Usually, it’s about $110, $120 per head per week. “Normally, a groom gets a job taking care of five, six, seven horses and they get paid by the head. It also solved issues and problems that have always existed in racetrack barns. The system continued for a variety of reasons, primarily among them that it worked. “When everybody was secure in knowing they were going to get paid a certain amount, they were happy to do whatever it took to get the job done.” Daniel and the exercise riders would walk hots, help catch horses and fill the water buckets. My brother and the grooms would walk down the line and muck stalls together. Ortiz described the new system as “a test run that was scary. With all-hands-on-deck required, the traditional pay structure of pay-per-head went out the proverbial window followed by job descriptions. Aside from the horses, the barn was Ortiz, three exercise riders, an assistant trainer, a foreman and the two grooms. “We went there with 27 horses and only two grooms. Barn help didn’t want to travel to Colonial Downs in Virginia where Ortiz and many other trainers had to locate.
He is based in Lexington and had stabled during summers at Churchill Downs. The closure of Churchill Downs this past summer for the new turf track installation was the time for Ortiz to launch his system. The salaried system solved a chronic short-term problem of finding barn help and the long-term problem-equally, if not more importantly-of keeping barn help. He went on to earn $688,013 for the year-an enviable figure for any new trainer.
IRAD ORTIZ SPILL FULL
That’s very respectable for a trainer in only his first full year on the racetrack. He saddled eight winners in 46 starts at Oaklawn, for a 17%-win percentage. Ortiz may have also interspersed “My Way” with whistling a happy tune on the way home. Don’t let anybody else tell you where to run them. Nobody knows your horses better than you do. Steve and I didn’t really know each other that well at the time, but I like to talk a lot, so I asked him, ‘What advice would you give a young trainer?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Stick to your guns. He ran third and I ran fourth and we were walking back to check our horses after the race, we happened to walk side by side. “Steve Asmussen and I were in a race together. John Alexander Ortiz has two favorite memories from his first Oaklawn Park meet in 2017: listening to Frank Sinatra’s signature song, “My Way,” on the eight-hour drive back to Lexington from Hot Springs, Arkansas after the meet and getting some advice that he has never forgotten.
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