Mitchell Making a Run at Del Mar : Trainer Seeks Fifth Straight Title as Track Opens Today

Mike Mitchell has just won another training title at Hollywood Park, his third, and is at Del Mar seeking his fifth straight summer championship, which would be a run of success unlike anybody since Farrell Jones in the 1960s.

From 1960 through 1966, nobody at Del Mar could touch Jones, the seasonal leader for seven straight years. Since Jones and before Mitchell, the only trainer who dominated Del Mar was Bobby Frankel with four straight titles in the 1970s.

Perhaps it would be fitting if the 37-year-old Mitchell won the 43-day meet, starting today at 2 p.m., and went on to challenge Jones’ record. Mitchell started out in racing under his father, Earl, but one of his first outside jobs was walking hots for Jones.

Mitchell also groomed horses for Willard Proctor, who trained such stars as Convenience, The Carpenter and Gallant Romeo and this year has the stakes-winning Lovlier Linda. Proctor was not only a mentor but a friend.

In 1975, Mitchell, new as a head trainer, was unable to get stalls for his horses at Hollywood Park and Proctor loaned him four. When one of Mitchell’s horses beat one of Proctor’s shortly after that, Proctor kiddingly asked his pupil if he could have the stalls back.

“Farrell and Willard have to be two of the greatest trainers that ever lived,” Mitchell said. “They had different styles--Farrell was a tough man who dealt with a lot of horses and Willard always has a small stable and is patient with his horses--but working under them was like going to college.”

Before Mitchell met either Jones or Proctor, he was a cocky kid out of Bakersfield who figured he was already prepared to be a head trainer. In 1969, when Mitchell was 21, his father sent him to Chicago with about 10 2-year-olds.

“I thought I knew how to handle horses,” Mitchell said. “When I did things for my dad (who is retired and now living in Phoenix), he was always there to back me up. But when you’re on your own and have to mark the (training) board and choose where to run your horses, it’s different. I wasn’t ready for that.”

Mitchell returned to California and went through a series of jobs for a number of trainers. He was even a pony boy for Ron McAnally at one time.

In 1974, Mitchell went to New York to work for Reggie Cornell, McAnally’s uncle, and carved himself another slice of comeuppance. The kid from California was overwhelmed by the harum-scarum East. Besides that he wasn’t making any money.

One morning at Belmont Park, trainer Laz Barrera, who had known Mitchell slightly from California, spotted him outside Cornell’s barn. Mitchell had the look of someone in a foreign country, a look the Cuban-born Barrera had worn many years ago.

“What are you doing here?” Barrera asked.

“I don’t know,” Mitchell said.

“If you need some help to get home, see me,” Barrera said.

In an old pickup truck, Mitchell got as far as Kentucky and was broke again. He worked there for a while at a farm to finance the rest of the trip.

Back in California, Mitchell took a job at Del Mar as a groom for Loren Rettele, a young trainer just organizing his own stable after having worked for Jack Van Berg. One of the horses Mitchell rubbed was Beira, a speedy gelding who broke Santa Anita’s six-furlong record with a time of 1:07 4/5.

In the fall, Rettele sent Mitchell to Bay Meadows and put him on his own. Back at Santa Anita early in ‘75, Mitchell claimed his first horse for $7,500. The horse’s foreboding name was Break a Leg.

Break a Leg had the legs to move up in company and win, was stakes-placed and also won a claiming stakes at Bay Meadows.

Mitchell has made hundreds of claims since then, some good, some spectacular, some bad, some disastrous. Claiming horses was also Farrell Jones’ game and even though some of Mitchell’s training friends tell him that there’s no future in claiming anymore, Mitchell has paid little attention.

One of his clients, a Santa Barbara man named Jerry Redding, gave Mitchell $300,000 to spend at a 2-year-old intraining sale, and Mitchell used all but $300 to buy four horses, but it’s still the claiming business that stimulates him.

Without claimers, Mitchell wouldn’t have a cornucopia of stories about swapping horses. He seems to enjoy recalling the heartaches as much as the successes

For example, there was the time Mitchell put in two prerace claims, on behalf of different owners, for a horse who was pulled up at the quarter pole and had to be carted off the track. There were nine other claims, which meant that in the shake of the numbered pills, Mitchell had only 2 chances in 11 to get stuck with the injured horse.

“But I got him,” Mitchell said. “Sometimes I think claiming horses is like shooting craps in Las Vegas. When you’ve got a hot hand, just keep going.

“But when you turn cold, you might as well just back off. But you know what? One of those other nine trainers claimed that horse again the next time I ran him. And don’t you know that he had to be eased up again with that bad leg?”

Even the accounts of Mitchell’s successes come with vinegary epilogues. Banker John, whom he claimed for $10,000, earned $130,000, but Mitchell lost him for $8,000 while the horse was going for the single-season win record at Hollywood Park.

“I was very sad when I lost him, because I really owed the horse more than that,” Mitchell said. “He was a bleeder and he had the worst set of legs you’ll ever see, yet he could really run. He was my favorite horse.”

Uncharacteristically, a stakes horse wound up in Mitchell’s barn in 1978.

Johnny’s Image won the Santa Catalina Stakes at Santa Anita, but that was also the year of Affirmed, already looking like the Triple Crown champion he would eventually become. Ducking Affirmed, Mitchell entered Johnny’s Image in the California Derby at Golden Gate Fields, where it rained for two days before the race. Not keen on running, Mitchell reluctantly started Johnny’s Image and he bowed a tendon in the race.

It was in the California Derby last year when Distant Ryder gave Mitchell his first $100,000 win.

“To be honest, I first got the horse with the intention of trying to get rid of him,” Mitchell said. “But then he won a couple of allowance races easy and we put him in the Derby.”

In his next race, the Illinois Derby at Sportsman’s Park in May of last year, Distant Ryder ran ninth and suffered a serious leg injury. He’s just now back in training, but has been moved to Gary Jones’ barn.

Mitchell shrugs at that. “It’s just as well,” he said. “I don’t think he’ll be worth $100,000 as a stud. If I still had him, I’d be running him for a (claiming) tag.”

Maybe Mitchell owed Jones one, anyway.

“I told Mike he ought to get out of the claiming game and get some young horses,” said Jones, who shared an apartment with Mitchell this season at Hollywood Park. “So he goes to that 2-year-old sale and outbids me for two of the horses I wanted.”