Owner Still Has Plenty of Fire

The remaining months of 2002 won’t make any difference. Engrave the Fickle Owner of the Year Award and ship it to Roger Devenport in Lexington, Ky.

Devenport, 82, fired another trainer the other day. That’s hardly a horse racing headline anymore, because Devenport is always firing his trainers. In fact, the latest conditioner to get the ax--the capable Dallas Stewart--has been sacked twice by Devenport. Shades of George Steinbrenner with his Yankee managers, before he and Joe Torre struck the mother lode.

“Maybe I made a mistake last year when I rehired Stewart,” Devenport said Thursday night. “Who knows?”

That comment will be of little consolation to David Vance, another trainer caught in Devenport’s revolving door. When Devenport spirited his well-bred filly, Unbridled Elaine, and the rest of his horses away from Stewart in June, Vance took over the stock. He saddled Unbridled Elaine for victories in the Iowa and Monmouth Oaks in July, and was prepared to ship the filly to New York for the Breeders’ Cup in October when his phone rang, much as Stewart’s had five months before. It was Devenport, firing Vance and returning the horses to Stewart.

Fortunately, Unbridled Elaine wasn’t paying much attention. A week after Vance was fired, the big gray, saddled by Stewart, won the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, at 12-1. Devenport, battling bone cancer, was at Keeneland, his hometown track, where he bet $400 across the board on the horse he named after one of his daughters.

“I was sad when Unbridled Elaine left, and happy when she came back,” Stewart said after the Breeders’ Cup.

When Unbridled Elaine left Stewart again, this week at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans, it was for a trip back to Kentucky, where she will soon be bred to the stallion Rahy. The rest of Devenport’s horses wound up with Tom Amoss at the Fair Grounds.

Devenport, who picked out Unbridled Elaine as a weanling, buying her for $230,000, said his beef with Vance was over shipping.

“I wanted to get the filly to New York early, so she could get used to the track,” Devenport said. “The trainer didn’t want to go until the last minute.”

The second time around, Devenport dumped Stewart because he thought the trainer hadn’t detected an injury to Unbridled Elaine’s left front ankle.

Devenport always has been a suspicious guy. Years ago, when he raced quarter horses in North Dakota, one of his horses got away from the gate badly and was beaten in a race he was expected to win. After the race, Devenport said that he heard the trainer of the winning horse promise the official starter a case of beer.

“I’ve been very careful ever since,” Devenport said.

Devenport never raced his quarter horses in California but spent time here as a Marine near the end of World War II. He hocked his wristwatch and with a few buddies repaired to the Beverly Hills Hotel.

“That was the only way we were going to afford that place,” Devenport said.

One of their captains saw them there, felt they were cramping his style and not too politely pointed toward the door.

“Another guy saw we were having trouble, and came over and put the captain in his place,” Devenport said. “It was Errol Flynn.”

Back in his native Wisconsin, Devenport got in the butter business and made his fortune. Cholesterol wasn’t even a rumor then. Before it was sold, his butter company was churning out 45 million pounds a year.

There is no need for Devenport to travel to Miami Beach for the Eclipse awards dinner on Feb. 18. Despite winning the Breeders’ Cup race, Unbridled Elaine is not a contender for 3-year-old filly. The finalists are Exogenous, who died of finjuries suffered when she reared and fell before the Distaff; Flute, seventh as the favorite in the Distaff; and Xtra Heat, second in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

Devenport scoffs at the vote, in the tone of voice he might usually reserve for dispatching a trainer.

“Did any of those horses earn more than my horse?” he said.

No, they didn’t.

“Would the owners [of Flute and Xtra Heat] rather have their horses than my horse?” he said. “Of course they wouldn’t. Not a shadow of a doubt.”