Robbins, Cooper Part Ways

Jay Robbins, who trained Tiznow to do what no other horse has done--win consecutive Breeders’ Cup Classics--won’t be training Tiznow’s brother, or any other horses from the same stable.

Robbins said Tuesday that Tizbud, an unraced 3-year-old with the same parents as Tiznow, sire Cee’s Tizzy and broodmare Cee’s Song, has been moved to the barn of John Sadler, another trainer at Santa Anita. As a result, Robbins told Mike Cooper, the managing partner of the Tiznow stable, that he no longer wanted to train any of Cooper’s horses. Three of them, two unraced and the mare Cee’s Elegance, will be trained by Doug O’Neill at Hollywood Park, Robbins said.

Cooper couldn’t be reached for comment, but in the Daily Racing Form he was quoted as having said, “Nothing is forever. I just thought that this is what’s best for Tizbud.”

Robbins said he was told that he was losing Tizbud in a letter from Cooper two weeks ago.

“He said that it was no reflection on my skills as a trainer,” Robbins said, “and that he wanted to try the horse with a higher-profile stable.”

The split between Cooper and Robbins is a bitter reflection of the frequent tension between owners and trainers. Owners pay the bills, and many of them expect to have a substantial say. Trainers usually figure they know their horses better than the owners do. In the Cooper-Robbins relationship, friction mounted last year after repeated disagreements about Tiznow’s racing schedule. In September, Robbins said, he received a letter from Cooper that said that Robbins’ tenure was in jeopardy unless he consulted more with Cooper.

At the time, Tiznow, in his first race in six months, had just finished third in the Woodward at Belmont Park. The options for a final prep race for the Breeders’ Cup were the Goodwood Handicap at Santa Anita and the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont, where the Breeders’ Cup was also going to be run. Robbins preferred the Goodwood, which would save Tiznow an extra cross-country trip to New York. He prevailed and the colt ran third in the Santa Anita race. In 2000, when Tiznow was voted horse of the year, Robbins had used a victory in the Goodwood as a prep for the horse’s first Breeders’ Cup win, at Churchill Downs.

In 2000, Cecilia Straub-Rubens, who had bred Tiznow, raced the horse with Cooper, a longtime friend and executive in her late husband’s beer distributorship. Weak with cancer, Straub-Rubens watched Tiznow win at Churchill Downs, then three days later, died, at 83, in a California hospital. Cooper raced Tiznow last year in a partnership that included Straub-Rubens’ two children.

According to Robbins, the tension between him and Cooper went back to last summer at Del Mar, where Tiznow, a horse struggling with back problems, was attempting a comeback. He had won the Santa Anita Handicap in March but hadn’t raced since.

“Right after Tiznow’s fourth workout since coming back, [Cooper] was telling Scott McClellan [jockey Chris McCarron’s agent] that we were running in the Pacific Classic [Aug. 19],” Robbins said. “Chris and I had to sit down with [Cooper] for 45 minutes to explain to him how the horse couldn’t make that race. There would have been time for only one more workout, and we would have been asking him to run a mile and a quarter off just that. We didn’t run, but I think it was all downhill after that.”

Cooper told the Racing Form that friction between him and Robbins was unrelated to the trainer’s losing Tizbud.

Robbins said he had called Cooper after getting the owner’s second letter. According to Robbins, Cooper suggested that they sit down and talk.

“The time to do that,” Robbins said he told Cooper, “was before you sent the letter.”

Despite his second Breeders’ Cup win, Tiznow finished second to Point Given, the preeminent 3-year-old, in the 2001 horse-of-the-year voting, but Tiznow still won an Eclipse Award as the best older male horse. Retired to stud after his second Breeders’ Cup win, Tiznow finished out of the money in only one of 15 starts, winning eight times, and earned $6.4 million, which puts him eighth on the earnings list of North American horses.

Robbins, 56, said that he has seven horses in training. His stable hasn’t grown--and in fact might be smaller--since Tiznow’s first Breeders’ Cup win. A recent chance to train a large draft of horses for Stan Fulton, the owner of Sunland Park in New Mexico, quickly soured and Robbins said that he and Fulton are no longer in business together.