After Surviving a School Shooting and Cancer Surgery, a 25-Year-Old Trainer Savors His First Win

[Wandering Eyes]

Nick Vaccarezza, 25, won his first race from 12 starts as a licensed trainer June 30 at Presque Isle Downs. Although every conditioner's first victory is a special accomplishment, Vaccarezza's was unique because it occurred in a stakes race. Off at even-money odds, Keeneland-based shipper Golden Afternoon (Goldencents) prompted the pace and drew off by 2 1/2 lengths to capture the $100,000 Tom Ridge Stakes over six furlongs.

The win was also sweet because Golden Afternoon is owned by a partnership of friends (Eddie and Pat Greco, Scott Jaffe, and Michael Cloonan) headed by Carlo Vaccarezza, Nick's father.

Earlier this year, Carlo stepped away from a 10-year training career while continuing his decades-long involvement as an owner, capping a transition plan for the family's racing stable that was several years in the making and centered on Nick taking over the day-to-day care of 14 Kentucky-based horses.

Nick Vaccarezza told TDN in a Tuesday phone interview that his first training win was a goal he had pursued ever since he can remember.

“My dad was always involved with horses, and when I was growing up in Florida he would always bring me to Calder,” Vaccarezza said. “My first word was 'Go!' so this horse thing has been instilled in me since before I could even speak. I could read a Racing Form by age six. And when I found out I was too tall to be a jockey, I started betting on myself that I was going to be a trainer. I've wanted to train forever.”

The Vaccarezza family's involvement with Thoroughbreds afforded Nick access to some high-profile trainers to help him learn the trade–Dale Romans, Chad Brown, and the late H. Allen Jerkens among them.

But while Vaccarezza's statistical slate as a trainer is still relatively blank, away from the racetrack he has already dealt with more adverse, life-altering experiences at age 25 than most people encounter in an entire lifetime.

Vaccarezza on his way to his first win | Coady Media

On Feb. 14, 2018, Nick, then a senior, and his brother, Mike, a sophomore, survived the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in United States history, walking out of their Parkland, Florida classrooms alive after a gunman with a semi-automatic rifle killed 17 people and injured 18 others.

Through a fundraiser at a Boca Raton restaurant owned by their father 11 days after the shooting, Nick and Mike raised $160,000 for the families of the victims, and the Vaccarezza racing stable would later name a racehorse in honor of a friend of Nick's who had been slain at the school.

Then, seven years later, right after taking out his training license in early 2025, Nick Vaccarezza was diagnosed with Stage 1 testicular cancer.

Vaccarezza underwent surgery May 5, barely missed any time under the shedrow, and said he has been declared cancer-free at all his follow-up checks in the two months since the procedure.

“Thankfully, I don't need any chemotherapy or anything yet,” Vaccarezza said. “But it's looking good so far. It's watch and wait. Every two months blood [monitoring], every four months scan.”

A trainer's education

While Vaccarezza does not shy away from discussing the Parkland shooting or his bout with cancer, he does not frame those events as life-defining experiences.

Horses and the track are Vaccarezza's world, and he said the seeds for his schooling to be a trainer were planted more than two decades ago when Pat Greco, one of the current partners in Golden Afternoon, gave the broodmare Hay Jude (Wavering Monarch) to his father.

Carlo Vaccarezza bred Hey Jude to Tiger Ride, and he named the foal she produced in 2005 Little Nick, honoring his then-toddler son. The gelding won nine races from 40 starts, including three black-type stakes.

Two years later, Hay Jude produced a foal by Spanish Steps. Named Little Mike, after Nick's younger brother, the 14-for-30 gelding, owned by their mother, Priscilla, won four Grade I turf stakes, including the 2013 Breeders' Cup Turf.

Little Mike was trained by Romans, and Nick Vaccarezza hung out at the barn of the Eclipse Award-winning trainer as often as he could as an adolescent, soaking up horsemanship and even being allowed to hotwalk horses for Romans while in middle school.

Golden Afternoon wins the Tom Ridge Stakes | Coady Media

By 2014, Carlo Vaccarezza had started training the horses he owned, and he shared stalls in the same Gulfstream Park barn as Jerkens in what was to be the Hall-of-Fame trainer's last year before his passing.

Nick Vaccarezza said Jerkens, then 86, took him under his wing that winter, mostly by talking to the 14-year-old.

“If you want to learn something, you can learn something from talking to anybody, whether it's a homeless guy or the president of the United States,” Vaccarezza told TDN, recalling the experience from 11 years ago. “There's always something to learn from someone new.”

But Vaccarezza said he really hit it off with one of Jerkens's younger assistants, Fernando Abreu, who let him inside stalls to observe close up how skilled grooms do their jobs, and later allowed Vaccarezza to rub horses himself by age 15.

As Vaccarezza built up his barn skills and learned more about the logistics of operating a stable during his mid-teen years, Abreu eventually introduced him to his brother, Reynaldo, then an assistant for Chad Brown, who was in the midst of winning four of five eventual Eclipse Awards for outstanding trainer.

After Vaccarezza graduated from high school in 2018, Brown offered him a job under his shedrow.

Vaccarezza did well enough as an assistant that Brown even allowed him to handle a small string at Saratoga for part of 2019.

“Chad showed me how an operation of that size has to be run, and how it runs,” Vaccarezza said.

But Vaccarezza's plan at the time had been to take off just one year of education between high school and college. He stepped away from Brown's stable and enrolled at the University of Kentucky (UK) for the fall 2019 term.

After two months at college, Vaccarezza felt that it wasn't working out the way he had hoped. He talked to his parents about quitting school, then called Brown to see if he could have his job back.

The trainer welcomed him back to the Florida division, but Brown told Vaccarezza not to give up entirely on pursuing an education.

“One thing Chad always told me was that he can teach me everything he knows about a horse,” Vaccarezza said. “But what he cannot teach me is how to become a good businessman. And he's such a great trainer because he's a great businessman.”

Everything was going smoothly for Vaccarezza for about five months. Then the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the world, and the 20-year-old opted not to travel with Brown's stable when it shipped north to New York.

As the early months of the pandemic morphed into summer, Vaccarezza decided to relocate back to Lexington. His father was opening a new restaurant there (one of three in Kentucky that Carlo owns), plus the family's racing outfit was stabled at Keeneland.

“The 2020 [GI Kentucky] Derby was in September, so I went up there,” Vaccarezza said. “My dad ran three horses on Derby day, and they all ran really bad. So I said, 'This is my time that I need to work for my dad and turn his barn around; try everything that I learned from Chad, and apply it to my dad's horses.'”

The stable started winning races. Reynaldo Abreu even ended up coming over to work for the outfit. Vaccarezza put in his hours during the mornings and on race days, but also decided to take some classes at UK.

“I thought it would be an extra card in my pocket if I went and did a pre-veterinary course,” Vaccarezza said.

Once he took part of the course load, Vaccarezza decided it would be worth it to actually end up with a diploma, so he completed the work in four years and finished with a degree in equine science and management.

Celebrating after the Tom Ridge Stakes at Presque Isle  | Coady Media

“So fast-forward to 2024,” Vaccarezza said. “Reynaldo left our barn on good terms. We brought in trainer Mike Dilger for a year. And Mike took the job knowing that I was soon to take over completely. My dad wanted to see if I was ready to do it on my own. Last year we had a great year. We won at 25%, and were in the top three like 50 or 60%. We did pretty well for only having 10 to 14 horses at a time.

“I was pretty eager to train,” Vaccarezza explained. “And we kept pushing it back to, 'Let's wait until you graduate school. Let's wait this. Let's wait that.'

“But I think I was waiting on Golden Afternoon,” Vaccarezza said. “We had aspirations to try and run him in the Derby, and that would have been my first big horse that put me on the map.”

Golden Afternoon had broken his maiden for trainer Carlo Vaccarezza at Kentucky Downs on Sept. 8, 2024. The gelding subsequently ran second in the Grade II Bourbon Stakes on the turf at Keeneland, then won an allowance/optional claimer on the grass at Fair Grounds, all at age two.

In an effort to mark the family transition with a well-meant contender, Nick Vaccarezza's first starter as a licensed trainer ended up being Golden Afternoon's sophomore debut, in the Jan. 18, 2025 GIII Lecomte Stakes at Fair Grounds. The gelding was fourth, beaten only 2 1/2 lengths, at 25-1 odds.

Vaccarezza was elated to be off and running in his training career.

Then he felt something wasn't right with one of his testicles.

“It was all of a sudden,” Vaccarezza said. “Around February, after I had taken out my license, we were at Fair Grounds still, and it started to swell up. I thought maybe I had just sat on it when I was riding a pony, but it never really went back down. So when I got back to Keeneland in March, I got it checked out, and they basically immediately said they had to take it out.”

'Every day a blessing'

As his doctors performed tests and scheduled the surgery, Vaccarezza continued to run the stable.

Golden Afternoon, the barn's big hope, was transitioned back to the turf. But after finishing second in the $100,000 Black Gold Stakes at Fair Grounds, he was badly outrun in both the GIII Transylvania Stakes at Keeneland and in the GI American Turf Stakes at Churchill Downs on the Derby undercard, finishing eleventh and ninth, respectively.

Forty-eight hours later, on the Monday after Derby day, Vaccarezza had his cancerous testicle surgically removed.

Nick Vaccarezza | Courtesy of Nick Vaccarezza

Now, eight weeks later, Vaccarezza is both reflective and optimistic about his prognosis.

“It hasn't stopped me. It hasn't slowed me down at all. I missed a couple of days of work,” Vaccarezza said. “It actually makes me a lot more grateful to do what I do. Because life is so short, and every day that you get is a blessing. And I just really want to thank God for everything He's done in my life.”

Shipping Golden Afternoon to Presque Isle for Monday's stakes was an experiment in cutting the gelding back in distance and trying a synthetic surface for the first time.

Vaccarezza said he caught a big break in getting five-time Eclipse Award-winning jockey Irad Ortiz, Jr. to ride.

Both Irad and his brother, Jose Ortiz, had just ridden at Churchill over the weekend, and were planning on driving more or less past Presque Isle on their way to Saratoga for this week's races. The Ortiz brothers have both known Vaccarezza since he was a teenager, and they agreed to make a slight detour on their road trip to help out.

“Irad only rode the horse because of me, really. He knew I needed to win my first race. And he'd already won on Golden, and he knows that he's a nice horse. It was nice that they came,” Vaccarezza said.

“They've been like big brothers to me for the past five or six years. Irad and Jose keep me in line and make sure I'm doing the right thing. They've kind of invested in me, as well, and it's inspiring to see that guys who are that successful, I can reach out to any time and they can give me advice on anything in life,” Vaccarezza said.

“We gave Golden a little class relief and a cut back in distance, and he showed how dominant he can be,” Vaccarezza said.

“To have my dad there, and to hold the trophy for my first win, in a stakes, with Irad and Jose there, and my brother there, it was really special to have all my guys in my winner's circle for my first win,” Vaccarezza said.

Vaccarezza spoke to TDN Tuesday evening just after pulling into the parking lot of one of his father's restaurants in Lexington. He was hosting all of his stable help for a celebratory dinner in honor of the team getting a stakes win the day before. The next morning, the entire outfit would be getting ready to ship west from Keeneland to Ellis Park for the summer meet.

“I've only got two hands and I have 14 horses,” Vaccarezza said, deferring credit for the win to his team. “It would be impossible to do it all by myself.”

The post After Surviving a School Shooting and Cancer Surgery, a 25-Year-Old Trainer Savors His First Win appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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