Bolo won't rank among the favorites when the 141st Kentucky Derby goes off on Saturday afternoon at Churchill Downs. According to the odds at the online betting site Bovada, he's a 40-1 long shot right now. But to Carla Gaines, Bolo is an "amazing, amazing horse. Beautiful horse. What can I say? He's the main man."
It's understandable Gaines would feel that way. Not only does she love horses, she's Bolo's trainer, and for the first time in her more than 25 years training horses, she's preparing to saddle a Kentucky Derby entry.
The Birmingham native could make history with Bolo on Saturday. A woman has never trained a Kentucky Derby winner.
Although thoroughbred racing is a male-dominated sport, Gaines said she couldn't see a reason a trainer's gender would make a difference.
"Maybe men are a little stronger physically, but you're not stronger than a horse," Gaines told Blood-Horse. "You're never going to dominate a horse because you're male. It's just in your head how you deal with your animals and how you get along with them and how you cooperate with them."
But Gaines, 62, understands how unusual she is.
"I hear it a lot, though," Gaines said in a video interview for Churchill Downs. "'She's a great female trainer.' I say. 'You're supposed to say I'm just a great trainer.'"
Gaines didn't begin training horses until she was in her 30s. Equipped with undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Alabamain psychology and sociology, she had set out to "change the world" as a counselor for troubled and at-risk children.
"My first job was with kids who had been in trouble, abused and neglected," Gaines told the Daily Racing Form. "I had one kid who shot his father, but his father was molesting his sister. He didn't know how to stop the pain."
Gaines sought solace on horseback.
"As soon as I was through work, I would get on my horse and take off riding down the trail," Gaines toldthe Independent of London. "It was just a great release."
Gaines fell in love with horses at her grandfather's farm, where her mother held her aboard a Tennessee Walking horse as a small child. By her teen years, Gaines was riding hunters and jumpers.
"I always had a passion for horses ever since I was very, very small," Gaines said. "My grandfather had a farm in rural Alabama. They brought us a couple of ponies, and so that's sort of how I started riding."
When Gaines felt her job overwhelming her, she took some time off with a horse-related adventure.
"After I while, I couldn't take it," Gaines said. "I just needed a sabbatical from the cruelty of humanity. I never intended to train. I planned on going back to my career. But I never went back."
Her sabbatical included joining friends who bought yearlings and prepared them in Louisiana for sale as 2-year-olds in the horse-racing centers of Florida and Maryland.
"I worked for two, three years as a psychologist or a counselor," Gaines said. "I kind of needed to get away from it for a while. When I went to the horses, it was supposed to be just a sabbatical and then I was going to choose another field in psychology or social work, and I just got hooked on this. My family was a bit mortified. ... But all you have to do is have a horse like Bolo, Curlin's Fox or whatever walk out of your barn every morning, and you think, 'I don't want to do anything else.'"
After moving to California to pursue her horse-racing dreams, Gaines worked as an exercise rider and became an assistant trainer. In a $4,000 claiming race at the Solano County Fair in 1989, Glory Quest won his first start under Gaines' training, and she was on her way to a 40-horse stable at Santa Anita.
"I was so proud of that horse," Gaines told Blood-Horse, "and he was this beautiful chestnut an old claimer. I worked on him and worked on him, then ran him for the first time at Vallejo. They grow corn on the track there in the winter."
Gaines earned her first Grade I victory when Nashoba's Key won the 2007 Vanity Handicap. She has 25 graded-stakes victories, including four Grade I wins, on her resume now.
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Bolo ended his 2-year-old season with a pair of victories on turf. As a 3-year-old, he's run third in the Grade II San Felipe Stakes on March 7 and the Grade I Santa Anita Derby on April 4, with Dortmund, one of the leading Kentucky Derby contenders, winning both races.
Bolo's dirt showings earned enough points to put him 19th in the Road to the Kentucky Derby point standings. Twenty horses can enter the race, and Bolo's owners decided to take the opportunity to Run for the Roses. Bolo flew from California to Kentucky on Sunday for the biggest race of his live.
"After he got enough points to actually participate, that's what we decided to do," Gaines toldthe Louisville Courier-Journal. "I know it's an incredibly tough year and there are some very good horses, but our horse is good, too."
While Bolo will be a long shot, he's already beaten the odds to reach the Kentucky Derby. Now Bolo has only 19 horses left to beat to race into history with Gaines.
"There's one horse every year that's capable of pulling that off in what's a 30,000-, 40,000-foal crop," Gaines said, "and that's everyone's dream and desire."
Source: http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2015/04/kentucky_derby_2015_alabama_na.html
