When the hammer fell on Hip #5 in the Lexington Selected Sale in October, 2011 little did anyone know that the ride of a lifetime had just begun for a group of Canadians, originally hailing from one end of the country to the other. A ride that would bring this group, ranging from age 33 to 78, together like a family... including a day in Ohio that none of them will ever forget.
Story by Keith McCalmont / Photos by Nigel Soult
“I thought he was going to break my ribs.”
The words sound threatening, painful for certain, and there may even have been tears but if there were, they were only tears of joy.
Those words belong to Anthony Beaton, the 36-year-old assistant trainer, and part owner, of Little Brown Jug champ Vegas Vacation.
On a rowdy afternoon at the Delaware County Fair, Beaton stood dangerously close to amped up co-owner Adriano Sorella as Vegas Vacation, trained by Casie Coleman, took the lead in the second heat and barreled down the stretch to win the Little Brown Jug.
“He won and I was jumping up and down and Tony was jumping up and down and I turned and grabbed Tony so hard I must have broke his bones!” recalls Sorella.
Sorella, once a star offensive lineman on his high school football team, admits he got a little carried away, “I’m not exactly a tiny guy, but I was so frigging excited!”
Beaton, who offers up words like they’re $100 bills, quietly admits, “I did lose my wind there for a second.”
Vegas Vacation, purchased by Coleman for $32,000 at the Lexington Selected Sale in 2011, is owned by five rather unique individuals. Coleman, Beaton and Sorella are joined in ownership by 78-year-old industry veteran Ross Warriner and first-time horse owner Phyllis Saunders.
Together, the group represents a unique cross-section of Canada ranging in age from 33 to 78 while hailing from one end of the country to the other.
And they don’t always agree.
Sorella, who hands out $100 bills like they’re pennies, nearly did just that at the Jug had Coleman not intervened.
Supremely confident, Sorella decided that when Vegas Vacation won the Jug, he was going to make it rain to the tune of US$10,000.
“I had to preorder the money from the bank. You can’t just walk in and get that kind of cash,” laughs Sorella. “I took out eight grand in singles and another two grand in five-dollar bills.”
In addition to the cash, Sorella also had some baseball caps made up with Vegas Vacation emblazoned across the crest. Packed and ready to roll to Delaware, Sorella made one tiny mistake.
“I took a picture of my suitcase with a baseball cap on it and posted it on Facebook,” laments Sorella.
Coleman saw the posting and all hell broke loose.
“Casie is superstitious, I mean super-superstitious, and she messaged me and said, ‘Are you crazy! Why would you do that? Don’t you know its bad luck?’
“She started rambling about all these horses she made hats and shirts for and how once you do it, it’s the kiss of death.”
Sorella reluctantly deleted the picture from his Facebook page and took the money out of his suitcase.
“Part of me wishes I’d left it in my suitcase because I would have ended up throwing it in the crowd,” admits Sorella. “But it’s probably a good thing I didn’t do that.”
COLEMAN, A NATIVE OF Victoria, British Columbia is the mastermind of the group having signed the ticket on Vegas Vacation.
She co-owns a 40 percent share of Vegas Vacation in partnership with Warriner, through their highly successful West Wins Stable.
There’s not much the personable Coleman hasn’t accomplished in harness racing. Winner of more O’Brien Awards for Trainer Of The Year than anyone else in history (five), she’s also won the Jug, the Metro Pace and North America Cup to name just a few races, and in the process has earned a reputation as one of the top trophy-winning trainers on the continent.
It’s no wonder owners gravitate to her.
“Ross Warriner is partners with me on everything for West Wins and we’ve been partners in horses for seven or eight years now,” says Coleman.
Sorella, who used to own thoroughbreds, got into the harness game through the SBOA New Owner Mentorship Program which takes 10 prospective owners, each investing $4,500, and partners them up with a mentor and trainer to buy a yearling and learn about horse racing.
“There were two ownership groups, one led by John Kopas and the other by Casie Coleman,” recalls Sorella. “I knew all about Casie and chose to go with her. But Kopas did better with his group. His horse (Grin For Money) made a few hundred thousand dollars. The horse we ended up getting, M G Homerun, was an alright OSS horse, but not much more than that.”
Even though he didn’t hit that initial venture out of the park, Sorella was determined to win with Casie, even if she did play hard to get.
“I went back to Casie after and told her that I wanted to buy some horses, and she told me she wasn’t taking on new owners,” says Sorella. “She’s a great trainer and people go to her everyday but she likes the owners she has and she’s her own owner and is invested in the majority of them. “
Instead, Coleman put Sorella in touch with her boyfriend, Blake MacIntosh.
Sorella claimed a number of horses with MacIntosh, but he persisted with his original plan of working with Coleman.
“When baby season was coming around again, I went back to Casie and said listen, ‘I want a couple babies and no disrespect to Blake but I know how well you do with two-year-olds and I really want you to take me on as an owner.’
“I’m not sure what it was, maybe she felt sorry for me, or maybe she knew that I was serious about this because of the horses I’d been claiming, but she took me on and here we are.”
And when Coleman sealed the deal on the Bettors Delight gelding, she knew just who to call.
“I messaged Adriano and told him I’d just bought a colt named Vegas Vacation. I thought he’d like him because of the name,” laughs Coleman. “He loved the name and ended up taking half.”
As a unique way to incentivize her staff, Coleman offers her assistants a chance to buy into the yearlings they like.
“Once I get the horses to Florida, I let them train them to see who they like and Anthony liked Vegas Vacation and he bought five percent of the West Wins share.”
The final part of the ownership equation comes in the form of Saunders, who simply wanted to get involved.
“She’s just a friend who wanted to buy in, so she picked up five percent from me,” says Coleman.
Through 28 starts, Vegas Vacation has banked just shy of $1-million in earnings while taking the team on a tour of the biggest races and tracks across North America.
But, it’s all in a days work for Coleman who seems to take great pleasure in bringing her friends along for the ride.
“Most of the owners are there for every race. Sometimes we even travel together to keep ‘shipping costs’ down,” she laughs.
And as for keeping her owners in the loop?
“Text messaging is pretty much the greatest thing ever,” she grins. “I’ll text them once a week and give them an update on how the horse is doing.”
OF ALL THE OWNERS, it’s Beaton who knows best how ‘Vegas’ is doing.
Beaton has driven more miles behind Vegas Vacation in morning jogging and training than anyone lucky enough to have sat behind the star pacer.
“Speed and quickness make him a special horse. When you ask him, he gives it. He shifts gears so quick it’s something you can’t teach a horse,” says Beaton.
Tony, who now resides in Waterdown, Onatrio with his wife Lisa, grew up in Port Hood, Cape Breton, a proud seaside community on the west side of Cape Breton Island, and he’s still a bit surprised to be making a living in horse racing instead of hockey.
The road sign welcoming drivers into Port Hood proclaims, “Proud of Our People, Proud of Our Heritage, Home of Al MacInnis!”
MacInnis enjoyed a Hall of Fame career in the National Hockey League playing for the Calgary Flames and St. Louis Blues.
“Like any young person from Cape Breton I always wanted to make it to the NHL and play hockey but it just didn’t pan out,” laughs Beaton. “I never thought I’d end up making living training horses.”
Hockey and horses kept Beaton busy as a youth.
“I learned the racing game from scratch,” he says. “It’s more laid back and like a hobby down there. It was just me and a couple of buddies owning horses together. We’d go to Inverness Raceway on Sunday. You’re not racing for any amount of money it was just for fun.”
Eventually Beaton moved to Ontario to find work.
“I moved here in 2001 and I worked for Rod Hennessy at the time and then I worked for Paul Mackenzie for a year. For the last eight years now, I’ve been with Casie,” he says.
Starting as a caretaker, Beaton worked his way into a position as an assistant trainer in Coleman’s bustling barn and has even trained a couple of his own. But it’s thoughts of Vegas Vacation that keep Beaton inspired at the track.
“He’s a dream horse,” says Beaton. “There was something about him when he came out of his stall at the yearling sale that caught my eye. He reminded me a little of Betterthancheddar and I thought if he could be anywhere close to ‘Cheddar’ we’d have ourselves a horse.”
Though Beaton didn’t make it to the big leagues as a hockey player, he’s certainly made it to the big leagues in horse racing suiting up under the lights to warm up his star pupil on some of the biggest prize money nights available.
AT THIS STAGE IN HIS LIFE, Sorella is chasing the hardware more than the prize money.
And though some people might focus on Sorella’s flashier escapades and think the 40-year-old Toronto native grew up with a silver spoon, don’t be fooled.
“I worked hard my whole life. When I was young I worked in a meat shop for ten years packing meat and eventually the owner of the place became my partner and we opened up a couple restaurants,” says Sorella.
A good student at York Memorial, Sorella was blessed with a business mind in an athlete’s body. He did well enough at football to earn scholarship offers to play ball at Boise and Maine, which he declined.
“Growing up in an Italian household, parents don’t want you to go to school in the U.S.,” says Sorella. “Plus I was always thinking business anyway. So, when high school was done I opened up a restaurant (Pazzo’s) in Kensington Market.”
The restaurant did well, but not well enough to support Sorella and his two partners.
“I had a big drought,” says Sorella. “I just needed to do something else.”
Sorella was married in 1999 and they had a daughter, Tatiana, which meant he had to put his nose to the grindstone.
“I had no choice but to go work for my godfather in a plumbing mechanical company for about seven years as an apprentice plumber. But it wasn’t me,” he says. “I was making good money but it wasn’t my thing. I was really struggling.”
Sorella’s exuberant personality is suddenly quiet as he recalls a difficult period in his personal life.
“I got divorced in 2001,” he says. “I was living in a basement apartment and I didn’t have much money.”
And then, the life energy that propels Sorella takes over and inflates him to his larger than life self.
An opportunity to work in ad sales, a natural fit for a man who makes you feel like a best friend after ten minutes on the phone, changed his life.
“I was doing online ads on my own for seven years and I landed a gig with the Infinity Network and they looked after me,” says Sorella. “They put the reins in my hand to take over all their ad sales. It gave me the power and resources to go out and buy racehorses and live how I want to live.”
Sorella’s words string together at an alarming rate as if he’s taking everyone listening on a journey at breakneck pace.
“Seven years ago I was living in a basement and had nothing. Now, I’m on the verge of paying off a $670,000 home. I have nice cars, a nice job, I’ve got a Little Brown Jug, I’ve got some nice horses. How can I complain?” he speeds.
Pausing to take a breath, reining himself in, it seems for a moment this run-on sentence of accomplishments might have reached its full stop.
Think again.
“Plus, I’m single and I have a great daughter who is turning 14 and this is all for her. We got to fly a private plane to the Poconos together for a race and she thought that was really cool. My parents did for us and I’m going to do for her,” he says. “Tatiana loves visiting the horses and she’s learning quickly that the horse doing well is good for us.”
Deep down, Sorella knows that his flashy personality may turn some people off. In addition to his proposed $10,000 giveaway, Sorella has sponsored elaborate barbecues at Casie’s farm, complete with an ice-cream truck, poutine truck, open-bar, etc.
Just recently, Sorella took 26 people to Ruths Chris, a top of the line steak house, the night before the Jugette. And within the first months of owning Vegas Vacation, he made headlines by promising to take Casie’s entire crew on a real Vegas vacation if the horse won the Metro Pace.
But it’s not about being flashy.
“Even before I got into racing I’ve always wanted to do things for other people. That’s the way my dad was,” says Sorella. “When the ice cream truck came down our street, my dad would buy ice cream for all the kids on the street and even the old people because he got a kick out of seeing everyone licking their ice cream. It was more of a laugh than trying to impress everybody and it’s the same thing for me.”
THOUGH IT SEEMS UNLIKELY, there are actually a number of similarities between the excitable Sorella and experienced Warriner.
Both share a love of football and business and despite their age difference, Warriner is 78-years-young, there is certainly a mutual respect. It’s a friendship one can expect to flourish as maintaining a relationship is the foundation on which Warriner has built his life.
Consider the rather roundabout way Warriner was introduced to racing back in the late 1970s.
“I used to coach minor league football in Burlington,” says Warriner. “One day a chap came up and said, ‘You spend a lot of time with our kids, is there anything I can do to help?’”
The chap was George Doy, a longtime horse owner, and he helped Warriner find a few sponsors to provide equipment for the kids on the team.
A few months went by and it happened that Warriner’s office needed new siding, and siding was Doy’s business. He placed a call to get a quote and Doy arrived at the office to make his pitch. When all was said and done, Doy had made Warriner an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“He said, ‘I have a horse racing at Flamboro Downs, how would you like to go up with me?’” recalls Warriner. “Off we went and of course the horse won. I told George if he was ever looking for a partner on a horse to call me up.”
A few weeks later, George called and Warriner joined him, and a number of investors, in a training centre. Suddenly, Warriner was a player in the racing game.
Doy, by way of pitching the purchase of a trotter named Carolwood Richard, connected Warriner to trainer Roger Mayotte. And with Mayotte, Warriner went on to enjoy great success at the races including a number of famous scores with his favourite horse, the 62-time winner and $2-million earner Escape The Wind.
And you’d have to think that Sorella would appreciate Warriner’s sense of business adventure.
A Hamiltonian through and through, Warriner attended Delta Secondary, Central Secondary and eventually studied at MacMaster University.
When asked if he was a Ti-Cats fan, Warriner laughed, “I sold programs as a 12-year-old at the stadium. It was my first business venture. A friend and I had the Melrose entrance to the stadium. On a holiday weekend we made $120 which in those days (1949) was a fortune.”
Over the years, Warriner, an accountant by trade, has been involved in a number of industries but it’s racing, and the friendships he’s made while racing, that he loves best.
“I’ve never owned a horse by myself,” says Warriner. “Sharing the experience with other people and the relationships you develop is most important to me. It enhances the whole experience.”
And his experience is welcomed by the group.
“Ross is the father figure of the group,” says Sorella. “He always tells me to enjoy the ride. In his words, ‘I have a lot of scars and bruises from racing so enjoy these moments’.”
PHYLLIS SAUNDERS, only just retired at the age of 60, finally has the time to enjoy those special moments owning a racehorse can bring. She moved to Hamilton from Port Colbourne when she was 20-years-old and, like Warriner, became immersed in life in ‘The Hammer’ marrying a steelworker, and raising three children who still live in the area.
“I worked two jobs at a time most of my life, in retail sales and as a bartender, before I retired two years ago,” says Saunders.
A lifelong racing fan, Saunders created her own opportunity to work with one of North America’s top conditioners.
“I met Casie six or seven years ago at Mohawk. I just walked up and introduced myself after she had a win,” she says. “I just admired her. I thought she was amazing. Especially as a woman in a man’s sport doing as well as she was. I think Casie’s an inspiration for women all over. Her parents must be so proud of her.”
Their friendship grew from that meeting and, in time, her daughter April went to work for Coleman assisting with office work and helping out with the horses. It was April who alerted Saunders to the opportunity of owning a piece of ‘Vegas’, and the timing couldn’t have been better.
“I jumped at it because I didn’t have to work weekends or nights anymore, so I thought I could go to the races and watch him,” says Saunders.
Although the high stakes success of her well-traveled racehorse has improved her bank account, Saunders likes it best when ‘Vegas’ is at home.
“I love going to the barn when he’s up here. We have barbecues and a chance to spoil Vegas,” she laughs.
Plus, it allows Saunders a chance to bartend.
“Vegas likes a drink of beer once in a while,” she laughs. “His favourite is Rolling Rock.”
OVER THE PAST YEAR, this motley crew of owners has been enjoying their moment playing the role of the underdog in the David vs. Goliath battle that is Vegas Vacation racing against the blue blooded Captaintreacherous.
The Somebeachsomewhere colt, a $250,000 purchase at the 2011 Lexington Select Sale, has already signed a lucrative stud deal with Hanover Shoe Farm starting in 2015.
Captaintreacherous, who has won 20 of 23 career starts, has gotten the better of Vegas Vacation on eleven occasions. But in five of those eleven meetings ‘Vegas’ has been a close second to the divisional leader, including back-to-back defeats in the Hempt elimination and final by just a neck each time.
Then there was the final of the Cane Pace at Tioga where ‘Vegas’ ended up fourth to ‘The Captain’, beat just three-quarters of a length, and seemed to be climbing over his rival’s back as he was boxed-in helplessly right through the wire.
“I don’t know if you can call it a rivalry. We haven’t beat ‘The Captain’ yet,” says Coleman. “We’re coming close but we haven’t done it yet.”
Vegas Vacation will have the entire 2014 season to take down his rival and add to his legend.
“We won the Jug, but I want more,” says Sorella.
And what Sorella wants, he usually gets…so Beaton, if he wants to save his bones from getting crushed again, might want to think about grabbing his shoulder pads from his hockey bag the next time Vegas lines up to do battle with the Captain.