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“I got sober, opened up my own stable and went to work.”
my own stable and went to work,” he says. “The only people I knew were bad people — drug dealers and such.”
One summer around 1986, John went to Mount Pleasant Meadows in Michigan with 19 horses and sold all but one and trained and ran Southern Policy (Reb’s Policy-Due Be Fast, Fast Jet) with Tom Tietz.
“I called Blane periodically and would always tell him, ‘I’ve got to do something!’” John says. “Then I called Wayne Lukas. He was at the top of his game. He had offered me a job at Bay Meadows one time, but I didn’t take it. He set me up an interview at his office, so I called Blane and asked if he’d take me up there.
“Blane said, no, he just didn’t have the time,” John says. “I said, ‘I’ve got no time! I just can’t stay here anymore. I’m trying to be straight and sober and I’m working for some really bad people.’”
The next day, John boarded a plane and flew out. “I walked up to Blane at the races and told him where I was headed,” John says. “Blane says, ‘Don’t do it, just hang on and come by the barn in the morning.’
Blane offered him a job, but John said, “No, no, no, no. I want to train horses and since we’re talking, I’m going to tell you straight up, all that yelling you do, that works the opposite on me; I learn nothing. I close down. I can’t deal with it.
“He hired me right there and that’s how it started,” John says.
STINEBAUGH SUCCESSES
WORST VACATION EVER
John worked for Blane for seven or eight years without a vacation and one fall he said to Blane, “Hey, you know what, we’ve had a super year, I want to take a vacation for a couple weeks.”
Blane asked John where he wanted to go and when John replied that he was considering Hawaii, Blane said he’d be bored to tears.
“He said, ‘You want a vacation? Let’s do this. I’ve got 20 stalls at Pomona. You can come stay at the house with me and Shirley and go to Pomona every day and fool with those horses and I’ll pay you a percentage on them. You can just relax.’
“I said, ‘What part of that is a vacation?!?’” John says. “So, every night when I’d come in, he’d say, ‘Let’s go to the races tonight.’ He’s got me working all day at Pomona and helping him at the races all night.”
In May 1994 at Ruidoso, Blane started telling John he wanted to shut down there for good after Labor Day and offered to send John to Santa Anita, promising he could run the operation. “We’ll have the best of the best,” Blane said. But John made the decision to go out on his own.
EMULATING HIS MENTOR
John had learned the ropes of horse buying from Blane, so when John started out at Sunland Park, training for Carol Addison,
he followed his familiar pattern. “She always wanted to have more horses, so I said, ‘Get some cash and meet me in California and we’re going to buy some Thoroughbreds.’”
2019 Champion Distance Horse Let There Be Sound.
“My husband went fishing and I went to California,” Carol says. “We went to Blane’s farm and met his family and went to tracks and ranches looking at horses and claiming some. At one point we had 13 horses and I didn’t
miss a race; chasing after the horses John was running for us kept me busy.”
“Within a year, I had 50 or 60 head,” John says.
John’s client base grew to include Charlie Forbes; Mike Levi, with whom John later built Frontera Training Center on R.D. Hubbard’s old place near Sunland Park; Dieter Trapp, who was buying horses to build up Quarter Horse racing in Germany; Bruce Pilkenton; and Bruce’s father-in-law, Tommy Arhopulos, who stood Windy Ryon.
Tommy told John to pick out five or six yearlings from his crop of 50-60, so John’s pick included Doctor Cheval, Katie Cheval, Johnny Cheval, and Stormy Cheval. “They were wild; they hadn’t been touched,” John says.
Under John’s tutelage, Doctor Cheval, by the Beduino son Cheval Volant and out of
the Alamitos Bar daughter Little Tiny Lamb, qualified for both the Heritage Place and Rainbow derbies; Katie Cheval (Cheval Volant- Miss Katie Ryon, Windy Ryon) won the G3 Manor Downs Lassie Futurity; Johnny Cheval (Cheval Volant-Oh Rexie Ryon, Windy Ryon) won his trial to the MBNA America Texas Challenge trial and qualified for the Texas Championship Challenge G1; and Stormy
2012 Champion Distance Horse All About Larry.
2008 Champion Distance Horse High On Cat.
STATS (AS OF JUNE 3, 2021) Career Starts
Wins (Stakes Wins) 2nds (Stakes 2nds)
3rds (Stakes 3rds) Total Points Earnings
6,174
863 (70) 828 (55) 779 (61) 27,003 $17,287,048
2012 Champion 2-Year-Old Filly PJ Chick In Black.
2010 Champ. 3-Year-Old Gelding Double Down Special.
SPEEDHORSE July 2021 53