Favorite Son

by

“Eighty percent of success is showing up.”— Woody Allen

If Woody has it right, Dale Romans couldn’t miss being a success as a Thoroughbred trainer. He’s been showing up at Barn 4 on the backside of Churchill Downs since he was 9 months old, brought there by his dad, Jerry, who also was a trainer. 

The racetrack was, before anything, a playground for Dale and an older brother as they grew up, roaming the barns and racetrack when their dad would leave the track for a second job. “We’d be there all day till feed time in the afternoon, and we just loved it,” he said.

Eventually, the boys went to work in their dad’s barn—Dale as a groom, his brother as an exercise rider.

“I was 14 and grooming and running horses in races. I don’t think my father understood child labor laws,” Romans, a Louisville native, said with a laugh. “The horse stuff I learned more from trial and error, being there all the time.” This is an epic understatement, given the 52-year-old’s tenure at Churchill Downs.

“Being there” brought him into contact with a groom, Willis “Chico” Malone, who one day came to the rescue of Romans’ father as he was struggling with a difficult horse in the shedrow at old Miles Park in Louisville’s West End. From that chance encounter, Chico became a mentor to the elder Romans and a “grand-mentor,” of sorts, to Dale.

Romans recounted with obvious fondness Chico going to Churchill Downs to see him in the days before his first Kentucky Derby starter ran in 2006. Romans said, “He came to tell me, ‘You have to teach a horse to run a mile and a quarter. It’s not natural for them’—make sure I train that horse hard.”

“As you climb the ladder of success, be sure it’s leaning against the right building.” 

— H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Romans learned from his dad as well, but it had less to do with racing horses than the business connected to it. “I never saw him take a penny he didn’t have coming in,” Romans said. “He had a lot of flaws, but he was very honest.

“He taught me the racing world is a very small one. Don’t cheat people. You get one black eye, and you might never get back … He always told me success can be measured in a lot of ways; it’s not always in winning big races. It’s how long you last and were you able to feed your family.”

Romans assesses his career not in terms of major wins, purse earnings, accolades or awards but in modest goals that are, in many ways, more meaningful. “I won my first race 31 years ago, so I’ve lasted,” he said. “My kids are grown, so I’ve fed my family.”

Romans said the principal thing he learned from his father about horses was conformation: whether a horse’s body—based on its proportions, bone structure and musculature—is optimal for racing. “He could never afford pedigree with the budgets he was buying on, so he’d always try to find a diamond in the rough without a royal pedigree and make it into a good horse,” he said.

Traveling with his dad to horse sales, Romans learned the “four or five things a horse has to have”: correctly shaped back leg, the neck “tying into the chest” the right way, and a good shoulder, forearm and hip. “It’s hard to teach because there’s ratios between everything.” 

His father apparently was a good teacher as evidenced by a start for Romans that, albeit small, kept him on the racetrack for good. 

“Start where you are. Use what you have.Do what you can.”— Arthur Ashe

Like his dad, Romans had to start with “claimers,” the lowest grade or caliber of racehorses, which gave him the experience to train better quality horses. “Claiming horses is the best way to learn because you see all different kinds of elements and injuries,” he said. “Then, when you get up in the higher ranks, you realize those horses have the same problems, but you know how to work on them.” 

To date, Roses in May is Romans’ top earner on the racetrack. He won the 2004 Whitney Handicap at Saratoga in New York and the 2005 Dubai World Cup in the United Arab Emirates. “He had a lot of issues,” Romans said, “but he made $5.5 million because of things I had to learn as a kid with cheap horses.” Among Romans’ best runners are turf champion Kitten’s Joy, Preakness Stakes winner Shackleford, multiple graded stakes winner Tapitsfly, and Keen Ice, noted for winning the 2015 Travers Stakes over Triple Crown winner American Pharoah.

Romans said his barn is still “50-50”—claiming horses to allowance and stakes runners. A write-up for his Eclipse Award for outstanding trainer in 2012 noted that, among top-echelon trainers, the smaller percentage of stakes horses in his stable actually made his achievements more notable than that of other successful trainers. In other words, Romans was doing far more with less. 

“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.” — Booker T. Washington

Much has been written about Romans’ dyslexia, and it is a subject he has never avoided. While it obviously hasn’t hindered him as a trainer, it is a critical part of why he chose his path in life. Horses, in short, have been his redemption and, on a deeper level, a godsend. “I love this game, and I’m very lucky to have it,” he said.

“Through all my educational difficulties, it seems like horses were always there. I could always get along with them better than teachers,” Romans said. 

Romans’ trainees have earned $105 million in purses, won three Breeders’ Cup races and scored an Eclipse Award. But huge purses and major wins aren’t what’s most important to Romans, “I would have been happy, considering myself successful, if I could have just had 20 horses and raised my family,” a goal he long surpassed.

When he goes to the racetrack, he said, “I leave there feeling better than I did when I got there … I was telling one of my clients the other day, ‘A good day of horses breezing [working out]—as long as they’re working good—is as good as winning a race.’ ”

“There is no place like home.”— John Howard Payne

The only thing missing in Romans’ career is, perhaps, the most obvious: a Kentucky Derby win.

When does he start thinking about the next Derby? “Usually when I wake up,” he quipped. About the 2-year-old horses in his stable, he said, “Every horse is a Derby horse until they prove they aren’t.”

The Derby is, by no means, an obsession or a quest that drives Romans, even though his next Derby starter will be his 11th, and it has become common for him to have a horse or horses on the Triple Crown trail (the Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes). His reaction to his win in the Preakness with Shackleford in 2011 provides a measured and healthy perspective on how success is defined. His excitement that day, he said, “was no different than it was when Miss Mindy won in a maiden $3,500 race [Romans’ first win as a trainer, on Feb. 15, 1987 at Turfway Park]. I couldn’t have been on a bigger high than I was that day.” He added that he could have retired a happy man after his first win at Churchill Downs, where he grew up, literally and figuratively.

A Derby win would mean much to many locals in the grandstand at Churchill Downs. During “the walkover”—the Derby starters’ walk from the barn area, around the clubhouse turn of the track, to the paddock before the race—Romans nearly always gets the loudest cheers. Many of those cheering know him personally from the South End, a blue-collar area where he grew up and still lives, and where “everybody knows everybody,” according to Romans.

“It just gives me chills to think about it,” he said. He declares Louisville “the greatest city in America for the way they rally around their own.

“It’s a proud city and very proud of anybody who comes out of it and is successful. I couldn’t be treated any better.”

“Live a life full of humility, gratitude, intellectual curiosity, and never stop learning.”— Gary Grice (aka, GZA)

Would a Derby win mean retirement for Romans? Not on your life.

“I never even want to talk about that,” he said quickly, “not at this point. I just learned how to do it.”