Carlos Martin returns to California with a leading Breeders' Cup contender of his own, Come Dancing

ARCADIA, Calif. – Carlos Martin believes the last time he was in California was in 1987 when his father, the trainer Jose Martin, ran Groovy in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Hollywood Park. Only 18 years old at the time, Carlos Martin took Groovy’s fourth-place finish as the 2-5 favorite in the Sprint hard.

“I think I stayed in the hotel room for about three days,” Martin said. “It was just sad the horse got beat. He was such a great horse.”

Martin, now 50, has returned to California and the Breeders’ Cup with Come Dancing, a top contender for Saturday’s $1 million Filly and Mare Sprint at Santa Anita. A victory would not only mean a championship for Come Dancing, but it would reward a career of perseverance for both horse and trainer.

Carlos Martin’s grandfather Frank “Pancho” Martin is in the Hall of Fame. Pancho Martin won the second Breeders’ Cup race ever run when Outstandingly was elevated to first via disqualification in the 1984 Juvenile Fillies at Hollywood Park.

Though Martin doesn’t have much recollection of that race, he was a fixture around his father’s barn since he was a young child. Martin said it wasn’t definite he would become a trainer, but the more he hung around with his dad, it became evident he was heading that direction.

“I loved watching him with good horses, and being close to my father brought me more into it,” Martin said. “Watching him have a lot of success, it gets you exhilarated, feeling it all come together. Maybe I knew, but I wasn’t saying to myself I was going to follow in his footsteps. The only thing I knew was I really loved the horses.”

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Carlos Martin began training in 1989. Over 30 years, he has won 719 races with his first Grade 1 victory coming in 1991 when Buy the Firm won the Top Flight. Martin would win only two more graded stakes before Come Dancing waltzed into his barn in 2016.

One of those graded wins was the Grade 2 Black-Eyed Susan in 2003 with Roar Emotion. Martin had taken over the training of that filly a few months after Jose Martin was diagnosed with lung cancer. The older Martin was given five months to live but he lasted four years – long enough to attend Carlos’s wedding.

“I was glad he was there, it was a great day,” Martin said. “A week later he was in the hospital and he died on Nov. 22.”

One of Martin’s primary owners was Carl Lizza, who raced under the banner Flying Zee Stables. Lizza died in July 2011. A year later, Pancho Martin died.

Even before Lizza’s death, Carlos Martin’s stable was shrinking. He said the lowest it got to was five or six horses.

Looking for new clients, Martin requested a meeting with Marc Holliday, the head of a prominent commercial real estate firm and relatively new owner. Martin, along with his sister Gloria, met Holliday at Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse in New York’s Grand Central Station.

Holliday agreed to give him horses and he also gave him a loan to keep his business operating. Now, Martin trains Come Dancing for Holliday.

“If it wasn’t for Marc Holliday I don’t know if I’d still be training horses,” Martin said. “Training is tough. It’s not only attracting clients and getting the good horses, it’s tough to keep a business going.”

Holliday said he first heard about Martin from his nephew Andrew Wolff, who was doing an internship with track veterinarian Dr. Michael Galvin.

“He said ‘Uncle I have somebody you really have to meet. He’s a tremendous, hard-working trainer,’ ” Holliday recalled. “[Martin] asked me to give him a horse.”

Among the first horses he gave him was Promise Me a Cat, a minor stakes winner who earned more than $300,000. Rogue’s Jewel and Shot Gun Pennie were other stakes winners trained by Martin for Holliday.

Come Dancing came into Martin’s barn in 2016. She won her debut by 3 1/2 lengths at Aqueduct. In her next breeze she suffered a fractured pastern in her right front leg and needed surgery. Come Dancing had been off 13 months when she won an allowance by 6 1/2 lengths. She had mixed success in 2018.

This year, however, Come Dancing has been sensational. She has won four of five starts, including dominant victories in the Grade 3 Distaff at Aqueduct and Grade 2 Ruffian at Belmont. After losing to Midnight Bisou in the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps, Come Dancing won the Grade 1 Ballerina at Saratoga on the Travers undercard. It was a special moment for Holliday, whose Blue Devil Racing Stable includes lifelong friend James O’Reilly.

“I’m not even sure the Breeders’ Cup could eclipse that moment of winning on a racetrack that James and I have been going to for 35 years, always saying to each other could you imagine what it would be like to stand in that winner s circle on Travers Day with a Grade 1 winner, and there we were doing just that,” Holliday said.

Come Dancing came back to win the Gallant Bloom, and in a subsequent work she blazed six furlongs in 1:10.19 over the Belmont training track, giving Martin confidence that she is ready to give a winning effort in the Breeders’ Cup in what will likely be Come Dancing’s final race.

“I think if Come Dancing shows up and she breaks with the field, I’d be disappointed if she doesn’t win,” Martin said. “From what I’ve seen, the way she’s training, the way she’s thriving it just seems like she’s taken it to another level.”