Bob Battaglia–A Study In Inspiration, by Mary Kirkman, April

Bob with multi-champion English horse Gai Argosy (Gai Parada x Gai Gay Pride).

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B oB B attaglia —a S tudy i n

by MARY KIRKMAN

On February 17, 2014, at the Arabian Horse Times Readers’ Choice Awards ceremony, Bob Battaglia was presented with the program’s Inspiration Award. It was not the first such honor he has received; over the years, he has been inducted into the APAHA Hall of Fame, been cited as English Trainer of the Year, and been named APAHA Horseman of the Year four times and Saddle Seat Trainer of the Year three times. Not to mention, he and his riders have won between 500 and 600 national championships and reserves. But the Inspiration Award, the one that means he has influenced people in a positive way, is unique. “I think that’s one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received,” he says. “It is a great reward that I did not expect, a very big moment in my life.”

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This is a special time of Battaglia’s life—not the end of his career, but by his own admission, a time that he is recasting his schedule to lighten its demands. Or in other words, a good

time to look back, remember it all and see what it means from a new perspective.

a t humBnail S ketch o f a n h iStoric c areer Old photographs not only recall achievements, but provide a glimpse into a bygone world. In the 1950s, Chicago’s Lincoln Park area was home to a host of public riding stables.

Children came from all over to learn to ride, compete in horse shows, and trail ride in Lincoln Park itself, a magnificent green belt stretching along the shore of Lake Michigan.

Countless veterans of that era recall legendary midnight rides at breakneck speed through the park on Friday nights. The fierce rivalry between the barns, a half dozen or more of them constructed before the turn of the 20th century, ensured that the young equestrians honed their skills tirelessly. From that

Bob with Bronze Idol, 1959.

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scene came some of the top names in nearly every saddle seat breed. Bob Battaglia was one of them.

In a sense, Battaglia began his training career long before he was a professional. Stable owners often bought cheap horses at auction, trucked them to the barns and put their better young riders on the new, often barely-trained, mounts. A friend of his who also rode in the program recalled that “there would be little bodies flying through the air,” but the children would settle the horses and help them learn their jobs. Many, like “Bobby,” as he was known then, didn’t come with much

Bob on Old Hickory at the 1960 Chicago International Show.

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Battaglia capped his juvenile career by winning the 1960 Chicago International Boys Equitation Championship, then one of the most important titles in the country. An old blackand-white picture tells the story: a slender, dark boy, casually elegant in the formal white-tie riding habit of the day, sits so comfortably on a rangy American Saddlebred that it would be excusable to wonder if he’d been born there.

From the age of 10, Battaglia knew he wanted to be a horse trainer. Maybe he made that decision one Saturday morning at the barn, or maybe it was when his dad arranged for him to meet a young sensation in the Saddlebred world, a man many horsemen were predicting would be one of the greatest of all time. His name was Tom Moore, and he too had grown up working in a Lincoln Park barn. To this day, Battaglia says Moore is the best horseman he’s ever known.

Gai Argosy and Bob.

Heritage Demicent (El Magato x Ala-Arabi Bint Indirza)

financial backing, and worked to support their passion; it was not until Battaglia was well into high school that his parents were able to lease a horse for him, and it was not a superstar.

As it turned out, that didn’t matter, because he could make just about any horse look good. “Even when he was a little kid, he was kind of legend in his own time,” observed World’s Champion Saddlebred trainer Dick Obenhauf in a 1997 interview. “He was and still is a natural.”

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The next step for a budding trainer was an apprenticeship with more experienced practitioners, and in Battaglia’s case, he went straight to the top. First came Chat Nichols, and then one of the Saddlebred breed’s most revered names, Lloyd Teater.

It was in the twilight of Teater’s career, and by the time he left, Battaglia had risen to be the old horseman’s right hand, effectively running the barn for him. But the future was limited in Saddlebreds, and he had recognized that if he was going to accomplish his goals, he needed to look elsewhere. His next stop, with Dick Leadley at Heritage Hills, provided a clue: Leadley trained Arabians as well as Saddlebreds, and that clientele was growing. In 1972, after 10 years as someone else’s assistant, Battaglia was ready to go out on his own, and with friend Ginger Tadin, he opened Starcraft Training Center, in McHenry, Ill. Their specialty was Arabian horses.

They had chosen wisely: their success wasn’t instantaneous, but it was the next best thing. Battaglia won his first national championship that fall with the road horse Heritage DemiCent, and six years later, his first U.S. national championship in English pleasure, with Featurette. One year after that, he put one of his amateur riders, Karla Koch, on Featurette and the pair won the U.S. national championship in English pleasure amateur. No one could recollect that ever being done before.

After that, it seemed as if Bob Battaglia’s name was always part of the conversation when Arabian and Half-Arabian English horses were being discussed. Remembering the 35 years that followed Featurette, the dates blur in his mind, but the

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English horse Afires Vision (Afire Bey V x Matoskette).

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horses don’t. There was a steady parade of top-flight names: Bint Miss Fire (1982 U.S. National Champion English Pleasure); GG Matador (1983 U.S. National Champion Informal Combination); and the remarkable Gai Argosy, who was only 3 when he won 1984 U.S. National Champion English Pleasure.

There was Magalad, 14 times a U.S. and Canadian national champion or reserve in park and English pleasure, open and amateur; and Hucklebey Berry, a three-time national champion with others before Battaglia converted him to the amateur ranks and added the title of 2000 U.S. National Champion AOTR to his record. More recently, there has been the stallion Afires Vision, who collected national championships like other horses nab peppermints, scoring at the U.S., Canadian and Youth nationals in pleasure driving, informal combination and pleasure driving open and amateur; and Second Sight, a multi-champion at the U.S. and Youth Nationals in Half-Arabian English pleasure and native costume.

There were many others, hundreds, too many to mention, perhaps too many even to remember. But over the years, there was a steady flow at the highest levels, and as time went on, more and more that crossed easily from the open ranks to the amateur and youth at the same strike rate of success. The dominant trend of the past 30 years has been that owners like showing their own horses, and Battaglia knew how to accommodate that. You have to change, he notes. That’s the secret of lasting. “If you want to stay on top of any game, you have to grow with it.”

At the end of the 1970s, Battaglia and Tadin went their separate ways, although they always have remained close friends.

He moved to California to open Baywood Park in San Luis Obispo with Randy Shockley. They trained, ran a breeding operation—importing stallions, keeping 30 to 35 broodmares and breeding that many foals every year—bought and sold, even fielded splashy auctions that were the order of the day. But

Bob aboard 1997 U.S. and Canadian National Arabian English Pleasure Champion Magalad (Zodiac Matador x Gala De Cognac).

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Scottsdale 2012

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Battaglia was never comfortable with that, and had stopped producing big public sales before the downturn in the industry.

He left Baywood Park too, and moved to Arizona and then Texas for several years before returning to settle in Scottsdale. That was key in his success, he offers now. “Moving from one place to another was often related to investment,” he says. Although selling horses did generate income (“the horse business has been great to me”), it was his auxiliary interests that made the difference. He was buying and selling property, building and selling houses and farms.

Along the way, he also did his fair share of “giving back” to the breed. A quick recap of service reveals that for the Arabian Horse Association, he has been the co-chairman of the Education and Evaluation Committee for eight years, and a clinician at the AHA Judges’ School for that long. He has been Vice Chairman of the National and Regional Classes Committee, and a member of the AHA Judges’ Steering

Committee, the IAHA (now AHA) Yearling Heritage Committee, the Whip Study Committee, and the IAHA and APAHA Hoof Study Committee. He also was Chairman of IAHA’s Professional Horseman’s Committee, as well as one of five people who wrote the rules for the Country English Pleasure division. And for years, he was a Large R judge.

To the casual observer, his career was an unbroken upward trajectory. On the ground, living it, it was more humanly challenging. “As any business, you have your ups and downs,” he says. “I’ve had three times in my career when I thought, ‘what am I doing this for?’ Anybody who does anything long enough goes through those feelings. What always brought me back to ‘I really love this and want to do it’ was the horses.

That’s why I started in the first place, why I got into the horses, why I rode as a child—I was gung-ho crazy about horses. It didn’t matter what breed—I think there are great horses in every breed. It was something that was an absolute passion of mine, and I just followed it through.”

2010 and 2011 U.S. National Half-Arabian English Pleasure Champion Second Sight (Afires Vision x Silver Fantasy PV).

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the PurSuit o f SucceSS: k ey a chievementS a nd l eSSonS l earned However one might look at it, Battaglia is one of the great success stories of the Arabian horse breed, the only one of his era who remained at the top of his game consistently for decades. It is worth asking how, in what were often difficult times, he did it, and if what he has learned might be helpful to others.

The greatest lesson over the years was not so much learned as confirmed. At least in principle, he knew it from his earliest days of taking every job he could find to support his addiction to horses. “The biggest lesson I’ve learned my whole life is to work hard for what you want,” he says. “Set a goal and get to it, and once you get there, set another goal and get to it. Don’t be afraid to work.”

Bob with Chase Harvill passing on his knowledge and giving instruction.

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But there is one significant qualifier. “The horsemen I went to work for taught me work ethics and how to get the job done, but not at any cost. The horses always came first.

There was a limit that you went to and you never abused them—you never just went through the horses. When a horse was either hurt or couldn’t meet the criteria, you put it in that category and then you got another one if you wanted a different discipline.”

He recalls Lloyd Teater and how much the old horseman cared about his horses. “The most influential one in caretaking and interaction with your customers was Lloyd Teater,” he says.

“He was considered in the Saddlebred business to be the best

caretaker/conditioner and businessman, the way he looked at the horses and the people. Even in his 70s, he would come to the barn every single day and he knew every horse. He may not have worked every horse every day, because I did a lot of it, but he knew their conditioning, what was going on with every horse. He could walk down the aisle of the barn and look in the stall and tell you what was right or wrong with that horse. That was what set him apart from everybody, as far as I was concerned, and I’m talking 50 horses, including outside babies and broodmares.

“I remember one Chicago International, during the day, when he had gone back to the hotel to rest, and a fire broke out in the barn. It was a big two- or three-story barn and we were on the main floor, but there was a lot of smoke and firemen had gone up to the second floor. I remember him running back to the stalls in tears, thinking something had happened to the horses.” Here Battaglia chokes up. “He was passionate about them, so concerned that something had happened to them—he was in his 70s, running down the aisle, out of breath. I had to make him sit down and tell him that we were fine. But that’s what I learned: horses come first.”

That was just one reason that he always has been known for his patient, kind training style. That was the way he was raised; he knows the science as well as the art of training, and if necessary can call on a whole mental library of different bits and aids. But he didn’t often need it. Time and clear, consistent treatment usually did the trick. Horses responded to him, to his light hands on the reins, to the gentle persuasion of his legs at their sides. With nearly them all, performances in the show ring were partnerships in which they held up their end of the bargain and so did he.

Is there any one thing he could pass on to others? He nods. “Many people today don’t run their barns like a business,” he observes. “It’s easy to want to be too friendly. You can be friends with your clients, but there is a line that you never cross. That’s probably the hardest thing to do in the horse industry.” It hasn’t much to do with affection, he adds; many of his clients and former clients are dear friends. It is more about respect. “If they are true friends, they understand that you are running a business and there are certain things you can and cannot do (asking for favors, discounts, things like that). They have to understand that you are trying to do the best possible job for them, because it is a business even if it’s their pleasure.

They depend on you to make the right decision to help them.”

Bob with Lissa Tehan during a demonstration.

Looking into the future, he is not happy about the decline of interest in horses in today’s society. Pushed for suggestions as to what the Arabian breed can do about it, he has a few thoughts.

The key to engaging the interest of young people now lies in computers, he mentions. Don’t ask him to do much other than surf the net or answer email, but he has noted that there are no equine video games and few DVDs about horses—nothing involving kids in horses the way old western television shows and movies did in his youth. We need that, he says. There are too many other reasons kids don’t have much access to horses these days; we need to acquaint them with what they are missing.

But the most important job is to make association with horses an attractive mainstream leisure activity again, and that’s not easy. “Trainers, breeders and horsemen have to get involved in their industry if they want it to go on,” he says. “Get involved in the politics, in their local clubs, in doing more to promote the breed again. You can’t just sit on the sidelines and go to shows.

“And, there is a market out there, but you need to think about the horse as more than just a show horse. This horse, in particular, is a family horse who can do anything. You want to open your eyes to the fact that you can’t sell these horses just as show horses. They are trail horses, backyard horses, family horses, and they go in western, English, driving, dressage, jumping—any discipline. That is one thing that AHA is doing, but I don’t think enough people understand that. These horses can do everything; you just have to find out what that is.”

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the BeSt, t he WorSt a nd What i S t o c ome No story about Bob Battaglia is complete without mentioning Russ Vento, his partner of more than 20 years, who died prematurely in 2009. It was Russ, he says, who made so many of his achievements possible. “Russ and I were such an incredible team. He had an incredible passion for people and for the horses.” Together, they selected horses and bred many champions.

However, it was a lot more than just their remarkable chemistry in so many fields and their success in horses.

Looking back now, Battaglia, who through all the years never stopped learning about horsemanship, realizes that from Russ, he also learned a lot about people and life. Always friendly and certainly charming, Battaglia typically has been somewhat

Bob and Russ, 2006.

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reserved; the gregarious Russ, on the other hand, rarely met a stranger. He touched people’s lives.

“It was his passion for life,” Battaglia reflects, “for the Arabian horse and even more, his passion for the children and the amateurs in the industry, because he was one himself. There was not a day that he wasn’t concerned about them. He was the first one to jump over the fence if someone was in trouble—to the point that I told him to stop that, he was going to hurt himself. But of course, he never did.

“I think now of all the encouragement he gave people.

He’d walk by somebody and just give them a smile, tell them they were doing great—even people he didn’t know. He

Bob and Russ, 2009.

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was, I think, a great iconic influence on the people in this industry and I’m sorry that the people today didn’t know him like people in his lifetime did, because they’re really missing something.”

It was not easy to go on without Russ, he concedes. That, too, has been a learning process. “You just have to pick up the pieces and go. I managed because I knew it was what he would have wanted me to do, what he would have expected of me.

It takes a couple of years before you get over a lot of things, and you never are over all of it. It takes only one little thing to bring back a memory and emotions pour out like crazy.

“You have to be brave enough to go on,” he adds, “because life does go on. That part everybody says is true: life does go on, but how it goes on is up to you.”

So now, he is making changes for his own future. In a position to slow down, he plans to change the focus of his involvement in horses. “Realistically, I’m not exactly the youngest person on the block anymore,” he says dryly. Plans call for him to mentor others, to pass on his experience in selecting the right horses, polishing riding skills, developing strategies—all the components that go into maximizing the Arabian horse experience. It is something he has done for years, and he will do more of it on request.

Bottom line, Bob Battaglia is a horseman. Sometimes that term is a convenient synonym for a trainer, breeder or any handson professional in the industry, but in reality, that is probably not accurate. There are plenty of professionals in the breed, many of them very good at what they do, but true horsemen? Not so common. Battaglia makes no value judgments; he doesn’t even think about it. It’s just the way he is.

“To me, a horseman is somebody who thinks of the horse first—his condition, his wellbeing, his mental and emotional awareness,” he says. “For instance, when you throw open the door of a horse’s stall, what is the first thing that you look at?

It’s, is the horse happy? And then you notice where the urine point is and the manure pile (every horse is different, but almost every one goes in the same place). Have they eaten their feed? Is the water pump working? Have they drunk out of their

Bob explaining conformation traits of the English performance horse with Elle Yes ridden by Tom Moore.

buckets? Are the blankets straight and the straps tight? And this you should be able to assess in about three seconds, if you train your eye as a horseman. The rest comes along with it. It’s a genuine concern for the horse’s wellbeing, physically, mentally and emotionally. It’s no different than with a little child, and you’re taking care of it because they can’t get out of that stall and do it themselves.”

So, after all these years, how would he define success? “It’s your reputation,” Battaglia says. “You have to be honest; you can’t misrepresent anything. It comes down to integrity: what do you believe in, and how do you want to be treated? That’s how you should treat everybody else.” n

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