Sisterly, brotherly love: The tales of the DeVauxs and the Blasis

Greg and Scott Blasi were raised about a half-hour west of Wichita in the town of Cheney, Kansas. Among 2,000 or so residents and about three years apart in age, they literally grew up together.

“Our address was actually a van,” Greg said. “I bet you can’t find it on a map.”

For Cherie and Adrianne DeVaux, together was not quite the word, what with the 17-year difference in their birthdays and the 1,300-mile distance between their birthplaces.

“Adrianne was actually born when I was in high school in Florida,” Cherie said. “She’s the only one that’s a Florida-bred. The rest of us are New York-breds.”

What the DeVaux sisters and Blasi brothers have had in common all their lives has been horses. And hard work, too.

Ron Flatter Racing Pod: Hear the DeVauxs and Blasis.

“We were lucky enough to be raised in a household where it was admired and appreciated,” said Greg Blasi, 53, widely regarded for his work at Churchill Downs as one of the best outriders in the country. “Doing what Scott does, the hours he puts in and early mornings, I get a little break in the winter, but he gets up seven days a week, 365 days a year.”

Scott Blasi, 50, has spent more than half his life as an assistant to Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen, frequently traveling across the country and even around the world. Other than some off-and-on training on his own with five graded-stakes winners between 1999 and 2007, his 27-year association with Asmussen has outlasted a lot of marriages.

“Maybe that’s why I’ve never been married,” Scott said from New Orleans in a phone conversation with Greg, who was on the line from Kentucky.

Cherie DeVaux, 42, has emerged from more than a decade as an assistant to Chuck Simon and Chad Brown. She has come into her own in the past six years as a graded-stakes-winning trainer.

She was born into a racing family in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. It just was not Thoroughbred racing.

“Our family was heavily involved in harness racing,” Cherie said from New Orleans, where she and her sister are working together at Fair Grounds. “When I was younger than Adrianne (is now), they had gotten out of harness racing. I really grew up on the backside with a pretty large stable of theirs. When they got out of it and moved to Florida, that’s when I started into more fun riding.”

That meant competing in barrel races and local rodeos around Florida, where the DeVauxs had relocated by the time Cherie was a teenager. That was when Adrianne DeVaux, 25, was born.

They were born into equestrian families

These days Adrianne is Cherie’s top assistant or, as the two of them say, “sis-sistant” trainer. Growing up in Florida, Adrianne picked up the family business like it was part of her DNA. It did not take long for her to graduate from a beginner on horseback to an accomplished equestrian.

“I did a bunch of events,” Adrianne said. “Goat tying, barrel racing, pole bending. I was able to get a pony in high school to kind of develop into my own horse. I was able to compete on her and make money on her.”

As a rider, she said she was “right in the middle” when it came to her level of competitive expertise. Her true pride and joy, she said, was becoming a top-class horsewoman every bit worthy of her family name.

“My favorite thing I did was taking a horse that didn’t really know anything and being able to move her on up and compete at that level,” Adrianne said.

Cherie’s greatest contribution to Adrianne’s upbringing may have been that big-sister endorsement that came with a lot of encouragement.

“She did help me get my confidence back,” Adrianne said. “Every horse we were able to get for me, riding-wise, either something was wrong with it, it bucks, it would run off, it would do something. My confidence was kind of destroyed. Cherie helped a little bit getting that back. I was scared to do anything when I was younger. I do remember her just yelling at me to do something the right way. I was like, ‘OK. Fine. I’m just going to try it.’ ”

“As any older person can understand, you really try hard to just not interject and let them learn,” Cherie said. “It’s always different if it’s a third party like an instructor. But it’s hard when it’s your family. Still to this day, we butt heads on things just because it’s family.”

About that video that went viral

As all sisters and brothers know, there is a fine line between butting heads and busting chops. Take what happened June 4, when two loose horses were in full gallop passing the finish line at the end of a race on the main track at Churchill Downs. On horseback, Greg Blasi got after them as they came to him in the clubhouse turn.

“The first one that got to me, I caught it left-handed on the inside fence,” he said. “With the rest of the field of horses, the other outrider that backed up with me kind of got trapped down in there by some other jocks pulling up after the race. I looked over my shoulder, and the other (loose horse) came. He basically just ran and put his head in my lap. It wasn’t all that heroic.”

The whole thing was caught on video by free-lance racing journalist Greg Hall. The clip went viral on social media, but Scott Blasi did not sound impressed.

“Anybody could have done that,” he said. “I don’t know why they’re making a big deal out of it, because anybody could have done that.”

Sure, other than dropping his reins to grab the loose horses while maintaining his ride with all legs and no hands, it was a layup for Greg.

As much as Scott was joking, Greg did not miss a beat in throwing a compliment to his little brother, albeit backhanded.

“He’s caught some horses at Churchill and stuff,” he said. “If he wanted to take a pay cut, he could come to work being an outrider.”

Their junction is training horses

Like the DeVauxs, the Blasis have lived their whole lives around horses. Their father Joel trained quarter horses and rode Thoroughbreds at the old Ak-Sar-Ben racetrack in Omaha, Neb. He and Jeanie Blasi raised four children. Both Greg and Scott gravitated to training.

“I actually trained for a little while,” said Greg, who saddled 35 winners in the ’90s, mostly in Illinois, Louisiana and Minnesota, and even had Scott as an assistant for a while.

After he decided to turn away from training, Greg could not turn away from horses. He moved to Churchill Downs, where he has worked for a quarter-century every spring and fall, including the last 24 runnings of the Kentucky Derby.

“I kind of found my niche. It’s something I like to do,” Greg said. “Everyone that I work with at Churchill Downs has the same mentality as far as keeping horses safe, trying not to let them get off the track where they can get hurt. We try and do a good job of catching them. The quicker you catch them, the less likely something is to happen and somebody else is to get hurt. We take a lot of pride in that.”

The Blasi brothers are like film directors who are supporting actors in their own movies. They may not be the big names, but they are visible to knowing onlookers.

A big sister’s encouragement

With the DeVaux sisters, the roles are more traditional in the sense of a boss and an employee, even if Cherie had to nudge Adrianne.

“She was needing a job,” said Cherie, whose father Butch DeVaux trained and brother Jimmy drives in harness races. “I soft-sold what I really wanted her to do. I said, ‘Why don’t you just come down and see if it works out and see what you want to do in what capacity.’ I tried not to force her into anything. It was during COVID, so she got plenty of time to get acquainted and learn to gallop, to kind of learn and mold the role of being an assistant trainer.”

That meant doing everything from cleaning stalls to helping Cherie’s husband David Ingordo, a bloodstock agent who leads Belladonna Racing.

It also meant returning an encouraging word in those nascent days of 2018 when the newly christened DeVaux stable was trying to find its footing.

“Cherie had one horse in her barn when my mom and I went down to help her,” Adrianne said. “I was so mad I had to take off work to help her, but she really put her whole everything into this one horse. She was grooming her. She was setting up stalls for all these other horses. She was still pressure washing her office and painting her office. If anyone knows Cherie, they know that’s the most important part of her day. She really dove in head first and didn’t rely on anyone to help her in any sort of way.”

Adrianne said she can get emotional thinking about those early struggles. She also said it has been all the more rewarding seeing better horses come to the barn, bringing better results and greater rewards. The pinnacle so far came Sept. 16 at Woodbine, where 2-year-old filly She Feels Pretty won the Natalma Stakes. It was the DeVaux stable’s first Grade 1 victory.

“It’s been amazing to watch the growth of not only her and how she handles adversity and how she’s been able to completely change her mentality about everything,” Adrianne said. “That’s helped everything. We’ve all been in a great mindset.”

Deep down they are horsemen

Success is in the numbers for Scott Blasi, who has been a right-hand man for thousands of Asmussen’s more than 10,300 victories that are the most in North America Thoroughbred training history.

“Steve has been good to me in a lot of ways,” he said. “Being with the better horses, it’s paid off.”

Deep down, though, Scott said his greatest joy takes him back to his roots as a horseman.

“Honestly, I like making horses,” he said. “I like the young horses.  It’s fun to develop something into a Gun Runner. They’re few and far between, but you have to have the opportunities to be around the elite talent. I guess that’s what keeps me going in the morning is the grind of that. I like to watch those kinds of horses develop.”

The stories siblings tell

No phone conversation with reminiscing siblings can end without some kind of story about brothers being brothers and sisters being sisters.

“Everybody’s favorite sister story that’s not to do with the racetrack is when I saved a pony from being hamburger meat,” Cherie said. “I told Adrianne it was in the kill pen, but it was so cute. Adrianne was 16 at the time, and I said, ‘Don’t ride this horse in an open field. There’s a reason why he ended up there.’ ”

That led to what has become known as the Daniel video, which has made the rounds and then some. It shows Adrianne walking a chestnut pony toward a tree before it makes a right turn and abruptly starts bucking toward that dreaded, open field.

Trying to hang on, Adrianne shouted, “Oh. Ah. Daniel,” before the camera was dropped. And so was she. Other than contusions to her pride, Adrianne was fine. And so, too, was the pony, who got a life-saving reprieve from the DeVauxs.

“I’m just really glad I bounced,” Adrianne said. “I was bouncing then. Now I don’t bounce if I hit the ground. Daniel was a rebound bounce.”

The language was not florid in that 15-second clip. The Blasis said they should be so lucky when they are seen and heard.

“Everybody is always saying putting a live mic on me Derby week might be the craziest thing anybody has ever done,” Greg said, noting that NBC Sports does just that. “I have to work on that. I have two daughters (with his wife, trainer Helen Pitts-Blasi).”

“They say that’s the most honest kind of person,” Scott said. “Somebody that cusses a lot. That’s what they say. There’s facts behind this statement.”

In that vein, Scott has had to put his money where his mouth is, especially when he might have barked something that got back to racing authorities in Kentucky.

“We’ve been through a lot of stuff together,” he said. “I remember when I was in a racing-commission meeting, and they said to me, ‘What’s this $500 fine? Do you have a history of being disrespectful to racing officials?’

“I said, ‘No. Except I cuss my brother out on the racetrack. That’s no big deal.’ ”

That gets a laugh now, but Scott admitted the incident that, told completely, could not be repeated in a family way was all his fault.

“I was in the wrong,” he said. “I came on the track late. I had this filly that liked to tie up. They didn’t have her ready. I didn’t want to take her back to the barn. I was totally in the wrong. I definitely had that 500 coming.”

In the end, it was like all the stories shared by the DeVauxs and the Blasis. They all were punctuated in smiles, sooner or later.

“I got a pretty good chuckle out of the racing commission,” Scott said.

“Luckily,” Greg said, “nobody in our family holds a grudge.”