Fame Was Fleeting for These Three Trainers

By BILL CHRISTINE

Nov. 3, 1998 12 AM PT

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Some of the horsemen who won in the 14 Breeders’ Cup races at Churchill Downs in 1988 and 1991 became part of an unusually star-crossed mix. Three have died, one of them by someone else’s hand. One is trying to revive his career after bilking his principal client out of almost $2 million, another has left the game after repeated attempts at drug rehab. And Angel Cordero retired as a jockey, became a trainer, quit that and now works as a jockey’s agent.

Trainers Thad Ackel and Chris Speckert also won Breeders’ Cup races at Churchill Downs, then left the mainstream for different reasons.

Ackel and Speckert, both 43, are in good health, haven’t been indicted lately and continue to work in the game, if only on the periphery. Still, they can serve as reminders to the future stars Saturday, when the Breeders’ Cup will be run at Churchill Downs for the fourth time, that the fame that comes with winning the sport’s richest races is very often a perishable thing.

Ackel will be here from New Orleans, though only as a spectator. He had never started a horse in the Breeders’ Cup before he and jockey Ray Sibille won the Turf with Great Communicator, a 5-year-old gelding, in 1988. Ackel hasn’t had another Breeders’ Cup starter. And Great Communicator suffered a fatal breakdown at Santa Anita two years later.

“I was in a daze through both of those events,” Ackel said. “At the time, it was hard to visualize what exactly was happening. Great Communicator was a real blue-collar campaigner. Nobody liked him much at Churchill [he went off at 12-1 odds], but I thought we had a real shot. He was the first shipper to arrive at Churchill, and going from California to Kentucky, he just flourished in the cool weather.”

A $42,000 yearling purchase, Great Communicator ran eight times before winning and as a 3-year-old could have been claimed for $25,000. He ran 56 times and earned almost $3 million.

When Ackel’s father died in 1992, the trainer disbanded his stable, left California and returned to the family business, commercial real estate, in Louisiana. Ackel owns a 30-acre farm in Covington, where he breeds six mares and runs a pinhooking operation. Pinhookers buy young horses and hope to turn a quick profit by reselling them before they race.

“This is how fleeting fame can be,” Ackel said. “Right after he won the Breeders’ Cup, I took Great Communicator back to California and ran him in the Hollywood Turf Cup. He wasn’t even favored. Most people liked that horse Nasr El Arab. But we beat him and won that race too.”

In 1991, when the Breeders’ Cup returned to Churchill Downs, there was no heavy favorite in the Juvenile Fillies.

At the top of Churchill’s long stretch, the winner could have been the 29-1 shot La Spia, owned by Cubby Broccoli and trained by Randy Winick. But Pleasant Stage, third from last and 10 lengths off the lead early in the race, won by a head after a ground-saving ride by Eddie Delahoussaye.

The trainer was Speckert, a transplanted Englishman who once worked as Charlie Whittingham’s right-hand man. In 1991 he was running the California division of Thomas Mellon Evans’ Buckland Farm.

Pleasant Stage won an Eclipse Award for 2-year-old fillies. Speckert also finished second in the 1991 Breeders’ Cup Sprint with Pleasant Tap, who had been sixth for Speckert in the 1989 Juvenile and would return in 1992 to take second, behind A.P. Indy, in the Classic.

Speckert made one more Breeders’ Cup appearance, running sixth with Pleasant Tango in the 1993 Classic. After the death of Evans, who bred and raced Pleasant Colony, winner of the 1981 Kentucky Derby, his family wanted to keep the horses in the East, and Speckert moved from California to Kentucky two years ago.

“In this business, you’ve got to go where the supply is,” Speckert said.

The other day, Speckert saddled Santa Fe Sand, a filly who won at Keeneland by 11 lengths.

“We might have been there [the Breeders’ Cup], but this filly got sick this summer and I fell behind with her,” he said. “I’m training 12 horses now. I prefer Kentucky to California. I love it here.”

Trainer Dick Lundy, seventh in the Breeders’ Cup Classic on dirt with Opening Verse in 1990, was back the next year with the same horse and scored a 26-1 upset in the Mile on grass. Opening Verse’s owner was Allen Paulson, who not long afterward sued Lundy, his private trainer, in a case involving improper commissions over the purchase and sale of horses. Lundy resigned as Paulson’s trainer in 1992, later accepting a default judgment of $1.7 million against him and a bloodstock agent.

Lundy, also a former Whittingham aide, retreated to New York, where there was family business to tend to. Two years later he decided to try training again. Last winter in Florida, he cared for Favorite Trick, the 1997 horse of the year, before the colt’s training transition from Patrick Byrne to Bill Mott.

“I needed to do this one more time,” Lundy said. “I feel good about it. There are some things I’d still like to try to do. I won a Breeders’ Cup race and an Eclipse Award with Blushing John, but my chance for a Kentucky Derby ended [in 1991] when Dinard [the Santa Anita Derby winner] got hurt before the race.”

Lundy, 50, has been training at Thistledown and River Downs, second-rate tracks in Ohio, while he hopes for a springboard back to the mainstream.

“The game has changed,” he said. “The established stables like Payson, Greentree and Rokeby are gone, and the traditions aren’t there anymore. The Breeders’ Cup [which started in 1984] changed the whole complexion of the game. Training is now more glitz and go for the moment. Bob Baffert is the epitome of that.”

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What Followed Their Success

A random look at horsemen who have won Breeders’ Cup races at Churchill Downs: Horseman: Jockey Angel Cordero

Year: 1988

Horse: Gulch

Race: Sprint

Update: Retired as a rider, Cordero gave up training to become a jockey’s agent for John Velazquez

Horseman: Jockey Angel Cordero

Year: 1988

Horse: Open Mind

Race: Juvenile Fillies

Update: Retired as a rider, Cordero gave up training to become a jockey’s agent for John Velazquez