Barrister in the Barn : Describing Darrell Vienna as Simply a Horse Trainer Does Not Really Do Him Justice--He’s Also an Attorney

Darrell Vienna, something of a Renaissance man, never envisioned himself training thoroughbreds.

He was interested in horses as a youngster, but his passion then was the rodeo. He grew up competing as a bull rider and bareback bronc rider in high school, then professionally while attending UCLA.

Nor did Vienna, who is from Los Angeles, ever see himself practicing law. He gave it no thought, even though he has an inquiring mind and always is eager for mental stimulation.

So, at 50, what is Vienna doing with his life?

He is training race horses. In fact, he is 20 years into a successful career. Three of the horses he trained, Native Paster, Classy Women and Finder’s Fortune, hold world records. He trained a Breeders’ Cup and Eclipse Award winner, Gilded Time, and has won major stakes races with horses such as Fly Till Dawn, Mountain Bear, Drumalis and Short Sleeves.

He is also an attorney.

He was well over 40 when he went to law school, passed the bar in 1994 and has a practice with partner Shauna Weeks. Among their clients have been trainers Bobby Frankel, Gary Jones and Vladimir Cerin, who were exonerated after horses they had trained tested positive for illegal substances, and jockey Corey Nakatani, who was suspended early last year after a whipping incident past the wire in a race at Santa Anita.

A current client is jockey Pat Valenzuela, who was arrested and charged last fall with two misdemeanors, vandalism and being under the influence of a controlled substance. Valenzuela pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in December and is due back in court in April.

Attorney. Trainer. Those jobs wouldn’t seem to go hand in hand. But Vienna, married and a father of two, seems to be making the vocational merger work.

Still, there have been some problems.

His decision to go to law school cost him a couple of owners, he said, among them Josephine Gleis, whose best horse, Fly Till Dawn, won several important stakes in the early ‘90s. And Vienna also lost some time with his children--daughter Remy, 12, and son Christopher, 18 and a student at UCLA.

“But I have a good relationship with them,” he said.

Several longtime owners remain and the barn, with 32 horses, certainly hasn’t suffered because of the boss’ double duty. Vienna finished 1996 with 38 winners from 155 starters and has won with six of his first 17 starters at the current Santa Anita meeting, including Belle’s Flag in Sunday’s $213,200 La Canada Stakes.

He doesn’t mind delegating responsibility and has confidence in his assistant, Tim Pinfield, a former jockey in England who has been with him for about four years.

“He’s a very easy man to work for,” said Pinfield, who has also worked for Charlie Whittingham. “He’s very intelligent and he can read people well. We’ve got a pretty good relationship and we discuss everything that goes on around the barn.

“There’s not much that slips his mind. He gives everything he says a lot of thought, and things you say to him don’t go in one ear and out the other. He puts a lot of trust in me to hold down the fort, but you can’t pull the wool over his eyes.”

Working two jobs, Vienna is not a man with lot of time on his hands.

“You have no idea how much time you waste in a day until you have a lot of things to do,” he said recently in his Pasadena office. “I get to the barn [usually at 7 a.m.] and stay until the work is done and that can be either 9:30 [a.m] or 12:30 [p.m.], go to the [law] office, go to court, if I have to, or go to the races, if necessary. And I only go when I have business. I don’t go just to watch the races.

“I’ll come back, go to dinner, then come back here and work if I have to.

“Horse training is overrated, in terms of what you need to do. The proof of that is that there are people who basically walk off the street and win races. Being a horse trainer is elevated beyond what it really is.”

Vienna got into the training business after his college-rodeo days, and after spending time working with show horses with his wife Kristen, an accomplished rider whom he met at UCLA.

“What I learned as a kid and through the rodeo was that you could make a horse do just about anything by forcing him or tricking him,” he said.

“From [Kristen], I learned a different approach that had more to do with training them, preparing them and understanding them in a different way.”

His father-in-law, who had some race horses, asked if Vienna would be interested in owning a thoroughbred.

“I bought one and it was disastrous,” he remembered.

“It wasn’t a good experience, but I spent a lot of time at the track and I kind of liked it and [training] looked pretty easy to me.”

Eventually, he and partners from his pharmaceutical business bought more horses, had some success, then branched out, after some initial reluctance, and took on clients.

Although training remains Vienna’s chief interest, racing has never been enough to satisfy him. Holder of a psychology degree and part-owner of a pharmaceutical company specializing in nutritional products for large animals, he spent a lot of time going to night school.

He took writing and poetry courses, and was co-writer of a script for an episode of the television series “Hill Street Blues.”

His interest in education prompted suggestions by Bob Forgnone, one of several attorneys who had horses with Vienna, that the trainer try law school.

“He always seemed to need something to energize him on the intellectual side,” said Forgnone, who represented Hollywood Park during the Marje Everett era. “Racing wasn’t his whole life. I thought [law school] might be something he would enjoy.

“There’s no question that the study of law is intellectually taxing and I thought he would find it invigorating. He’s a natural cross-examiner. He loves to cross-examine everyone and everything.”

Vienna, however, wasn’t so sure the law was for him.

“[Forgnone] badgered me about it for years and I wouldn’t do it,” he said. “Finally, I relented, but I didn’t think I would be accepted because I was too old and had been away from school for too long.”

He was accepted in 1990, but he figured his stay at Loyola Law School would be short-lived.

“I thought I would go for a week or so, not like it and drop out,” he said. “But, from the first night I was there, I was hooked.

“Law school is unlike any other school. You’re given reading assignments and then when you get into class, people can just start asking you questions about what you think and you have to get up and talk on your feet.

“It’s kind of threatening, but it is also exciting. I never intended to practice. It was just an experience to go through.”

But he took the bar exam in 1994, passed, and then teamed with Weeks, who had an interest in equine law, but worked at a firm that didn’t deal in that area.

“[Forgnone] introduced me to her and we formed a partnership,” said Vienna. “You could tell right away she was a very, very bright person and knew the law. And, if she didn’t know the law, she would get to it quickly. It’s been a great combination.”

In the cases of Frankel, Jones and Cerin, Vienna and Weeks introduced evidence showing that the positive drug tests were caused either by contamination or the inaccuracy of a feed supplement’s label.

It helped, too, that in March, 1995, the California Horse Racing Board had clarified the stewards’ authority to consider mitigating circumstances as a defense to the trainer-insurer rule, which says trainers are ultimately responsible for whatever happens in their barn.

“Darrell has been an absolutely outstanding advocate for the people he’s represented,” said steward Pete Pederson, who has been opposite Vienna at various hearings.

“He has always been fair with us. He’s very tough, but never in an antagonistic manner. He’s a very thorough person who has learned his business well. He is going to do whatever he can for his clients and make sure they are well represented.”

Given how things are going in both of his professions, Vienna has every intention of staying with both.

“[Training] really has a big hook,” he said. “You can get forced out, but you don’t walk away from it. I have a lot of hope for racing and I feel if I don’t do anything else as a lawyer, we’ve helped horse racing and the position of a trainer tremendously.”