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JEAN TROCHET Jean Trochet, 20, May Be Youngest Trainer in U. S. Quits Riding After Few Years; Saddles Winner 13 Days Later By JOE HIRSCH Americas youngest trainer? He could be a 5-foot 10-inch, 120-pound youngster named Jean Trochet, who hung up his tack at "Garden State Park on May 15 after a brief career as a rider and 13 days later saddled his first winner at the age of 20. "Its hard to say which gave me my greatest thrill," Trochet told a reporter recently at the barn, "riding my first winner, Freedom Parley at Garden State in November of 1954, or sending out my first winner as a trainer on May 28. I guess it would have to be the latter because now I have the added responsibility of taking care of my mother and younger brother, Alan. I tell you, I was so excited I thought I was dreaming." The Trochet family is from Louisville, Ky,. originally, and Jean got his first taste of race track life at old Douglas Park in the Falls City. The Trochets settled in New Jersey last year where Jeans mother j entered into partnership with Jack Roths-! child in the operation of Lakewood Farm, a thoroughbred breeding and boarding establishment. Jean was 5-foot-5 and weighed 103 pounds when he began riding and sprouted like a shoot only during the past few season. He came on the race track under Odie Clelland. Odie is a veteran horseman who also brought Eddie Arcaro around and Trochet says he learned plenty from Clelland. Jean rode in Massachusetts, Maine, Florida," Louisiana arid New Jersey with some success. However, his increasing height and weight difficulties forced him to make a decision and he applied for his trainers license recently. He passed the tests with flying colors, and took over active training of the small string that carriesthe blue colors of the Lakewood Farm. Now he plans to race his stable along the New Jersey circuit this summer, and commutes almost daily to the farm in Lakewood, which is centrally located to Garden State, Monmouth and Atlantic City. The place has accommodations for 45 horses and boasts a seven-eighths training track and starting gate. Incidentally, Jeans" brother Alan, who is 14, is beginning v to gallop horses at the farm and may be of some additional assistance to the stable since he hopes to study veterinary medicine. As a former rider-turned-trainer, what does Jean tell his jockeys in the paddock? "All you can do is tell em about the habits of the horse," he says frankly. "Good riders dont need instructions and bad riders wont follow them. But I still ride my horses around the track subconsciously and help them along with plenty of "body English." And, of course, I gallop them in the mornings. You can tell a lot from being on them."
