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Winfrey Training Horses 21 Years % Practically Grew ■ Up on Race Track Native Dancers Conditioner :s Started Out as Assistant to • His Stepfather, Cary Winfrey I By Staff Correspondent CHURCHILL DOWNS, Louisville, Ky., May 1. — Just 20 years ago, plus a few f months, Daily Racing Form published its • first feature story on William C. "Bill" ► Winfrey. It was datelined Miami, Jan. 12, 1933, consisted of a few sticks of type and | the lead paragraph began, "They call him : the youngest trainer on the American f turf." | The first published acknowledgement of Native Dancers trainer went on to state i that he had applied for his trainers li- ; cense the previous fall at Laurel, had fin- i ished in the money with all four of the horses he had saddled at the Maryland track. It added that young Winfrey was born in Detroit, "spent his romper days in Dallas, Texas, and grew up around the tracks, stables and tack rooms," mostly at Aqueduct. Bill Winfrey made his training debut as an assistant to his stepfather, G. C. "Cary" Winfrey, who now trains the horses of his daughter, Mrs. Jan Burke, and is regarded -within the profession as one of the best conditioners alive today. Bill had enjoyed, though that is not perhaps the correct word for it, a brief career in the saddle, I but was a rapidly growing 112 pounds when he turned to training. Those four races, which he finished in the money were all run by one horse, Nego-poli, owned by the elder Winfrey, and he won one race, was beaten a nose in another and finished third in his other two starts. For all that effort, he earned the magnificent sum of ,100. Discovery Yearling in 1932 During the fall of 1932, Alfred G. Van-derbilfs Discovery was a yearling. The son of Display came to the races the following year, not long after BUI Winfrey made his debut in these columns and finished sec-gpnd to Cavalcade in the Kentucky Derby Sgf-4934. Discovery was the last colt to cay«y the cerise and white diamonds in the ► ~ i "Run for the Roses." A year ago, Winfrey got as far as Churchill Downs with a Van-derbilt colt named Cousin, but that brilliant rogue literally declared himself out of the Derby by his lunatic behavior. Three years ago, Winfrey and Vanderbilt had Derby hopes for the grand filly, Bed o Roses, who had won seven stakes and set a money-winning record for juveniles of her sex the previous year, but the daughter of Rosemont went amiss early in the year and her stablemate, Next Move, was never pointed for the colt stakes until September, when she turned in one of her few bad races in the Discovery Handicap. To go back again into the past, Winfrey declares that his career in the saddle was not quite so bad as it has been remembered by many. "I won four races," he recalls, "the first at Empire City and the last at Saratoga." Though granted a license in 1932, and making a good start that year with Nego-poli, Winfrey spent most of the next five years obtaining a thorough grounding in the fundamentals of conditioning thoroughbreds. Recently, he remarked: "When I had been training for a couple of years and began to win races, I thought I knew something about what I was doing. Now, after more than 20 years, I am just beginning to realize just how little I do know." The first good horse Winfrey trained was Postage Due, who had been claimed by the elder Winfrey and turned over to Bill. Though a bleeder, Postage Due won many good races. Perhaps the best claim Bill ever made on his own was Dini, a hard-hitting little mare whom he got from Andy Schut-tinger for ,000 and who went on to be rated the best sprinting filly of her day by John B. Campbell. Claimed Good Horse From Jones About the same time, in 1940, Bill also performed the rare feat of claiming a good horse from Ben Jones. The men who have made a good claim from "B. A." in the past 15 years can be counted on the fingers of one hand, but the younger Winfrey haltered One Jest for ,000 and developed her into one of the better distance -running mares of her time. When Winfrey was training Dini and One Jest, he said something one day that still echoes in the memory when one thinks of Native Dancer. "Both are loafing kind of mares," Win- Continued on Page Forty-Sere* Winfrey Training Horses 2 7 Years; Practically Grew Up on Race Track Native Dancers Conditioner Started Out as Assistant to His Stepfather, Cary Winfrey Continued from Page Thirty-Eight frey said, "but I prefer that kind to those that grab the bit and run themselves right into the ground." Native Dancer has always been a "loafing kind of colt," one who will never do more than he is asked and it is that characteristic that enables him to run farther than his pedigree assures. After almost 10 years gaining experience with his own horses and those of his stepfather, Bill Winfrey began taking horses for other owners. In 1940, he had a division of the Cleaveland Putnams stable, while "Boots" Durnell had the main string. The following year he conditioned Volitant and others for the Saratoga Stable of the late George Bull. He also had the "Wolf" horses of Mrs. Alice F. Sherman and beat such as Alsab and Requested with American Wolf in the Bahamas Handicap of 1942 at Hia-leah. Winfrey was training the Circle M Farm horses of the late Edward S. Moore when he went into the Marines. He served two years in the South Pacific. It has often been said that luck is as essential as ability on the race track and there may be some indication that Winfrey has his full share of that precious element in the fact that he was unscathed throughout his term with the "fightinest service" in that hot corner of the world. Returning from the wars, f Winfrey trained a few horses of his own for a brief time, then held posts with Wood-vale Farm and Havahome Stable, developing the fine filly Sweet Dream for the latter. Successful With Fillies Winfrey has long had a special touch with fillies, who are anathema to many otherwise capable trainers, perhaps because, like their human counterparts, they require infinite patience and understanding, allied with firmness. His first great successes with the Vanderbilt stable, which he took over in 1949, were with Bed o Roses, while Next Move picked up where she left off the following season and both mares continued to be leaders of the older divisions. The success of the Vanderbilt stable since Winfrey assumed its direction has been nothing short of phenomenal. After a doldrums of more than 10 years, following the big years of Discovery and Good Gamble, in Winfreys first season the stable won 36 races, including an even dozen stakes. That pace has continued, despite the defection of Cousin, exiled to England, last year. No Secret of Success Last fall, a few days before Native Dancer won the Futurity, Winfrey said: "I know that I am not an innovator, and I havent any secret of success." There is some ground for disagreement there. We suspect that Winfreys luck, demonstrated on and off the racetrack, is part of the secret. The rest is a truly remarkable refusal to become disturbed or j flustered under pressure. Winfrey goes * along, doing what his experience tells him to be the best thing to do in each circumstance as that circumstance arises. That is not always easy and some trainers with great reputations justly earned have allowed themselves to be panicked into do- , ing things with horses coming up to im- ; portant races that they would not have j done had they been following their unflur-ried judgment. Native Dancers training is a perfect ex- , ample of this. Here is a colt who went through his juvenile campaign unbeaten ! and was only once seriously extended. He I did this on a pair of ankles that must have caused his conditioner many anxious mo- J ments, though Winfrey always minimized j the dangers apparent in them. This spring « at Jamaica, Winfrey did confess that there was a time last summer when it looked as though the gray colt wouldnt make it be- j cause of his osselets. Those ankles are big- ; ger than they were last year, probably be- cause of the firing, but Winfrey continues ; to minimize them as he goes along prepar- » ing his charge for the first Derby in which • Vanderbilt has had a starter since 1934. One recent afternoon, Bill suggested that another trainer might be "holding j out"- a bit in discussing the possible unsoundness of a Derby colt. The writer ! doubted this, saying, "Blank is a friend." ! "Im a friend, too," Bill said, "but there will be times when I may have to hold out on you a little." A glance at Native Dancers ankles and a study of his training schedule and the extreme care with which Eric Guerin has ridden him this year, more than suggests that Winfrey may have been "holding out," when he implied that the colt is sound. The point is that Winfrey has gone along, preparing this colt for the Derby in the way that his experience tells him he should be prepared, though his training and his race prior to the Wood Memorial were far less than any number of gratuitous advisors believe a classic colt should have. Despite all the pressure, which in the case of an unbeaten colt who has received the greatest "build up" of all time, Winfrey never lost his equanimity and never asked Native Dancer to do a thing that he didnt think, from his own experience, was just what he should do. Regardless of the success of this colt, or his failure, that is the secret of Bill Winfreys success.
