Page 38 - NMHBA Summer 2017

Izzy Trejo
“A 99-To-1 Shot” Lands a Tough Job
“Izzy’’ Trejo was living the easy life.
A stress-free, pay-as-you go, can it get any better than this sort of gig.
It was the spring of 1995 and Trejo
had a job parking cars at social events and other happenings at upscale locations in the Phoenix area. He was making $600 a week—all cash money he points out—and only had to work four days a week to earn it.
The only glitch was that Trejo had a couple of months earlier earned a degree from the University of Arizona’s racetrack program and the diploma was figuratively sitting in his back pocket.
So when the racing secretary at Delaware Park offered him a job, Izzy’s conscience came into the picture.
“I thought, my parents spent all this money on college and here I am parking cars,’’ says Trejo. “I figured I better take this opportunity.’’
And that’s how Ismael “Izzy’’ Trejo’s career in horse racing management got started. A career that 15 months ago brought him to New Mexico as the current executive director of the New Mexico Racing Commission.
Trejo’s time in New Mexico remains a work in progress. His is a job that brings
a daily diet of challenges and changes, optimism one day, setbacks the next. Part of his mission is to chase “cheaters’’ out of the state and make New Mexico horse racing a product bettors in other states are willing to gamble on.
In no way, says Trejo, did he know the scope of what he was getting into when he arrived in New Mexico in March of 2016.
But more on that later.
Career decisions can be influenced by a lot of things, not the least of which are family and familiar territory—the sense of having been there, done that.
So it was with Izzy Trejo.
By the time he was five years old, he and his older sister Adela were spending a lot
of time on the backside alongside their dad
Milo Trejo. There’s no underestimating the influence his dad had on Izzy.
“I owe a lot of my success to the work ethic that my father instilled in me working in his barn,’’ says Trejo.
Milo Trejo trained racehorses for more than 40 years at tracks in New Mexico, Arizona, the Midwest and Canada. For him, the road to the races started with a trip from his home in Mexico to South Texas to help his dad pick strawberries.
Milo Trejo was a young boy (12 or
13) at the time. His family had a ranch and land in the mountains around their hometown of Zimapan-Hidalgo. It was an agriculture-based, self-reliant existence that included cows, pigs, goats, corn crops and farm horses.
Because Milo Trejo could read and write, his father brought him along on one of his annual trips to pick strawberries in Texas.
“Being around South Texas eventually led to his being around horses and ranches,’’ says Izzy.
by Pete Herrera
In time it led to a job grooming horses for match races in West Texas. His ability to both groom horses and break babies eventually got him to Sunland Park and Turf Paradise in Phoenix, where he worked with trainer Richard Hazelton, a virtual icon in the business.
Hazelton - often referred to as “King Richard’’ - did the Chicago to Phoenix circuit and by the time he retired in 2011, had won 4,745 races.
Among the horses that Milo Trejo groomed and exercised during his
time with Hazelton was Zip Pocket, a sensational sprinter who at one time held multiple world records.
“They would train all winter in Phoenix and have fresh horses when they got to Chicago,’’ says Izzy. “Arlington Park was the upper echelon of tracks in the Midwest back then but the horses from Phoenix held their own.’’
Milo Trejo began training Thoroughbreds soon after The Downs at Santa Fe opened in the early ‘70s and scored immediate success.
Izzy says although he doesn’t have the stats to back it up, his father told him he won 11 races from the first 15 horses he ran at Santa Fe.
“All of a sudden people started bringing him horses and he built his stable up,’’ says Izzy. “From there it was a lot of hard work and a pretty successful career.’’
Many of Milo’s victories came in partnership with the late jockey Walter Ramos. The two became a formidable duo at Santa Fe, the State Fair meet in Albuquerque, and at Canterbury Downs outside Minneapolis.
Izzy was born in 1971 and a winner’s circle picture taken at Santa Fe shows Ramos aboard the winning horse with the then infant Izzy in his arms.
Milo Trejo, who will be 76 this month (July), retired from training last September.
36 New Mexico Horse Breeder
Izzy at 5 years of age in his cowboy suit.
Izzy’s exposure to horse racing began