It`s not your basic winter vacation that Frank Kirby is taking.
He gets up a couple of hours before sunrise, goes to Cicero and spends much of his morning either out in the cold or in a drab, concrete barn.
Kirby trains thoroughbreds. However, there hasn`t been any thoroughbred racing in Chicago since Dec. 31, and there won`t be any until Sportsman`s Park opens Feb. 24.
”It`s a vacation from the tension of racing every afternoon,” said Kirby, one of Chicago`s top trainers since the mid-1970s. For the last six years, he has been training the Chicago branch of the Hondo Farm stable, a huge operation that also includes subsidiaries in Puerto Rico and New Mexico. But it`s not quite a paid vacation. The purse money has stopped coming in, but the bills never do.
”Actually, the tension of racing doesn`t bother me,” Kirby said, on second thought. ”I`d like to go here for 12 months.”
A trainer of Kirby`s stature could get stalls in either Florida or New Orleans, where many of his Chicago counterparts from last summer are residing. On the other hand, he couldn`t take along all 50 of the horses now at Sportsman`s.
”No. 1, we`re home,” explained Kirby. ”Of the horses here, about 70 percent are Illinois-breds. We`ve got extensive breeding and training centers in Illinois.
”No. 2, we don`t have the expense of traveling.”
Kirby and his horses have a lot of company. The Sportsman`s backstretch can accommodate 1,200 horses, and about 650 are on the grounds, according to Stormy Bidwill, the track`s president of thoroughbred operations.
The leading trainers at the Hawthorne meeting–Neil Boyce, George Getz, Kirby, Jimmy De Vito and Ernie Poulos–are taking ”winter vacations” at Sportsman`s, and so are many trainers with medium-size and small stables.
”We`re getting a good break in the weather,” said Kirby. ”In spite of that cold spell in January, the weather has been better than it was in November and December when we were racing at Hawthorne.”
Finding grooms and exercise riders is no problem, according to Getz, who is spending his first winter in Chicago after migrating to warmer climates for almost 20 years.
”I`ve had the same grooms for four and five years,” he said. ”Pay a good wage and treat people well and you`ll have no problems, winter or summer. ”When the Hawthorne meeting ended, I gave our horses two to three weeks off. Now, we`ll be putting them back into training to get ready for the opening of the meeting.
”The horses coming in from the East and leaving Florida early will have a little bit of an advantage over my horses because they have been competing. But my horses will have the edge on those who spent the winter on the farms.” The nearest track currently operating is Latonia in Florence, Ky., and some of the trainers at Sportsman`s are running horses there.
”They`ll send a couple of horses for races on Thursday night and Friday night, then come back here,” said Daily Racing Form clocker Bill Pettingill. ”The ones coming from here are hitting the board. The trainers aren`t sending them over there just for practice.”
The deepness of the Sportsman`s track and the absence of racing programs every afternoon keep winter training low-key. Most of the horses have been working three furlongs with times in the vicinity of 38 seconds.
”You still get a good idea of which horses like the track and can handle the sharp turns at Sportsman`s,” said Pettingill. ”For instance, Ernie Poulos has a couple of horses who have impressed me, High Oak Silver and M`Mamselle Coo Coo.”
As the start of the Sportsman`s meeting draws nearer, the number of horses on the track will increase and the workouts will intensify.
In the stable area, some have their fingers crossed in anticipation.
”It`s hard for the little persons to fit in,” said Claude Montgomery, a groom and assistant trainer for Mibbs Carroll, who has five horses at the track.
”If your horses had a good meeting–and you have somebody reliable to fill in–you can take a little vacation early in January. If not, you have to scuffle through the winter and hope that better days are ahead.
”I get here every morning at 6 o`clock, and I`m back here feeding and checking on the horses every afternoon. This morning, I started to bring this mare, Afro Gal, back into training. She had her last race at Hawthorne in December and needed a rest. But now you could tell she was glad to be back on the track.
”I got away from the track for two years and drove an ice truck, but once racing gets into your blood, you come back to the track. It`s different than on the outside. Here there`s no unemployment. You can always find something to do if you know what you`re doing.”
