him more than others. None was more constant than Diane Perkins of Wimborne Farm.

“Mrs. Perkins became like my guardian angel,” he says. “I was more famous because I trained for her for 15 years in Argentina than for any other thing that I've done. Because she's tough! But she has a big heart. Anytime that I was in a bad spot, she always showed up and helped me. Whatever I have done, it's not possible without her.”

When in 2015 he finally started his own stable, then comprising three horses, Perkins came to Keeneland to make a $50,000 claim. When the horse scratched, she shrugged. There were other claimers, right? She picked out a filly for $20,000. “Because she's the ugliest,” she said. “She'll be the easiest to make look good.”

In the Disney version, that filly would have become the breakout stakes winner. In the real world, she was no good. But that is the same world where Correas nonetheless turned everything round: one full of discouragement, bad luck, unequal resources. And, in fact, it was Perkins who brought “the horse that probably made me” from Argentina: Kasaqui (Arg) (Lasting Approval). Tried in a Grade I, the longshot fell and was vanned off. But that same summer of 2016, he came within a neck of landing the GI Arlington Million.

Kasaqui set the template. Between them, those to have followed from Argentina have disclosed a masterly touch in Correas, patiently adapting their talent. Didia exemplifies the model, one developed both through his own experience and that of other South American imports such as Siphon (Brz) and Memo (Chi).

Didia | Sara Gordon

“I think that if you have a decent horse the first year, they're going to thrive the second and third year,” he says. “They get much, much better after a year. We took a horse to Europe, 40 years ago, who was a monster in Argentina. And the first 10 days he was training like a freak. And then in days 15 to 20, he went to the bottom. He couldn't beat a maiden 5-year-old. After four months, he started getting better. And then he won the Premio Roma, a Group 1, by 17 lengths. He needed that time to adapt–and when he got that time, he was good.”

Correas stresses that this is no personal revelation. “It's what McAnally has done, you name them, all the guys that have had success,” he says. “It's not my invention. My father sent [Charlie] Whittingham a horse and he spent four months on the farm, just marking time–and then he won the Del Mar Handicap.”

It all stands to reason. The whole racing theater here is different: the sharper tracks, the emphasis on speed. Hardly any South American imports, Correas notes, have excelled round a single turn. Yet the routers are typically quite mature. How can they be reinvented at this stage of their careers?

“I won't say 'reinvent,'” Correas replies. “[But] if they don't adapt, they're not going to succeed. So you need to try to get them there. Sometimes you are right, sometimes wrong. But you think, okay, this horse is going to do well this way and you try to take him there.”

Blue Prize, for instance, had to learn a new style of racing.

“She was always dead last in Argentina,” Correas says. “The Oaks, okay, it's a long stretch–but you can't understand how she can make up so much ground, she was 15 lengths behind. So we put blinkers on, got her sharper from the gate, not on the lead but closer. Because you can't make up that much ground here, at least not on the dirt.”

Not that there is ever anything formulaic to his training.

“I don't like to call it a program,” Correas says. “I'm not a program person. I might think that I'm going to work this way today, and then I come here [to the track] and change everything. That's why my number is not that big. When you go to 100, 150 horses, you need more of a program. But we try to design one for each horse. We don't always accomplish that, but that's what we try: to respect the horse, see what we can do to help. Equipment, the way you train them, how many days a week, how many miles you gallop them. Every horse is a little bit different.”

So it's all about flexibility: in the horse, and in the trainer.

“You have to adapt,” Correas says. “When in Rome, you do like the Romans. You can't train in America like in Argentina, or in Argentina like in America. In Argentina, we run a mile and a half with one turn. They start slow, finish fast. The ones that can! Those long stretches are very demanding.”

As such, while he stresses that few Argentinian breeders can compete at the top of the U.S. market, might the commercial Thoroughbred of modern Kentucky nonetheless be vulnerable to the type of robust specimen they have cultivated so long? After all, even if they can no longer import the same caliber of blood, the land is still the same.

“I don't know about that,” Correas muses. “The South American horse [that comes] here is mostly or fully developed. And I don't think it a trend only in America, that they don't last that long, or aren't that strong, or whatever. I think the thing is that 2-year-old races have never been as important. When I was a kid, 2-year-old races didn't exist. Now, they have a ton of money: money talks, and people want to run at two.”

Blue Prize | Sarah Andrew

But Correas feels that even the mature athlete has finite resources. “You have to remember that a good horse gives you everything every day,” he says. “Even when they jog, they give you everything. So you have to manage that to last for the whole year, or for the period that you need. A horse has a certain amount of good races in him a year. So it's up to the trainer how he manages those, and picks those spots.”

He stresses that you duly need the right owners to train a horse right. “I don't run my good horses very much,” he says. “And they let me do that, they are patient. When I tell them this is the plan, they say, 'Go ahead.' And that is a big part of the success, that they let you work. They believed when I told them what we're going to do: we got lucky, and we delivered. So now, probably, for some of them it's easier to believe me.”

Didia will duly be campaigned sparingly, her year split into two cycles. Her first big target is in the bag; the second will be the Breeders' Cup, via the GI Diana Stakes and potentially a defense of the GII Rodeo Drive Stakes.

“Usually what I do is map a first and second half of the year,” Correas explains. “Of course, I'd have loved to win the [GI] Jenny Wiley, but against that quality maybe a mile and 1/16th is too short for her. But, yes, [the New York] was her big target. At the 5/16th, you can see that we have a ton of horse, and she kicked like a rocket. And she came out really great. She's very easy to deal with: she eats, sleeps, she wants candy and that's it. Good horses are usually easier to deal with.”

With his preference for giving tailored, individual attention to smaller numbers, Correas likes to find out what makes a horse tick and then work round that. “In her case it was teaching her how to use her speed,” he says. “And that's what she has learned to do. She's relaxed easier this year.”

But these special sensibilities that set the top trainers apart are little use unless harnessed to the commitment that sustained Correas through his wilderness years. As it happens, both dimensions were once honed by mentors in France. In his youth, he was sent to Alec Head and his family; and then, later on, any lingering entitlement was thoroughly quashed by David Smaga.

“It was one of the best learning experiences in my life,” Correas says gratefully. “He's like my brother now, I love him to death. He made it very hard on me, all the time I spent with him. But he told me one thing, when I left, that I'll always remember. He said, 'I don't know if you learned something about horses, but you learned how to work–and you're going to do good wherever you go.' And he gave me a hug and started crying. And I thought that he hated me!”

So many people, so many places: it's been a long journey. Horses like Didia, like Blue Prize, presumably make him all the prouder as a result.

“I feel blessed,” Correas replies. “Those are the ones that make you a good trainer. When you have one Blue Prize, one Didia, one Kasaqui in your life, you are blessed. I have had three. Probably of the last four or five good horses from Argentina, I've had three or four. I'm very thankful for that. I don't think 'proud' is the word. I'm happy. Happy for the team I was able to build over all these years. And for the friends that I have made all around.”

But that is enough credit to others, and to luck. Let's insist on that other ingredient.

“I always believed in what I did,” Correas finally accepts. “I'm not trying to be cocky. Probably I have exactly the same misses as wins, as many times not made the smartest decisions. But that's how you learn. I mean, you have to stumble and get up, keep going and try the next time to be a little bit smarter. And that's it.”