Zeringue doing his own thing as trainer

Whitney “Zeke” Zeringue might have been best known in the racing world for owning the New Orleans-area farm where jockey Joe Talamo got his start galloping horses at age 14.

Outside racing, Zeringue went in an entirely different direction. For 11 years, until 1997, he was president of Halliburton Energy Services, the well known company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. Zeringue, who went to work for Halliburton in 1972 as a petroleum engineer, went on to other executive positions in the energy sector before retiring in 2020.

Now, he trains a string of horses.

“What changed for me to get back into training was retiring from my real job,” Zeringue said in a phone interview this week. “I started back in earnest at Louisiana Downs earlier last year.”

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Zeringue has been racing regularly at Fair Grounds, where he stables 11 horses. Through Jan. 5, he had 19 starters and three winners, including Freedomfi, who scored a solid Louisiana-bred claiming win Jan. 2.

“I own most of them myself, which has been my mantra – breed and raise and race my own,” said Zeringue, whose 60-acre farm alongside the Mississippi River, about 17 miles from Fair Grounds, has a training track. Zeringue once housed 14 mares at the farm but now only has three.

Instead of going into meetings every morning, Zeringue now goes to the racetrack to oversee his stock with longtime assistant John Taylor. Taylor did the bulk of the training when Zeringue previously raced horses in his name, but now the owner and breeder is right up in the training, too.

“I joke and say that racing is my habit, but I’ve been blessed and fortunate,” Zeringue said. “I’ve had the opportunity to participate in something I love.”