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PROFILE morning it gets in the way too much; you have to wear a helmet, then getting in and out of stalls, you end up knocking it off more often than not.” He compromises during training hours by wearing a ball cap, which today is a maroon one stitched with the “VH” logo from his grandfather’s livestock brand. 51-year-old Von Hemel owns a small farm in Piedmont, Oklahoma, where he lives with wife Robin, fourteen-year-old daughter Tess, six horses (“pets,” he calls them), two dogs, and two cats. Donnie and Robin met when both worked for Don Von Hemel, and Tess, her dad says, has “got the bug [for horses], no doubt about it. It was almost hard not to in our family.” There’s a barn full of forty Thoroughbreds stabled at nearby Remington Park, Von Hemel’s home base – he is the all-time leading trainer in the state – with two assistant trainers, Efrain Chavez and Crystal Campbell. The size of his stable is his ideal. “You can still keep your finger on everything,” he says. “I’ve got a lot of clients that I’ve had for 20-plus years. As long as you have that core of clients that you can hang on to, you’re hopefully doing something right.” Von Hemel grew up in his father’s small hometown of Manter, Kansas (population then: about 150 or less; population now: not much more), with two siblings: sister Pam, a speech
“Slewacide’s been a great horse to me. He keeps giving! He just keeps giving” pathologist; and younger brother Kelly, also a successful trainer, with 1,250 wins including the most stakes victories in the history of Prairie Meadows, from where he trains. Kelly trained Miss Macy Sue, third in the 2007 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint, and Iowabred millionaire Sure Shot Biscuit. Don Von Hemel moved around with his stable while their mother Roylynn stayed in Kansas with the children. Roylynn “did a wonderful job, as far as I can see,” says Donnie Von Hemel, laughing again. “I often wonder what kept me out of trouble. At the time, I thought I was just scared to death of my mother. But looking back I think it was more that I didn’t want to disappoint her.” From an early age – “when you’re just too young and in the way” – Von Hemel enjoyed being in his father’s shedrow. When he was around twelve or thirteen, he began to make a “worthwhile” contribution in the barn by walking hots. His 8th Grade graduation gift was a visit to Lexington, Kentucky, with his father for the September yearling sale at Keeneland. Von Hemel was an athlete in school – football, baseball, track and field – and, he recalls,
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“trying to convince the coach that I could be gone for a week was really hard. I kept up with all my schoolwork, but of course I couldn’t keep up with football practice. So for two weeks, I think it was, after I got back, after practice was over I’d have to run. It was a lot of running and that was the price I had to pay to be able to be gone.” Was it worth it? “Yeah, Most definitely. It was something I always wanted to go do, and I learned a lot about conformation.” Von Hemel worked his way up to grooming, galloping, and learning other hands-on aspects of training during school vacations, but after graduation, he attended college, as his parents wanted him to do, and studied accounting. Degree in hand, he told his mom and dad, “Look, now I want to do the racetrack full time.” He became Don’s assistant until getting his own trainer’s license in 1984, saddling the first 21 of his current total of 1,900 winners that year. The father had given the son a good foundation. “I would call him the best horseman I’ve ever known,” Von Hemel says. “And I know that would be influenced by the fact that he’s my father, but when he was a
young trainer, he basically had to do everything. He broke the horses – he was even his own blacksmith.” When Donnie struck out on his own, many of Don’s owners supported him. The duo tagteamed on the training of a number of racehorses, such as Graded winners Evansville Slew and Mariah’s Storm, depending on where the horses were running at any given time. Von Hemel earned his first training title in Louisiana in 1988, breaking a three-way tie with Frankie Brothers and Jack Van Berg with a closing-day victory, a “pretty exciting” moment. In the early days, there was Explosive Girl, “the first good horse I had a chance to train.” Owned by Jim Wells, the daughter of Explodent won or placed in 30 of 40 starts and earned over $460,000 for both Don Von Hemel and Donnie Von Hemel. On the 1988 Cornhusker card – Ak-Sar-Ben’s biggest day of racing – she participated in what was billed by the media as “the first major match race in America since 1975.” The match came about, Von Hemel says, “because I opened my big mouth that I thought she should have been Ak-Sar-Ben’s Horse of the Meet over Who Doctor Who.” More than 21,000 fans showed