By Katie Petrunyak
The walls of David Donk's stable in Saratoga can't talk, but there are two horsemen spending their mornings there this summer who have plenty of memories to share about the barn at the top of the far turn that once housed five consecutive Belmont Stakes winners. Donk and Phil Gleaves, a former trainer who now runs a small racing partnership, were both assistant trainers to legendary Hall of Fame trainer Woody Stephens early on in their careers and they still have stories to tell from the barn where Woody once based his stable.
Like how Gleaves, a native of Liverpool England, has always been a massive David Bowie fan. One summer he took a Greyhound bus from Saratoga to see the rockstar perform at Madison Square Garden. He rode the bus back north afterward and got to the barn at 4 a.m. the next morning with plenty of time to spare before the first set.
Flash forward a few decades and Bowie was the inspiration for a horse that Gleaves bred, trained and still races today. Named after one of the personas that Bowie adopted in concert, Thin White Duke (Dominus) has proven to be a special horse for Gleaves and his fellow co-owners: horseplayer and journalist Steven Crist, Ken deRegt and Bryan Hilliard. And just like Bowie's music career spanned multiple genres, Thin White Duke has shown versatility racing on various surfaces. So whether this weekend's GII Troy S. runs on the grass or the main track, the 6-year-old's connections are confident that their horse will show up.
Becoming a breeder sort of fell into Gleaves's lap when his longtime owner Russell Reineman–who he won the GI Travers for with Wise Times in 1986–passed away. Reineman's family asked Gleaves if he was interested in any of his broodmares before they started downsizing.
“I looked at several and there was one that caught my eye with her pedigree being inbred to Danzig, who I had galloped for Woody Stephens and was a tremendous racehorse and sire,” Gleaves recalled. “She was an unraced mare by Distorted Humor, who I also trained early in his career. So from that mare, Aberdeen Alley, I started breeding and one of the horses I bred was Thin White Duke.”
Gleaves broke Thin White Duke himself in Ocala and then brought him up to Saratoga, where the New York-bred broke his maiden in the 2020 Funny Cide Stakes as a 2-year-old. He won another stake and placed in two more over the next year.
When Gleaves announced his retirement toward the end of 2021, he suggested to his partners that they send their horses to Donk.
David Donk and Phil Gleaves | Sarah Andrew
“I've known David for a long time,” said Gleaves. “When I left Woody Stephens in '85 to train privately for Frank Stronach, David took my job. Over the years we have shared clients. David's best horse was Awad and he sent him to me one winter in Gulfstream to babysit him because David wasn't going to Florida that winter. We were fortunate enough to win a stake with him down there. So we have a great relationship, David and I. Just as importantly, he came from the Woody school of wanting to run horses frequently if they were up to it. That's my philosophy as well and so that was a big selling point for us as to who to send our horses to.”
Coming off a nine-month layoff, Thin White Duke returned to the races in 2022. After one unsuccessful start on dirt, Donk tried switching the gelding to turf. He won at 33-1 odds.
“He had run on the grass before, but we just thought he was going to be a better grass horse than a dirt horse,” explained Donk. “We had a decision to make coming into Saratoga, as you usually do with turf horses, about distance. You're either choosing a five and a half furlong sprint or a two-turn mile or mile and a sixteenth. It's a big difference. Johnny Velazquez had ridden him and we asked Johnny what he thought. He said we should try to sprint him. The first time we sprinted him here, he was off the pace and had a really big run. We were like, 'Wow, that's what he wants to do.' So it has just evolved from there. It's not that he can't run on the dirt, but he's certainly shown that he's really proficient as an off-the-pace sprinter on the turf.”
In 36 lifetime starts, Thin White Duke has come in the money 19 times and amassed over $750,000 in career earnings. He has collected stakes wins in the 2023 Lucky Coin Stakes and in the same race in 2024 after it was re-named the Harvey Pack Stakes. That score was especially meaningful for co-owner Steve Crist.
“Winning the Harvey Pack was phenomenal because it was the first running of the Harvey Pack and Steve came up under Harvey Pack,” said Gleaves. “Steve had come up under Harvey Pack and they had been on the [Thoroughbred Action] replay show many times back in the day, so it was very important for Steve to be in the race and then to win it was just super.”
Finding the right spot for Thin White Duke has proven to be a challenge this year. The gelding has yet to run in the money so far in 2024, but Donk said that the races have not been conducive to his horse's running style. Thin White Duke ran eighth in the GI Jaipur, which Cogburn (Not This Time) won in record time. His next two races were also on fast, firm ground.
“With his style, I feel like he's been up against it,” said Donk. “He's run okay, but he hasn't had the same punch. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. I think with the elements of the weather coming into play, it changes things up a bit.”
Thin White Duke has placed third in the last two runnings of the GII Troy Stakes. This year's Troy was initially slated for Saturday, Aug. 3 but was pushed back to the 10th due to heavy rain. With a cancelled race card on Friday because of more bad weather, Saturday's Troy will more than likely be run on the main track.
Donk said Thin White Duke has had no disruption to his training with the week-long delay. If anything, it was beneficial as it gave him extra time after his last race on July 28.
“He was coming back really quickly so another week certainly doesn't hurt us,” he explained. “He's not a horse that we have to do a lot with. He's a happy horse. We're just trying to maintain him in between. He's coming into it the right way and I think the elements of the weather will be different for some horses. If it's on the grass, it's going to be a bit on the soft side. If it comes off the grass, he's got a record of running well on the dirt, so we'd be pretty comfortable either way.”
Thin White Duke and Phil Gleaves in 2020 | Sarah Andrew
Regardless, Donk will stick to his model of running a healthy Thin White Duke regularly. It's the same philosophy he shares with any of his new owners.
“I tell them that it's not just about trying to win in Saratoga,” Donk said. “You're very fortunate to get to run in Saratoga. It's a beautiful place and as I get older, I appreciate it even more just to be here and compete. It's all about the horse here, so it's a lot of fun to be here and experience it with people. I don't have the deep pedigrees and high-priced horses like some of the bigger outfits have, but I've got a lot of great clientele. People that I've had for 25, 30 years.”
Just this past Thursday, Donk had two winners on the card with Trail of Gold (Solomini) breaking her maiden in her second career start and Fancypants Juliana (Mo Town) winning a New York-bred allowance optional claimer.
Gleaves's partnership has several other horses in training with Donk including Succulent (Candy Ride {Arg}), a 5-year-old mare who won an allowance at Belmont at Aqueduct in May in her last start and the 4-year-old filly Snowy Evening (Frosted), who was fourth in the Port Washington Stakes last month.
Gleaves said that between broodmares, yearlings, weanlings and racehorses, their partnership currently owns 11 horses.
“We're careful not to let it grow exponentially because it can really get out of hand,” he said.
When asked what his days look like since he has retired from training, Gleaves said he still gets up at 5:00 a.m. every morning at his home in Ballston Spa, NY.
“I'm still immersed in the Thoroughbred industry. I'm just no longer in the trenches,” he noted.
This summer Gleaves is enjoying spending his mornings soaking in Saratoga while sitting outside a barn that was such a defining place for his career and sharing his time there with another horseman that has supported him along the way.
“David is a super guy,” he said. “I love him like a brother. I know that any decision that he makes on a horse would be the same decision that I make because we came 'round under the same guy in this very barn.”
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