Leandro Mora, who has spent the winter supervising US trainer Doug O’Neill’s Dubai team, in an interview with Laura King
There are some people who always look on the bright side of life. That’s Leandro Mora, right-hand man to Doug O’Neill and as sunny as the weather in which he is supervising the Californian-based trainer’s string at Meydan racecourse.
Mora has every right to be cheerful in 2022. Under his guardianship, O’Neill’s team has thrived during the Dubai World Cup Carnival, winning four races from 16 starts. Chief among them was Hot Rod Charlie’s impressive Dubai World Cup prep, a smooth win in the G2 Maktoum Challenge Round 2. They have also tasted success with Appreciated in the Curlin Stakes (Listed), plus Get Back Goldie and Notre Dame.
“The carnival has been a blessing,” says Mora, trademark wide smile, one morning during training in the shadow of the spectacular Meydan grandstand. “When we came over two years ago, we didn’t know what we were doing and this time at least we know where we’re sitting and we’re following the ratings, which is a little different to back in the United States.”
Even two years ago the O’Neill string managed plenty of success, taking the G3 UAE 2,000 Guineas with Fore Left, the Curlin with Parsimony and the G3 Turf Sprint with Wildman Jack.
This year, though, eyes are on the big prize and mention of Hot Rod Charlie, who has just been out for two steady circuits of the dirt, has Mora smiling even more. He spends a lot of time with the four-year-old and it was his name on the license when the colt won the Louisiana Derby, O’Neill having been serving a suspension.
‘Charlie is like Dennis the Menace’
Now Mora has the task of preparing ‘Charlie’ for the $12m Dubai World Cup, for which he is currently second favourite behind fellow US star Life Is Good, world #1 according to TRC Global Rankings.
“Charlie is like Dennis The Menace,” says Mora. “As a two-year-old, he was as fat as the rail – very, very skinny, and he ran two races. One of the owners, Bill Strauss, said ‘what’s going on with this horse? We’re never going to win a race.’ And I said, ‘relax, he’s just a green little fellow, we might have a chance to break his maiden.’ And now … I like to remind them about all that stuff,” he laughs.
Strauss, along with enthusiastic co-owners Boat Racing, was on hand to see their horse win in Dubai. It was an impressive one, by 5½ lengths over rising local star Al Nefud.
“There are two horses that I’ve been with that don’t get tired,” continues Mora. “Hot Rod Charlie … he doesn’t have many winning races because of what I call racing luck, but he can run all day long.
‘He could run two miles and not get tired’
“The other was [2012 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner] I’ll Have Another. He didn’t get tired, couldn’t have blown out a match. Hot Rod Charlie is the same way – I believe that he could run two miles and not get tired, he has such a big heart.
“Back in the stables he’s a sweetheart and here [on the track] he’s all business. He likes to look around on the [horsewalk] trail, because you see a lot of deer, so he likes to stop a lot.”
While Hot Rod Charlie might have had an inauspicious start to his career, it was nothing compared to Mora’s own beginnings. He arrived in the US from his native Mexico as a 16-year-old, having left his parents’ lime farm in search of a different path in life.
“I started back in 1977 when I was a young teenager,” he recalls. “I was hired to become an assistant, cleaning dishes for a chef back in California. This guy stopped by in Del Mar to visit a couple of his brothers who were working there. I saw horse racing there – I told him to keep going and I stopped right there, so that’s how my career began.”
It could go without saying that he didn’t exactly start at the top. “My first job was hotwalking, and then I was a groom for about three years,” he says.
“I had to force myself to speak English so I went to school for three months. It was tough because horse work, that’s in the morning, and school was at night. It’s not easy on a human being when you get no hours to sleep, so I had to give up one of them and so I befriended a lot of people and started learning street English.
“I was 17 then and I had to fake my ID as at that time you couldn’t work until you were 18, so I used my brother’s birthdate and then a few years later I had to change it, which was not easy to do.”
‘My inspiration was Seattle Slew’
Mora had been around horses – not racehorse, mind you, back home in Mexico. “We had horses but they were plot horses, just to ride and do little things with,” he explains.
“They called them ‘Aztecs’ – small body, big head – and they were not runners, but the Spanish rode them hundreds of years ago to the United States and Mexico. My inspiration was Seattle Slew. That Seattle Slew in ’77 … I saw the majesty of that beautiful animal. Compared with the horses I knew, just … wow!”
Mora has come a long way since his Aztec riding days, having been with O’Neill for 21 years. “I worked for a guy called David Bernstein, he helped me out with my licence and then I worked for Brian Mayberry who I adopted as my American father – he and his wife taught me a lot of things,” he says. “But Brian was a heavy smoker and so cancer took him. After 15 years of being with the family I had to move on.
“A good veterinarian friend of mine told me that Doug O’Neill needed somebody. I went to look for him and I remember saying to him: ‘I hope I’m not going to disappoint you’ and he said ‘you’re not going to disappoint me, He knew already that we were going to bond and that’s how it’s been since.”
Since then, the O’Neill success story has been a considerable one: two Kentucky Derby wins, with I’ll Have Another and Nyquist, as well as six Breeders’ Cup successes – plus the hugely popular one-time claimer Lava Man, a stand
ing dish on the west coast for a number of years who ended up in the Hall of Fame after numbering three Hollywood Gold Cups and two Santa Anita Handicaps among a multitude of big-race successes.
‘He’s a smart guy’
Not surprisingly, Mora speaks highly of his boss. “Doug can pick up things that only he can absorb,” he says. “He only listens to what he needs to – he’s a smart guy.”
So what have been the highlights during those two decades of working together? “For me some of the most impressive things we’ve done have been with claimers,” he says. “Lava Man was a highlight, of course, and so was one was called Fleetstreet Dancer. We claimed this horse for $40,000 and at that time the Japanese people had put in a dirt track and they wanted a guinea pig to test it, so they invited an American horse and it happened to be us.”
Mora is talking about the Japan Cup Dirt in Tokyo in 2003. “So we took this dirt horse to Japan and the track was made of rock dust – not a good track – but it helped us,” he grins.
“It rained so much that week. In the States the horse was more than 100-1 and we ended up winning the race. I don’t know how it happened but we won. I think that’s what pumped us up to travel and started the whole thing, because when you get invited, it’s hard to say no as you never know what will happen.”
There’s are other horses who rank higher than Fleetstreet Dancer in the Mora’s personal hall of fame, however.
“The love of my life that’s a horse? Of course, that’s Nyquist and Lava Man,” he says. “Lava Man was a horse of a lifetime, he was very special. But Nyquist was born to be a champion. We didn’t make him; he was born to be who he was and in his brain he knew who he was. He would do anything we wanted; never hesitated, I loved him.”
He loves Hot Rod Charlie, too. Perhaps even a little bit more if he picks up the lion’s share of $12m on March 26.
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