By Emily Shields
ARCADIA, Calif. (Dec. 9, 2014) — As a young man, D. Chadwick Calvert was taught in church to remember the initials CTR for “choose the right.” They meant the right path, but Calvert has since converted the CTR initials to mean Calvert Thoroughbred Racing.
“Plus, I’m always trying to choose the right. . .horse,” he said
The past few years have seen Calvert do an excellent job of choosing profitable young horses, but he has decades of experience to pull from. With his own expertise and the help of a longtime friend, the Colorado-based attorney is building a stealthily good racing string. Born and raised in Denver,
Calvert was first introduced to the game by his lawyer father, David.
“Around 1968 a client approached him and asked if he wanted to buy a couple of racehorses,” Calvert recalled. “He didn’t know anything about them, but the first horse was named Flying Morman, and my dad was Mormon.”
That seemed a sound enough reason to buy in. Calvert remembers visiting the old Centennial Race Track in Littleton, Colo., to watch the horse run.
When Calvert was 17, his father purchased a horse out of Kentucky subsequently named Kid Calvert. The son of Exclusive Native won the 1974 Centennial Derby and was grade III-placed at Ak-Sar-Ben in Nebraska.
“That horse was named after me,” Calvert said. “That’s how long I’ve been interested in the game.”
Now, Calvert jokes that his attorney business is simply so that he can “afford the bad habit” of buying racehorses. “My wife, Dorene, and I got married 30 years ago and bought a few horses together in Arizona. Since then we’ve been racing in California quite a bit because I love Cal-breds.”
Calvert doesn’t select horses on his own, however. He relies on the help of fourth-generation horseman Scott Rollins, who is as close as a brother.
“I’ve known Chad my whole life,” said Rollins. “My grandfather trained for his father, and my father rode for them. We stayed close even when he went off to law school.”
The Arizona-based Rollins goes to the Thoroughbred sales there and in California to short-list horses for Calvert.
“I go through and look at every horse in the sale, making a list up to about 25 horses,” Rollins said. “Then we go back through them together and rank them before we try to buy.”
At the 2013 Barretts May 2-year-old sale, Calvert went to $15,000 on a Cal-bred son of Stormin Fever—Empress of Dance, by Maria’s Mon.
“I arrived at Barretts just in time to watch this colt work down the lane,” Rollins recalled. “I knew we had to have him.”
A dubious Calvert wondered if Rollins had even examined the rest of the horses in the sale, but Rollins insisted.
The colt, originally named Fever Storm, was renamed Storm Reveler and finished fifth and then third in consecutive maiden claiming sprints at Del Mar in 2013. In a final attempt to get him to break his maiden at the seaside racecourse, where the Calverts have a timeshare, Storm Reveler was wheeled back in against non-claiming company. He lit up the board at odds of 30-1 and caused a Pick 6 carryover.
Storm Reveler finished third in the $100,000 Barretts Juvenile Stakes and now has a record of one win and two thirds in five starts for earnings of $62,570.
“With the money from his maiden win, I went right back to the sales,” Calvert said.
At the 2013 Barretts October yearling sale Calvert picked up a pair of horses, including a chestnut son of Lucky Pulpit—Wild Reflection, by Wild Wonder, later named Colorado Strong. After being broken in Arizona, Cal-bred Colorado Strong was unveiled against maiden special weight company July 4, 2014, at Los Alamitos, where he won by a nose.
Shortly after that October sale Jack and Barbara Hatch contacted Calvert about a Papa Clem—Holiday Sale, by Boundary, colt they owned who had failed to sell in the ring. Calvert named the Cal-bred Peradventure and grew excited when he outworked Colorado Strong by several lengths before either horse debuted. Peradventure broke his maiden first out by 4 1⁄2 lengths.
Topping Calvert’s string of recent winners is Smack Talk, whose win was even more special, given that the Cal-bred son of Stormin Fever—Foxy Faith, by A. P Jet, is a homebred. Calvert campaigned Foxy Faith with Dustin and Jennifer Moore in 2005 and 2006, and the mare has since gone on to become a producer for them. Calvert and Moore own her juvenile son in partnership.
“He was named Smack Talk because of an incident at a hotel,” Calvert said. “They were Seattle fans, and it was right before the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos played in the Super Bowl. They were talking smack to me, and the name just really fit that colt.”
The little, fiery Smack Talk debuted July 17 at Del Mar, scoring by 3 1⁄4 lengths at odds of 8-1. He made it four-in-a-row maiden special weight winners for Calvert, who also has a Latent Heat filly named One Hot Note he owns with his wife.
Peradventure and Smack Talk surfaced again in the $196,000 Golden State Juvenile Stakes Nov. 1.
The race took place on the undercard of the Breeders’ Cup World Championships, and though the excitement of running in such a race was high, the outcome was muted as Smack Talk and Peradventure finished fifth and sixth, respectively.
“We wanted to get Peradventure running down the hill at Santa Anita, and even worked him on the turf,” Calvert said. “He will head for the grass next out.”
As for Smack Talk, trainerVann Belvoir, who conditions both horses, sees a bright future.
“That was his first race back since opening day at Del Mar,” Calvert said. “Both horses are nicer than what they showed in that race; he just needed the out. He may come back in the California Cup Derby in January.”
Calvert manages to balance his busy law office with his racing passion by making as many trips as possible to see his horses run. But he doesn’t despair when he can’t.
“I have a media room with a big-screen television at my practice,” he said. “You try to give everything equal time.”
“Chad is high energy and fun to be around,” Rollins noted. “He understands the game and that to be successful, you have to put money in. He’s not the kind of guy who waits around hoping a $1,500 horse will magically become a stakes horse.”
After another successful Del Mar season, Calvert wheeled his winnings back into two more horses, a Stormin Fever filly and an Albertus Maximus colt. Rollins is in the process of breaking both horses in Arizona, and they will ship to California in the spring with an eye on the 2015 Del Mar summer meet.
With four recent winners from Calvert’s small string of 10 horses, it would be prudent to keep an eye on the small but powerful barn.
“Not many people know how well we’ve done in maiden special weight company,” Calvert said.
The next time he has a horse in, the right choice might be to pay attention.