Carroll enjoys new role as assistant to Casse

NEW ORLEANS – You can still find 57-year-old David Carroll out on the Fair Grounds oval most every morning doing what he has done since he was a 6-year-old in Ireland – riding horses.

Carroll has wintered at Fair Grounds for the better part of two decades. Things right now are both better and worse than they were a year ago.

Worse because Carroll, his stable down to a handful of modest runners, finally gave up being a head trainer at the end of the 2015-16 Fair Grounds meet, but better because he has settled comfortably into his job as an assistant to trainer Mark Casse.

“It took me a few months to kind of grow into the role,” Carroll said. “I’m so happy working for Mark. I really enjoy being part of this team, and he couldn’t treat me any better than he does.”

Carroll had a breakout year in 2003, when he won 35 races and had a 26 percent strike rate. In 2008 and 2009, his stock won seven graded stakes, and he saddled Denis of Cork to a third-place finish in the 2008 Kentucky Derby. But his stable was down to 90 starters and 12 winners in 2014, and 81 starters and 15 winners in 2015. Carroll is kind, generous, well liked, and a capable horseman. It’s hard to understand why his operation went into decline.

“I just like to tell it how it is, and I did that with my owners. Not in a bad way – just to say, ‘This is how we need to be competitive.’ They obviously didn’t like it too much because I ran out of horses,” said Carroll, who has two children – one in college, another in high school. “I didn’t have the time to dwell about it or feel sorry about it. I have a family I want to take care of.”

A year ago, Carroll was looking down his Fair Grounds shed row and wondering how it could produce.

“I’d come into the barn and see six, seven horses – $30,000 maidens and maybe a one-other-than-allowance horse,” he said. “I love the game too much and love training too much to get bitter.”

Now, Carroll overseas a 30-strong Casse string at Fair Grounds that has been very active at the meet and is loaded with talent. On Saturday, Carroll will saddle Casse-trained runners in the Grade 3, $200,000 Lecomte, where the barn starts Takeoff, and in the $150,000 Silverbulletday, which drew the sharp debut winner Summertime Sky, who makes her first start around two turns and on dirt in the race for 3-year-old fillies.

Takeoff, an eye-catching dirt-route maiden winner here in his most recent start, is one of 12 entrants in the Lecomte, a Kentucky Derby qualifying race.

Carroll, meanwhile, says he still rides four or five horses every morning. Casse fears a fall and injury to a key assistant, but Carroll isn’t ready to get out of the saddle. Carroll was the work rider for the great Easy Goer, and he came to America after spending five years in the yard of Irish training legend John Oxx. His career as an Irish jockey, though, was short-lived.

“I was the worst jockey you ever saw in your life. Bad doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Carroll said. Training had worked out better – until it didn’t. Carroll is in a better spot now than last January.

“I come to work excited every day now,” Carroll said. “Hopefully, we’ll be back here next year with even more horses.”