From the Start, She Was Groomed for Horse Life

Horse racing has accepted women into its heart and soul more easily than many other sports. The men of horse racing understood that a woman’s soft hands and gentle voice could calm the brio of a 1,000-pound animal built of muscle and bone and strong will.

Laura De Seroux considers herself lucky to be in horse racing.

On Sunday, De Seroux, a 49-year-old trainer from Alhambra, the daughter of a train engineer and the wife of a French bloodstock expert, will run Until Sundown in Hollywood Park’s $500,000 Swaps Stakes, the track’s top race for 3-year-olds.

How is it De Seroux finds herself with a horse as well bred and talented as Until Sundown, how is it she will be battling men such as Bob Baffert and his horse, Congaree? De Seroux struggles sometimes to explain. It just happened.

De Seroux found inside herself a pull to horses when she was a child. She read books about horses, looked at pictures of horses, imagined herself riding horses, dreamed of what a horse would smell like.

“I read ‘King of the Wind’ 25 times,” De Seroux says. “I devoured the Walter Henry books.”

For her sixth Christmas, her aunt gave little Laura Lubisich three months’ worth of riding lessons.

For ever after, all De Seroux has wanted was to be around horses. She found odd jobs around stables so she could keep riding. She competed in hunter and jumper equestrian events.

“I was different than the other girls because I didn’t come from the same kind of money,” De Seroux says. “I had to work for my equipment, for my riding time, for everything.”

After her graduation from Alhambra High, De Seroux’s parents moved to Lake Arrowhead.

“I was kind of on my own,” she says. “I found myself a job as a groom at Santa Anita. I went to Cal State Los Angeles for about two weeks. But I could never find a parking space and one day, when I couldn’t find a space, I just turned around and went right to the track. I had a semester of incompletes and I never went back.

“My dad was worried. He was afraid I was going to be some kind of itinerant. I think he equated working at the track to being ‘circus people.’ But I just knew I wanted to work around horses. I worked my way up from groom to being an exercise rider.”

A year out of high school, De Seroux went east to work in Kentucky, Florida, Maryland, New York, New Jersey. The work was wonderful, the homesickness horrible. She came home and found a job with trainer Charlie Whittingham.

“I knew Charlie liked female riders,” De Seroux says, “and I was lucky. He had an opening.”

De Seroux once posed for a picture that ran in the Los Angeles Times. It was of Whittingham’s female riders. The headline was “Charlie’s Angels.”

There was nothing sexist about Whittingham though.

“Charlie shared his knowledge with me,” De Seroux says. “He wanted all of us to succeed. He wanted us to learn all the areas of horse racing.”

With Whittingham’s blessing, she went to work with Bruce McNall when he was beginning his foray into horse racing. She was McNall’s racing manager. She began learning the bloodstock part of the sport and traveled the world for McNall and Nelson Bunker Hunt. She met her husband, Emmanuel De Seroux, and played a key role in the purchase of two Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe winners, Trempolino and Saumarez, for McNall.

The knowledge that Whittingham shared has helped De Seroux become a keen judge of talent. She is part owner of Until Sundown, a bay colt who has won three of five starts and finished second twice.

“I thought Until Sundown might be Triple Crown material, but we couldn’t get him going in time,” De Seroux says. “We got him through the 2-year-old sales, he had bucked his shins, that set him back. I’m a conservative trainer. I learned that from Charlie. I want my horses to be lucky to have been in my care. I give them time when they need it.”

De Seroux got her first stakes win as a trainer last year at Hollywood Park, and it was at the expense of Baffert.

“Bob and I were both at the sales in Keeneland,” De Seroux says. “We were both in the viewing room to watch the race. I heard Bob talking about his great filly, how fast his filly was, how he needed a fast young buck to breed her to. I wasn’t saying a word. My knees were shaking as I watched the race. The race ended, my horse [New Heaven] had won and Bob looked at me and said, ‘Who is that horse?’ ”

In the Swaps, it is Baffert’s Congaree, who won the Wood Memorial and finished third in both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, who is the favorite.

De Seroux says, “If we finish second to Congaree, that would verify to me we have a horse who belongs in the top echelon and who, if he feels good, we could point to the Breeders’ Cup races with.”

Modesty is something De Seroux didn’t learn from anyone. She brings that to her job naturally. All the rest, De Seroux was taught by the men who welcomed her into the sport and who now trust her to train the horses.

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HOLLYWOOD PARK

Schedule for last days of season:

* Today: 1 p.m. first post, featuring $150,000 Hollywood Oaks.

* Sunday: 1 p.m. first post, featuring $500,000 Swaps Stakes (ESPN2, 3 p.m.)

* Monday: 1 p.m. first post.

*

Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.