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Man believed to be first African-American trainer at event breaks through at 55 with $5,500 filly California Angel
Seven have won Grade I races. Three of them are millionaires. Two others have won more than $900,000. End to end, the collection amounts to more than $9.3 million in horse-flesh earnings.
On the other side of the same barn is 55-year-old Indiana trainer George Leonard III, a Louisiana native in a cowboy hat and Bass Pro Shops shirt with boots gathering fresh dust daily. He broke through with California Angel, a $5,500 steal from the Ocala 2-year-old sale who refused to believe her 17-1 odds in an October qualifying race at Keeneland.
Two men, separated by 50 feet … and a million racing miles.
Brown’s crew includes assistant trainers, grooms, hot walkers and vague others doing vague other things. Leonard’s support staff?
“My wife and I,” he said.
Except, he did.
“It’s hard to dream about having a Breeders’ Cup horse,” George said Tuesday, standing outside the stall of his horse entered in Friday’s $1 million Juvenile Fillies Turf. “I keep cheap claimers. I don’t have those caliber horses. My owners don’t spend that big money.
“… We don’t go to the sales to buy Derby potential horses or stakes horses. We’re usually trying to buy something feasible, something we can afford.”
Turns out, fate is not always tied to bank accounts.
“I just got lucky that one time — one shot,” he said.
Leonard grew up in Elton, a town of about 1,300 in southwest Louisiana. There are four churches, but no stoplights. Business listings include Buster’s Crawfish Shack and Bubba’s Wrecker Service.
The Leonard kids would feed horses in the morning, go to school, then return after the last bell to continue working. The budding trainer competed in basketball, football, track and baseball.
Though Leonard said his best sport was baseball, the former shortstop developed real grit and stamina in track sprints, including the grueling 440-yard dash.
“Gut check,” Leonard said of the race. “Hurts your belly. You don’t eat after that.”
Those experiences on and away from both types of tracks shaped the work ethic and competitive zest that, all those years later, led Leonard to a place he never thought he’d be for a race he never thought possible.
Brown, the decorated trainer with 15 Breeders’ Cup wins alone, has averaged $26,229 per race in his career. Leonard, breathing the rare air of his only Breeders’ Cup, has pocketed $1,683 each trip to the starting gate since winning a 6½-furlong race in a bull ring at Louisiana’s Jefferson Downs in 1991.
So, winning the Grade II Jessamine Stakes with a thrilling late rush last month — Leonard’s first runner in a race of that magnitude — called for a celebration decades in the making.
“We called him and he was at a McDonald’s, eating hamburgers,” said Chris Walsh, owner of California Angel, the daughter of Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner California Chrome. “I think it was meant to be. He’s worked hard all his life. He’s an excellent, excellent horseman.
“He’s like the other small trainers out there with the passion for doing it, but they never get that horse that pushes you into the limelight.”
Then, Leonard got that horse — literally.
Walsh sent him out with a $20,000 budget, but Leonard stopped nearly $15,000 short of that limit because his eyes lit on a gem simply in need of polishing.
“George said, ‘I’m not sure why she was overlooked in the sale,’ ” Walsh recalled. “It was the last day of the sale. He was really surprised. He said, ‘I think I found a horse for you.’ ”
Though Leonard is aware of the history he’s making as a Black trainer, it’s not his focus.
Shattering ceilings is not his preferred gig, but he understands the potential importance of the moment. When someone is first, it becomes easier to be the next, and the next, and the next.
“There’s value in that, shortening the road,” Leonard said. “No matter where you come from, if you work hard, keep your head down and do the right things, you can go far.”
Then, Leonard’s cell phone rang with the theme song to the spaghetti Western, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
“My favorite movie,” he said.
If there’s pressure this week for Leonard — whose filly is 8-1 on the morning line for Friday’s wide-open race — some of it melted in the light-hearted moment. The soaking-it-in-process started to fully take root. Thoughts drifted to his late father and horse-training partner, killed in a car accident 13 years ago.
Another smile left the starting gate.
“My dad would be on top of the world,” he said.
How would things change if Leonard found a way to win Friday, an underdog’s underdog shouldering his way farther into a world he thought had no place for him?
“Probably more interviews,” he said.
Bet on it.
