ALABAMA’S LOSS IS CALIFORNIA’S GAIN
Carla Gaines at this year’s California Cup with John Harris, left, who gave her the fi rst horse she trained
In some small way, Carla Gaines—one of the most successful and admired horse trainers in the state—owes it all to California Thoroughbred magazine.
As she relates the story, the youthful Gaines was reading the periodical in an administrative office adjacent to a stallion barn in the bayou country of central Louisiana one icy winter morning when she made the decision that changed her life. The people she was working with at the time were pinhookers—in the business of buying yearlings and preparing them for resale as 2-year-olds. She enjoyed the people and working with the horses, but the weather was frightful.
“It was so miserable,” she recalled. “It just rained and rained and it was freezing cold. The pictures (in the magazine) were so inviting; it seemed so sunny and I remember telling my friend, ‘I’m packing my stuff and I’m going to California.’ Anyway, that’s how I got my start.”
Little did Gaines realize that her decision would lead to a training career totaling 31 graded stakes winners so far, including five grade 1 victories, and purse earnings of nearly $36 million. Among the stars have been three-time grade 1 winner Nashoba’s Key, a 2023 inductee into the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association Hall of Fame, and 2009 Breeders’ Cup Sprint (G1) winner Dancing in Silks. Both were bred in California, as are most of her biggest earners.
Dancing in Silks wins the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Sprint
Horses were always on her mind, even though her early career path headed in quite a different direction. The Birmingham, Ala., native started out as a counselor for troubled youth after earning undergraduate degrees in psychology and sociology and a masters in counseling at the University of Alabama.
“I wanted to change the world, to help mankind,” she said. “But it didn’t work out so well. I was working with kids who were in trouble, abused kids, and a lot of it was really serious.”
She recounted incidents of rural Alabama children raped by their fathers or other relatives, then avenging their mistreatment, sometimes with murder.
“I was shocked at how brutal people can be, and it was hard for me to deal with,” she said. “It was so difficult for me to understand; it was not what I was used to. I found myself taking some of the stuff home with me. After a while, I had to get away from that.”
She had loved horses since childhood, so she turned her focus to young horses.
Carla Gaines plans to keep training “as long as I have some good 2-year-olds in my barn.”
In California, Gaines broke horses for breeder Champ Hough, a bronze-winning 1952 U.S. Olympics equestrian. For Jack Van Berg, the Hall of Fame trainer and a large-scale breeder, she conditioned young horses in preparation for auction. Realizing that training was her future, she spent about 10 years learning the business as an assistant at barns in both halves of the state, taking care of the horses and also working them. That included a stint with Calumet Farm, which had a string in Southern California with trainer Tom Walker.
During this time, she got to know owners Warren B. Williamson, who diedin 2018, and John Harris. Gaines worked for a time at Harris Farms. Williamson and Harris would become the cornerstones of her success later as a trainer.
“They’ve been very good to me,” she said. “Mr. Williamson and Mr. Harris gave me my first two horses.”
Harris’s horse, Glory Quest, became her first winner, taking a $4,000 claiming race at Solano County Fair on July 16, 1989. Williamson’s horse, Yesterday’s News, was problematic to train, but she got him to win a race.
“Those were the kinds of horses I got back then, the ones that no else wanted,” Gaines said.
Adding of Williamson, “That’s how we got started, and eventually we began buying horses together. Those were great times. I miss him.”
Thirteen of Gaines’ 20 biggest earners are Cal-breds, and Harris and Williamson stand out as her top clients.
Texas Ryano, now a California stallion, won the 2016 Hollywood Turf Cup for Gaines
Besides Nashoba’s Key, the 2007 Cal-bred Horse of the Year and earner of more than $1.2 million in little more than a year of racing, Gaines trained the Williamson-owned British-bred multiple graded stakes winner Foxysox (an earner of $715,118) and graded winners Tiz Elemental ($483,740) and Texas Ryano ($455,045), as well as the latter two’s dam, graded winner Blending Element ($448,483).
The extensive list of top Harris horses is even longer, starting with the multiple stakes winner and Cal-bred champion Super High ($669,668), graded winner Lucky J.H. ($632,065), multiple graded stakes-placed John Scott ($460,304), and Cal-bred champion Closing Remarks ($398,820), currently in training. Other leading Cal-breds for Harris Farms are Unlimited Value, Desert Law, Top of Our Game, and recent stakes winner Coalinga Road.
“They’ve been very good to me; great clients and great friends,” Gaines said of Harris and Williamson. “They started me on my career, and we just continued from there.”
Gaines lives in Pasadena, a few minutes from Santa Anita, with her beloved 13-year-old white Labrador retriever named Louie. She enjoys hiking in the nearby San Gabriel Mountains and taking snow skiing trips to Big Bear and Mammoth when she has the time, as well as summering in Del Mar. She plans to continue training “as long as I have some good 2-year-olds in my barn.”
Dispensing advice on horses is a big part of her job, of course. But one of the most fortuitous rolls of the dice came from a client who ignored her. That would be Ken Kinakin, owner of Dancing in Silks, who wanted to supplement his horse to the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Sprint after winning the Don Valpredo California Cup Sprint.
“That horse was kind of an overachiever, and the Breeders’ Cup Sprint that year at Santa Anita was going to be an especially tough field,” Gaines said. “The owner was not a rich man, and Dancing in Silks was the only horse he owned. I tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted.”
As it turned out, Dancing in Silks scored at odds of 25-1 by a nose over Crown of Thorns. The first four horses were separated by a neck, and Kinakin collected a purse of nearly $1.1 million.
“I’m glad he didn’t listen to me,” Gaines said.