Eddie Plesa: A Forgotten Breed Worth Remembering

[Wandering Eyes]

He knows the business inside out, and a lot of it drives Eddie Plesa Jr. crazy. As we mount the golf buggy to see a couple of babies through the gate, his conversation freewheels from one exasperation to another. At one point he even admits relief that his children did not do as he did, in following his father into the game. “One of my sons is a police officer,” Plesa says. “He goes to work every day with a gun, and I feel more comfortable, with him doing what he does, than if he was in the barn with me working.”

This, moreover, was before the Churchill stewards put every other irritation in the shade by throwing out a Kentucky Derby winner trained by his wife’s brother. Yet it would be all too easy to give the wrong impression. For while you’re actually with Plesa, you don’t sense the slightest negativity: just verve, insight, engagement. Things about the business vex him, for sure, but only because he cares; only because he loves horses.

In fact, you soon develop a vexation of your own–on his behalf. How can a guy like this, with such pedigree and experience, closing on 2,400 winners, have barely 30 horses in his care? Happily, the support of people like Karl and Cathi Glassman means there is some quality there, too. Training, nowadays, is said to be a numbers game. In contrast with the “super-trainers,” however, a guy like Plesa will still patiently preside in person over every single lesson absorbed by his charges.

“My father had a saying: dynamite can go off in anyone’s hands,” he says. “Anybody can train a good horse. It’s with the lesser horses that you need experience and knowledge and horsemanship. Allen Jerkens didn’t have many horses. And I don’t think anybody would say any super-trainer was better than him. He had gotten older, when he decided to stay here [in Florida]. But you don’t forget this stuff.

“These horses, they have personalities just like people. Over-achievers, under-achievers. Not everyone has the chance to see that. I do. Everybody who works here does. It’s no reflection on those trainers, and it’s certainly not jealousy on my part. But with 300 horses in five different places, you’re only as strong as your weakest link. I’d rather have the personal attention.

“There was a time when the top trainers had 35, 40 horses. So that would be nine trainers with 35 horses, as opposed to one guy. And, of course, that one guy can only run two in a race.”
Plesa, as indicated, didn’t raise the subject himself. But it seemed apposite to do so, as he reflected on changes in his professional environment since watching his father train Fred Hooper’s “fourth string”.

“We’re kind of a forgotten breed, to be honest,” he says. “The game has changed in every aspect. Racing, at one time, was the only game in town. That’s not the case anymore. I feel we made a deal with the devil when we became partners in these casinos.”

He is scathing about the behaviour of Churchill Downs at Calder, a track that meant a lot to him over the years. About the sport’s yield from wagering and simulcasting. About the lack of a racing commission in Florida. About a labour market straining under demographic and political change. And, above all, about the “horrible job” the sport makes of self-promotion.

Plesa acknowledges that some challenges are societal. But could we get our own house in order, for instance, sufficiently to meet the crisis if the Stronach feud ended with the family walking away? Or, a more immediate challenge, can we explain to government that you can only “give jobs to Americans” if Americans are able and willing to do them?

“Yes, some problems are beyond our means,” Plesa says. “But could we do things better? I think we could. Think of the people that own horses, the vast majority very successful in what they do. I trained for Barry Schwartz who was partners with Calvin Klein. Great story, two kids become friends growing up, and the rest is history.

“So in this business you rub elbows with people who are super wealthy, super bright, and enamoured by horseracing. People from Hollywood who produce shows, captains of industry. Couldn’t we get all these brilliant minds to sit down in the think tank and say, ‘Listen, what can we do to help promote this sport? How can we get its magic out to people?'”

As it is, he wonders what on earth such minds must make of the current model. He dreams of a horseracing czar, empowered to coordinate calendars and programs, so that tracks might complement rather than undermine each other.

“Some of this stuff’s so basic, it’s mind-boggling,” he says. “If you’re a business person and look at the model we have, you’d have to scratch your head and say: ‘What the hell? It’s like the A.F.C. having different rules from the N.F.C.'”

But the horse itself, to Plesa, will never be a commodity. Where other barns resemble factories, processing claimers, he loves to develop talent. “That’s the part of the business I enjoy most,” he says. “Some trainers just recycle horses. But horses, again, are like people. You get earlier developers, late developers. The guy who was the athlete in junior high, by the time you graduate into college, he hasn’t grown, hasn’t gotten any faster. He was number one, now he’s middle of the pack. Same with horses.

“Working with 2-year olds, for me, is what it’s all about. Claiming horses have their place, they get you from point A to point B. But I wouldn’t like to be a Florida-bred running for $16,000. With the 2-year-olds, you have an investment in time, and patience. Not only as a trainer, but as an owner.”

And here, sure enough, is a trainer who will put the interests of his horses ahead of any short-term gain.

“The longer you do this, the more you understand you have to be able to convince people to wait on horses,” he says. “Some people, you can’t convince. Some people don’t belong, as horse owners. They’re not cut out for so many variables that come into play, that you have no control over. Because it’s not just a question of sitting in a stand, watching your colors.”

He recalls the time an owner of an exceptional young filly conducted himself so boorishly that Plesa, at a time when his kids were young and his business precarious, ordered him point-blank to take her away. She proceeded to do everything Plesa knew she should, but he had no regrets.

When you’ve trained for Hooper, as Plesa did after his father, you can handle punks like that.

“Ah, Mr. Hooper!” Plesa exclaims. “One of those people you could brag about that you met. Went against everything that was said back then. He was a barber, he was a boxer. He grows potatoes and blight kills the whole crop. Now he needs money to pay the bank. He reads in the paper they’re taking bids on a road building project. He had never built a road, was never in construction. He puts in a bid, gets the contract. So now he goes to the bank and says, ‘Listen, this is the deal. I can pay you–if you give me more money.’ And then he becomes one of the biggest contractors in the country.”

True, when he had made his dollars Hooper still knew the value of cents. In fact, it is only now that Plesa has turned 70–albeit only just, in the same week that the Churchill stewards put such a dampener on family celebrations-that he has found the clients he wishes he could have had all along.

“Karl and Cathi are still pretty new in the business, but I swear to God they are absolutely the best people I have ever trained for,” Plesa says. “I wish I’d met them 20 years ago.”

But then there are also 30-year stalwarts like David and Olga Melin, for whom-along with another valued patron, Marion Montanari-Plesa trained Yesbyjimminy (Yes It’s True) to tear up Calder with a six-race streak in 2008. Yesbyjimminy soon faded at stud, but Plesa sent him a mare named Forest Retreat (Forest Camp). She produced a champion juvenile filly of New Jersey, so they bred her back–and Plesa’s wife Laurie duly found herself decorated as breeder of the FTBOA champion turf female of 2018 in Miz Mayhem, whose half-dozen wins last year included four at black-type level.

Laurie, the Melins and Montanari were the owners lucky enough to cash in Preakness runner-up and GI Woodward winner Itsmyluckyday (Lawyer Ron) to Spendthrift. But if that high-profile success confirmed Plesa to be equal to any opportunity, his fulfilment as a trainer has never been about personal acclaim. So when he thinks back 20 years to Three Ring (Notebook), who won the GI Acorn S. only to fracture her skull in the Belmont paddock next time out, it is intimate memories of the filly around the barn that stay with him most.

“Three Ring was particularly special to us, because I’d bought her mother at a sale,” he recalls. “And she was the first horse my wife became familiar with, on a personal basis. We’d come back to the barn after dinner and the filly would be lying down in the stall. I could go in there and she’d put her head in my lap. I’d pet her and my wife would too. A long time ago, now. But she was special.”

Other cherished achievers include Best Of The Rest (Skip Trial), who won first time out at two and the inaugural Sunshine Millions Classic as a 7-year-old. Plesa established that he would only hold his form in limited cycles but would always bounce back, granted a sufficient vacation.

“He was an over-achiever, and that’s where horsemanship comes in,” Plesa says. “Not that I’m an outstanding horseman. It’s just that if somebody else had their hands on him, he wouldn’t have kept going so long and would probably have ended up running for a tag. Because they wouldn’t have given him the time. He paid us off in spades.”

None of this happens because a fellow can read a manual. It comes out of a lifetime in the game; in fact, two lifetimes.

“My father left home when he was 12 years old,” Plesa recalls. “Came from a very poor family. Omaha, Nebraska. He was small, somebody said, ‘Geez, he could be a jockey or something.’ So he went out and became a jockey. Won his first race when he was 13, at Ak-Sar-Ben.

“He had a ton of ability. He trained horses people said would never make it and won stakes with them. And I was the beneficiary, in a lot of ways: I’ve been working with horses since I was five. He’d be riding in Ohio or Michigan and the day school would get out, down here, my mother put me in a car and we’d drive to wherever he was. And when I got there, I’d walk horses for people. So I’ve done everything, just about. When I was his foreman, I’d kid about that: that, for him, meant doing the work of four men.”

It will not have been lightly, then, that Plesa steered his own children away from the business. But then there still are those other babies, out there schooling through the gate.

“Listen, it’s been a great family thing for us, no ifs or buts,” he reflects. “It sent all my kids to college. But I’m glad I’m where I am now. I’m not sure I’d want to be a young person starting out. Yes, it’s still a great business. But the game’s changed. I have a watch I can talk to. ‘Call so-and-so,’ and it does it. So is there still a place for the rotary phone? No! Is there a place for horseracing? I hope so.

“Certainly as long as I’m here on the back side there’s going to be a 2-year old in that barn. Because that’s what gives you hope. You can’t hit a grand slam claiming a horse. But you can, buying one. And then you have the homebreds. Those horses don’t know whether they’re in the first round draft or the seventh. But they listen to you and, as long as you teach them well, they go out there and do the best they can.

“So long as I can do that, I’ll get up every morning and come out here. I like that the 2-year-olds need that devotion, patience, expertise. And really horseracing is a wonderful sport. I would love to see it to continue. And it will, past me. Though what the future holds I question. While you might not think this, I’m a very positive person. An upbeat person. And I know I’ve been very, very lucky. It’s just that about this business, I’m a realist.”

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