Page 26 - October 2007 The Game

26 The Game, October 2007 Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper
On the Road Less Traveled:
The “Double-Life” of Alex Murray
By Peter Valing
An acquaintance of mine is a B.C. Supreme Court judge, but you wouldn’t guess it once he doffs his robe at the end of the day. George Angelomatis spends his evenings in the basement of one pub or another, training boxers. Much the same could be said of Alex Murray, except that his “double-life” starts each morning in the Hastings backstretch, training horses before he puts on his robe for the day. As coincidence would have it, the two men know each other, the latter having pleaded a criminal case or two before the former. Together, the two characters give a Runyonesque dimension to Vancouver’s legal society.
While interviewing Alex in his tack room on the peripheries of the backstretch, I brought up George, partly to see if Runyon’s 20th century union of ring and track still holds true in the 21st, and partly to momentarily pause the avalanche of facts, jokes and anecdotes that was tumbling forth from his lips. My fingers had seized up and my notepad was overflowing.
No surprise, considering the life that Alex has led. In the beginning, there was the track. Alex was at Hastings before and after school, watching his father’s horses train. “When my father was off working on the trains, my mother would come down and watch the horses for him. She had a hot-plate set up in the tack room, and I’d have my lunch there. Then I’d run back to class.”
It wasn’t long before Alex owned a horse of his own. Working summers on the trains, he saved up enough to claim Xplored. “Fresh out of university, and I was living off a horse!” he laughs. “The first year, I didn’t even claim taxes. The income didn’t seem real.” With Xplored Alex covered a lot of track, from Victoria to Toronto, Washington to Louisiana. “It gave me perspective. I was exposed to how others worked with the horses, and this was invaluable.” He noted the differences in method and technique, but soon realized that things were done in a similar way across the board. “Training at Santa Anita and Sandown was basically the same, plus or minus the zeroes attached to the purse.”
It was in 1973 that Alex officially became a trainer. He had two stalls at Golden Gate Fields, but didn’t stay long. The 70s were rambling times, and likely to the strains of Gershwin and Oscar Peterson, Alex covered the long miles between meets. The early 80s found him racing officially at Northlands; the late 80s training at the now defunct Sandown on Vancouver Island.
“I had also finally written my LSAT and had been accepted to Law School at UVIC,” Alex explains. (He had missed a previous opportunity to write the entrance exam because he had entered a horse in a stakes race in Calgary.) Rambling days
had been exchanged for hectic days of early mornings spent with the horses and midnight hours spent with the books. “In my last semester my student loans ran dry, so I lived in my 10x10 tack room.”
A freshly-minted lawyer, Alex’s specialty was criminal law. “It was what I found most interesting and the field best suited to my personality. Nothing really shakes me up too much. Life and death, love and hate - I look at it all with a level head.” Since ‘93, he’s represented a wide range of clients, from shoplifters to murderers, and attributes his insight into their minds and ways to his years spent at the track. “I’ve seen it all here – the peaks and valleys of human behavior. The backstretch offers such a wide experience of life in such a small arena.”
Up until last December, Alex kept a suit hanging in his tack room. “I’d be here at 5AM to gallop my horses, and afterwards I’d be off to the courthouse to defend a client. I had to be careful not to track hay or dirt into the judge’s chambers.” This kind of dedication paid off in 1997 when his colt, Vernon Invader, was named champion two-year-old. The following year Vernon Invader won the B.C. Derby, and in 2001 came through again as winner of the B.C. Cup Classic.
“I like to say that he cribbed and weaved his way to $600,000,” says Alex. “He was a great horse, but he had his vices.” Alex dealt with the excess nervousness in Vernon Invader by cutting the partitioning wall between him and his neighbor by a third, allowing freer interaction between the animals. “I don’t like to use too many mechanical devices to correct my horses. I prefer social means to make them more content. This is, after all, a very artificial environment that they’re in.”
Now that suits no longer hang in his tack room, Alex will have more time to think of ways to improve the living con- ditions of his horses. “I’ve taken a sabbat- ical from my practice. I like law, but I love horses, and I’m going to concen- trate on them for the time being.”
Concentration comes easily to Alex, who partakes in none of the diversions and vices often associated with the backstretch. He’s a working-class, rooted intellectual acetic. “I don’t drink, smoke or play the ponies. I allow myself one vice – buying horses. I figure dropping $5,000 or more on an animal that might go nowhere is gamble enough.”
With a little over a month to go in the Hastings meet, Alex’s mind is once again on the road. He’s submitted his stabling application to Golden Gate Fields and hopes to be in California by December. “I especially like it around Berkley. I’ve got a fondness for radical ideas,” he says. And thus the interstate awaits Alex, his horses and his volumes of Emile Zola.
His Passions Run Skin Deep
By Jackie Humber
On most mornings the first thing a groom will hear when a galloper is ready to jump on a horse is the running of the galloper’s feet down the shedrow. That would be if you were a groom waiting for an average gallop boy, but Cenek Kottnaur is no average gallop boy. You can hear his familiar sounds of a crow as he marches up and down the many shedrows he works for.
Born in the late 60’s in the communist country of Czechoslovakia he began working at horse barns and exercising the large animals at the youthful age of 14.
”I had to do everything at the barns back home. We would groom and gallop and exercise all the horses,” said Kottnaur.
After a year working at the all day job he decided to pursue another avenue still in the horse industry.
“Well I always liked horses. I would spend a lot of time just drawing them, so I still wanted to work with them. So when I was 15 I went to jockey school for three years,” he said.
During those years Kottnaur perfected his riding skills and remained working at the barn. At age 18 when most young adults are thinking about working and buying a vehicle, Kottnaur decided he wanted to leave the restraints of his communist home country.
“I tried to leave but I was caught and thrown in jail. My mom had to come and get me out,” said Kottnaur.
One year would pass before he legally bought a ticket to Italy and with the help from his father he was able to leave Czechoslovakia.
”Normally I wouldn’t be allowed to leave but my father made it possible for me to go,” said Kottnaur. He stayed in Italy for 15 months. First working in construction for six months and then the call of the horses reeled him back.
“The last 8 or 9 months I worked at the racetrack in Rome. I was just galloping a few horse every morning,” said Kottnaur.
One day after galloping in Rome, Kottnaur started to think about all those postcards that his family had received from his uncle in Canada.
“When I read my uncles letters and
saw the pictures, it sounded like the place I wanted to be and I knew someday I would be in Canada,” said Kottnaur.
In 1989 Kottnaur arrived in Vancouver and first began working in construction. He had known that Hastings racetrack existed but he put his passion for riding and galloping on the back burner. Then the desire to be at a racetrack hit him head on.
“One day when I was driving down McGill Street on my way to work in construction, I looked over and saw all these people galloping horses. Well, I quit my job that day and went to the track,” he said.
Kottnaur first began working as a groom for trainer Jerry Norton. The next six months he worked with trainer Eric Garcia.
“In the early 90’s I started working for trainer, Jim Brown. I worked with him for two years. We all did everything. I groomed and galloped,” said Kottnaur.
Realizing that grooming was not his passion, Kottnaur started freelancing as a galloper. It was around this time that Kottnaur first began to get tattoos.
“I mainly have Haida tattoos but the cost was high so I decided to start tattooing myself. He first began on oranges, then grapefruits and finally on any willing friends.
“I really like tattooing. I just wish I had more time to do it,” said Kottnaur.
His work can be seen on the arms of many \backstretch workers at Hastings Racetrack.
Kottnaur’s freelance galloping started in the successful barn with trainer Robbie Anderson.
“I’ve been in the Robbie Anderson stable now for 8 or 9 years and I really enjoy it,” he said.
Today Kottnaur is the father of a 16 year-old daughter.
“I talk with her on the phone all the time. We get along great, but she is in school and she works, so I mainly speak with her by phone,” said Kottnaur.
As for his future, Kottnaur hopes to remain galloping and tattooing.
“I just wish I could do more tattooing, there’s just not enough time,” he said.
Trainer Alex Murray and Exercise Rider, Cenek Kottnaur at Hastings
Photo by Jackie Humber