Trainer of ‘80s Is Dead at 86

Charlie Whittingham, a thoroughbred trainer whose horses won more than 2,000 races, and the Kentucky Derby twice, died Tuesday.

Whittingham, who turned 86 April 13, was still active with a small band of horses at Santa Anita even though he was battling leukemia, had lost vision in one eye and had only partial sight in the other.

In a training career that started in 1934, he won 2,534 races, more than 630 of them stakes races, the premier events in racing. Whittingham was one of only a few trainers whose horses reached nine digits in earnings. His total, according to the Daily Racing Form, was $110,602,295.

During his heyday, Whittingham created a mismatch at his home tracks, Santa Anita and Hollywood Park. He won 222 stakes at Hollywood and 204 at Santa Anita, more than doubling the output of the next closest trainer at each of those tracks.

In California, there was hardly a stakes race that didn’t have the hoof print of a Whittingham horse on it, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that he took America’s most famous race, the Kentucky Derby, seriously.

Whittingham, who was elected into the Racing Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 1974, had unsuccessfully run a couple of horses in the Derby earlier in his career, but when he took the colt Ferdinand to Churchill Downs in 1986, it was the trainer’s first race there in 26 years.

Ridden by another old-timer, 54-year-old Bill Shoemaker, Ferdinand won the Derby, making Whittingham, then 73, the oldest winning Derby trainer. Whittingham updated that line in the record book three years later when, at 76, he saddled Sunday Silence for a Derby victory.

“If I had known the Derby was going to be this much fun, I would have tried it more often,” Whittingham said.

A lean, fit, bald former Marine whose tough-guy demeanor belied an open-door policy at his barn office, Whittingham carved out a legend in a variety of ways. He had an eye for a horse, he knew what to do once he got a good one, and he ran his own stable, leaving no doubt among his well-heeled clients about who was boss.

When composer Burt Bacharach, frustrated by the losing ways of one of his horses, suggested that the animal be wormed, Whittingham glared and said, “You haven’t been turning out too many hits lately, either. Maybe we ought to worm your piano while we’re at it.”

Whittingham’s clients ran the gamut. Besides Bacharach, others who owned horses under his care were Hollywood’s Greer Garson and Sid Luft, oilmen Howard Keck and Nelson Bunker Hunt, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum of the Dubai ruling family, hockey’s Wayne Gretzky, Buffalo Bill owner Ralph Wilson, and Kentucky horse breeders John Gaines and Arthur B. Hancock III.

“This is the end of an era,” said Mary Bradley, who raced horses with Whittingham for 32 years. “Charlie was so good with people because he never knocked anybody. He never knocked his horses, either. Remember what he said, that you shouldn’t say anything bad about horses until they’ve been dead for at least 10 years?”

Whittingham said he stayed away from the Kentucky Derby, a race for 3-year-olds, because he didn’t believe in pushing young horses early.

“They’re like strawberries,” he would say. “They spoil very easily.”

He was renowned for bringing horses up to major stakes without prep races, preparing them to run long distances off morning workouts alone. He trained 11 champions, three of whom--Ack Ack in 1971, Ferdinand in 1987 and Sunday Silence in 1989--were voted horse of the year.

In 1985, Ferdinand was too precocious of a 2-year-old for Whittingham to hold back on.

“He showed him to me at Del Mar that summer,” Shoemaker said. “He had never run a race. But Charlie said that we were going to have a lot of fun with the colt, and we were going to win the Kentucky Derby. Charlie was the best. If there was a better trainer I ever rode for, I don’t know who it would be.”

Whittingham didn’t like to compare horses, but he finally got around to rating Sunday Silence as the best he ever trained.

Pat Valenzuela rode Sunday Silence through the Triple Crown. After winning the Derby and the Preakness, Whittingham was denied a sweep when Easy Goer beat his colt in the Belmont Stakes in New York. Sunday Silence avenged that loss by beating Easy Goer in the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic, a race Ferdinand had won two years before.

Valenzuela said Tuesday that Whittingham never gave his jockeys any detailed riding instructions.

“When you met him in the paddock before a race, he was more than likely going to say: ‘Just don’t screw it up, jock,’ ” Valenzuela said. “That’s exactly what he said to me before I rode Sunday Silence in the Derby. But the thing about Charlie is that his horses were ready to run. Every one of them. You always knew he was going to send you out there with a fit horse.”

Whittingham was proud that many of his assistants--including his son, Mike--had gone on to form their own stables. The list includes Richard Lundy, Neil Drysdale, Chris Speckert, Alex Hassinger Jr. and the late Joe Manzi and Rodney Rash.

There was a public-address announcement about Whittingham’s death in the barn area at Santa Anita on Tuesday morning, and horsemen there observed a moment of silence. Drysdale, however, was with his horses at Hollywood Park and hadn’t heard the news until a reporter called. He was too overcome with emotion to comment.

“He lived well and I’m sure he died happy,” Speckert said in Lexington, Ky. “His love of animals was only exceeded by his love of people. He was so successful, but you couldn’t tell it by being around him. He had time for everybody, and that’s why you could learn from him. Around his barn, even the chickens were happy.”

The old Marine sometimes acted as if he was still in the corps. Once, before a race in New York, he challenged Valenzuela, about 50 years younger, to a push-up contest.

Head-butting was also a regular Whittingham pastime, if he could find an opponent.

One morning, on the backstretch at Arlington Park in suburban Chicago, Mike Whittingham was wandering around as though suffering from a hangover.

“Tough night, Mike?” somebody asked.

“No,” he said. “Made the mistake of doing some head-butting with the old man.”

Besides his son, Whittingham is survived by his wife Peggy, daughter Charlene Von Blucher, 11 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Services are scheduled for noon Friday at the Church of the Good Shepherd, 400 W. Duarte Rd., Arcadia.

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Charlie Whittingham at a Glance

TRIPLE CROWN VICTORIES

* Kentucky Derby--Ferdinand (1986), Sunday Silence (1989)

* Preakness--Sunday Silence (1989)

BREEDERS’ CUP VICTORIES

* Classic--Ferdinand (1987); Sunday Silence (1989)

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

* Inducted into Racing Hall of Fame in 1974

* Three-time Eclipse Award winner (1971, ‘82, ‘89)

* Trained 11 national champions

* Seven-time national earnings title winner

* Santa Anita, Oak Tree and Hollywood Park’s all-time leading trainer in wins and stakes wins.