Rob Fellows is a numbers guy. So when discussing the numbers his stable posted in 2022, it looks like it could be one of his best years but the longtime trainer astutely noted that there's a bigger picture to examine.
That bigger picture is also why at the age of 60, the veteran conditioner is stepping back from his active role as the head of his stable and handing over the reins to his son, Kyle.
"Being self-employed, you're always a little bit of a control person. You make your own way. So it's very hard to surrender control or surrender what you've spent a lifetime building," stated Fellows. "I mean, I've been toying with the idea for the last few years...but when is the right time? I can't answer that, but I think about that my son wants to do this for a living, my wife [Yolanda] and I have developed a lot of relationships and have a lot of clients and horses and broodmares, and we own yearlings and stud shares...we're kind of all-in in this game.
"But, at the same time, for the last 40 years I've been at the races every night of my life. I can't keep doing it. It gets harder and harder on you, you know?"
Thus, as the calendar turned to 2023, Fellows decided that the timing was right for him to take more of a senior management position with Team Fellows.
"I mean, I could have stayed down as trainer as long as I lived and let my son do some of the work, and I would never have been able to see where he may or may not take our little business we started. This way I can, you know, kind of watch and advise him."
With nearly 10,000 training starts, Rob Fellows sports a summary of 1,560-1,215-1,241 with $25 million in purses. His best season numbers-wise came in 2008 when his stable earned $2.15 million and he finished the year tied atop the training standings on the WEG circuit with 95 wins. Having said that, Fellows astutely pointed out that the $1.63 million banked by his starters in 2022 might be a better accomplishment.
"I kind of look at the numbers and I say, okay, we have $100 million to race for. And I think we got about 1.5 to 2 per cent almost of the total amount of purses with a lot less than 2 per cent of the horses. So when you can get more than your market share of the purse with less than your market share of the horses, that's kind of what you're trying to do.
"We had a couple $2 million years when there was $350 million in purse money, right? So we were getting like three-quarters of a per cent of the purse of Ontario. So now with less horses and getting a higher percentage, you're kind of getting more than your market share."
Two of the horses that were responsible for a notable share of that team bankroll in 2022 have returned to action for Team Fellows in 2023: past O'Brien Award finalists Logan Park and Warrawee Vital.
Logan Park (Archangel - Rite Outa The Park) picked up a win in his first start off the bench on Monday, April 3 at Woodbine Mohawk Park with a determined first-over Preferred 2 score in 1:54.2. The 13-time winner looks to repeat this Monday, April 10 at Mohawk in a $48,000 Free For All Trot from post position seven.
Warrawee Vital finished a solid third in his seasonal debut on Saturday, April 1 at Mohawk. The two horses that finished ahead of Warrawee Vital in that $28,000 conditioned event — Roll With The Flow and Points North — have both stepped up to the $42,000 Free For All Pace this Saturday. Warrawee Vital will face six rivals after drawing the rail in the $32,000 Preferred 2 Pace.
Fellows told Trot Insider before that April 1 debut that the son of Captaintreacherous - Great Memories is still rounding into form.
"Other years, I've had better tracks and we never tried to get them ready until May. So we'd actually have trained a lot better, faster, stronger before we qualified. This winter — and especially the last month — has been very hard to get a horse ready because we go into Mohawk to finish them off and there hasn't been great days."
One new addition to the Fellows barn that's likely to be heard from this year is a recent acquisition: four-year-old trotter Esplosione. A graduate of the Ontario Sires Stakes program, Esplosione (Kadabra - Dynamite Dame) won his second start for Fellows & Co. this past Monday, April 3 in 1:54 on the same night that stablemate Logan Park won the Preferred in 1:54.2. Owned by Outofthepark Stable, Haly Jojo Stable, Pat Dillon and Steve Mc Gill, Esplosione will be pointed for the Ontario Sired Graduate Series later this month.
"I hope he's like a newer version of All Wrapped Up," said Fellows in comparing Esplosione to his $450,000 winner. "A horse that will show up on the racetrack, grind out $100,000 and the owners can get their pictures taken and have fun with him. Hopefully that's the horse we got."