Zest for Racing
Whitney “Zeke” Zeringue has taken a unique career path to become a breeder, owner and trainer
By Denis Blake
Louisiana breeder, owner and trainer, Whitney “Zeke” Zeringue.
For some people, a dream retirement means relaxing days with cold drinks on a sandy beach or 18 holes on the golf course. For those with a passion for racing, it might entail watching their own Thoroughbreds compete from the comfort of an air-conditioned turf club. Whitney “Zeke” Zeringue, a self-described workaholic, is not one of those people. After a successful business career with energy services giant Halliburton, he now gets up before the sun’s rays hit the beach and it’s too dark to hit a golf ball so he can manage his breeding and training operation located just a handful of furlongs from Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.
So why is a former president of a major corporation breeding and training his own horses, rather than enjoying a leisurely retirement and letting others handle all work that comes with raising and conditioning equine athletes? First off, Zeringue, who worked with former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney at Halliburton, said, half-jokingly, that horses are easier to manage than employees because they don’t talk back. And secondly, well, he just enjoys it, and that’s what retirement is supposed to be about.
“I would have people come by and ask why in the world are you becoming a trainer, have you lost your mind?” said Zeringue, who picked up his first win as a trainer in 1999 after owning racehorses for many years. “I’m basically a workaholic, and it intrigued me. I’ve always been interested in the well-being of the animal. I’ve been blessed enough that I can own my horses and march to my own beat, so to speak.”
That means Zeringue can make decisions based on what he thinks is best for the horses and his operation, and he doesn’t have to worry about satisfying or answering to owners.
Getting into Racing
Zeringue did not grow up around horses, nor did he have any immediate family in the business, but he still found his way to the track and got hooked at the Fair Grounds.
“After graduating from college as a petroleum engineer, I was assigned to a posting in Houma, Louisiana,” he said. “A lot of the guys there were into horse racing, but they were involved in the betting side of it. But I soon found out that I worked too hard to bet on horses, so I thought maybe I ought to own them, which maybe was a worse decision,” he added with a laugh.
A woman was also involved in his new interest.
“The girl who I was dating at the time, who ended up being my wife of 52 years now, had an uncle who liked the horses, so we would go with him to the Fair Grounds,” said Zeringue, who also took in the races at the now the long-gone Jefferson Downs.
Zeringue got into ownership despite a small problem that came up after a visit to the winner’s circle.
“The funny thing is I was allergic to horses,” he laughed. “My first horse that I owned, we went to the winner’s circle. and you know you touch the horse. and later in the day I can’t open my eyes and I keep sneezing. I went to a dermatologist, and sure enough I was allergic to horse dander, so that should have been an indication to stay out of the business. But I got allergy shots and built up a resistance.”
Even with the allergies under control, some might be content with just owning a stable of horses and paying a trainer to do the hard work. Instead, Zeringue decided to make a career change.
“ I would have people come by and ask why in the world are you becoming a trainer, have you lost your mind?”
Learning the Trade
There is really no organized schooling for becoming a trainer, and many learn the business after being born into a racing family or working their way up through various jobs on a racetrack or farm. That’s not the path Zeringue took, but after retiring from Halliburton in 1999 he decided he wanted to train his own horses.
“I had enough of corporate life, so I did an apprenticeship at the old Evangeline Downs in Lafayette,” he said. “I was there for about six or seven months and got my trainer’s license. Sam Houston opened around then, and I got my first win there with a horse named Texas Wave.”
That win came in a $10,000 maiden claiming sprint for a $4,800 purse. Zeringue also owned the horse, and even though he took home the lion’s share of the pot, it’s a bit different than leading a corporation that measures revenue in billions rather than thousands.
Yet Zeringue was soaking up experience, first at Evangline and then at other tracks around the region, so that he could learn a new profession even while he still stayed active in the business world as a consultant and with other ventures.
“I would watch guys and interact with them during training at 5:30, 6 a.m.,” he said. “Anatole Bourque is who I started under. I met Sam Breaux. I’d watch them. I watched what people did right and then built on that and made it my own. People might call it plagiarizing, but if they are doing it right why not? Pat Mouton taught me a lot. I just observed these guys and tried to understand how they do it. Since I owned the horses, if I messed up it’s on me.”
Zeringue and his team in the paddock
Zeringue also credited other conditioners who he learned from or who trained for him, including Howard Delahoussaye, T.J. Brumfield, Tommie Morgan, Morris Hewitt and Tucker Alonzo. Most recently, being stabled at various Louisiana tracks with experienced horse people and good friends like Denise Schmidt and Larry “Deadeye” Jollivette, has added to the experience and pleasure of being a thoroughbred trainer.
For a time, Zeringue was training some of his horses and had some with John Taylor.
“We called him ‘Tippy’ Taylor,” said Zeringue. “He worked with me together in the training of the horses. He did a great job.”
As if becoming a trainer wasn’t enough of a challenge, Zeringue decided to start breeding and raising his own horses as well.
“Breeding has been a labor of love, and my wife, Joyce, has been right there with me doing it,” he said.
One of the best horses Zeringue campaigned was also one he bred, Letithappencaptain. A Louisiana-bred daughter of Captain Bodgit, she won four stakes and earned $223,125. Zeringue trained the filly for most of her career, including for his first stakes win as a trainer in the Sarah Lane’s Oates Handicap at Fair Grounds, the same track where he first developed a love of horse racing. Taylor was the trainer toward the end of her time on the track, and she was named Accredited Louisiana-bred Champion 3-year-old filly in 2003 and later produced Grade 1 winner Ultimate Eagle after Zeringue sold her. The success of Letithappencaptain helped Zeringue’s farm earn the title of Louisiana 2003 TOBA breeder of the year.
“On the breeding side, I had a more scientific mind, so I started reading a lot of books,” he said. “I tried to understand nicking patterns and all that. We built up a broodmare band of about 14 at one time, but the trials and tribulations and losing babies got to us, and we scaled down to around four. Then I met a younger fellow named Quinn Strander, and he wanted to get invested in horses and we had some business dealings before that. So we formed Bammm Stables. He decided he wanted to learn more about breeding, so I’m back in the game now with seven broodmares.”
Zeringue currently has eight horses on the track, and among the future Louisiana-bred foals due at the farm are those by Louisiana stallions Unified and Carpe Diem, as well as Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1) winner Knicks Go.
A Historic Farm
Zeringue’s farm comprises about 60 acres near the New Orleans airport, and fittingly, part of the property used to be an old racetrack. The current training track sits on the very same spot where Thoroughbreds raced nearly a century ago.
“It was actually a racetrack at one time in the 1930s,” he said. “I think it was called Taft Downs. Ironically my wife’s dad, as a young man, went to the track. It’s hard to find much information about it though.”
Details about the racetrack are certainly sparse, and even the name is hard to pinpoint. A 1936 newspaper ad publicizes the “South Kenner Breeders’ & Racing Association” holding its first meeting with 70 days of racing over a half-mile track. The ad said admission was .40 and that spectators could “see ‘em pass the track twice.” Another article refers to the oval simply as the “South Kenner track.”
“We dug up the old track and refurbished it,” Zeringue said. “It still had the limestone and base part of the track. I just had to add a lot of sand. The footings of the old grandstand are still there, we’ve found a bunch of old liniment bottles. You can see where the barns were, and we’ve dug up some old horseshoes, so there’s a lot of history here. If I took a bulldozer and scraped under the sediment, I’m sure I’d find more stuff, so that intrigued us about the property when we bought it. I guess it was destiny all along.”
It’s also fitting that a property with that much history has continued to produce it. In addition to the successful Louisiana-bred racehorses to come from the farm, top jockey Joe Talamo got started there as a teenager before winning the Eclipse Award as leading apprentice rider in 2007 and compiling more than 2,300 wins since. Dustin Dugas also spent time at the farm as a jockey before moving on to training, and he now serves as a top assistant to two-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Brad Cox.
Like any breeder, owner or trainer, Zeringue would love to win the Kentucky Derby or a Breeders’ Cup race, but he also has more realistic goals in mind. Winning races, of course, is part of the goal, but not the only part.
“For small breeders like me, I think it’s kind of like the roadside tomato farms,” he said. “The farmer has produced something himself, and you have to take pride in that.”
A tomato farmer might not be able to compete with a giant commercial farm that supplies Heinz ketchup, just as Zeringue is not trying to outdo the sprawling Kentucky farms with million-dollar broodmares and high-dollar stud fees. He said if he can produce a productive horse, there is satisfaction in that.
One of his goals is not even to win the Louisiana Futurity, but rather to just have a starter.
“Everybody at the LTBA knows this…we have been nominating to the Louisiana Futurity for 37 years, and we’ve never run a horse in it,” he said with yet more laughter, again proving his enjoyment of the Thoroughbred. “The ladies always joke when I walk in the office; here I am paying my fees again.”
But with six yearlings and six weanlings in the pipeline, plus seven broodmares, hope springs eternal for Zeringue, as it does for so many other small breeders. So, watch out for him to have a horse in the Louisiana Futurity next year…or perhaps the next year.
“The odds are with me,” he said with optimism.