McGaughey Gets Lots of Assistance With a Hot Barn

While trainer Shug McGaughey saddled six winners, five of them in stakes, on his record-breaking day at Belmont Park on Oct. 16, his No. 1 assistant, Buzzy Tenney, worked back at Barn 20, supervising the help and sending the horses to the paddock.

“We had so much to do that I didn’t appreciate what we’d done until I came to work the next morning,” Tenney said.

McGaughey ran seven horses that day, one each in races two through eight, and with a race being run about every 35 minutes, the afternoon was like a revolving door for Tenney.

Regal Solution, McGaughey’s only non-stakes winner on the card, started the day by winning an allowance race.

“That’s probably the only one we’ll win all day,” Tenney joked to the help at the barn.

Then Strolling Along won the Lawrence Realization Stakes.

“That was one we definitely didn’t expect to win,” Tenney said.

Next up, McGaughey won the Frizette Stakes with Heavenly Prize, a 2-year-old filly making only her second start.

“Damn,” Tenney says he thought, “maybe this is going to be a day.”

Looking ahead, Tenney saw that Dispute was running in the Beldame Stakes.

“I thought she had a big chance,” Tenney said.

After Dispute’s victory, it was Lure’s turn in the Kelso Handicap.

“At a mile, we didn’t think anybody could beat Lure,” Tenney said. “When he won, I said to myself: ‘These winners can’t keep on coming, can they?’ ”

For one race, the winners stopped. Personal Escort ran next to last as Dehere won the Champagne. In the next race, Miner’s Mark got his nose to the wire ahead of Colonial Affair in the Jockey Club Gold Cup. Colonial Affair’s owners thought they had won as they left the box-seat area, heading for the winner’s circle, and McGaughey, walking with them, was talked into accepting a second-place finish for Miner’s Mark.

“When we won that one, I still didn’t go crazy,” Tenney said. “After a night’s sleep, I woke up the next morning and it hit me.”

Tenney is typical of the take-charge head assistants that anchor major stables. For most of the last 20 years, trainer Ron McAnally has leaned on Eduardo Inda. One summer, Humberto Ascanio saddled more stakes winners at Del Mar than his boss, Bobby Frankel, who was running horses in the East. When Woody Stephens was winning five consecutive Belmont Stakes, from 1982-86, Sandy Bruno, a former schoolteacher, was doing the detail work. “But I don’t do windows,” Bruno once joked.

Tim Yakteen is the latest in a 40-year list of Charlie Whittingham assistants, some of whom eventually formed their own stables, and occasionally beat Whittingham in races. The alumni include Neil Drysdale, Chris Speckert, Dick Lundy and Mike Whittingham, Charlie’s son. All of them have won Breeders’ Cup races and another former Whittingham aide, the late Joe Manzi, won the 1984 Juvenile Fillies, only to lose it when the stewards disqualified his Fran’s Valentine for interference.

Whittingham had enough confidence in Yakteen to send him to Tokyo in 1991 to saddle Golden Pheasant, who won the Japan Cup.

Tenney has worked for McGaughey since late in 1985, when McGaughey became trainer for the powerful Ogden Phipps stable. Tenney and McGaughey have similar resumes:

--Both are 42 and grew up in Lexington, Ky.

--Neither came from a racing background.

--Both attended the University of Mississippi, Tenney earning a degree with a business-administration major and McGaughey dropping out after two years.

--For their internships in racing, both worked for trainers who wintered horses in South Carolina.

--Both were given career boosts by Seth Hancock, president of Claiborne Farm.

“Shug and I were members of the same Cub Scout group,” Tenney said. “We went to junior high school together. We went to different high schools and were opponents when our golf teams played.”

After college, Tenney went to work for the family leasing business in Lexington, disliking every day of it. After four years, he went to Hancock, an old friend, looking for a farm job.

“I don’t know why you want to do this,” Hancock told him. “You’ve got a business degree, and experience in a business, and you’ll start out working for us as a groom, at $105 a week.”

Tenney became a groom at Claiborne in 1977. “I thought it might lead to a farm manager’s job,” Tenney said.

Tenney worked in many aspects of the farm business for Claiborne, breaking yearlings, helping at the foaling barn, handling horses in the sales barn. Like many jobs in racing, the hours were long, but the work came in spurts.

“We’d spend about three hours every day playing nickel-dime poker,” Tenney said. “The job was on the slow side and I was starting to get bored.”

In 1981, Tenney joined trainer Steve Penrod and worked winters for him in Aiken, S.C. McGaughey, who got the Phipps job after a recommendation from Hancock, hired Tenney in November of 1985 and they took off for Florida and New York, where the Phipps horses are stabled.

Many head assistants work on a salary-commission basis, the commissions sometimes running 1-2% of the purses the horses earn. In 1988, the McGaughey barn had a purse total of $7.1 million; last year, the total was $4.1 million, and this year, after the $1-million day at Belmont, McGaughey is already at $4.6 million. One of fringe benefits for Tenney, his wife and their two small boys is living on Phipps’ 200-acre estate on Long Island, about 12 miles from Belmont Park.

The workweek is seven days and most mornings Tenney arrives at the barn at 5:30 to begin looking after about 40 horses, all of them needing some form of exercise. “The main thing is to get there ahead of Shug, and he usually doesn’t get there too early,” Tenney said. “We call the work in the morning organized chaos. You don’t want to fall behind. There’s no such thing as catchup.”

By late morning, there’s a lull and Tenney frequently slips over to a nearby gym to work out. When Belmont is running, he is back before the first race, to school horses in the paddock. In the afternoons, the pace is dictated by how many horses the barn is running. Tenney’s day usually ends at 5:30 p.m., after the last race.

“I’m going to take a week’s vacation next year,” Tenney said. “I usually only take a day here and a day there. But it’s not Shug, he wants me to take time off. It’s me. I never do.”

McGaughey has won four Breeders’ Cup races, but Tenney’s memories first turn to Easy Goer, winner of the 1989 Belmont Stakes but second twice as a heavy favorite in Cup races.

“He gave you a total effort every time,” Tenney said. “I grazed that horse for hours, and did all the leg work on him, and he sure needed a lot of leg work.”

Tenney is not expected at Santa Anita until Friday, the day before the Breeders’ Cup. Three of McGaughey’s Cup horses--Miner’s Mark in the Classic, Dispute in the Distaff and Heavenly Prize in the Juvenile Fillies--are owned by the Phipps family, and Lure, who will try to win the Mile for the second consecutive year, races for Claiborne Farm.

Before her seven-length victory in the Frizette, Heavenly Prize’s only start was a nine-length victory against maidens. The Juvenile Fillies will be the first race around two turns for the Phipps-bred daughter of Seeking The Gold and Oh What A Dance, a Nijinsky II mare, which is a concern for jockey Mike Smith.

“Heavenly Prize’s dam never ran a race,” Tenney said. “She’s not a growthy filly, but is better than average size. She’s got some filling in to do and should be pretty big by next year. She’s got a certain fire within her when she runs, but it doesn’t get in the way otherwise. You don’t even need a pony with her.”

Of Tenney, McGaughey says: “Buzzy is a big help. He’s a big believer in me, and he’s got confidence in me that we’re going to make things happen.”