Dan Ward has had a hands-on role in the barns that developed some of the fastest and most important horses of our time—generational talents like Ghostzapper and Songbird , a $5 million earner in Medaglia d’Oro , a Belmont Stakes winner in Empire Maker, three Kentucky Oaks heroines in Keeper Hill, Flute, and Blind Luck , broodmare of broodmares Toussaud, and many more champions, Breeders’ Cup winners, and grade 1 winners.
After more than four decades working for two Hall of Fame trainers—first Bobby Frankel, then Jerry Hollendorfer—the 64-year-old Ward is out on his own for good. When Hollendorfer decided to scale back and focus on California, the time was right for Ward to be the one calling the shots. On July 1, Ward assumed responsibility for Hollendorfer’s string of 29 horses at Monmouth Park (which will head south to Oaklawn Park in the winter) and within days had claimed three more.
Having learned from two legends across so many years and so many horses, it’s possible no assistant has ever been more prepared to make the transition to head trainer.
MarketWatch: Why was this the moment to go out on your own?
Dan Ward: We’ve been talking about it for a while. Jerry said, “When I’m done with all the lawsuits and everything, then you start on your own.” He was good enough to let us get established at two different places. Anytime you go to a new track, you have to learn all the trainers and the state vets and the commission and the racing office and how to read the book and everything. It’s a nice situation and I’m pretty lucky.
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I found two places that we really like, Oaklawn and Monmouth, and schedule-wise it is perfect. We can train at Monmouth until the end of October and then they open up at Oaklawn in November. It’s good racing, the purses are good, and they’re safe tracks to train on.
MW: How did you end up at the racetrack and what was your first job on the backside?
DW: I was a big racing fan growing up in Pasadena and then we moved to San Diego. I was a fan of Secretariat and going all the way back to Majestic Prince when he made a run at the Triple Crown. I used to go to the races at Del Mar with my friends and during Santa Anita we would go up there for the big races on the weekend.
I was a big fan of Bobby Frankel. I started with a trainer named Joe Manzi then as soon as there was an opening with Bobby, I went to work for him, walking and then grooming and then foreman and then assistant. Basically, I got to work for my idol.
MW: How did you manage to climb the ladder in the Frankel barn the way you did?
DW: When I started with Bobby I was 17 years old. I started as a groom because I had worked for another trainer. He gave me two to groom, and then I worked my way up to walking. It was just hard work, and then he would say, “That one looks good, you’re taking good care of them.” He liked that I was a hard worker, even though I didn’t know anything when I started.
Bobby Frankel
MW: You got to learn from two of the best and most successful trainers ever in Frankel and Hollendorfer. What separated them from all of the other superb horsemen out there?
DW: Those are two great teachers and very similar, being such hard workers. And with them it was all different types of horses. Every horse is different, of course, but the horsemanship works on the claimers and the great horses. It’s good to learn about claiming horses and grass horses and 2-year-olds. We got Songbird and Unique Bella when they started training, but we also claimed Sahara Sky and won the Met Mile (Metropolitan Handicap-G1). We claimed Vasilika for 40 (thousand) and she made $1.8 million. And we also know how to claim a horse for 8 or 10 (thousand).
Sahara Sky wins the 2013 Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont Park
MW: What is something you learned from Bobby Frankel?
DW: The things that he told you, they’re good to this day. Like when I was starting, he said, “I’m gonna send you on the road with these horses. If you think that you need to work the horse five (furlongs), go a half (mile) instead.” Always go a little bit easier, because a lot of people overtrain.
MW: Is it accurate that with Jerry you jogged every horse on the pavement outside the barn every morning?
DW: Yes, every horse. Because it takes about 15-20 minutes, but better you see something in the morning and say, “Hey, let’s not work this horse today” or “This foot’s hot” or “I don’t like the way he’s jogging.”
And we don’t train with any medication, so it’s a lot easier to see if there’s a problem. That’s the way that I’ve always done it, working for Bobby and then working for Jerry.
Jerry Hollendorfer at the 2018 Eclipse Awards
MW: What are your feelings on everything that went on with Jerry in California the past few years (being excluded from 1/ST Racing’s Santa Anita Park and Golden Gate Fields, then Del Mar, due to a series of fatalities, which led to legal action and, ultimately, settlements with the racetracks, plus additional litigation with the California Horse Racing Board)?
DW: I don’t know how anybody could say that you’re negligent if they saw the kind of care that the horses got.
Jerry has a farm in Washington where he has retired horses. It’s called Down the Stretch Ranch. He pays for the whole farm, not like these people that get on TV and pat themselves on the back. We’re all concerned about aftercare, but Jerry puts his own money where his mouth is. The veterans work with the horses and it’s good for them and Jerry funds the whole thing. So, what are you going to say? That he doesn’t care about his horses? That doesn’t make sense. It was bad luck during that (2019) meet, for sure, but the previous year, we had zero fatalities.
MW: Can you tell me about a horse you remember especially fondly that wasn’t one of the obvious superstars?
DW: When we first got horses from Juddmonte, we got three and Ron McAnally got three, to see what we could do with them. One of the ones we got was Marquetry, and he turned out to be a really good dirt horse, but there was another one, a turf horse named Exbourne.
Exbourne wins the 1991 Hollywood Turf Handicap at Hollywood Park
He was one of Bobby’s favorite horses because he was group placed in Europe—broke his maiden, then was second in a group one—but they couldn’t get him back to the races. So when we got him, he was a real project. He wasn’t a real smooth mover on the dirt but when you got him on the grass it was a different story. He won the Hollywood Turf Handicap (G1T) and I think that was really important to us getting more horses for Juddmonte because once he turned out to be a major horse, then we started getting more and more horses from them. And once you get horses like that, then you get others.
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