Downs trainer is one-in-100

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/09/2020 (2122 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What’s the common thread that runs through some of the best horses ever to race in Manitoba — including millionairess Escape Clause, champions and stakes winners Balooga Bull and Magic D’ Oro; and just about every stakes-winning two-year-old over the past 15 years from the late Ardell Sayler’s barn?

Second-year trainer Devon Gittens is the answer.

The 35-year-old from Gemswick, Barbados exercised all the aforementioned horses in their formative years and taught them well. Not only that, he knew how good they were long before they ever started — and when they did begin their racing careers, they were ready.

Do you know how many trainers actually know when their horses are mentally and physically ready to run in an actual race for the first time? Probably less than one per cent.

Over the past 45 years, I’ve been touted on a gazillion horses, most of which weren’t even close to being ready. You see them at every racetrack, the hot horse who is going to win first time out. They make it to the top of the stretch and go straight backwards into oblivion.

Over the past few years, while exercising horses for other trainers, Gittens mentioned a few horses that were ready to run well and he was right every time. It’s part of the edge that comes with getting on the horses’ backs in the morning. And if you do everything else in the barn, as Gittens does now, you have an even bigger edge.

‘I’m very lucky to have these horses. I want to say thanks to Betty and Frank for giving me a chance. In Barbados it’s much more difficult to get started’
– Devon Gittens

Gittens has spent most of his life with horses and clearly has a natural talent for preparing a horse not only to run, but to want to run and win. He started out as a teenager in Barbados getting on horses in pastures and went on to work at the racetrack there. He found his way to Canada in 2006, thanks to an invitation from Assiniboia Downs CEO Darren Dunn.

He spent 14 years exercising horses for almost every top trainer at the local track, including Sayler and Rob Atras, and finally decided to take out his trainer’s licence last year with two of his own horses. He won with both, and longtime Manitoba owner-breeders Dr. Betty Hughes and Frank Johnson decided to give Gittens a shot this year with a few homegrown horses by their relatively unknown stallion Vengeful Wildcat.

Like his trainer, Vengeful Wildcat is a diamond in the rough, and he actually has a chance of taking on the stakes-winning breeding juggernaut of Ziprick Thoroughbreds, whose now-retired Going Commando has been the leading sire in Manitoba for more than a decade. Ziprick Thoroughbreds is bringing in a new stallion, and they do a great job with their horses, but Vengeful Wildcat could take some beating thanks to Hughes, Johnson and Gittens.

Gittens has compiled a win-place-show record of 6-4-5 from 32 starts this year. And he’s done it with maidens by Vengeful Wildcat for Hughes and Johnson, winning with Purrsistent, Prairie Magic and Rightofvengence, as well as their Lauren’slittlestar. Purrsistent has won twice and was beaten by only 3½-lengths by Manitoba star Hidden Grace, finishing second after an excellent effort against that much more seasoned rival.

“I’m very lucky to have these horses,” said Gittens

“I just want to say thanks to Betty and Frank for giving me a chance. In Barbados it’s much more difficult to get started.”

Gittens also said he’d learned something from almost every top trainer on the grounds at the Downs while exercising their horses, but made special mention of longtime friend and horseman Clairmonte Parris.

After watching Vengeful Wildcat win the Tyro and Chick Lang Stakes and finish second in the Bayshore Stakes-G3 and Sapling Stakes-G3 on YouTube, I went out to see the big, happy bruiser at Darrel Lawson’s Farm this spring to take a photo of him reading Beating the Odds in Hockey and in Life, by Eddie Olczyk with Perry Lefko, for an online promotion. As he playfully climbed all over me while trying to eat the book, it was clear there was some class to this guy. Not only could he run; his pedigree is powered by some of the best horses in racing history. Yet he was bought for a song.

Purchased for just US$2,200 by Hughes in a 2012 Keeneland Horses of All Ages Sale, primarily to breed to their own mares, Vengeful Wildcat is definitely a horse who slipped through the cracks. He’s by Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew’s undefeated Breeders’ Cup Juvenile-G1 winner Vindication out of multiple stakes producer Wild Snitch by multiple graded stakes-winning sprinter Forest Wildcat.

Throw in more extreme high class, elite talent and stamina from multiple Grade 1 winners Strawberry Road, Storm Cat and Key to The Mint and you have a hidden gem whose offspring will only get better.

Just like their trainer.