Experience more value than gender when it comes to training winners at Hastings Park

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Separating the colts and geldings from the fillies and mares is the norm in racing, but it only applies to the horses. When it comes to the trainers, vets, hot-walkers, grooms and the tens of other essential people required to help an equine athlete get ready to race, there are no allowances made for gender.

And in the case of trainers, allowances don’t need need to be made. Hastings is particularly well-represented by women trainers, and they’ve been matching the men for so long, it’s barely worthy of note.

Just last month, five of the six winners one afternoon at Hastings fell to five different women trainers, a statistic remarkable only in that nobody considered it even worthy of comment.

Nicole Rycroft, who is from a long-established racing family but who is only at the beginning of her training career, thinks women trainers are so well-established at Hastings these days, that youth is more of a hindrance than gender.

“Just being young feels the harder part,” Rycroft said recently. “Trust has to be earned and, even though I’ve been in the sport my whole life, some probably do think, ‘She’s only been training for three years, what does she know?’”

Unlike Rycroft, Patty Leaney, whose own daughter Jaymie Pearman Cruz is currently carrying on the family business in Seattle, wasn’t born into the sport, but agrees experience is more important than gender. Leaney said: “Perhaps back in the day it might have been an issue, but I’ve never found it a hindrance to be woman in racing. I know Jaymie feels the same. She’s taken seriously, but perhaps a few will say, ‘Maybe in a few years.’”

Both Rycroft and Leaney acknowledge the women trainers who have come before and set the standard. Both cite Hastings’ pathfinders such as Nancy Betts, Terry Clyde, Pat Jarvis, Cindy Krasner and, of course, leading trainer Barbara Anderson-Heads as having shown the way. Anderson-Heads benefitted from the knowledge passed down by her trainer father (Robert) and mother (June) and she discovered long ago that there are no short cuts when it comes to learning how to train winners.

“I do remember a fellow in the grandstand when I first started training,” Anderson-heads recalled, “and he looked over and he says, ‘oh you’re Barbara Anderson’ and I said ‘yes’ and he says ‘oh you’re way too young to be training’.

Sadly, as Anderson-Heads pointed out with a rueful smile, “With experience comes age. I’d much rather be experienced and young, but that’s not the way it works.”

Hastings Race Selections:

First Race Friday

Hastings Race 1 (7 p.m.): On a card largely devoted to redoubtable female horses, Queen of Attitude is perhaps the toughest of them all. Already twice a winner this season, the eight-year-old mare goes in search of her 15th lifetime victory.

Hastings Race 3 (8 p.m.): Pineapple Tidbits is another veteran female with an iron constitution and courage to match. The seven-year-old mare won over tonight’s distance two weeks ago and a follow-up win tonight would be the 11th of her remarkable career.