BOTH A KIWI AND A CANUCK

New Zealand native Tony O’Sullivan may not have taken a direct route to Canada when he left his homeland years ago, but now, with a wonderful family, a flourishing business, and a Metro Pace winner in the barn, the Canadian citizen has truly made himself at home here.

By Perry Lefko

LEFT TO RIGHT: HAILEY, TONY, HEATHER & MACKENZIE

Trainer Tony O’Sullivan was born and raised in New Zealand, but he’s proud to say he’s a Canadian citizen and that there’s really not much difference between being a Kiwi and a Canuck.

O’Sullivan became a Canadian about 5 ½ years ago after taking up residence full-time in 2004 and thereafter marrying and starting a family. And in September, appropriately on Canadian soil, he celebrated the biggest victory of his career, winning the nation’s biggest two-year-old race, the $661,000 Metro Pace, with Beyond Delight.

“I learned a lot about Canada (studying to become a Canadian citizen), but I’ve probably forgot it all,” he says with a laugh. “New Zealand is home, but I don’t think of Canada as just a stop. It’s where I live with my wife and kids, where I have my business. I employ people. It’s home. New Zealand and Canada are very similar countries in the demographic of people. Everyone is more laid back, polite.”

Born on July 5, 1976 in Palmerston North, O’Sullivan grew up as the son of a horse racing announcer. He enjoyed sitting in the booth with his father, Mike, but had no intention of following him in that profession. In fact, he had no desire to pursue any type of a career in the harness racing business, which he considered more of a lifestyle and less of a full-time occupation – the complete opposite, he says, of standardbred racing in North America.

He wanted to be an air force pilot, but didn’t have the requisite marks in physics and decided at that point to abandon the university/college education and take up a trade in carpentry. He enjoyed woodworking and wanted to become a builder, but lost interest after a couple months, and began working at a thoroughbred stud farm about 20 minutes from his home. Then he began working for several standardbred trainers in New Zealand for about the next 2 ½ years.

Attracted by U.S. harness racing and the marketing of the stud farms in New Jersey, he decided to come to come to North America, taking advantage of a connection to work as a groom for trainer Paul Jessop, a fellow New Zealander.

“I realized pretty quickly how much I didn’t know just because it’s a very different way of doing things,” he says.

Jessop gave him the opportunity to drive as well, and O’Sullivan found that to his liking. After leaving America, and following a brief time working in harness racing in Italy, he returned home to fine tune his driving skills (his father called some of the races in which he competed). Eventually he decided to return to the U.S., this time with about $800 and a plan to stay longer. Ross Croghan, a transplanted Australian training in the U.S., hired him as an assistant trainer and gave him some drives as well. In 1997, he drove 131 times, won 19 and posted $68,905 in earnings. His career shifted to Ontario in 1999 when he oversaw Croghan’s horses for the summer at Mohawk. O’Sullivan decided to stay thereafter and worked for a few different trainers in Canada, while also pursuing his driving career. In 2000, he totaled $140,109 in earnings as a driver.

Two years later, in 2002, the horses he drove earned $233,709, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to reach the next plateau because he wasn’t catching enough breaks. He gave up the idea of driving full-time and set his sights on training. He had ownership in some horses with some clients he met while working for trainer Mark Harder and set up his own stable in 2004.

“I thought if I could make a living, and make a little more than I was making working for someone else, then I was good,” he says. “I owned a townhouse in Cambridge, what else did I need?”

In 2005, Bound For Glory, a three-year-old grey pacing filly by The Panderosa, became his first major horse. She won some minor stakes races and placed second to champion Cabrini Hanover in the final of the $680,100 Fan Hanover, earning about $300,000 on the year. O’Sullivan’s stable earned over $1.2 million in purse from 44 victories, and his stock as a trainer started to rise among prospective owners.

The following year he won the $569,250 Breeders Crown Three-Year-Old Filly Trot at Woodbine with Susies Magic, who scored at more than 20-1 odds over Pure Ivory and Passionate Glide in only her second start for O’Sullivan. Robert Stewart, Chuck Sylvester and Jim Campbell had all trained the Dream Vacation filly during her time in the U.S.

“I couldn’t believe I won the Breeders Crown,” O’Sullivan says. “It helped for sure. I got good horses and good owners (Lee and Linda Devisser and William Jones) because of that. But in some ways I wish I had won the race a little later in my career because I know a lot more now and I figure it would have helped me a lot more than it did in 2006.”

Fast forward five years to 2011 and Tony had his best season, placing second on the Woodbine/Mohawk circuit with 94 wins and finishing as runner-up for the O’Brien Award for Trainer of the Year to Jeff Gillis. O’Sullivan’s horses won more than $3.9 million in purse earnings, practically doubling his career best season, in both money and wins, from the year before. He started a Breeders Crown record 11 horses, although some of them were sent to him just for that event. His big horse that year was three-year-old gelded pacer Alsace Hanover (p,3,1:48.3f - $1,139,644), winner of the $500,000 Adios and stakes-placed in the Breeders Crown and Battle Of The Brandywine, to name a few.

“I would like to give him props. He really got me going,” O’Sullivan says. “It was one of those years where nothing went wrong. We drew well. We had no real soundness issues. We had very little sickness. It was just one of those things where trips worked out. I remember we won the Adios and I jumped on the plane and raced six at Mohawk and won three. We had a bunch of really good racehorses that won $100,000, $200,000. We had 45-50 horses, primarily racing here. We were racing five, six, seven on a Saturday night.

“We had horses winning three and four in a row. We were rolling. Scotty Zeron first started out at the time and I committed to using him on everything. It was a dream year.”

O’Sullivan registered stable earnings of $3.9 million and $3.4 million in 2012 and 2013, while he operated split stables in New Jersey and Ontario because of the uncertain future of racing in the province due to the cancellation of the Slots At Racetracks Program. Although he dropped off to $2.4 million in 2014, he reached the $3 million mark again in 2015.

In the summer of 2016, he decided to end his American string because it impacted on his professional and family life. He and his wife, Heather, have two children –- Hailey (from Heather’s first marriage) and MacKenize. It was while back home in New Zealand for a month’s vacation that the decision to end the split-stable operation formulated in his mind.

“When you go away for a month and you’re not on the treadmill and you get out of your work environment, you have a lot of time to think and you can see things a little differently than when you have tunnel vision and you’re just going 100 miles an hour,” he says. “That was when I started to think it might be time to wind it down. It was really hard to buy racehorses down there for a decent amount of money to where you could make money with them. No matter how big the purses are, it’s all got to come down to dollars. And I’ve got two young kids that are far more important to me. Not being able to be home when my daughter gets off the bus for school, it was starting to wear on me. If things weren’t running well in either stable it affected my thinking.

“I can focus much better on this stable now that I’m here more. It’s a lot easier. We’re still doing just as well; we’re just not racing as much. But now I have time to spend with my kids. I’m only now just starting to relax.

“Our family life couldn’t be better. I can’t complain. It’s great. The whole closing of the Jersey stable takes the stress off of the family. The stability in your home life definitely moves over to your business, your job, whatever. Is it the support system? Is it you don’t have worry about things? I don’t know what it is. Once I settled down and got married, my business got better and better.”

Beyond Delight, by Bettors Delight, won the Metro Pace at odds of 6/1, a week after breaking his maiden in his elimination (his ninth start) at odds of 20/1, giving O’Sullivan the most significant victory of his career.

Owned by Jeffrey and Michael Snyder and the Four Friends Racing Stable, Beyond Delight has given O’Sullivan his first big two-year-old star.

“It’s what I’ve wanted to have for quite a while and we haven’t been able to do it and now we’ve done it,” he says. “It’s a milestone. It sounds corny, but it’s one of those things where you can say, ‘I can do it.’ If I have the product, I can produce a horse for the biggest two-year-old race of the year, which is the Metro. The money is great, but it’s a personal accomplishment. The nuts and bolts of winning the Metro is we’ve had the horse from day one. He didn’t get sent to us. We nurtured him along like every over trainer does and we won the Metro.”

O’Sullivan has recently agreed to join Anthony MacDonald’s ‘The Stable’, which has created fractional ownership for as little as one percent of a horse and is in its second season of operation. Whatever horses O’Sullivan trains for the Canadian-based operation will be separate from his own business.

“Anthony approached me a few months ago to ask me if I would want to be on board (with the idea),” O’Sullivan said. “I think fractional ownership is really good, and the reason I went with Anthony is he wants to promote the idea, not himself, and he knows there are people that might want to own a horse with a so-called ‘name’ trainer. “Whether we get one baby or two babies from it, I haven’t really talked to him about that, but I think it gives owners an option. They might want to go with me or whomever. If we can get two new owners into the business that become real owners, it’s a success. Is it the answer to everything? I think absolutely not. But did it get people into the business? Yes.

“It’s a great idea, if marketed right, and you’ve got the right person behind it, because Anthony will push, push, push, and people will buy a piece of a horse. I’m pretty shy. I don’t really advertise much. But it might help me to push a little bit more.

“Hats off to Anthony. This is not personal gain. I think he’s truly passionate about it because otherwise why would he do it? Why would he give horses to me? I think he’s going to do it with a couple others, too. He wants to get a lot of people on board so it grows. For the good of the sport, I’m doing it. This is something that needs to be pushed.”

Clearly, Canadian citizen Tony O’Sullivan has several reasons to sing the praises of O Canada.

FINDING RELIEF AS AN OWNER INSTEAD OF A TRAINER

Tony O’Sullivan worked early in his career at a thoroughbred stud farm. Now he’s became a thoroughbred racehorse owner.

“I admire thoroughbreds,” O’Sullivan says. “They are powerful, and in the last few years I really thought about owning one and I thought I would get into owning one with a buddy on a mid-level claimer. It’s just to have something to be able to watch for a different type of excitement.”

O’Sullivan partnered with Mike Guerriero, who was one of the owners of 2013 world champion two-year-old pacing colt Hes Watching.

“It was something that wouldn’t get in the way of our existing business,” he says. “It was completely separate from his thing in standardbreds and my thing in standardbreds and didn’t affect any of our clients or his trainer (Dave Menary).”
They contacted former standardbred horseman Norm McKnight because of his harness racing background and his statistical success with mid-level claimers.

“He was easier to talk to (because of his harness racing background),” O’Sullivan said. “I thought I could have a more comfortable relationship with him. Mike and I wanted to have a vested interest in something that had nothing to do with the business we were already in.”

O’Sullivan and Guerriero visited McKnight at his stable and watched some horses work out and subsequently they decided on a budget of $40,000. McKnight picked out Bear No Joke, an eight-year-old gelding.

“I can’t read a thoroughbred race line, but Norm explained how he goes about claiming horses,” O’Sullivan said. “Mike and Norm knew more about it than me. We didn’t know in which race the horse would run because the condition book is completely different than a standardbred condition book.”

Bear No Joke raced first-time-out in a sprint stakes race, and failed to collect a cheque. He was run back in a claimer and finished second, and next time he ran, in a claimer again, he finished second and was haltered. All and all, the partners broke even in the 2½ months of their first foray into owning thoroughbreds. They reinvested in another claimer, Csonka, a six-year-old gelding.

“It’s not something I worry about in terms of how they are training and eating, that’s Norm’s job, like with my barn it’s my job,” O’Sullivan says. “It’s almost a little bit of an outlet. I have the excitement of owning a thoroughbred but I have no responsibilities of the day-to-day (job of training).

“Even though we know they are going to race every three to four weeks, it’s still strange having a horse you claim and it can’t race (back immediately) because there is no class written for him. But that’s part of the ride, part of the experience, and we know that going in.”