COMMENTARY : His Stable Is State of Art

On a recent racing program that Belmont Park had billed as Breeders’ Cup Preview Day, trainer Shug McGaughey won five major stakes races -- an unprecedented feat that earned him a lasting place in the sport’s record books. Yet those who understand the nature of McGaughey’s operation know that the achievement was even more amazing than it looked.

Trainers who dominate the sport and win large numbers of races are almost invariably the ones who have many rich owners behind them and an army of horses to command. McGaughey trains almost exclusively for a single family and never has more than 35 to 40 horses in his barn. Lacking strength in numbers, he must depend on the quality of these horses and on his own skills -- both of which are exceptional.

Some top trainers (such as Wayne Lukas) are characterized by their aggressiveness; they look for fast results, even with young, inexperienced horses. Others are cautious, patient, farsighted -- Charlie Whitttingham epitomizes the type. But McGaughey manages to combine both approaches -- sometimes in his management of a single horse. His winners at Belmont -- four of whom have now come to Santa Anita for the Breeders’ Cup -- demonstrate the trainer’s flexibility.

Miner’s Mark is a colt who always generated great expectations because of his pedigree: he is a son of the famed stallion Mr. Prospector and the undefeated champion mare Personal Ensign. And so the trainer harbored visions of winning the Kentucky Derby with him. McGaughey said, “He was a very, very slow horse to come around, but I had to bring him out early as a 3 year old just to give him a chance (in the 3-year-old classics).”

But when the colt disappointed in early-season races and then got sick, McGaughey promptly abandoned his Derby hopes and let Miner’s Mark develop at his own pace. Not until October of his 3-year-old season did Miner’s Mark realize his potential, winning the $850,000 Jockey Club Gold Cup to cap the trainer’s historic day at Belmont. Now he is a candidate for the $3 million Breeders’ Cup Classic.

McGaughey also opted to make an aggressive move with his filly Heavenly Prize, but unlike Miner’s Mark she rewarded the trainer with an immediate payoff. The 2 year old had won her career debut impressively, prompting McGaughey to consider thrusting her into the Grade I Frizette Stakes.

A prudent horseman like Whittingham would never do such a thing, but McGaughey decided to take the gamble, saying, “If I’m wrong, I’ll back off and she’ll make a nice 3 year old.” But Heavenly Prize responded to the challenge, winning by seven lengths, and now she is the solid favorite for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies.

When McGaughey talks about these decisions in his laconic, good-ole-boy manner, he makes training thoroughbreds sound like an easy, unstressful job. Anybody listening to him would scarcely guess he holds what was long been regarded as the most high-pressure position in his profession: training for the Phipps family.

The progenitor of the clan, Henry Phipps, was a cobbler who founded a steelworks with Andrew Carnegie.

The family’s main activity, aside from managing its own money, is horse racing. Ogden Phipps was chairman of the Jockey Club and now his son Dinny holds the same position. The family has developed a small but extraordinary group of broodmares, and mates them with the great stallions at Caliborne Farm.

The Phippses are the last of the racing dynasties and they have the pre-eminent breeding operation in America. Having invested so much of their lives into the sport, they want to win and expect to win. And the pressure on the men who train for them is intense.

Eddie Neloy, who directed the Phipps horses to great success in the 1960s, died of a heart attack. Another of their trainers, Roger Laurin, quit the profession entirely. The highly regarded horseman Angel Penna seemed paralyzed by indecision after he took the Phipps job; he was so cautious and ran his horses so sparingly that his tenure turned out to be a dismal failure.

The family found a successor in a young Midwestern horseman who has started his career as a groom, worked his way up through the ranks and developed the champion Vandlandingham for the Loblolly Stable. McGaughey took over the Phipps horses late in 1985 and, when he did, a journalist asked him why he would want a job that had broken so many people. McGaughey said: “It ain’t going to break me.”

It hasn’t, but the stress of it has surely taken a toll. Since taking the job, McGaughey has spent time in an alcoholism-treatment clinic. His marriage broke up. Yet he insists the Phippses “have never questioned a thing I’ve done. I guess I just put a lot of pressure on myself.”