‘I’m humbled by all of this’: Black trainer makes history at Breeders’ Cup
DEL MAR, Calif. — George Leonard III is not your typical horse trainer at the Breeders’ Cup.
He picks up a hose and washes down his horse, mucks his own stall, spreads fresh bedding, while the rest of his team, his wife, walks their 2-year-old filly around the shedrow.
The Breeders’ Cup is about big rollers, high-priced horses and big breeding rights, but every once in a while comes along a magical set of circumstances from which movies are made. A lifelong trainer of cheap claimers buys a horse for $5,500, wins his first graded stakes race at 18-1 and gets an all-expenses paid trip to racing’s biggest stage.
And Leonard is more than one of a kind in
