North American Trainer - August 2020 - Ezine Edition

Page 94

| PROFILES |

competitive guy by nature. I was a cute little first grader. I went up and down every block in Chicago. I sold more than any kid in the whole school. They brought a truck to deliver those doughnuts. My mom didn’t know she had to deliver them. She got mad at me.” Tramontin received a wooden statue trophy of the Virgin Mary. “That’s still on my desk,” he said. His business education was aided mightily by his grandmother around the same time. “She gave me three stocks,” he said. “I had to come home and look them up in the paper every day. The three stocks were Sears, Marquette Cement and El Paso National Gas. That wound up paying my tuition to LSU. That got me from Chicago to Baton Rouge.” The son of a tool company worker, Tramontin grew up near Sportsman’s Park, but he didn’t get into horse racing until his close friend Bob Asaro bought a horse for $2,500 in 1989. That horse, Genuine Meaning, was named Louisiana-bred Two-YearOld Champion and earned nearly $300,000. “Bob’s telling me, ‘This is easy,’” Tramontin said. It’s not. Tramontin bought his first horse, Windcracker, who broke down in training and had to be euthanized. “Then Tom, who’s always been my trainer, calls me from England and said there’s a Louisiana horse, Artic Tracker, in a sale there,” Tramontin said. “He said he was Group placed in the 2,000 Guineas but caught the equine virus. He said, ‘This is a really nice horse. We’ll have to pay $40,000.’” Tramontin said, “I’ll do it one more time, Tom.’” They got the horse...for $80,000. Amoss told him not to worry because he found a partner for the horse in Texas. That partner reneged, so Amoss took a $10,000 share as did Bob Asaro. Artic

90

TRAINERMAGAZINE.COM ISSUE 57

Tracker was worth it, earning $241,795 from eight victories, nine seconds and 11 thirds from 47 starts. In August 1994, Tramontin almost bought the horse of a lifetime, two-time Horse of the Year Cigar. “Artic Tracker had just won a stakes at Louisiana Downs,” he said. “I told Tom, ‘Let’s find another horse and try to get into the next level.’ He called and said, ‘I found one: a three-year-old in California.’ Tom said he’d been racing on turf, and that the horse is racing on the wrong surface. We made a bid for $175,000 ABOVE LEFT: on a Friday, and they said they’d consider it.” No Parole and Over the weekend, owner Allen Paulson jockey Luis Saez. decided not to sell his would-be star. “In October, he wins the first of 16 straight on dirt,” Tramontin ABOVE RIGHT: said. “I watched him on TV and threw my sock Greg Tramontin at the TV.” By the end of Cigar’s run, Tramontin was out of socks. Despite missing out on Cigar, Tramontin was enjoying racing, but he decided to get out when he entered the insurance business in 1995 after a successful five-year run with the Yellow Pages, beginning as a sales rep. “I didn’t want to get criticized for being in the horse business,” he said. “Insurance is a regulated industry. I took a hiatus from racing.” He didn’t return for 23 years. While Tramontin was out of the game, Moss, a three-time champion hunter/jumper, was flourishing. Horses have always been in her life. “It started when I was eight years old,” she said. “My dad was very adamant about learning about horses before he bought me show horses,” she said. “He had come from Chicago, and he loved horses.” Moss joined the pony club, then got involved in hunters and jumpers. She won a national show jumping championship at Madison Square Garden. “I came up with some of the greatest horsemen you’ll ever meet,” she said. “I rode competitively until I went to school at the University of Kentucky.” She brought her horses to Lexington to keep competing, but found a whole new way of life in college and asked her father to pick up the horses and take them back home. “I had never had a


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.
North American Trainer - August 2020 - Ezine Edition by Trainer Magazine - Issuu