No slowing down for trainers in twilight of storied careers

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Jinks Fires first showed up at Oaklawn in 1959. David Vance came along in 1962. Don Von Hemel set up shop in 1975, and D. Wayne Lukas sent a division to town for the first time in 1984.

The men are the stalwarts of the local training colony, respected as much for their accomplishments and horsemanship as their longevity in a demanding profession. They carry on when many from their generation have retired. For them, training is not just a career, it’s a passion.

“I love horses, and I’ve always been very competitive,” said Vance, the 77-year-old who trained champion Caressing and has four titles at Oaklawn. “I love claiming, trying to move a horse up the ladder. And I love trying to come up with a good young horse. It’s just kind of bred in me.”

Lukas, 82, is a member of the Hall of Fame who won training titles at Oaklawn in 1987 and 2011 and more stakes than any other stable during the track’s annual Racing Festival of the South, which gets under way Thursday. He soon will be releasing his first book, entitled “Sermon on the Mount.”

“One of the quotes in the book is that the Thoroughbred industry is not fueled by economic judgement,” he said. “It’s fueled by passion, love of the game. That’s what fuels it.

“As you get older, it’s more satisfying to develop a horse.”

Von Hemel, 83, won the Oaklawn training title in 1981 and has two sons who train at Oaklawn, Donnie and Kelly Von Hemel.

“I love to be around my sons and the people at the racetrack,” Don Von Hemel said. “I just like being around the horses, and I like to keep training.”

Fires, 77, won the meet’s biggest prize, the Arkansas Derby, in 2011 with Archarcharch. He arrived on the local scene after an owner approached him with an employment opportunity during a Memphis rodeo in which Fires won the bull-riding title.

“He wanted me to break yearlings, and when the horses came to the track, I kind of followed them here to Oaklawn, and I’ve been here ever since,” said Fires. “It was the first time I’d been to a racetrack.”

Lukas showed up on the track at 16, eventually trading a career as a basketball coach for one as a trainer. He first had success with Quarter Horses and by 1978 had transitioned completely to Thoroughbreds.

“In this game, there’s no how-to book,” he said. “You can’t go to the library and pull out a book on how to win the Kentucky Derby or any other major race. It’s what I call an intuitive awareness. Experience is everything in this game.”

Vance worked for his father at Oaklawn before going out on his own in 1964. He’s trained top-of-the-line runners like Grade 1 winner My Trusty Cat, but also is well known for making successful claims. He said that Oaklawn, which is approaching $6 million in claims at this meet, has long been a good place for such business.

“It was one of the best places to claim,” he said. “You always could claim a horse or two and go win [anywhere]. We never failed to claim a horse here that couldn’t go and win. You could always find them if you looked.”

Fires was a trailblazer in his own family, as brothers Bucky, Earlie, Manny, Jackie, Monroe, Wayne, and Teddy all joined him in the racing industry. Earlie Fires, a retired jockey, is in the Hall of Fame.

Jinks Fires galloped horses before training, and he said he remembers getting on them at barns located across the street from Oaklawn.

“I used to ride horses over from behind Stubby’s,” Fires said, referring to a local restaurant. “They had barns over there across the road.”

He also remembers purses for maiden races being worth $5,000. Vance said he recalls the featured races at some point in the 1970s being worth $25,000. These days, the purses for both categories are more than $80,000.

Von Hemel said it was purses that first brought him to Oaklawn.

“The purses were better at Oaklawn than where I was racing,” he said, “and I had horses I thought would fit down here.”

Von Hemel has won at least one race in Hot Springs every year since, and later this season is looking forward to bringing the graded stakes winner Smack Smack back to the races.

Vance is looking forward to the 2-year-olds who will be joining his stable when he gets to his next stop, Churchill Downs.

It is at Churchill where Lukas is expected to saddle Bravazo in next month’s Kentucky Derby. The winner of the Risen Star at Fair Grounds, Bravazo is in training at Oaklawn. Lukas has another top 3-year-old in Sporting Chance, who was to run Saturday at Keeneland in the Blue Grass.

Fires could be active during the Racing Festival of the South, as he has Colonelsdarktemper, the winner of last year’s West Virginia Derby, pointing for the Grade 2, $750,000 Oaklawn Handicap next Saturday.

Lukas said he recently was talking about the draw of racing with Bill Parcells, the retired NFL coach who has a stable of horses.

“He said, ‘As coaches, we lived from game to game, Sunday to Sunday. … That adrenaline coming into the stadium on Sunday afternoon in those big games is what fueled us, what kept us going,’ ” Lukas said. “He said, ‘Now that I’m no longer coaching, that competitive drive is still in me to compete. I need something to give me that same feeling that I got every Sunday, which was almost a way of life for me. Now, that’s what horse racing does.’ ”