Fenstermaker Fired as Trainer of Hooper Horses

Ross Fenstermaker, who won an Eclipse Award with Precisionist as a sprinter in 1985 and then finished second with him last year in the voting for best male handicap horse, has been fired by owner Fred Hooper as the trainer of Hooper’s West Coast stable

After today, Hooper’s Santa Anita division of 17 horses will be turned over to John Russell, who was an Eclipse Award-winning trainer for Hooper with Susan’s Girl in the early 1970s.

Hooper operates a large breeding farm in Ocala, Fla., and primarily races his own stock.

“I think John might do a better job training our 2-year-olds than Ross did,” Hooper said. “The last couple of years, our 2-year-olds just didn’t come on the way I thought they should. We’ve got a number of 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds now who are still maidens.”

Fenstermaker, 47, began galloping horses for Hooper when he was 14. He has worked for Hooper all but eight years since then and has trained his California division since 1979.

Hooper won the Kentucky Derby in 1945 with Hoop Jr., a $10,200 yearling purchase and the first horse he ever owned. With racing divisions in Florida, New York-New England and Birmingham, Ala., besides California, he has about 100 horses in training.

Fenstermaker was credited with an outstanding training job with Precisionist in 1985. After winning the 1-mile Strub at Santa Anita and other stakes in the spring, the 4-year-old colt was sidelined with sore feet.

In the six-furlong Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Aqueduct in November--Precisionist’s first start in more than four months--he won by three-quarters of a length and clinched the national sprint title.

Last year, Precisionist won the Californian at Hollywood Park and the Woodward at Belmont Park. With a chance of being voted Horse of the Year, however, he had a tough trip and ran third in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita. The Horse of the Year vote went to Lady’s Secret, whom Precisionist beat in their only two meetings.

Preparing for this year’s Santa Anita Handicap, Precisionist broke a leg in a workout and was retired to stud. His earnings of $3 million put him fifth on the career money list.

“I have no hard feelings toward Mr. Hooper,” Fenstermaker said. “We’ve been together a lot of times over the years and he’s made changes before. That’s the way he’s been all his life, and you just have to accept it.”

Hooper gave Fenstermaker a lifetime breeding share in Precisionist, which the trainer sold to Anvil Ranch in Solvang, reportedly for $350,000.

Both Fenstermaker and Russell trained Susan’s Girl, Hooper’s first champion and the winner of divisional titles in 1972, ’73 and ’75.

“This came out of the blue,” Russell said Thursday. “But when Mr. Hooper approached me, it was clear that he had already made up his mind. Something like this happens so often in this business that it hardly qualifies as a big story anymore.”

Fenstermaker said: “I plan to stay in California and train. I’m talking to a few people. Probably something will happen awfully fast or it will be awfully slow before I can put together a stable again.”