Veteran trainer Bennett sends out R Angel Katelyn in Miss Preakness

Perhaps it’s not surprising that even at the age of 73, Florida-based trainer Gerald Bennett still drives the van that carries his horses to their out-of-town stakes engagements, such as the one that landed he and his stable star at historic Pimlico Race Course.

Driving a tow truck was one of the responsibilities Bennett, a native of Springhill, Nova Scotia, had running a service station more than four decades ago, one of the last of several jobs he juggled before getting himself involved full-time in racing.

 

“I had just worked on the farm with horses in Nova Scotia. That’s it,” Bennett said. “One day I got to talking to Jerry Paxton, and older gentleman who owned some horses at Woodbine. His wife trained them. He asked me, ‘Why don’t you come to the track?’ I went to the track and started helping him hot-walking. Eventually after a year I started grooming and running horses in the afternoon and working another job from 7 at night to 3:30 in the morning until I got going.”

 

After 41 years, Bennett is still going strong. Approaching nearly 3,700 career wins, he is at Old Hilltop with multiple stakes-winning filly R Angel Katelyn, whose graded stakes debut will come in the $150,000 Adena Springs Miss Preakness (G3) Friday, part of the Black-Eyed Susan Day undercard.

 

Pay Any Price, trained by South Florida-based Ralph Ziadie, will also be running in Bennett’s name in Friday’s $100,000 Maker’s Mark Jim McKay Turf Sprint.

 

Averill Racing, CCF Racing Stables and K Lauren Racing’s R Angel Katelyn has won five of seven lifetime races dating back to last fall, with one second and one third, good for $277,120 in purse earnings. A victory would make her only the second career graded stakes winner for Bennett, who won with the first horse he ever saddled, Victorian Sun, in at now-shuttered Greenwood Race Track in Toronto in 1976.

 

In that race Victorian Sun upset the favorite, a horse owned by Conn Smythe, the founder of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Jockey Club of Canada and a member of the National Hockey League’s Hall of Fame.

 

Bennett’s only graded stakes success came with Beau Genius, winner of the 1990 Philip Iselin Handicap (G1) and Michigan Mile and One-Eighth Handicap (G2) before going on to run 10th in that year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1).

 

“That was not my choice. I should have been in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint,” Bennett said. “Craig Perret who rode him and Randy Romero always told me there’s not another horse in the country that could beat him sprinting. But, I stretched him out to win the Arlington Challenge Cup going a mile and a quarter, and he ran it in 2:02.

 

“Beau beat Opening Verse in the Michigan Mile,” he added. “Opening Verse goes on the following year to win the Breeders’ Cup [Mile in 1991] and he beat Black Tie Affair, who went on that same year to win the Breeders’ Cup [Classic]. We ran against some super nice horses.”

 

Beau Genius won 13 stakes for Bennett and has the distinction of being the last of late Hall of Fame jockey Bill Shoemaker’s 8,833 career victories, coming in the Hallandale Handicap on Jan. 20, 1990 at Gulfstream Park.

 

“We were cleaning our garage out one day and Mary, my wife, found a picture,” Bennett said. “That was Shoemaker Day. The publicity guy came to us and said they can’t get Shoe on anybody. They had given him $10,000 I think to come and ride. They asked me to help them out and I put the Shoe on Beau. I still have that picture.”

 

On Aug. 28, 2009 at Presque Isle Downs, Bennett became the 23rd trainer in North America to reach 3,000 wins – a number that has grown to 29 in the years since. He ranks 17th all-time with 3,657 wins, 11th among active trainers.

 

Bennett dominated Detroit Race Course after coming to the U.S. in the mid-1980s, winning 18 championships, and has also been leading trainer at his regular base of Tampa Bay Downs in Oldsmar, Fla. He has won at least 100 races in a single year 18 times including nine in a row from 2003-11, with a career high of 166 in 1987.

 

Among his best horses are multiple stakes winners Banker’s Jet, a winner of more than $670,000 in career purse earnings, and Secret Romeo, who at one time was the top Michigan-bred money winner of all time.

 

“The game it’s not easy. You get up every day and what I like is you never know what’s around the corner, and being with young horses. You get some good ones. I’ve had a lot of nice horses,” Bennett said. “Horses will take you to the top. You never know.

 

“I’ve always been a player in the game. I run my horses. I don’t abuse them or anything. The horses always look like a million dollars. We take care of them. They’re all our kids,” he added. “That’s how they pay you back, putting you in the winner’s circle, and there’s no thrill like it.”

 

When the young ones come in Bennett said he will be up to about 50 horses, none better than R Angel Katelyn, who is as fast as she is talented. The six-furlong Miss Preakness will test her on both counts.

 

“As long as everything stays good, she’s pretty sharp, eating up good an everything. She’s very happy,” he said. “She’s stayed sound for us and keeps going good. These babies are the ones that are going to get you to the Breeders’ Cup.”

 

Bennett, whose son Dale is also a trainer, has no designs on slowing down.

 

“You have to have some chemistry in your life and people around you and have that with the horses and keep good people around you and teach the help to always be humble and show respect to everybody,” he said. “Everything else takes care of itself. You make a lot of good friends in this game. This is one game where you meet more people than most any business than I know of.