How Jeff Gillis Became a Family Man

It’s taken some time, and some life-changing events, but trainer Jeff Gillis – of Federal Flex and Mystician fame – has finally come to realize that there’s more to life than working. And his growing commitment to balance and happiness certainly hasn’t taken away from his success on track. If anything, it may have bolstered it.

By Perry Lefko

Every night, regardless of how his horses have fared, 34-year-old trainer Jeff Gillis sneaks a peak into the room of his two boys, eight-year-old Jacob and six-year-old Tyler. It’s all about perspective – something Gillis gained an appreciation of a few years ago. He finally realized that he needed to devote more time to his family instead of focusing purely on horses. And yet ironically enough, it’s family that drew him towards horses. A shared love he had with his father, Raymond, in fact, who died suddenly four years ago – but who may be the guiding light in his son’s success.

“At some point you recognize what matters in life,” says Gillis from inside his office at the Ideal Training Centre. His attention is often drawn away by horse matters, but he quickly shifts the conversation back to family life, in particular his wife, Sarah, and their children. “There will always be more races. It’s just about priorities and I didn’t always see it that way. I thought a Saturday night at Woodbine meant we’ve got six in and I can’t miss it. But I’ve realized they race with or without me.”

As 2011 was giving way to 2012, Gillis reached a personal best (with almost $4 million in purse earnings) and he appeared poised to win his first Canadian training title. His season included a victory in the $300,000 Breeders Crown Open Mare Trot with six-year-old Frenchfrysnvinegar, who was supplemented to the race for $31,500 – a portion of which Gillis paid to put his money where his mouth was when suggesting breeder/owner David Smith pony up and take a shot. He also had success with Mystician, who won the million dollar Metro Pace in 2010 and pocketed almost $700,000 as a hard-knocking sophomore. And Gillis’ two-year-old gelding pacer, Speed Again, won five of 10 races, just shy of $500,000, and suggested he could be a quality sophomore after placing third with a troubled trip in the Metro. Apogee Hanover, whom he welcomed late in the season, and Mister Herbie had good seasons in the Ontario Sires Stakes program, each of them winning their Super Final.

Gillis’ annual purse earnings have been on the increase since 2009, and the fact he has a financial interest in many of his horses has helped him to earn a comfortable living and invest in yearlings and broodmares, some of whom were bred to Santanna Blue Chip, a horse he owned with others. “It’s about making money for me... it’s a business,” Gillis admits. “I’m a selfish guy. I want to retire young. What drives me is success. I have a love for the sport and enjoy horses, but it’s a business for me and a financial game. It’s not necessarily wins or training titles. But there are sacrifices.”

And again, he is talking about family life. He coached his kids’ baseball team and makes time to watch them play hockey. He was a hockey player himself growing up, a goalie, but when the action headed up ice all he could think about was horses, which happened to be his father’s hobby. So now he has the best of both worlds: training horses and living his hockey dreams vicariously through his sons, whom he admits are “both pretty good – better than I was.”

Gillis could easily pass for a bouncer if you didn’t know he trained horses. He stands 6-foot-4, weighs 285 pounds, wears a large ear ring in his left lobe and has a tattoo shaped like barbed wire on his upper left arm. He’ll proudly display it if you ask. “I guess it was a midlife crisis,” he says of the ear ring and the tattoo, both of which he added in a one-week span five years ago. “I don’t know if it was a phase. At the time I had to have an arm band.”

Hey, there are worse things in life to have.

Born in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Jeff moved to Ontario at three years old with his family. His parents had decided that the opportunities for raising a family were far greater there than the Maritimes and settled in the Mississauga area. Raymond worked in the shipping and receiving department at Northern Telecom, and his boss happened to be George Peters, who now operates Ideal Training Centre.

It’s a small world.

Raymond Gillis had raced horses in the Maritimes, and one of his starters, Battle Gun, set a track record at Inverness Raceway in 1979, clocking a mile in 2:05.3. Jeff has memories of his father taking him to his hockey games and then going to the races or to the barn. The seeds of a future career were sewn.

A few years into his teens, Gillis moved again, this time with his mother and stepfather to Alliston, near Barrie, Ontario where his rudimentary equine education began. He worked on weekends for an old horseman named Clarence Rutledge, who bred and raced horses on the B circuit. “It was experience, and any kind of experience is good experience,” he says. “That was more a kid just showing up – free labour kind of thing – just trying to learn.”

Not long after he officially became eligible to acquire his trainer’s license, Gillis began his career with the help of his father. His mentor provided him with a homebred mare, JT Laugh, whose first two initials represent Jeff and his younger brother, Tim. The up and coming trainer won his first race in his ninth start, when JT Laugh came out on top in a $2,500 claiming race on December 30, 1995 at old Barrie Raceway. “I remember that better than last week,” Gillis says with a smile. “That was a nice horse to kind of have your first win with.”

The purse had a value of $1,800, of which $900 went to the winner. When you do the calculations, Gillis collected all of $45 as the winning trainer, but in his first year as an official conditioner it didn’t matter. His horses won all of $1,620 that year.

Rather than work for others to learn the business, Gillis decided to learn on his own, using money he made working for his stepfather in the cattle business. He claimed his first one, a horse called Armbro Lick (with his stepfather) for a nominal amount at Flamboro. The horse raced 14 times, won twice and was subsequently claimed.

The trainer’s purse earnings escalated to the grand sum of $12,396 after his second season. They climbed again to $47,350 in his third year, but fell to $11,277 the fourth. He subsequently went broke.

“There’s an expression I’ve heard recently that I’ve grown attached to,” he says. “‘Lessons not learned in blood are soon forgotten,’ and I think there’s some truth to that. When it’s your own money and your own livelihood – I came from very humble beginnings – you’re forced to work hard and do well in order to get by. I probably would have been better served in a lot of ways learning a few more tricks of the trade from an experienced, respected horseman.”

To make financial ends meet, he worked the midnight shift on an assembly line at Chrysler. It was mundane and routine, but supported his life as a struggling horseman. He came home at six in the morning, grabbed an hour of sleep, headed off to the track to jog horses, returned home to get some rest and then went to his night job. He raced his horses on the weekend. It was not a life he wanted to live forever.

In 2000, Gillis’ horses collectively earned $138,501, and he saw his first big break when approached by owner Fred Brayford of Alliston to claim a horse for him called Best Man late in the fall of 2001. Gillis had some success with the horse and Brayford gave him some more. In March of 2002, the trainer moved south from Barrie and rented a house in Guelph to race on the Woodbine circuit -- what he called the epicentre of harness racing in Canada.

Not long after he was approached by Bert Smith, who owns the Almost Doesn’t Count Stable, to condition most of his stock. Gillis’ annual purse earnings began to skyrocket. He went from $247,195 in 2001 to almost $1.5 million in 2002. In 2003, he won in excess of $2.1 million in purses and placed third among trainers on the Woodbine circuit.

“That’s the difference between training $3,000 claimers that are racing for $2,200 and training $50,000 claimers that race for $28,000,” he says.

In 2004, his earnings dropped by more than $500,000 from the year before to $1,627,360, and the next year that bankroll dipped below the $1 million mark. He admits that he and Smith got into a “bit of a rut” when the stable started to slump and that led to a gradual parting of the ways. Gillis started developing relationships with some people who would partner with him on claiming horses.

But the worst was yet to come.

In February, 2007, he and 10 other horsemen on the Woodbine circuit were charged in what became known as the Aminorex scandal. Traces of the stimulant, which is a banned substance, started to appear in horses treated with the sheep wormer Tramisol. The positive tests were considered Class 1 drug violations, subject to suspensions of one or more years by the Ontario Racing Commission, pending an investigation. Gillis said when the positives were announced, he didn’t even know what Aminorex was. The trainers were put in limbo pending an ORC ruling, so Gillis began dispersing his horses at a fraction of their worth. 28 days after the positive tests were discovered, it was announced the trainers could race at B tracks, but restrictions were placed for the Woodbine circuit, requiring the horses to be in a retention barn a day before they raced to ensure security and integrity.

Gillis devised a plan to go back to basics, racing in Sudbury, where he had gone earlier in his career while based out of Barrie. Alongside his father, he decided to claim some horses that fit the racing scene at Sudbury and move there to keep expenses down, while his wife and kids remained in Guelph.

That plan ended abruptly on June 30 when Raymond Gillis, 61, was killed in a car accident near Ottawa; he was on his way home with Tim from the teen’s high school graduation in Nova Scotia. A transport truck turning on a bend in the road hit their pick up truck head on. Raymond died instantly, while Tim miraculously survived the accident with only a punctured lung and a few cuts. Both were wearing seatbelts.

Raymond Gillis had been more than just a father to Jeff; he was also his best friend. “That was incredibly tough,” Gillis admits. “I didn’t know what to do. I was a mess. I didn’t see what the point of the Sudbury thing was. I wasn’t into it.”

Paul Cameron, who drove the horses for the Gillis family in Sudbury and helped with the day-to-day chores, took control of the operation for a short while and then oversaw it full-time when it was shifted briefly to southern Ontario. Gillis decided to work for Carl Jamieson as a second trainer to make ends meet, which also gave him a chance to oversee his investment in the two-year-old colt pacer Santanna Blue Chip, whom he owned with Carl and his son, Jody.

Santanna Blue Chip, a $75,000 yearling purchase, broke his maiden at Western Fair Raceway the night before Raymond died. In fact, earlier that night Raymond had called Jeff to ask him about him. Santanna Blue Chip earned some $900,000 in his first season, which ended with a wins in both the Governors Cup and Breeders Crown. Jeff used some of the earnings to buy a quarter interest in a $100,000 yearling trotter called Federal Flex that Jody owned with Ken Henwood. Subsequent interests were later sold to Al Libfeld and Marvin Katz.

In December of that year, 11 months after the Aminorex scandal arose, the horsemen implicated in it were exonerated by the ORC. It ruled that due to the uniqueness of the situation and the evidence of mitigating circumstance, the horsemen did not fall below the level of reasonable care in protecting their horses from a prohibited substance that resulted from the use of a non-prohibited substance.

Gillis had reason to be hopeful going forward, but what happened afterward -- and is still continuing – is stunning. He has been on an incredible roll.

As a three-year-old, Santanna Blue Chip won two of 16 starts, placed second four times and third five times, and won in excess of $700,000. He quite likely would have earned a lot more had he not knocked heads with one of the greatest horses in harness racing history, Somebeachsomewhere.

Federal Flex started off his freshman season with four consecutive victories, but his streak ended when he finished ninth in a field of 10 by more than twenty lengths as the 1-5 favourite in the William Wellwood Memorial. Federal Flex had a mild temperature beforehand, but it was decided to race him, which proved to be a mistake. The horse was given time off, during which Gillis and Carl parted ways. A month later, Federal Flex returned to the races with Gillis listed as the trainer and in his second start the colt won the $718,000 Valley Victory Stakes.

Although he won just $478,050 in 2008 as a listed trainer – and most of that off Federal Flex’s big win – he had a banner season as an owner. “I kind of felt somehow, not to get too spiritual or anything, that my Dad was looking out for me or something,” says Gillis. “His death was the last significant blow in a stretch of tough times. Then, it kind of felt like it was turning around. Things have been relatively wrinkle free since then. I consider myself very fortunate.

Santanna Blue Chip will always be near and dear to my heart because he saved me from the soup line. Without him there was no Federal Flex, there was no anything. I might be back at Chrysler now if not for him.”

Instead, he has found success and perspective, winning on the track and in the game of life through a commitment to his family.