trainer

John A. DiMario, who trained Runaway Groom to a memorable upset in the 1982 GI Travers S. at Saratoga, passed away Thursday at the age of 91. Runaway Groom famously defeated the winners of all three Triple Crown races in that year's Midsummer Derby-Gato Del Sol (Kentucky Derby), Aloma's Ruler (Preakness) and Conquistador Cielo (Belmont). That feat had only occured once before when Sun Briar pulled it off back in 1918, per Jonathan Stettin of Past the Wire. Runaway Groom also captured two-thirds of that season's Canadian Triple Crown. "I've...

Bruce Johnstone, who transitioned from a trainer to management at the New York Racing Association, the last 13 years of which he spent as Manager of Racing Operations, died Thursday following a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 76. "Bruce was a true horseman who used the lessons of a lifetime to make all of us better in so many big and small ways," said NYRA CEO and President Dave O'Rourke. "He was a man of impeccable integrity who was a beloved member of the thoroughbred racing community here in...

Tired of all the bad news? So were we. So, in our new series, we focus on the positive, asking people from non-horse racing families two questions: how they get hooked, and how they'll hook someone else on horse racing this year. KIARAN MCLAUGHLIN, TRAINER What was the experience that made you fall in love with horse racing? I was born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky, in the horse capital of the world. At that time, everyone knew someone who had something to do with the Thoroughbred industry. For me,...

Fausto Gutierrez is not well known in U.S. racing circles and neither is his owner, St. George Stable. That may be about to change. Mexico's dominant trainer and owner have set up a U.S. division based at the Palm Meadows training center and, after a handful of starts in 2019, are ready for what they hope will be a successful 2020 season. It starts Saturday at Fair Grounds, where the star of the barn, Kukulkan (Mex) (Point Determined) will go in the GIII Louisiana S. and the well-bred first-time starter...

Captain Tim Forster, a trainer whose love of steeplechasing ran so deep that he wasn't disparaging just of Flat racing but also of hurdling, was a renowned pessimist. His famously gloomy advice to Charlie Fenwick ahead of the American amateur rider going out to partner Ben Nevis in the 1980 Grand National was "keep remounting". And in a sense it would be good advice to aspiring trainers: to keep getting back up even when it seems the odds are against you. As it happened, Fenwick didn't have to heed the...

As one Head retired from the French training ranks in 2018 with a deserved fanfare of tributes, quietly another member of the family added his name to the list of Chantilly trainers some months later. The low-key entrance of Christopher Head was quite deliberate. The 32-year-old son of Freddy and nephew of Criquette--who retired 18 months ago--has worked alongside both his father and his aunt, as well as completing a stint with leading French jumps trainer Guillaume Macaire, but he is determined that when it comes to training, he is...