He Wasn’t Born in a Barn

In 1965, when he was 24, Bobby Frankel was ex-U.S. Army and a college dropout. He had worked in construction and been a clerk on Wall Street, but by accident he gravitated to the racetrack and told himself that he could train horses.

That might have been a minority opinion in those days. Frankel’s New York stable consisted of one horse, and when he claimed another one, a filly for $10,000, Ivan Parke, a Hall of Fame jockey who was now training, offered him a stall for the extra horse. The trouble was, Parke didn’t bother to tell his stall superintendent that Frankel and this cheap filly were coming.

Frankel remembers the greeting he got when he arrived with the horse at Parke’s barn. “There’s no room here for you,” the stall man said. “You’ll never do anything in this business. Do yourself a favor and find another job.”

That crushing putdown came rushing back to Frankel the other day at Belmont Park, where on Saturday the Hall of Fame trainer will run six horses--three of them favorites--on the eight-race, $13-million Breeders’ Cup card.

“The guy’s name was Ben McLain,” Frankel said. “Boy, was he a tough guy.”

At Aqueduct, another New York track, a gelding by the name of Double Dash gave Frankel his first win on Sept. 29, 1966. But in 1966 and ’67 combined, his stable won only 14 races. The brash kid from Queens was only talking a good game. He was earning more than the $200 a month he had pulled in as a groom a few years before, but not by much.

By 1970, however, his client list had broadened, his stock had improved and the grass-roots know-how that came from working around horsemen such as Johnny Campo began to pay off. That year at Saratoga, at what is arguably the toughest race meet in the country, Frankel tied another future Hall of Fame trainer, Jim Maloney, for the season title. Two years later, he moved to California, turned the claiming game upside down and began collecting meet titles at Hollywood Park, Santa Anita and Del Mar.

Through 1982, he had won 26 of a possible 36 championships at those three tracks. Eventually, though, quantity turned to quality, less horses became more, and Frankel, eschewing the claiming box, emerged as a national figure. In 1993, the Frankel barn led the country with a purse total of almost $9 million. Wayne Lukas had won the national money title for 10 consecutive years before then.

Elected to the Hall of Fame in 1995, Frankel is still hounded by some notable gaps in his resume. Lukas has won a cornucopia of Eclipse Awards, Triple Crown races and Breeders’ Cup stakes, while Frankel, except for his two Eclipse Awards for training, has been blanked in the other categories.

Known as a trainer who concentrates on grass runners and older horses--although he is starting a 2-year-old, You, and a pair of 3-year-olds, Flute and Squirtle Squirt, in separate Breeders’ Cup dirt races Saturday--he seldom runs in the Kentucky Derby and the other Triple Crown races, and all 36 of his Breeders’ Cup starters have been beaten.

If this gnaws at him, he will not readily let on. His peers--trainers and retired trainers like Gary Jones, Jay Robbins and Mike Mitchell--praise his consummate horsemanship, and for Frankel those are encomiums enough. It matters more to Frankel, for example, that his major clients, who include Edmund Gann of Rancho Santa Fe and Prince Khalid Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, share his confidence in the program and continue to send well-regarded horses his way.

The prince’s Juddmonte Farms picked Frankel as its principal U.S. trainer after a computer search crunched some very positive numbers more than 10 years ago. Although Juddmonte is also 0 for everything in the Breeders’ Cup--30 starters for several trainers, including Frankel, since the first running in 1984--Abdullah has entrusted Aptitude and Flute to Frankel since the start of their careers. Both will be favored Saturday, Aptitude in the $4-million Classic, the richest race of the day, and Flute in the $2-million Distaff. Frankel’s other favorite is You in the $1-million Juvenile Fillies, and rounding out his Breeders’ Cup card are Squirtle Squirt in the $1-million Sprint, Starine in the $1-million Filly & Mare Turf and Timboroa in the $2-million Turf.

“It would be nice,” Frankel said, “if Flute could win the first [Breeders’ Cup] race of the day. That would set the tone for the rest of the day.”

It is strange that of all Frankel’s Breeders’ Cup hopes, only one has been favored. In 1993, at Santa Anita, Bertrando, coupled in the betting with Marquetry, was the 6-5 choice in the Classic and appeared to have the 11/4-mile race won with an eighth of a mile left. But Arcangues, the sore-backed French import, stormed through the stretch to win by two lengths. The win payoff of $269.20 is a Breeders’ Cup record.

Theatrical ran for Frankel in the 1986 Turf at Santa Anita and was the second choice behind Dancing Brave, the Arc de Triomphe winner.

“Dancing Brave had the big rep,” Frankel said, “but I didn’t like the way he looked after he was subjected to a lot of hot weather in California. My horse had had a good prep over the course. I thought we were an absolute cinch.”

Dancing Brave was a well-beaten fourth, but Manila, at 8-1, beat Theatrical by a neck. It didn’t matter that Gary Stevens, Theatrical’s jockey, had knocked the whip out of the hand of Jose Santos, who rode Manila.

The next year, at Hollywood Park, Theatrical won the Breeders’ Cup Turf, but Bill Mott was his trainer. A tough pill? Not really, Frankel said, adding:

“Bert Firestone [one of Theatrical’s owners] wanted me to take a private training job with him, but the catch was that I’d have to move back to New York, where most of his horses were. I wanted to stay in California. So Mott took the job, and since the rest of Firestone’s horses weren’t that good then, he gave Theatrical to Mott. It happens.”

Last year, Frankel lost another narrow Breeders’ Cup decision when Kona Gold beat his Honest Lady by a neck in the Sprint. In a recent Daily Racing Form, in a listing of Frankel’s 36 failures, Honest Lady was mistakenly credited with a fourth-place finish.

“Hey, it’s bad enough, never winning one of these,” Frankel said as he good-naturedly chided a Racing Form reporter the next day. “Don’t take one of my seconds away from me.”

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Breeders’ Cup Facts

When: Saturday --Where: Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y. --TV: Channel 4

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Race Distance Purse Post Distaff 1 1/8 miles $2 million 10:20 a.m. Juvenile Fillies 1 1/6 miles $1 million 10:55 a.m. Mile 1 mile $1 million 11:35 a.m. Sprint 6 furlongs $1 million 12:10 p.m. Filly & Mare Turf 1 1/4 miles $1 million 12:45 p.m. Juvenile 1 1/6 miles $1 million 1:20 p.m. Turf 1 1/2 miles $2 million 1:55 p.m. Classic 1 1/4 miles $4 million 2:35 p.m.

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