Hollendorfer 'active as heck' in aftercare amid Santa Anita ban

In the days since his ban from The Stronach Group’s tracks, primarily Santa Anita Park in southern California and Golden Gate fields up state, trainer Jerry Hollendorfer has spoken in defense of his Hall of Fame record spanning 40 years and more than 7,600 wins without a previous suspension.

But Hollendorfer — asked to vacate those properties after four of his horses died as a result of injuries during the Santa Anita season — hasn’t mentioned Down the Stretch Ranch.

“I don’t know of any other trainer who has sunk the kind of money he’s sunk in to open up a deal like that,” says fellow trainer Tim McCanna, “and nobody knows about it because he didn’t toot his own horn about the deal.”

McCanna houses recently retired horses until they’re ready to continue to Down the Stretch, a Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance-accredited facility near Creston, Wash., that doubles as a source of equine therapy for veterans.

Boone McCanna, Tim’s brother and a former jockey agent, had the idea to open such a facility about five years ago. Hollendorfer and his wife, Janet, funded it while retiring there some 60 horses, among them Exit Stage Left, the 2014 California Derby winner.

The McCannas spoke up as Hollendorfer shipped his horses to accepting racetracks. He now awaits key judgment from Del Mar on whether the barn will be allowed to race in California’s premier summer meet.

“It’s been brutal for him,” Boone McCanna said. “During the whole thing, he’s never wanted credit for the ranch. But without Jerry, there’d be no ranch.”

More than 100 veterans have passed through Down the Stretch, which provides an idyllic setting and the sort of healing that comes from befriending a Thoroughbred. Veterans are introduced to horses’ pasts on the racetrack, learn to ride in a round pen, then are set free to enjoy the land

A few have furthered the experience, including Jerald Reichel, who took multiple tours to Iraq during his time with the Army National Guard.

“I would say that the ranch and what Jerry’s done saved my life,” Reichel said.

After his tour of duty, Reichel went through a divorce and experienced suicidal thoughts associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. Then Boone McCanna brought him to the ranch.

McCanna spoke of one horse, the former Hollendorfer trainee Toruk Makto, who he “couldn’t catch” in the ranch’s open spaces.

“Toruk walked right up to me and put his head on my shoulder,” Reichel remembers. “Boone was like, ‘That’s your horse, man.’”

Reichel has lived on the ranch for the last three-plus months, helping maintain it while he sorts out his future.

“This has taken me out of the darkness,” he said.

“We all have a connection to veterans,” Hollendorfer said last year, when asked about the ranch by Del Mar’s publicity staff. “If I can give something back to the horses and to the people who fight for me to walk around here, then I’m happy to do that. These people go out there and put their lives on the line for me, and I’m astounded people do that.” 

Reichel has met Hollendorfer but hadn’t heard about his recent racetrack ban. He said he was taken aback that others could allege the trainer doesn’t take care of his horses, citing more than 200 acres of proof at Down the Stretch Ranch.

“What they did to Jerry is a horrible thing,” said Tim McCanna, a member of Washington State’s Hall of Fame. “Jerry takes as good of care of his horses as anybody. Nobody puts in more hours than him. I compete with him. I claim horses off him. He claims horses off me.

“He happened to get a little bad luck that all came at once.”

Hollendorfer, who doesn’t have a ruling against him, has continued to enter horses at Los Alamitos and Pleasanton in California. In New York, where he had a small string, racing officials reversed course last weekend, telling the trainer and his attorney his entries there would be scratched.

Boone McCanna, who got to know Hollendorfer in the 1990s when both were based at Golden Gate Fields, calls him “the best horseman I’ve ever been around, and we’re from a third-generation racehorse family.”

McCanna and Hollendorfer speak about every other day.

“He’s active as heck,” McCanna said. “He sends his horses out, and he tells other trainers, too, if you have a horse that needs retiring we’re running this ranch up in eastern Washington. It’s been so maddening how negative things have been against him. He’s never one time mentioned some of the good things he’s doing.”