Kathy Walsh, who started training as an interloper among the nation’s almost hermetically-sealed male ranks and who pursued her career with a rare combination of grit, guts, gumption and generosity, passed quietly in her sleep at the age of 85.<\/p>\n
A consummate horsewoman, Walsh\u00a0brooked no fools and minced no words, yet garnered the kind of deeply held reverence and affection typically extended to those of royal lineage. There’s a reason she was nicknamed The Queen.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe probably hired and fired me more times than she changed her underwear, I used to tell her,\u201d said jockey Mike Smith. \u201cShe could be tough on you\u2013but once you were part of the family, buddy, you were part of the family, man.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Walsh was born into racing. Her father James trained. She cultivated great taste in mentors. Walsh spent the formative years of her equine education mining nuggets of wisdom from the likes Allen Jerkens, Charlie Whittingham and Buster Millerick, who she viewed as her \u201cadoptive grandfather<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Walsh started training in the early 1970s, taking over her father’s stable upon his death. She soon hung out her shingle as a trainer to note, winning multiple titles at Longacres in Washington State and Canterbury Downs in Minnesota.<\/p>\n \u201cWe go way back, me and Kathy, back to the old Canterbury Downs days,\u201d said Smith. \u201cShe’s a great horsewoman. She had a strong stable back then. She was someone you wanted to ride for all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n Once becoming a permanent fixture of the California circuit, so the overall quality of her stock improved in leaps. She won 15 graded stakes during a career comprising 1231 individual wins. This includes the 2001 GI Santa Monica Handicap with Nany’s Sweep.<\/p>\n Walsh’s moon shot came in 2007, and the arrival in her barn of Cal-bred Georgie Boy (Tribal Rule), who took that year’s GI Del Mar Futurity.<\/p>\n The following spring, Georgie Boy claimed wins in the GII San Vicente Stakes and San Felipe Stakes, on the way to what was expected to be a bold tilt at the Kentucky Derby. He missed the race, however, with pulled muscles in his back, but he returned to action later that year before claiming the GII San Carlos Stakes, his final race.<\/p>\n As a two-year-old still learning his craft, Georgie Boy was headstrong, a real bruiser. \u201cBut we knew he could run,\u201d said Smith, who rode the horse to second in the GII Best Pal Stakes, a prep for his next race, the Del Mar Futurity.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was so aggressive with the blinkers on when we finished second. And she was pretty aggravated because we’d gone pretty quick. And I said ‘Kathy, he doesn’t need these blinkers anymore. I know he did when he was young, bless him, but he needs to relax. Take them off,\u201d Smith recalled.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, she took the blinkers off but she took me off with them!\u201d said Smith. \u201cOf course, the horse relaxed beautifully in the Futurity and won it.<\/p>\n \u201cI ran into her the next day and I said, ‘Well, first of all congratulations. But if I knew I was attached to those damned blinkers, I would never have told you to take them off!’ That’s just the game, isn’t it,\u201d said Smith. \u201cAnd you know, we were having dinner together two nights after that.\u201d<\/p>\n Walsh was a pioneer among female trainers\u2013a distinction she would begrudgingly acknowledge but more readily downplay.<\/p>\n