Powell Meshes Old and New in Hands-On Approach

When Leonard Powell was eight, he wasn't like the other kids. Football. Scuffles. Comics. Cops and robbers. All the usual mischiefs his snot-nosed peers were getting into were quietly shunned by the young Powell in favor of something altogether more…cultivated.

“Me and my brother were pedigree buffs,” explained the French-born trainer recently, the mid-morning sun beating through his Santa Anita office window. “During school at recess, at night, we would teach ourselves who was the great grandad of whatever horse won a couple of days ago. We could recite eight or ten generations.”

Not that Powell feared rapped-knuckles for insubordination. “My parents encouraged it,” he said. Which is hardly surprising. For, home happened to be the family's historic 200-acre Normandy stud farm, le Haras du Lieu des Champs–a timbered-barn glimpse into the 18th Century. Some of the farm's alumni have gone on to be champions. The 2000 Guineas winner Pennekamp was a product of one of their mares. The last three winners of the Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris were born and raised there.

But this is a farm that seems to have played no small part in shaping the humans nurtured there, too. One of Powell's brothers, Freddy, is head of bloodstock at Arqana. Another brother, Richard, now runs the farm. Powell's step-brother, Arnaud Delacour, has been rocketing up the charts on the U.S. East Coast after less than six years a licensed trainer.

While over here on the West Coast, Leonard Powell, 41, has been steadily carving these past 14 years a niche for himself as a particularly canny and patient operator at the helm of a barn currently some 18-horses strong.

“Even if a horse is doing well, I like to give it a spell for six weeks, which is enough time to freshen it up without losing too much fitness,” Powell said, about a strategy he says has been integral to the remarkable success he's enjoyed with the gelding Soi Phet (Tizbud), now a resplendent 10 years of age, and poised for yet another campaign.

Last year, Soi Phet won his sixth stake race, the E.B. Johnston at Los Alamitos. And his career earnings are just over $100,000 shy of the million-dollar mark. Not bad for a horse Powell claimed for $16,000 five years ago.

Then there's the ex-French filly, Fatale Bere (Pedro the Great), who in just four stateside starts has claimed last year's Surfer Girl S. and this month's GIII Providencia S.–a tidy score-card made all the more meritorious considering the tactics Powell has to employ to keep the lid on in the mornings.

“She's very, very tough. She gets a lot out of her gallops,” he said, with dead-pan understatement.

Another telling feature of the Powell ethos is an Ernest Shackleton-esque readiness to roll up his sleeves and get stuck in. When Powell is not exercising his own horses, he's out there on his pony. If you can't find him on the track, chances are he's bustling up and down the shed-row. Indeed, a good portion of the interview was conducted with Powell lugging around from stall to stall his ultra-sound machine.

“I don't expect any of my help to do anything I'm not willing to do myself,” he said.

When this is your modus operandi, what helps is a grounding that's pock-marked with a little bit of everything–as his is. He rode as an amateur in France on the flat and over jumps, with a handful of victories to his name (including a 120-1 winner). He's been a stable lad. Foreman. Assistant trainer. He's got a business degree from the University of Caen, Normandy.

But it all started with the family farm, his father “very much” the slave driver, Powell said (with what seems like a note of pride). “You need a lot of patience when you're in breeding. It teaches you all the basics.”

With high school done and dusted, Powell packed his bags-first off, to Hall of Famer Richard Mandella, and what seems a rite of passage for those masochists with big ambitions.

“Mandella was tough. Very tough,” Powell said (again the understatement). But he credits this experience as having the greatest impact on his career. “I was a blank book back then,” he said. “I learned about the general care of horses–more than I did in Europe.”

At the turn of the millennium, Powell found himself in Sydney, working for trainer John Hawkes, at Warwick Farm. There, he learned most about fitness, he said-more specifically, the art of keeping horses simmering nicely without boiling over.

“The work times don't matter so much over there,” he said. “It's all about keeping a horse fit instead of grinding and grinding…They're very good about not going over the top.”

When it came to the 2-year-olds, the Hawkes approach was simple, he said: “stress them early” and then back off.

“We would train them hard for a week, two weeks, then send them out–then the next batch come in,” he said, explaining the physical and mental imperative of conditioning young horses.

“To me, it's like a kid that misses pre-school–it's very hard to catch up.”

And it was with Hawkes that Powell saw how beneficial “spelling” a horse could be.

“Giving a break to a horse when it's still on top is far more beneficial than weight. Horses age really well in Australia. You can see it with Winx,” he said, admitting that he would use this strategy more often with his own horses–if able to.

“It's not easy because of the economic factor,” he said. “Some owners, it's not easy to tell them that his horse is sound and healthy, but he needs a break.”

On his way back from Australia, Powell had a two-day stop-over in Singapore.

“I ended up staying six months.”

He worked for trainer Michael Kent, in a land where, when it rained, “it really rained,” he said. “I remember riding out, it had rained so much, I took my riding boots off and it was like a river that's pouring out.”

Kent's approach was rooted in science. “He checked blood levels all the time.”

Kent used a lactate reader–a device to read the lactic acid levels of his horses, “and he was very acute about the feed–had a good feed program.”

Which brings us neatly back to Powell's own magpie-like approach, taking an idea or two from here, an idea or two from there.

“I've tried to take the best from everybody,” he said. Like Kent, for example, he monitors the heart-rates of his workers. “That gives me a good idea of their fitness.”

But the art of training is more than just the repackaging of other ideas, he said–it's repackaging them into something identifiably yours.

“Patrick Biancone told me, 'When you train, you cannot just do like everyone else. You have to do something different, otherwise people won't want to have horses with you,'” Powell said.

“And I think what makes me different from other trainers is the time we spend on horses,” he added. “We do seven sets when other guys rush to do ten, twelve.”

That, and walking, walking, walking. “It's a great way to keep your fitness without stressing the joints as much…very good for their red blood cells.”

The need to separate and differentiate yourself from the competition is perhaps more keenly felt than ever, considering the current economic climate for trainers in California.

“We lack owners,” he said. And as for many of those owners already involved, “they'll tell you that the big trainers are too big, but they'll still send their horses to them.”

So, how do you expand and grow in an industry that's contracting?

“You have to concentrate on quality,” he said. “You have to buy quality horses because they're the only ones making money.”

He prefers to buy his own horses, find three or four partners only.

“That way, you're spreading the risk, but it still feels like your horse.”

And he'll often keep a share himself–or rather, a share in the name of his wife, Mathilde, his sweetheart from their university days, when she was an economics major. They have three daughters: Louise, 13, Blanche, 12, and Jeanne, 8.

“The one thing I'm most proud of is the fidelity of my owners–all my owners have been very loyal to me,” he said, attributing a portion of this to the shares he keeps in Mathilde's name–i.e. there's nothing like skin in the game to demonstrate sincerity. “I really see the owner-trainer relationship as that of husband and wife. You have to trust each other.”

Which in turn pivots us all the way back to the beginning, for there's an interesting duality to Powell which harkens back to those childhood days, his nose buried in pedigree books.

That's because, for all his forward thinking, the ferreting out of new techniques to bring about that extra length or so of improvement in his horses, there's a deeper appreciation for the fundamentals of the game, grounded in loyalty and hard work. A respect for the foundational traditions.

Just take a glimpse at the bookshelf at his barn: “Les Grandes Courses Francaises 2004,” a faded “International Horseman's Dictionary,” and a dusty looking “History of the Thoroughbred in California.” One on John Henry. Another on “The British Racehorse.” And the rose bushes decorating Powell's barn are given extra resonance considering the books he has at home on Sir Henry Cecil.

And so, when Powell tells the story of how Richard Mandella–a name synonymous with the “old school” as any–once complimented him after a win, it's easy to understand why that particular trainer's words have stuck with him above all others.

I had, of course, to do a bit of fact-checking, make sure the anecdote isn't apocryphal.

“He did good–I thought he did a good job,” Mandella said, dusting off the old memories. Then, he added: “I admire him. He's got a great little family. He does a good job with his horses. And I've been impressed with how he conducts his business.”

Can't say fairer than that.