Page 8 - May 2008 The Game

8 The Game, May 2008 Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper
Kevin Buttigieg’s stable jumps from four to 20-plus
y Harlan Abbey
ast year at Fort Erie, trainer BL
will continue to train a few of Bruno’s horses at the Fort.
While Kevin
Buttigieg is not
related to either
veteran Canadian
horsemen Paul or
Bosco Buttigieg, he
did spend some time
working for Bosco.
“My family is not
racetrack oriented,”
he said, “but one of
my uncles, Joe Spiteri,
always owned a Thor-
oughbred at the Fort
and he exposed me to
horse racing. Although
I liked school and
graduated from Sheri-
dan College in Oakville with a degree in marketing and business manage- ment, I always knew I wanted to be involved in racing. I started working summers at Fort Erie at age 12.”
Kevin and his uncle became part- ners in a horse named Senate Reform when Kevin was 14. After working for trainers such as Mike Newell, Chris Tuttle, Mike Keogh (in Tampa) and Dan Wills, Kevin passed his trainer’s license exam in 2002 and began his “of cial” training career with Frank’s Approval, whom he described as “an old, classy horse who t my speed-
oriented program.” “His rst start for
had the best outlook and was the nicest to handle. A child could have worked with her.”
The only horse he owns at present is Bad Boy Will, a ve-year-old sprinter who broke his maiden for $32,000 at Woodbine.
With his brother Charlie, who has
15 years of experience in racing, as his chief assistant, Kevin Buttigieg says he’s established a good stable staff
and has high expectations. “Except for Marshmallow, who won two sprints in a row at Mountaineer, I’m still learning about most of Bruno’s horses. I like horses with front running or stalking speed, tactical speed. But I have to become a more complete horseman handling all types of runners.”
Kevin has used jockeys Robbie King and Neil Poznansky in the past, however both will not be in the Fort’s jockeys’ room this year. “I’ll probably use Chad Beckon, Cory Clark and Chris Grif th as my main riders,” he said. “I like to ‘spread the wealth’ and no one rider suits every horse; they’re not all the same.
“Training Thoroughbreds is my pas- sion, it’s all I’m doing. It’s a seven- day, 24-hour-a-day thing. I want to have a good year, win some races, and keep my owner happy. If I’m leading trainer, so be it.”
Kevin Buttigieg appeared in the winner’s circle only twice.
me was a win, in a dead heat. In his second start he dead- heated for second and in his next start he dead-heated for third. I doubt if any other Thoroughbred ever did anything like that.”
This time around, he is expected
to equal -- or exceed -- that total in just one or two days, certainly within the rst two or three weeks of the infant 2008 season.
In 2007 Buttigieg had a one-man, four-horse stable and owned most of his stock, which, along with his two wins, accomplished two seconds and four thirds in his 15 starts. This year, he’s in charge of a 20-plus stable of horses for owner Bruno Schickedanz, Fort Erie’s leading owner for ten of the last 11 years.
Kevin contin- ued to operate “under the radar” of most racing fans,
Kevin mentioned that Bruno “called him out of the blue last winter” while he was racing at Mountaineer Park in West Virginia.
Kevin Buttigieg and the Bruno Schickedanz owned Marshmallow
although his small stable always
had very high win and in-the-money percentages. In 2004
“The horses he sent me won their rst two starts and they wound up with four wins and three thirds in nine starts,” he continued.
La Vitesse was named “Mare Claimer of the Year” and the following year Vorticity won a similar award for the males. in 2006 those two horses and Angel’s Wisdom combined to win seven races in a row.
For such a successful and involved owner, Bruno Schickedanz does not have his new trainer on speed dial: “He calls only when he has something important to discuss.”
“I can’t say I have a favorite among all the horses I’ve owned and trained,” he said, “they’ve all been good to me and have been cool to be around. But La Vitesse probably was the one I liked the best. She had 11 wins in four years and although she was set in her ways and sort of nicky, she probably
Maurice Doyle
Mark Fournier, who has trained
the majority of Schickedanz’s Fort stable the last couple of years, is
now handling the owner’s string at Woodbine and Trainer John Simms
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day he and his friends jump the fence, and off they gallop with the gypsies in hot pursuit. The boy isn’t much of a rider; the gypsies are. He’s caught and given the drubbing of his life.
ith Maurice “The Bird Man”
Doyle, you can run down the list of just about every Irish stereotype and check “Yes.” Does he like to sing? Yes, at 6AM while galloping down
the Hastings’ stretch. Does he like to take a drink now and then? Sure, a belt of apricot brandy upon emerging from the icy waters of English Bay.
Is he tough? “Solid as a rock,” he claims, after a lifetime spent on horse- back. Religious? Perhaps not in the conventional Irish Catholic/Protestant sense, but spiritual for certain. Lucky? In more ways than one. Add to this the boisterous and gregarious nature, the sing-song voice and the twinkle in the eye, and what you get is a character
“After that,” says Moe, “I never took a gypsy horse again. Instead, I returned horses that other kids stole and for doing so the gypsies taught me how
to ride – bareback. That’s when you really feel like you’re a piece of the horse.”
straight out of a Pogues song.
The song would have to begin with
He knew at the age of seven that he was going to make a life out of horses. He didn’t care much for school, and his father’s hopes that, like himself, Moe would become a carpenter fell on deaf ears. In 1970 he began his jockey apprenticeship “on the at” In 1974, he had his rst win (for which he col- lected a gold watch with his name in-
how Moe learned to ride. Imagine
a boy of ve peering across the top of a fence in Dublin. On the other side, a group of roving gypsies has established camp. The boy spots their horses. He’s been on a pony or two at the Fair and he liked the feeling. One
scribed on the back). He raced at all
the main tracks in Ireland from Cur- ragh to Leopard’s Town until 1975, when his weight had caught up to him.
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Cont. Page 10
See “The Bird Man”
The Game May 2008.indd
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