He’s Back at Track, Rebuilding Life, Stable : Trainer Steinmiller Overcomes Bout With Leukemia

Gordon Steinmiller left Los Alamitos Race Course five years ago and wasn’t sure if he would return.

But Steinmiller came back to Los Alamitos this spring. He brought 19 horses--and hope--with him.

Once one of the winningest quarter-horse trainers in the country, Steinmiller is now rebuilding his stable.

He overcame a three-year battle with leukemia, which forced him out of racing in 1984 when doctors told him he had only six months to live.

“It’s like starting over again,” he said. “I don’t have the quality of horses I once had. I have to start at the bottom and rebuild.”

Don Galloway, general manager at Los Alamitos, said Steinmiller needs time to re-establish his stable. Steinmiller has been ranked among the top five trainers nationally seven times, but hasn’t broken into the top 20 at Los Alamitos so far this year.

“He’s an outstanding trainer,” Galloway said, “one of the finest conditioners around. He adds a lot of quality to racing here.”

Steinmiller, 47, has a new outlook on life since he left the track five years ago, Galloway said.

“I’m sure this has made him more reflective on his values,” Galloway said. “What we look for in this sport is performance. The bottom line with trainers is do they have horses that are ready to run? But what happened has helped him put racing in perspective.”

Steinmiller refuses to elaborate on the disease that kept him out of racing until 1987.

“It’s hard to live with,” he said. “I hate being reminded of it. I have to live with it and think of it every day.”

Instead, he focuses on the present--and the future.

He spent the last two years training and racing his horses in Colorado and Wyoming before returning to Los Alamitos in May. He finished fourth in the national trainer standings last year with 104 wins.

This spring, he brought several horses he trains to Los Alamitos from his 30-acre ranch in Ft. Collins, Colo. He soon discovered that the horses leading the pack in Colorado and Wyoming often are chasing the leaders at Los Alamitos.

“It’s been slow for me,” he said. “I’ve had to go back and re-evaluate all my horses in Colorado. The level of ability is not the same. A lot of the horses I brought out here aren’t good enough.”

There were other times when Steinmiller had doubts about his horses. He started 16 years ago with a small stable.

“I would buy a couple of horses every year,” he said. “Then I got lucky. I got a couple of 2-year-olds, and one made more than $40,000. I thought to myself, ‘Gee, this is easy.’ ”

Training horses came naturally to Steinmiller, who competed in rodeos through high school and college. He was a member of two national championship rodeo teams at Casper (Wyo.) Community College before transferring to Colorado State, where he earned a degree in accounting in 1967.

He used rodeo scholarships to pay his way through college and later rode bulls professionally. But horse racing lured him away from rodeo.

“I got tired of being thrown off bulls and getting stepped on,” he said. “I had been piddling around with horses for a long time, so I thought I would give (horse training) a try.”

Steinmiller trained and raced his horses in Colorado and New Mexico in the 1970s. He also taught accounting at Lamar (Colo.) Community College and raised three children with his wife, Cleonne.

In 1978, Steinmiller quit teaching to devote his time to racing, and the move began to pay off.

His horses won 500 races at Los Alamitos between 1981 and 1984. During 1982 and 1983, his horses earned $1.75 million.

“He was an instant hit,” Galloway said. “He brought horses here that were ready to run and brought new riders. He introduced quality into our colony.”

And Steinmiller wants to be a hit again. He said the competition and his past success at the track brought him back to Los Alamitos.

“After you’ve raced in Wyoming and Colorado,” he said, “this place seems like heaven.”