In Their Footsteps: Shelby Landeros

[Wandering Eyes]

Growing up around the track indelibly molds a young mind. And even those who don’t find traditional careers in racing find themselves drawn back to the backstretch. Case in point: Shelby Landeros (née Wilkes), the daughter of Classic-winning trainer Ian Wilkes and wife of jockey Chris Landeros. Although she didn’t grow up a horse lover, Shelby is passionate about supporting the humans and animals who are cogs in the Thoroughbred industry.

Born in Arlington Heights, Chicago, Landeros grew up in Louisville. Ian Wilkes made his name as assistant trainer to the legendary Carl Nafzger, working with GI Kentucky Derby winners Unbridled (Fappiano) and Street Sense (Street Cry {Ire}).

“My parents are from Australia and they came here permanently in ’93,” the 27-year-old Landeros said. “My dad was an assistant trainer for Carl Nafzger for a while. I think he’s been on his own for about 11 years now.”

Since branching out on his own, Wilkes has conditioned 2012 GI Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Fort Larned (E Dubai), star sprinter Capt. Candyman Can (Candy Ride {Arg}), and multiple graded stakes winner McCraken (Ghostzapper). Landeros herself has been in two Derby winner’s circles: first, in Unbridled’s 1990 Run for the Roses triumph, while her mother was six months pregnant with her, and the second, of course, 17 years later.

She vividly remembers Fort Larned’s Classic, recalling, “My roommates from college laugh and Chris pulls up the footage, but I made the NBC coverage cheering for this horse and it’s the most mortifying clip I’ve ever seen in my life. But it’s memorable because it’s there and I’m standing right there with Dad and my brother’s behind me and we’re screaming for this horse to win [what] at the time [was] the richest race in the country.”

Her mother-Ian’s wife, Tracey-also gallops horses for her husband, and her brother, Brodie Wilkes, now works as his father’s assistant trainer at Del Mar. However, Landeros said, “I never really rode horses. I know how to ride; I can sit on a horse and trot. But I never really showed any interest.”

She added that, “For a long time, I actually didn’t really love the industry because my dad traveled with it, which meant he was gone a lot.”

Wilkes noted, “It’s something I never forced onto Shelby. It was always her choice. I never pushed her to be away from the track, never pushed her to be at the track, to be with horses, because training was mine and Tracey’s lives. She had to make her own mind up in where she wanted to be and what she wanted to do.”

As a teen, in search of a summer job, Landeros walked hots for her dad and she began to truly appreciate track life.

“Of course, everyone appreciates dressing up for the big days and whatnot,” she said. “That’s what my parents used to joke-I would just turn up for the big days in the big hats and everything. But now it’s like a whole different ball game, because I’m more invested in what my dad does and I love supporting him, and now I have Chris, so I’m on the whole other side of things.”

Landeros carved out her own path, attending Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, where she studied health sciences.

“I intended on being an athletic trainer and working with sports teams in the athletic training rooms and whatnot, like it’s not personal training, it’s working with their injuries,” she said. “You do the therapies with them before they get sent to physical therapy.”

But additional certification required further graduate school, and Landeros “didn’t have it in” her to do that post-graduation. So she moved back to Kentucky, keeping busy by working at Starbucks-until Mr. Right galloped up.

In a modern-day love story, Shelby met her future husband on Facebook. At the time, Chris Landeros was riding at Indiana Downs and came across Shelby via the “People You May Know” function on the social media platform. The two became “friends” and began messaging back and forth.

“He was very persistent,” Shelby recalled. “I think it was like eight months of messaging, and me sending, like, one line back to him, and so one day, after we were dating, someone was like, ‘Well, why did you keep messaging her?’ [He said,] ‘Well, she kept responding,’ so I did, and here we are.”

Landeros admitted, “He was a jockey and I’ve never been interested in dating anyone in the industry because if dad would start using him and if something happened between us and that’s his business, I wouldn’t want to interfere with it.”

But once she and her future husband started dating, Landeros told her father, “‘Business is business; don’t worry. You don’t have to use him because of me,'” and Wilkes replied, “I’ll use him because I like him as a rider.”

Engaged 11 months after they first began dating, Shelby and Chris scheduled their wedding day around a particularly important occasion: Derby Day. They wed on May 9, 2016, in Kentucky, for practical reasons. Landeros remembered, “So my entire family is in Australia and when I say ‘my entire family,’ the only two people I have over here are my mom and my dad. So I figured, if we’re going to get married in the spring, let’s just do it right after [the] Derby because everyone will be here, including Chris’s buddies who are jockeys who would’ve flown in to ride.”

Now, Chris regularly rides for his father-in-law.

“Chris has done a very good job, but business is business, too,” Wilkes said. “Family is family, but business is business. If any one of them-and Brodie-is doing something wrong, I’ll tell him because it’s important. It’s a business and same with Chris. When we leave the track, it’s over; it’s family then.”

Landeros observed, “And they’re both very good about, you get off the horse, you talk about it, and when they walk away we can go to dinner together and we don’t bring it up. It’s time for family and that’s nice, because it is hard for some people to keep work at work and it can make the family situation a bit stressful, especially since Chris works for him.”

But Chris’s career is blossoming, as he rides for both his father-in-law and other trainers.

Making the family atmosphere that much more exciting is the presence of Shelby and Chris’s son, Beckham, born in September 2017. Now a stay-at-home mom, Landeros says that finding work-life balance is tricky.

“Chris has workers in the morning, the afternoon he has to go ride, and when he comes home he wants a break and I want a break and I’m like, ‘This is a lot,'” she said, “But it’s nice in a sense that everyone [at the track] has kids-whether some of them are a little older-the majority of us have babies, so there’s always someone around. I’m very close with Shea Leparoux [daughter of the late trainer Mike Mitchell and wife of jockey Julien Leparoux] and she just had a baby in December and has a 2-year-old and they’re down here in Florida, so it’s nice when I can talk to her about things or we get the babies together.”

In 2017, Landeros and her husband decided to give back by getting involved in Hats Off to the Horses. The annual fundraiser involves industry couples posing alongside retired racehorses at Old Friends Farm and modeling hats crafted by milliner Sally Faith Steinman of Maggie Mae Designs; the hats are then auctioned off, the proceeds benefitting Old Friends. Shea and Julien Leparoux got involved previously and then recommended the Landeroses.

For their photoshoot, the Landeroses cozied up to Danthebluegrassman (Pioneering) and former turf star and fan favorite Little Mike (Spanish Steps). Landeros modeled a Little Mike-inspired chapeau and said, “It was actually fun because Little Mike won the Breeders’ Cup [Turf] in 2012 and that was the same year my dad won the Classic with Fort Larned, so I knew who he was. We did the hat for him and he had just come off the track, too, so he was still a little fresh for me.”

Landeros was happy to oblige, saying, “I’ve grown up with horses, I’ve been to Old Friends, and Michael [Blowen] out there is great. He always takes us around when we go out there and I try to send people [who ask], ‘Oh, what should we do in Kentucky or Lexington?’ [I’d say,] ‘Go visit Old Friends, donate, go see all the horses.’ Everyone, whether industry-related or not, wants to save horses and the sad part is you can’t always save every single one of them, so for someone to take time and create a property and create a home for these horses to have somewhere to go when they’re done with their careers, it’s great, especially since it’s nonprofit. They live on donations and anything I can do to help get money that way makes me feel better.”

Beckham, who first visited the track at six days old, might be too tall to follow in his father’s bootprints.

“At his growth rate, I don’t know if he’s going to be a jockey,” his mother admitted. “But he’s going to be on horses. We’re out at the track all the time because Beckham doesn’t nap at home, so to get him to nap, I have to go out and do things, so I’m just going to go to the track to watch Chris ride or watch my dad’s horses. So we get out in the fresh air and wander around. It’s a pretty germy place; we’re building up immunities.”

Wilkes loves having his grandson around the track, saying cheerfully, “You never realize until you have a grandson what it’s like and the fun things about it. As I told Shelby, I said, “I’m going to spoil him and [for] all those years you gave me a hard time, I’ll get even.'”

Wilkes also appreciates the people his children have grown into. Seeing them excel is “very rewarding” as he admires “what they do and how they’re accomplished in their young lives,” especially how they respect those around them. Particularly special is seeing Carl Nafzger and wife Wanda bonding with Beckham. He added, “They’re like our American mother and father and they’re grandparents to the kids and now they’ve got a great-grandson. They adore Beckham.” He added, “That’s special to see, too.”

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