Josie Carroll is “A Good Horse Trainer, Not a Good Woman Horse Trainer’

[Wandering Eyes]

When trainer Josie Carroll looks back on her 35-year career in Thoroughbred racing, she can’t believe all that she has accomplished.

She made history in 2006 when she saddled Plate winner Edenwold (Southern Halo) to victory, becoming the first woman trainer to accomplish that feat. She added to that in 2011 when she recorded her second win, this time with the filly Inglorious (Hennessy).

She will be looking to record her third victory in this year’s Plate at Woodbine Racetrack June 29 with one of two starters – Avie’s Flatter (Flatter), last year’s champion 2-year-old male horse in Canada, and He’s a Macho Man (Mucho Macho Man).

Carroll’s tenacity to pursue a career in the sport is quite fascinating. Her father was a builder of subdivisions and she was raised by a close friend of her mother’s after her mother died of breast cancer when Josie was only 1 1/2 years old.

“It’s a convoluted story,” Carroll said. “She was just very close to my mother. As she was going through (her cancer battle) and my father was running a company, her close friend was looking after me and then ended up raising me. I remained close to my mother and the rest of my family, but the mom that raised me was (a family friend). She was just this wonderful, independent, confident woman. That point of confidence is what she gave me. She was supportive of everything I did.”

Carroll recalled that at age nine or 10 she started following Thoroughbred racing through newspaper coverage. She began handicapping races by looking at the entries and picking names of horses.

“It always intrigued me,” she said. “I was just fascinated. There was something about these Thoroughbred horses that once you get exposed to them, you’re hooked. All I can say is this was my destiny. I was meant to do this because as long as I can remember I was fascinated with racing. I went through the typical stuff with riding lessons. I was interested in horses in general, but I had this specific passion for racing. I still have piles of scrapbooks of every picture of stakes-winning horses. Every weekend I’d cut those photos out of the newspapers. For me it was all horses.”

No one within her family had an interest or career in horse racing. To further her career in horses, she enrolled in a two-year equine program at a college near Woodbine. Part of the program included a field placement that she says “kind of got me into this world.”

She worked for veterinarian Dr. Darryl Bonder, participating in surgeries. It wasn’t her specific goal to become a trainer at that time.

“I just happened to have a passion for horses,” she said. “I just wanted to be at the track. I wanted to be around these horses.”

Her first experience working daily with horses came as a groom for trainer John Tammaro, who was conditioning for Kinghaven Farms and had a reputation for claiming horses and developing them into stakes winners. He taught her how to take care of the cheap horses as much as the good ones.

“You have to be exposed to a lot of horses,” she said. “If you are really ambitious in this business you need to work for people who have some numbers because the more opportunities you have to see the things that go right and go wrong, the more you are going to learn.”

He gave her the opportunity to become his assistant trainer. She worked helping to train horses in Ocala and stayed in the U.S. for a few years. When she returned home for her sister’s wedding and decided to take a month’s vacation, she needed her “horse fix” and walked hots for trainer Mike Doyle, Canada’s trainer of the year in 1984 and a conditioner of multiple Canadian champions.

Doyle was impressed with Carroll’s skills and offered her a job as assistant trainer.

In 1993, Doyle ran Wild Gale (Wild Again) in the U.S. Triple Crown and the colt placed third in the GI Kentucky Derby and GI Belmont S. Carroll was at the Derby and recalled the experience of escorting the horse on to the track and the magnitude of it all, especially hearing My Old Kentucky Home.

“It sort of brought tears to my eyes,” she said.

She wasn’t caught up in the criticisms by some media members who thought Doyle had no business running the colt in the race.

“I was living the moment,” she said. “I don’t think I even thought of ‘do we have a chance, don’t we have a chance.’ I was just excited to be there with a live horse.”

The following year, Doyle was hired by Frank Stronach to be his racing manager and Carroll’s training career began. Doyle recommended to many of his clients, including Stronach, to give their horses to Carroll.

“I just really believe everything happens for a reason and a purpose,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of great experiences here, but my pure moment in racing came when Edenwold won the Plate.”

A Canadian champion at two, Edenwold was not expected to win the Plate because there were doubts by some pundits he could be competitive at a mile and a quarter. He was a 16-1 long shot.

“As he came back past the crowd [after winning], you heard that wave of applause and that was just about appreciation for that horse in that moment and I never forgot that,” she said. “It was a very moving moment to show that appreciation for this horse you had the privilege of training. That was a big moment. I always had confidence in that horse to [win at a mile and one quarter]. He did whatever you asked him to do. He was just one of those honest, honest horses that give you everything he had.

“I thought he was going to run really, really well that day. It never crossed my mind he wouldn’t get a mile and a quarter.”

It was a historical moment becoming the first woman to train a Plate winner, but she didn’t think of it in terms of gender.

“I appreciate that fact – that that’s a historic fact – but I always just wanted to be a good horse trainer, not a good woman horse trainer,” she said. “I think that’s what all of us feel. You don’t want to feel like you’re in a competition with other women in the sport. You’re in competition with every trainer out there to get the best horses you can and do the best you can. That’s just the way I always felt and the way I was raised to believe you can do whatever you wanted.

“It was a great moment [to win the Plate]. It was a dream of mine; a dream accomplished.”

Carroll remembered the victory by Inglorious, the Woodbine Oaks winner that was the lone filly in the field of 17, for how she remained calm and collected on what was a blistering hot day.

“A lot of the horses were getting hot and agitated, but this filly had a great mind on her,” Carroll said. “Finally she got fed up with being in [the walking ring] and she suddenly put her head down and started to eat the grass. We had to pull her head up and it was just at that moment I said this filly is going to run lights-out this day. She is taking all this so in stride where every other horse is getting agitated.”

In August, Carroll will make history again becoming the first female Thoroughbred trainer to be inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame. She has often said she considers herself a trainer who happens to be a woman rather than a woman trainer. But the reality is she became a full-time trainer in 1994 at a time when there were few woman trainers at Woodbine and, by extension, throughout North America. That has certainly changed at Woodbine, where there are many woman trainers, many of them in the top 15 in terms of wins and/or earnings.

“I don’t recall being treated as a woman trainer up here,” she said. “I think to be successful training horses, [first of all] you have to get results. It’s a competitive sport and owners want results and I don’t think they are gender-biased up here. I think maybe it took longer for women in the United States to get the opportunity than we did in Canada. I think we were more forward earlier on.

“I like to think that anybody that comes to work here that wants to do something in the future I’m always there to help. I got a lot of help myself coming up from the people I worked for. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for some of the great trainers I worked for.”

Carroll has accomplished more than she ever dreamed starting out in the business.

“I think I set smaller goals and every time you reach one, you found new goals,” she said. “Winning the Queen’s Plate would have been one of the first goals. It’s something you grew up watching, and once you did that, you want more.”

Her biggest accomplishment may have been the unusual way she became a horse person.

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