Doug O'Neill peers intently at the cellphone, taking in the drone-shot footage of Nyquist, the Kentucky Derby champion he trains, circling the track at Pimlico Race Course.
"Bitchin'," he says in his typical California-speak.
It's another gray morning in Baltimore with the Preakness fast approaching, but the setting on O'Neill's bliss meter is a 10. It's remained there for months as he has prepared the best 3-year-old in the country for the Triple Crown.
And why shouldn't O'Neill be smiling? Not only does he have an undefeated horse who's seemingly impervious to anxiety, he's surrounded by a team of people — and when he says "team," he utters the word with religious conviction — who have stood with him through some of the harshest disappointments the racing game could muster.
"As you get punched in the gut, if you have a strong enough family, you gather up and you figure out, 'OK, how do we do this better so there's less punches to the gut?'" he says. "That's very instrumental not just in the great times but the crappy times."
Four years ago, this same group — O'Neill, his brother, Dennis, owner Paul Reddam and jockey Mario Gutierrez — had to scratch I'll Have Another the day before the Belmont Stakes and a shot at the Triple Crown. Besides that ultimate gut punch, they've endured downturns in racing luck and allegations of medication abuse.
Loyalty and camaraderie
But O'Neill's emphasis on team has only increased, becoming a drumbeat during Nyquist's push to the Triple Crown. His employees say he's earned their unwavering loyalty.
"He comes in in the morning and it's a fist bump and it's a 'Good morning' and 'do you guys need anything?'" says assistant trainer Jack Sisterson. "He makes himself very approachable, but with a lot of bosses, you're afraid to say anything to them. … Other employees may be afraid to tell the boss, but Doug is approachable in that aspect. I believe the results really thrive from that."
Go to the trainer's web page and the header reads "Team O'Neill Racing." Scroll around and you'll find "Down Home with Team O'Neill," a web series with credits that portray the trainer and his crew strolling their California barn in dark sunglasses, akin to the posse from HBO's series "Entourage."
These guys go out on the town together and they pull tight when one of their number suffers, as chief assistant Leandro Mora did last September when a stroke put him in the hospital.
O'Neill likes to say that because of this family atmosphere, losses hurt half as much and wins are twice as fun to celebrate. Certainly, the loyalty within his barn helped him endure a period when he was derided as a face of the sport's drug problems.
A few days after I'll Have Another won the Preakness in 2012, O'Neill was hit with a 45-day suspension in California because one of his horses tested positive for a high level of total carbon dioxide in 2010. The test raised suspicions of "milkshaking," a practice in which trainers inject baking soda through a horse's nostrils to combat fatigue. Investigators found no evidence O'Neill had used the practice, but given that he faced more than a dozen medication penalties across multiple states, he could not escape whispers that he was a cheater.
He has said the last straw came in 2013, when one of his horses tested positive for a stimulant in New York and he was subsequently hit with another 45-day suspension. O'Neill maintains he did nothing wrong, but the penalty convinced him his operation had become too sprawling and too loosely monitored.
He installed security cameras and hired a 24-hour guard detail for his home base in California and began paying for round-the-clock security when his horses traveled to other states. He has not been penalized for a medication violation since the New York suspension.
O'Neill says he's grateful for Nyquist in part because the Derby champion has given him a platform to talk about his improved practices.
'I just ... fell in love'
O'Neill grew up in Dearborn, Mich., as the youngest of four brothers. He wasn't much of an athlete but says he always craved the camaraderie that came with team sports, whether football, baseball, basketball or even water polo.
His family moved to California the year he turned 12, and that was where he caught the racing bug. His brother Dennis, five years his senior, got a $12-an-hour job with General Telephone out of high school.
"So he was rich," O'Neill says with a laugh. "He didn't know what he was going to do with all this money. So he bought into this partnership, like 5 percent of a horse. I was 13, and we'd go to the barn area. That kind of brought me into the backstage or the locker room of horse racing. And I just absolutely fell in love with it."
Dennis was like a second father to him, and to this day, their relationship is the foundation of O'Neill's racing team. They're different people — Doug an affable, round-faced extrovert who loves being an ambassador for racing, Dennis a beanpole cancer survivor who can't quite explain his mystical ability to pick future stars out of 2-year-old thoroughbred auctions.
"He just gives that unconditional loving support you can only get from a brother really," Doug says. "He's my brother and my best friend."
It was Dennis who steered Reddam to purchase I'll Have Another for $35,000, an incredible bargain considering the Derby and Preakness winner earned $2.7 million on the track and another $10 million for his breeding rights.
Nyquist was never going to sell for that little. In fact, Dennis thought he might go for $1 million — too rich for Reddam's usual buying habits — at the Fasig-Tipton sale in Florida last spring. The elder O'Neill loved the colt's athleticism and composure in the stall, and he was stunned when bidding stopped at $400,000. With nearly $5 million in earnings already, Nyquist is another Dennis miracle.
"He has magic powers at those sales," Doug says. "Those sales are like the NFL combine. You're watching so many athletes who are very similar, and you're splitting hairs. So you need a confidence in your abilities and special powers, if you will, to pick out the ones who are going to do it at game time. And Dennis has been brilliant at that."
If Dennis O'Neill is his brother's foundation, Reddam is the guy who pays to keep the house standing. The Canadian-born lender met O'Neill 12 years ago through a mutual friend in Arkansas. He bought into a claiming horse on O'Neill's recommendation, and their relationship grew from there, with Reddam quickly becoming the trainer's most important client.
"We've had our slumps, but Paul is without a doubt the most loyal successful man I've ever met in my life," O'Neill says. "If things aren't going well, he's just very adamant about 'Let's learn from what just happened and do better.' From Mario as a jockey to me as a trainer, it really allows you to work hard and not have that weight of worrying, 'Oh God, if this horse doesn't perform well, I'm going to get fired.'"
The relationship easily could have frayed after they were forced to scratch I'll Have Another the day before the Belmont Stakes, where he was a 4-5 favorite to take the Triple Crown.
Instead, Reddam and O'Neill grew closer and adjusted their approach as they prepared to campaign their next great champion.
Assembling the team
Every Wednesday, Reddam, the O'Neill brothers, Gutierrez and the jockey's agent, Tom Knust, meet in the owner's Orange County office to make plans for each horse. In these conferences, they decided Nyquist would run in only two Derby preps so he could remain fresh for a potential Triple Crown run.
"It wouldn't have happened prior to the meetings, because I would talk to Paul and then hang up. And then Dennis might talk to Paul and they'd go in a different direction," Doug O'Neill says. "Having us all in the room, throwing out all the plans and having one that doesn't get broken, is a life saver for me. … Nyquist is a perfect example because Paul has some really good friends who are beat writers and historians of the sport, and they were just peppering him with questions of 'Why are you only doing two starts?' And none of us wavered because, whether it was right or wrong, we were all on the same page with what we wanted to do."
Reddam was the one who brought Gutierrez into the fold. As a teenager, the jockey moved from Mexico to Canada, where he became the dominant rider at Vancouver's Hastings Racecourse. He was riding for a Canadian trainer wintering in California when Reddam and O'Neill spied him in 2011. The jockey's even demeanor fits Nyquist.
"In these big races, he's just incredible," O'Neill says. "Mario is real calm. He's got a real good mind on him. He's a very good finesse rider, and [he and Nyquist] get along fantastic."
Reddam, the O'Neills and Gutierrez are the most public faces of the crew behind Nyquist, but the support structure actually runs much deeper.
This was something O'Neill learned way back as a teenager, hanging around the track with his brother.
"I was extremely fortunate to cut my teeth in Southern California, watching the likes of Bobby Frankel and Charlie Whittingham, Gary Jones and Mike Mitchell — a list of great, great trainers who were right there in front of me," he says. "I think watching the way those guys succeeded — with top assistant trainers, top grooms, top exercise riders, just the organization that you get to see from a real successful barn — to witness that was priceless."
Beyond looking for skilled workers, he seeks people who will fit the all-for-one-one-for-all vibe of the barn.
"I'm looking for somebody who's not doing it for a paycheck," O'Neill says. "I'm looking for somebody who genuinely wants to be here, whether that's a 10-hour day or a four-hour day, whatever the day ends up being."
He leans on Mora, a respected four-decade veteran of the California racing game, to pick much of the 45-member staff. They've been together 14 years, and O'Neill says bringing Mora into his fold was "like trading for Peyton Manning."
Then there's his younger assistant, Sisterson, who arrived from England to play soccer at the University of Louisville. He's the bright-faced chap aboard the pony who leads Nyquist to the track each morning.
After college, Sisterson took a real estate job, working for one of O'Neill's best friends and chief counselors, Mark Verge. Verge noticed the young Englishman reading the Daily Racing Form in the office one day, so he sent him to O'Neill's barn.
Sisterson showed up at Hollywood Park with a box of coffee and two dozen doughnuts.
"I didn't really have a position open, but it was like, 'I've got to figure out something for this guy,'" O'Neill says. "My one worry, when you bring in a smart, good-looking horseman like Jack is … I didn't want to screw up the vibe of the family. But as I introduced him to the team, they all embraced him with open arms, because Jack would give the shirt off his back for any one of them."
The other stalwarts behind Nyquist include exercise rider Jonny Garcia, physical therapist Tyler Cerin and groom Elias Anaya. As he conducts daily media sessions, O'Neill has taken care to highlight the contributions of each.
"Doug really makes you feel like you're part of the team and he's happy to have you be a part of the team," says Cerin, whose father, Vladimir, is another top California trainer. "We're fist-pumping every morning and high-fiving just to get the day started. I think everybody feels real happy, and that rubs off on the horses. In my opinion, the horses can really sense that."
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