Hands-on-Reins Business Experience : Barn Becomes Classroom for Students in Program at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

“Oh, wow! He loves to go,” exclaimed Charlene Callaghan as she climbed off the handsome bay colt. “I didn’t see the people in the stands. I didn’t see anything except Hoist’s hoofs flying out in front of me.”

Callaghan, 23, a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo senior, had ridden Hoist The Hour a furlong in 11 2/5 seconds during an official preview workout before a grandstand full of buyers who had come from all across the United States for this year’s Del Mar invitational sale of 2-year-olds in training. It was Hoist The Hour’s fastest time.

“Now I know what it must be like for jockeys every time they ride in a race,” said Callaghan, a horse management major at the school.

Hoist The Hour, by the Hoist The Flag stallion Hoist The Silver and out of Power By The Hour, made a good impression, thanks to the workout by novice rider Callaghan. He brought the 19th-highest price, $29,000, among the 164 thoroughbreds sold at the recent sale. Hoist The Hour was bought by Kenneth J. Sullivan Jr. of Las Vegas.

Callaghan was one of three Cal Poly students riding the horses bred, born and raised on the Central California campus offered at the sale, which grossed $2,069,400. Golden Post, sold by Cedar Hills Farm for $69,000 to 505 Farm, brought the highest price.

Horses bred by Cal Poly students and born at the school’s farm have been racing at tracks throughout the United States and in many foreign countries since the 1940s.

Students breed school-owned mares to outstanding stallions, whose service is donated by breeders. The school sells three to seven colts and fillies at 2-year-old sales each year. Cal Poly never enters any of its thoroughbreds in races.

“You can’t begin to explain the excitement of this moment,” Roger Hunt, 47, supervisor of the thoroughbred program for Cal Poly, said as Hoist The Hour accelerated through his workout. “ . . . He exploded like a ball out of a cannon. . . .”

Hunt graduated from Cal Poly in 1971, did some cattle ranching, taught high school vocational agriculture, then returned to his alma mater in 1979. He has been in charge of thoroughbred management activities ever since.

“These kids become partners with the horses,” he said. “They learn to be honest with the horses. Beginning Oct. 1 and for six months, an outstanding student is assigned to a horse that goes on sale in March. They spend five to six hours a day with that horse. They do everything the owner, manager, trainer (and) exerciser would do, and clean the stables as well.”

Charlie Howard, 54, the oldest student in the program, spent 14 years in thoroughbred breeding in Hemet, then worked seven years in accounting.

“I wanted to get back to the thoroughbreds, my first love,” he said. “I would rather spend the rest of my life working with horses than poring over figures. So, I enrolled at Cal Poly to try to understand both breeding and training. Roger Hunt is a great teacher. He knows what the horse is going to do before he does it.”

Howard and the three other Cal Poly students, Callaghan, Jeff Miner and Amy Weston, spent 3 1/2 weeks at the track here, getting ready for the sale.

Bing Crosby, one of the founders of Del Mar, and Charlie Perkins, the California Thoroughbred Breeders Assn.’s first president, launched the thoroughbred horse management program at Cal Poly in 1940.

Crosby donated Bon Eva, an outstanding mare, to the university, and Perkins gave the school Vibrant, a stakes winner. The idea was to prepare students to be managers of thoroughbred farms or to be racehorse owners, trainers, buyers, sellers or agents.

It has been a highly successful undertaking. Graduates of Cal Poly’s horse management program are some of the best known names in thoroughbred racing today.

“Hoist The Hour was the talk of the backstretch after Charlene Callaghan’s stellar performance at the official preview,” said Bruce Batson, assistant general manager of California Thoroughbred Sales. “Of course, there were a lot of people on the backstretch who are graduates of the Cal Poly program.”

Alumni rooting for the horse included Rollin W. Baugh, CTS president; Leigh Ann Howard, manager of Valley Creek Farms, whose stable at San Luis Rey Downs has 22 thoroughbreds in training; trainer Barney Phillips and many more.

Expectations are that Hoist The Hour will join other leading Cal Poly “graduates” of the 2-year-olds sale such as The Bagel Kid, with $121,700 in winnings; Figaliann, $117,115; Positive Trace, $112,688; Poly Host, $111,546, and Shady Kate, $72,445.

The most ever paid for a Cal Poly thoroughbred in a 2-year-olds sale was $38,000 for The Bagel Kid.

Earnings since 1970 by 119 Cal Poly horses sold at the sales have totaled $1,538,656, with average earnings per winner of $24,817.

“We’ve been frothing at the mouth in anticipation,” Weston said. “The whole six months have been leading up to the sale. We’re competing with thoroughbreds from all over the country, from England, Canada and other nations. The four of us have been living in barns here at Del Mar with our horses for the last 3 1/2 weeks, training seven days a week, getting ready.”

Weston, 22, is from Arroyo Grande.

“No one in my family has ever been interested in horses but me,” she said. “I got my first horse when I was 13.”

At the Del Mar sale, Weston rode Something Gold, a brown filly with good bloodlines. Something Gold’s sire, Somethingfabulous, is a half brother of Secretariat. Cal Poly paid $27,000 for Something Gold’s dam, Petet Gold, in Kentucky. It was the most the school has paid for a thoroughbred. Petet Gold’s sire is Mr. Prospector, who stands for more than $200,000 per breeding.

Something Gold was sold to W. James Whyte of Vancouver, Canada, for $3,000.

“Working with these thoroughbreds, being a rider at Del Mar for the sale, all of this is a chance of a lifetime,” said Miner, 21, whose parents have a cattle operation at Willits, in Northern California. His Cal Poly thoroughbred, Dealing Decco, sired by Chivalry and out of Shimmering Rose, was bought for $1,500 by Bruno de Berdt of Acton, an alumnus of the school’s program.

Since the program’s inception, Cal Poly Foundation, a private organization, has funded buying new stock and maintaining the breeding farm. Profits from sales sustain its operation.

“Not a penny of taxpayers’ money has ever been used to support the program,” Hunt said.