Agent’s hustle has role in latest triple threat
Kemplen finds the rides so jockey Contreras can worry about the results
No horse will win Canada’s Triple Crown this year, but jockey Luis Contreras still can. The 31-year-old will try to sweep the three races when he rides Cool Catomine in Sunday’s Breeders’ Stakes at Woodbine.
Contreras rode Holy Helena to victory in the Queen’s Plate, then piloted long shot Cool Catomine to a commanding win in the Prince of Wales at Fort Erie Race Track. If he can win Sunday — Cool Catomine is the fourth choice in the field, at 6-1 odds — it will be the second time Contreras has accomplished this unique triple: He did it in 2011 when he won the Queen’s Plate with Inglorious, and the Prince of Wales and Breeders’ with Pender Harbour.
While Contreras makes riding winners look easy, his agent, Gary Kemplen, works furiously behind the scenes to scout the best horses for his riders. Kemplen also represents Gary Boulanger, who will ride King and His Court in Sunday’s race.
“My job is to keep everyone happy,” Kemplen said on a recent morning at Woodbine. “Keep my jock happy, keep the trainer happy.”
But, he adds, “I’ve got to find the best horse.”
While his jockeys exercised horses for upcoming races last Sunday, Kemplen spent the early training hours whizzing from barn to barn on his golf cart, booking mounts for both men. Sometimes he must pitch the jockeys to the trainer, sometimes poaching a horse from another jockey.
Unlike other professional athletes, most jockeys in North America do not work under contract, so they must drum up their own rides for each and every race. That’s why an agent is necessary.
“It’s important because that way I can focus on doing my job — and he can do his” said Contreras.
For Kemplen, that means spending most of his waking hours searching for promising horses locally and afar. Right after Holy Helena broke her maiden in May at Belmont Park in New York, Kemplen thought the filly’s owner, Frank Stronach, might want to make a bid for the Woodbine Oaks and Queen’s Plate. He called her trainer, Jimmy Jerkens to get first dibs.
Kemplen hasn’t always been an agent. The 62-year-old started as a quarter horse jockey when he was 16, and then started galloping thoroughbreds when he was 17. He worked with champion mare Glorious Song and spent eight years in New York assisting trainers Noel Hickey and Walter Kelley before the late jockey Dave Penna asked Kemplen if he’d come back to Canada and be his agent. “I love being around the horses, and I love being outdoors,” said Kemplen. He also loves the hustle. “He spends more time on the phone than he does with his wife,” laughed Contreras, when Kemplen stepped away to take a call.
It may seem like it could be difficult to manage two top jockeys who ostensibly would be vying for some of the same mounts — Contreras is second in the Woodbine standings, Boulanger is fifth — but Kemplen says that’s not the case.
“It’s good. If (Boulanger) has a ride, I can say, ‘How about Luis?’ ” he said. “Or if Luis is committed, then I can say, ‘What about (Boulanger)?’ ”
That was the case with Cool Catomine. Boulanger rode Cool Catomine in his first race, and finished seventh. For the horse’s next start, Boulanger was already committed to another horse, so Kemplen suggested Contreras could give the colt a try. The colt finished third, but then regressed to a seventh-place finish with Contreras.
Contreras told John Ross, the horse’s trainer, that the colt should improve with blinkers and he did, winning his next two starts, including the Prince of Wales.
Sunday, the colt will have to step it up again.
“I would have been happy if he ran decent in the Prince of Wales, but he overachieved,” Kemplen said. “It’s all how he takes to the turf.”