Grade 1 Winning Trainer Joe Cantey Dies at 82

Joe Cantey, who trained Loblolly Stable's Temperence Hill to defeat Genuine Risk in the 1980 Belmont Stakes (G1) and also trained numerous other graded stakes winners in the 1970s and 1980s, died Jan. 5 in his hometown of Camden, S.C. He reportedly died at the age of 82 from lung and mouth cancer.

Equibase statistics, which date back to 1976, list Cantey as having won 444 races from 2,761 starters—though his totals are likely higher than those figures, as he also trained in the early 1970s. He retired from training in 1987.

From 1977-1984, he won 33 graded races, including 10 grade 1s. In addition to Temperence Hill, Cantey also trained Cox's Ridge and Majesty's Prince. The former won the Metropolitan Handicap (G1) in 1978 in his crowning achievement for owner John Ed Anthony of Loblolly Stable, and the latter took five grade 1s, including two runnings of both the Man O' War Stakes (G1T) and Sword Dancer Stakes, (a grade 1 in 1984 and a grade 2 the previous year) for owner/breeder John Marsh.

Temperence Hill became champion 3-year-old male of 1980 under Cantey's conditioning, also capturing that year's Travers Stakes (G1) and later beating older horses in the Jockey Club Gold Cup (G1).

"Joe was Lollabolly's first New York trainer. We hired him when Cox's Ridge was just a 2-year-old," Anthony said. "He took Cox's Ridge onto eventually win the Met Mile and a number of nice stakes. At one point in (Cox's Ridge's) career, he had won 11 of his last 13 races, with his only losses coming in the Jockey Club Gold Cup and in the Californian Stakes against J.O. Tobin.

"He would come to Hot Springs with the stable in the winter and then back to New York in the spring and it fit our program beautifully. It was a wonderful time we had together. Joe was a top guy. I admired him and we were friends throughout our lives."

Trainer Daniel Peitz spent seven years working under Cantey as a groom, foreman, and later as an assistant trainer.

“The first day I walked in the shed row, no knock against (former boss, trainer) Paul Adwell or anything, but he (Cantey) didn’t miss anything,” Peitz said. “Every morning, the first thing he would do was walk down the shed row and look at every feed tub, Richie O’Connell was working for him at the time as his assistant, Richie was going around and feeling every horse’s legs. Everybody was getting done up in four bandages. Everybody had their own brushes. He did it the right way. Right away, I was like: ‘This is the way it ought to be.’

"He was just a good horseman."

Upon his retirement from training, Cantey became a six-time world champion of sporting clays and eventually opened his own gun club, Hermitage Farm Shooting Sports, in Camden, S.C.

"He was an avid sportsman, he loved to hunt," Anthony said. "He was a great shot. He was never happy in New York, he always wanted to be back in South Carolina. And once he felt he had made his mark in training horses and felt that he had accomplished enough, he moved back to South Carolina and managed a wildlife plantation down there. He did that for a number of years before the gun club."

Catney is survived by his ex-wife, Charlsie Cantey, his wife Amy, and children, J.B., a neonatologist and infectious disease doctor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and University Hospital, and his daughter Ashley.