McAnally Nearing Seven Decades at Santa Anita

Ron McAnally has been around the track a few times. The legendary Hall of Fame trainer, who turns 84 next July 11, has been at every Santa Anita Park meet since 1948, except 1950-51, when he served two years in the Air Force.

 

A fixture at his Clockers' Corner table as early as 6:30 a.m. when temperatures have hovered near the freezing mark on recent mornings, McAnally is sharp of mind and in relative good health as Santa Anita embarks on its 79th season Dec. 26.

 

Born in Covington, Ky. and raised in an orphanage with two younger brothers and two sisters, McAnally would go on to reach racing's greatest heights, training 12 champions, the most famous of which was two-time Horse of the Year John Henry.

 

He walked hots for his uncle, Reggie Cornell, trainer of the mythical stretch runner, Silky Sullivan, whose breathtaking rushes from last to first in the late 1950s would make him a household name.

 

"I was a groom mucking stalls at Santa Anita with this little guy at the next barn, right where Paddy Gallagher is stabled now," remembered McAnally, one of the oldest active trainers still on the beat. 

 

"I went into the service and when I came back, this guy was all the rage, winning races left and right. I didn't know who he was."

 

The man was Bill Shoemaker.

 

"I came here in 1948 in the dead of winter," McAnally said, "and Lefty Nickerson had come in from the East Coast. It snowed like hell while he was here and he looked at me and said, 'I thought it never snowed in Southern California.' "

 

McAnally, ably assisted by former trainer Dan Landers since 1995, isn't winning in bunches like he did three decades ago, but he takes it in stride, waxing philosophically.

 

"No trainer can win races with bad horses," he says. "But life goes on."