He’s One Preppie Who Can Tell You What a Prep Race Is

Horse manure and other signature scents of the backstretch waft in through the window of Eddie Gregson’s office. It’s a nice office, as stable offices go. Not too dusty, with a nice desk and a big leather chair.

You have to wonder, though, if Eddie’s Stanford ’62 classmates might get a little crinkly-nosed if any of them were to chance upon his office here in Santa Anita’s Barn 44.

“Why Edwin! Edwin Janss Gregson! Remember me? Chatsworth Osborne Jr. III? I knew you fancied ponies, old sport, but my goodness, this is tres deep! Say, have you ever considered converting these charming little horse rooms into squash courts?”

The old boys at Stanford probably got a clue that Eddie was walking a step or two off life’s beaten path when he dropped out of school for two years to act, and wound up in the cinema classic, “The Naked and the Dead.” Eddie played the latter, a soldier bitten by a snake, dying with foam on his lips (Eddie’s lips, not the snake’s).

Sunday Eddie Gregson, trainer, will saddle Super Diamond for the Santa Anita Handicap. Win or lose, this is a tale of two dreamers, neither of whom fits traditional molds.

Eddie was born rich and worked his way down.

He was raised on a 6-acre estate on Sunset Boulevard, the son of a real estate developer whose family also bred some of the state’s great thoroughbreds. Eddie saw his first Big ‘Cap in ‘47, from a box in the Turf Club. He owned a race horse when he was 12.

“I was the only kid at summer camp reading the Racing Form,” Gregson says.

But that horse was a hobby.

“I never saw myself going into racing,” he says. “I was always supposed to be an attorney. I went to prep school in New Jersey, and I was supposed to go to law school after Stanford. I took a wrong turn somehow.”

Several, in fact. First, he left Stanford at 18 to try acting. He worked summer stock and off-off Broadway in New York, got that part in “The Naked and the Dead,” and even married an actress, May Britt--they stayed together for two years. But he grew disillusioned with Hollywood--imagine that--when the only parts for a good-looking kid were in Frankie-and-Annette beach movies.

Gregson went back to school, majored in history, minored in the classics, considered a career as a college professor, then graduated and took a job as a wrangler in a cattle feed lot in Thermal, Calif.

Incidentally, I’m not making this stuff up. If Eddie is, that’s his problem, but people tell me he’s the most honest guy at the track.

Anyway, he intended to learn the cattle-speculating business from the ground up. But one day he made a sudden $30,000 killing on a cattle investment.

“I took the money, went to Keeneland (Ky.) and bought a yearling,” he says. “From that day on, I was a goner. I don’t know what happened. Something took me over.”

Not common sense, obviously.

“I soon ran out of money and had to become a public trainer to support my habit. My family certainly wasn’t going to support me as a horse trainer.”

He studied under Woody Stephens in New York and then under Noble Threewitt in Northern California. Eddie learned well. In 1982, he saddled Kentucky Derby winner Gato del Sol.

But the horsy love of Eddie’s life is Super Diamond, a pudgy, oft-injured 8-year-old warhorse gelding finally getting his shot at glory Sunday. Mr. Ed and Wilbur should have such rapport.

“He’s been down for the count four or five times, and every time he’s come back good or better,” Gregson says proudly, referring to Super Diamond’s long history of serious injury.

Eddie points out that Super Diamond has lousy conformation and a short stride.

“He does a lot of (winning) on just guts. He’s always in that first stall (just outside the stable office), and I look at him all day. He has a unique personality. He’s a very tough, very aggressive horse with a most expressive face.

“When he was younger, he was as tough to saddle as any horse I’ve ever seen. Horses like this are rarely great horses. He’s reluctant to load (in the starting gate), and when you saddle him, he used to shake and sweat like a claimer.

“We’ve spoiled him rotten. We give him sugar and carrots all day. He always wants to have his head out of his stall to see everyone. I lead him to the track myself every day; he hates ponies. I know the days he’s in a bad mood and the days he’s happy.”

Swiveling his leather chair, Eddie glanced out at Super Diamond.

Super Diamond returned the look, and . . . Can horses wink?