Colorful Breeders’ Cup-winning trainer Julio Canani, who died in Pasadena last week at the age of 82, made an indelible mark on horseracing throughout California. Here Team Valor International boss Barry Irwin, a longtime friend and associate, pays tribute.
Such was the make-up of Julio Canani that many others are bound to have better, funnier and more outrageous stories, but I knew The Man longer than most racetrackers.
The Peruvian émigré came to the United States as a teenager. He first registered on my radar in the 1960s, when he was part of a loosely formed band of degenerate gamblers who started hanging out together on the first floor at Hollywood Park. Among these horseplayers was an aspiring actor named Jack Klugman, who would go on to fame for roles he created in movies and television. When he could afford it, Jack got fairly deeply involved in racehorse ownership.
Outside of the track, members of the group never saw each other, but every day we were at the track we would find each other, compare notes, argue, tell each other big fish stories and complain about our women. Julio had an infectious personality, a big, wide smile nobody ever forgot and a hilarious use of the English language that at times was so silly even Julio could not help but laugh at himself.
Fellow trainer Neil Drysdale, who was born in England but spent time in South America as a horseman learning his trade, swears that when Julio spoke to Neil in Spanish, he spoke normally. Anybody who ever heard Julio speak English would question that assertion mightily.
All verbal communication with Julio included — at various and unpredictable points in an utterance — the words “I ming” as an Hispanic substitute for the English crutch words “I mean.” And rely on it he did. “Who I ming is kidding who?” is an example.
Another word relied on by Julio was “though”. He used it as a word to flesh out a sentence when it was too bare and needed help to be fully formed, regardless of whether it was appropriate or meaningful in any way. My ex-partner, Jeff Siegel, used to tease Julio by greeting him with the salutation, “Hello, though.” Julio was not averse to saying something like, “I am hungry, though” or “I’m gonna bet him, though” or “who is that guy, though?” or “how are you doing, though?” He could also employ both crutches in the same sentence, as in “But I ming he looks good, though.”
Julio eventually found ways to get involved in racing. He started up a business selling carrots on the backstretch. What he really wanted to do was get information to make more intelligent gambles.
Eventually he got himself jobs in the stable area working with trainers and horses, learning the finer points of horsemanship and the claiming game. When I returned to my Southern California birthplace after spending the better part of a year in Kentucky, Julio was training.
A constant source of hard-to-believe stories
When I wrote a syndicated column in Daily Racing Form in the 1970s, Julio was claiming horses on the Southern California circuit. I interacted with him on a regular basis as a writer dealing with a horseman.
Julio also used to hang around the press box as he was affiliated with a Spanish-speaking broadcast of the races. He was a constant source of hard-to-believe stories, betting information, coups and schemes in development, as well as his own handicapping gems.
Julio not only engaged in some questionable backstretch pranks that always had cashing a bet as their centerpiece, he reveled in them. One of his favorite shticks in those days was to hide the identity of a horse from the clockers. This cat-and-mouse game went on for years and usually involved the switching of saddle towels or some such nonsense. He was not above sneaking into another trainer’s tack room, borrowing a saddle cloth, working his horse while it was wearing the other trainer’s saddle cloth, and fooling the clockers so that only Julio would have the betting information.
It was hard to tell what he enjoyed most: Pulling off the stroke or telling the story about how he pulled off the stroke.
Jeff and I began syndicating horses as a business in 1987. Two years later we gave a 4-year-old English import to Julio that had been bought by us for $60,000. It had been bid in at Tattersalls by Sheikh Mohammed by an English agent we used and we gave him a profit.
Coup in the ‘Big Cap’
From the first day Martial Law stepped onto an American racetrack, he acted as though he had been doing it all of his life. He had raced on grass in England, was decidedly modest in terms of form and was consigned to the Newmarket sale as a cull.
Every time the Kentucky-bred son of Mr Leader breezed the dirt main track at Santa Anita it was showtime. He blew Julio’s mind from his very first public workout. He took hold late sprinting in his United States debut and finished fast for fourth.
When Julio stretched him out next time around two turns on a muddy track, Martial Law freaked and won by a wide margin. Jeff and I were both excited as hell. We decided that we wanted to spend $40,000 of our partners’ money to make him eligible for the $1 million Santa Anita Handicap, by paying a supplement of $25,000 and an additional $15,000 in fees to enter and start him.
But we felt that we needed Julio’s blessing.
Secretly Julio wanted to take the chance, but fearing peer pressure he feigned astonishment at our crazy idea. On the afternoon when a commitment had to be made, Jeff was unable to get Julio to commit one way or another. I got Julio on the phone. He said, “You want to run?” I said, “Yes.”
I am certain that Julio was torn between suffering from peer pressure by running a rank outsider in the biggest race on the local circuit and knowing in his heart that the colt really had the ability to pull off the daring stunt.
But no trainer wants to see his horse at more than 50/1 on the tote board, especially when denizens of the press box, backstretch cafeteria and first-floor bar would be armed with nuclear weapons to take him down after a big-race flop.
Martial Law did not let his connections down, winning convincingly and providing Julio, his family, his stable staff, and our owners with the thrill of a lifetime. The swell of emotion I felt after the race has never been duplicated by any other win of my stable, including the Kentucky Derby.
When Martial Law returned to Southern California after being mugged in his only other race at Oaklawn Park, Julio phoned me one morning and said, “I ming he got a suh-pish-us tendon, though.” He meant a suspicious tendon. But what he really meant but could not bring himself to utter the words is that the colt had bowed a tendon. I didn’t know whether to giggle at the pronunciation of suspicious or throw up at the bad news.
Julio was a fantastic person to have as a trainer for a bunch of neophyte owners like our partners in those days. He was down to earth, he was entertaining as any stand-up comedian and he loved to dispense tips on winners.
And regardless of where and from whom he had learned to train Thoroughbreds, one thing is certain: He was a gifted horseman. One horse in particular that he trained for us is a great case in point. Named Colway Rally, this Irish-bred, English-raced import arrived Stateside in 1989 as a 5-year-old and finished second in the Theatrical Stakes at Gulfstream a day before our Prized won the Breeders’ Cup Turf.
Colway Rally was a quality horse, winning the Grade 2 Citation at Hollywood Park. As Julio got to know him, he realized the horse was one in a million in terms of temperament. He started letting him cool himself out after training by walking around the ring without any human interaction or equipment. Then, after he ran a race in the afternoon, Julio would have the horse’s equipment removed and allow him to walk back to his barn alongside a groom. It was a sight to behold. He raced competitively to the ripe old age of nine.
Julio was a rapscallion, but so lovable and fun-loving that it was hard to get and stay mad at him, even if he tried to take advantage of situations. He got in trouble with a messy divorce that voluntarily sent him to the sidelines, when Jenine Sahadi took over the reins. Then he really got in Dutch when an owner took him to task for robbing him on the sale of some horses.
I knew he was far from being a saint. One morning, when it was just me and Julio standing next to a horse in a stall at Santa Anita, he began musing to himself, literally forgetting who I was and my station in life as a racehorse owner.
“I need to make some money,” he said. Then he looked me square in the eye and said. “I really need to make $25,000 right now. I gotta buy a horse cheap and sell it right now to one of my owners for a $25,000 profit.”
Then, suddenly, as if to awaken from a stupor, he realized what he had said and to whom he had said it, and quickly switched gears, told a joke and skipped out. I could have skipped that moment in life.
But most of my other moments with Julio were filled with excitement, intrigue, laughter and adult pranks.
The one thing that sticks with me about Julio is he always either had something going or he was about to. He thrived at the racetrack. He knew everything that was going on from the backside to the front side, to the press box. When Julio revealed his latest gambit to enrich himself and provide action to his cohorts, everybody paid attention, because, even if the enterprise failed, the trip was well worth it.