Hollywood win for Carl

The regularity with which Carl O’Callaghan’s phone has been buzzing since Sunday, December 6 suggest his singing days are behind him.

Four-year-old gelding Kinsale King’s win in the $100,000 Vernon Underwood Stakes Group 3 race is likely to propel the Los Angeles-based Newmarket-on-Fergus man’s training career into the big time.
Carl turned 34 the day after Kinsale King, a Kentucky-bred son of Yankee Victor, won by a neck in the six-furlong sprint at Hollywood Park, LA.
A year after taking out his training licence, Carl, who left Newmarket as a 16-year-old, reached the apex of his career thus far.
Now living in southern California, Carl, who attributes his singing genes to his father Shay, has 35 horses in his yard with up to 20 more on the way.
After years of working for trainers like John Kimmel and Todd Pletcher, Carl went solo and got his big break about 12 months ago.
“A year ago I went to a horse sale here in California and I met a guy who is from Kinsale,” Carl, who starts work at 3.30am daily, told The Clare Champion.
“He’s a doctor out here in cancer research. He had a lot of horses in California. I got talking to him and he said he’d give me a horse but you hear that every day. About two months later, he sent me a horse, a whacko. Nobody could train her,” he added.
Dr Patrick Sheehy owned the temperamental horse in question, which Carl managed to calm and control.
“Dr Sheehy, who also owns Kinsale King, said he knew then I was the man for the job if I could get her to the races. After that we just clicked and then he went out and bought a bunch of horses. He’s the backbone of my operation,” Carl said.
“That was a huge boost,” he said of his first Group 3 win. “The phones are ringing off the hook since last Sunday week. Before that I had Dr Sheehy’s horses and two or three other small clients. I’ve had people calling me that I haven’t heard from in 20 years. People from home and people from New York.”
The win was the second straight and third overall in six career starts for Kinsale King. In his previous outing, his first for Carl, he won a six-furlong optional claiming race on October 30 at Santa Anita Park by three lengths at odds of 60-1.
Yet the schooling of Kinsale King started with a complete examination of his legs.
“He had a lot of issues with his feet, a lot of quarter-crack problems. My blacksmith, Robert Guest from England, is a real talent. I worked him on the turf at Del Mar to save his feet and got him straightened out,” Carl said.
“I brought him here to Hollywood Park after Del Mar. The Underwood was my goal since I got him. First, however, he needed the comeback race at Santa Anita. I talked to a half dozen different agents who didn’t want to ride him,” Carl recalled.
“Alonso Quinonez was listed to ride him but he got sick the morning of the race, and I got Martin Garcia as a replacement. I thought he would run big and he ran real big.”
Before leaving Newmarket-on-Fergus in 1990, Carl had already immersed himself in horses.
“I started riding at Burke’s Riding School in Ballycar. I learned to ride there with Kevin Burke at about four or five.
“At about seven or eight, Dad started taking me over to Ballyhannon stud in Quin to John Hassett’s place. I was mucking stalls and riding out horses. It kind of took off from there that I wanted to be in the racing business. I was absolutely useless at school. Useless. It was always horses,” he laughed.
Carl’s determination to work in the equine industry led to him move to New Platz, north of New York, where he worked for Dr Jon Fackler and his wife Sue.
“They were teachers and they had a lovely farm in New York. They were looking for a young lad to come over and stay. My mother got me a visa and I stayed with the family for about three months on a holiday visa,” he explained.
After a short visit home, Carl returned to New Platz for a further two-year sojourn.
“They started bringing horses to the race track. I went to the race track one day and I just fell in love with it. Then I left the farm about a month later and came to the race track. I was about 17 then,” he remembered.
Carl later worked for American John Kimmel, who is a renowned trainer. “I worked for him for seven years galloping the horses and exercising the horses. He’d be the Aidan O’Brien of the US that time,” he explained.
Later employed for eight years by Todd Pletcher, Carl then relocated to Los Angeles, where he has been based for three years.
Still slightly disbelieving at Kinsale King’s win, Carl is targeting an appearance in the Dubai Sprint on March 17 and more domestic success.
“In 12 months I’d like to have another couple of graded stakes under my belt,” he said.
Away from the yard and the racetrack, Carl O’Callaghan sings at weddings and various social events, although the guitar isn’t being strummed as much recently.
“I play the guitar, the same as my father. But it’s on the back burner at the moment with the horses being so busy,” he laughed. Along with the phone, of course, which keeps lighting up with congratulatory tidings.