Last days of Wild Again trainer Vincent Timphony reconnected him with former jockey and writer Eddie Donnally

Vincent Timphony was born right outside the gates of the Fair Grounds in New Orleans. Monday, 76 years later, he died within a stone’s throw of Santa Anita.

Timphony was a horse trainer and horse-race character. Ranking the order is impossible.

In racing, he had his 15 minutes of fame. In life, he was a Fourth of July rocket who kept on going right through the fizzles. He had little when he was born and less when he died.

Eddie Donnally rode thoroughbreds for 20 years, more than 10,000 races over 54 tracks. He never won an Eclipse Award as a jockey, but he won one as a newspaper writer for the Dallas Morning News in 1986. He is now 67, “found Christ in a jail cell in 1995,” he says, and became a medical chaplain.

While Donnally was checking the charts of patients for his hospital rounds Nov. 28 at Methodist Hospital in Arcadia, he saw the name Vincent Timphony. He spent the rest of the week at Timphony’s bedside, along with a steady stream of family and friends.

“When they took him off life support, I cried,” Donnally says. “Chaplains aren’t suppose to cry.”

Some 26 years ago, Donnally had also done something you aren’t supposed to do. He had rooted in the press box at Hollywood Park. It was during the first Breeders’ Cup, and the first $3-million horse race, the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Timphony had told Donnally and a few other reporters that not only would his horse win the big race, but they should tell their readers and bet big themselves. It would be Timphony’s 15 minutes of fame.

That level of prerace brashness is uncharacteristic for a trainer. Not for Timphony.

He had gone to the Fair Grounds in New Orleans with his father and never got it out of his blood. He won his first horse in a gin rummy game. He ran a stable primarily of claimers and waited for his big horse to arrive. He carried a wad of $100 bills and was the first stop for backstretch workers needing bail money or medicine for grandma.

In the good days, Timphony was extravagant. He once threw a party that included $4,000 worth of avocados, each with a candle inserted, drifting in the swimming pool. He flew in an estimated $8,000 in seafood, as well as a New Orleans band and chefs who once worked for him at his New Orleans restaurant.

When he met his second wife, Scarlet, he offered her a mink coat, diamond ring and a Cadillac. “I told him I had all those,” Scarlet says.

As Donnally rooted in the press box that day in 1984, and the racing world watched in shock, Timphony’s horse, the second-longest odds starter at 31-1, stayed in front down the homestretch to win the Classic.

Aboard that horse, Wild Again, was Pat Day, back in racing after a bout with drug addiction. Squeezing him toward the rail was Slew o’ Gold, son of Seattle Slew, a 1-9 favorite ridden by Angel Cordero. Closing fast, to Cordero’s right, was second choice Gate Dancer, that year’s Preakness winner, ridden by Laffit Pincay. Three of the better jockeys ever, two of the better horses, and Wild Again wasn’t caving.

There was bumping, they hit the tape in a blanket and, while Wild Again appeared to have held on, an eight-minute inquiry left horses pacing and bettors fretting. When they put up Wild Again’s number, paying $64.60 on a $2 bet, the place went nuts.

Scarlet lost the feeling in her legs and was helped to the winner’s circle. Timphony looked as if he’d been dressed by an egg-scrambler. Day guided Wild Again into the winner’s circle and looked to the sky, raising his helmet in salute, and the Breeders’ Cup had a signature photo moment for years to come.

Timphony and his owners headed to the windows and were told there wasn’t enough money. They were escorted to the money room, got their cash, and headed to a men’s room, where they squeezed into a stall, the only privacy they could find, and divided it up. On the way out, one of the party tossed several $100 bills off the balcony, causing a near riot below.

Not only had they won the richest race in history, they had done so with a long-odds horse that hadn’t been preentered and had to be supplemented into the field at a stunning cost of $360,000.

Scarlet is coy, saying her husband’s gambling winnings that day were “more than $100,000.”

Donnally says that speculation had the group collecting the biggest bet, to that date, in horse-race history.

Scarlet says it didn’t matter, that Vincent “gave away more money in his lifetime than most people make in two.”

Wild Again won $2.2 million on the track and produced 11 Grade I winners. His offspring won purses totaling $81 million.

According to Scarlet, little of that came her ex-husband’s way. After being promised a 33% share of Wild Again, he was maneuvered out of most of it by one of the owners, Bill Allen. Shortly before Timphony died, he had no home, no money and was moving from one friend to another.

Allen died in July 2008, and Scarlet says she got a call from Timphony.

“He said, ‘I won. Bill Allen died first.’”

Wild Again died in Kentucky on Dec. 5, 2008, almost two years to the day before Vincent Timphony entered the hospital for his last stretch run.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com