Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
With Hades on trail, Orseno rises back to prominence
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Twenty-three years after running his first and only horse in the Kentucky Derby, trainer Joe Orseno is one good performance away from making it back to the world’s most famous horse race.
In the Florida-bred gelding Hades, Orseno has a 3-yearold that’s 3 for 3 and had his coming-out party eight weeks ago in the Grade 3 Holy Bull Stakes, where he upset the 2-year-old champion Fierceness. After skipping the Fountain of Youth Stakes, Hades will again meet Fierceness and nine other 3-year-olds in Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park.
Hades will most likely need a one-two finish in the Florida Derby to assure himself a spot in the starting gate May 4 at Churchill Downs. A third-place finish could leave Hades on the bubble in a points system Churchill Downs uses to determine the field in the likely case the race draws more than 20 entrants.
“The way he’s training and what he’s doing for me right now, I’m going to be disappointed unless he wins because he’s just doing that well,” Orseno said Tuesday at Gulfstream Park.
A victory in the Florida Derby would not only assure Hades a spot in the Derby, it would mark Orseno’s first Grade 1 win since Perfect Sting and Macho Uno won the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in back-to-back races on Nov. 4, 2000, at Churchill Downs. Both horses went on to be named champion in their respective divisions. That year, Orseno won six Grade 1 stakes and was a finalist for an Eclipse Award as North America’s outstanding trainer.
At that time, Orseno was in the middle of a five-year contract as one of two private trainers for Canadian entrepreneur Frank Stronach.
During those five years, Orseno won 10 Grade 1 stakes, including the 2000 Preakness with Red Bullet. Following a second-place finish in the Wood Memorial, Red Bullet was held out of the Kentucky Derby, a decision primarily made by Stronach, only to beat Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus in the Preakness. Stronach then held Red Bullet out of the Belmont to point to a summer campaign that never materialized.
“That was more disappointing than the Derby because he would have won the Belmont and he would have been 3-yearold champion,” Orseno said. “Then he got sick and needed a year off.”
An ankle chip kept Macho Uno out of the 2001 Kentucky Derby. Instead, Orseno ran second-stringer Thunder Blitz in the Derby, where he finished a respectable fourth behind Monarchos.
“He was not as good as Macho Uno, that’s for sure, but he had a nice campaign and ended up fourth,” Orseno said. “He ran really well for us. I was pleased with that.”
In the summer of 2002, Stronach made the decision to no longer retain Orseno as a private trainer, instead keeping some horses with him while spreading the rest of the stable out among several horsemen.
“No big falling out,” Orseno said. “The proof was I had horses for them after the contract ended for years and years.”
Still, Orseno had to rebuild his stable as a public trainer. He was sent horses from highprofile owners such as Cot Campbell’s Dogwood Stable and another Canadian businessman, Eugene Melnyk. None were particularly talented.
“Eugene Melnyk sent me five horses. I remember counting it up and he paid $3.7 million for the horses I got,” Orseno said. “Total, they were probably worth $20,000. Everybody
was giving me horses. ‘It’s Joe Orseno look what he did for the last five years, he’ll make these horses good.’ They weren’t good. A coach is only as good as his team, and I had no players.”
Since Krieger won the Grade 3 Tropical Park Turf for Orseno and Stronach in December 2002, Orseno has won just five graded races.
“I do miss being in those big races because I know we’re good enough,” said Orseno, who has 2,025 career victories. “Again, you need the players.”
Orseno, 68, started training horses in 1976. In the early 80s one of his clients was D. J. Stables, the moniker of Len and Lois Green, who named the stable after their daughter Debbie and son Jon. By the time Orseno took the Stronach job, the Greens had about 35 horses with Orseno.
When Orseno went public following his time with Stronach, the Greens slowly gave horses to Orseno, and then fired him a time or two before coming back a few years ago. Jon Green, now 54, told a story that he brought his daughter to Orseno’s barn one day and the then 8-year-old Carly wound up spilling the beans of the discussion by asking her father if she told Orseno he was moving the horses.
Despite the break-ups, Orseno remained friends with the Greens. After Jon Green sold his financial consulting business, he bought horses and gave them to Orseno. His father ultimately came back to the fold, too, though D. J. Stable maintains a larger string with Mark Casse.
“I can’t speak highly enough of his character, his work ethic, and his honesty,” Jon Green said of Orseno. “He’s taught me so much about horsemanship and about dealing with people as well, probably more so than anybody in the business.”
Orseno, who has about 50 horses, rebuilt his stable by making a decision years ago to be based year-round in Florida. In the last three years, he has maintained a string at Monmouth Park in the summer and plans to do so again this summer.
The Greens and Robert Cotran, another longtime client of Orseno’s, are the owners of Hades. A $130,000 purchase at last April’s OBS 2-year-olds in training sale, the Florida-bred Hades was bought with the lucrative Florida Stallion Series races in mind. But the horse needed more time to develop, was gelded, and didn’t make it to the races until December.
On debut, Hades got bumped out of the gate, was last early, but rallied to win that 5 1/2-furlong heat by a halflength. Three weeks later, Hades, facing Florida-breds, dueled with two other horses on the lead and drew away to win that seven-furlong race by eight lengths.
In the Holy Bull, Hades was challenged on the front end by Inveigled and then Fierceness, the latter putting a neck in front of Hades leaving the half-mile pole. The two ran together until the sixteenth pole, when Hades began to edge clear under Paco Lopez. Hades would go on to a two-length victory over Domestic Product and galloped out with something left in reserve.
“The one thing that Paco said that was interesting was he ran harder in the seven-eighths [allowance] than he did in the Holy Bull,” Orseno said.
Orseno toyed with the idea of running in the Fountain of Youth on March 2 – race that scratched down to five and was won by Dornoch – but stayed with his original plan of waiting for the Florida Derby.
“A little part of me said if I was in the Fountain of Youth I wouldn’t have to worry about points, I wouldn’t have to worry about anything. I think he would have been right there,” Orseno said. “But for my horse, I think I did the right thing. I’ll stand by that. I’m seeing the results right now; this horse is training phenomenal.”
While Orseno would naturally like to get back to the Derby, he said getting this horse there would be more about rewarding the 86-year-old Len Green.
“To get Mr. Green to the Derby is very important for me,” Orseno said. “I couldn’t be happier as far as who I should do it for. It seems like this is who I should be doing it for.”