OZONE PARK, N.Y. – When someone would ask Adrianne DeVaux when she would begin training horses on her own, her answer was always the same.
“Just give me five years,” said DeVaux, the younger sister of trainer Cherie DeVaux.
Well, that timeline has been pushed up a bit. Saturday, at Aqueduct, Adrianne DeVaux, 26, will send out her first starter when she runs the 2-year-old Shoot the Nickel in a maiden race for horses that sold for $50,000 or less at auction or did not reach their reserve of $50,000 or less.
DeVaux has a second horse, Two Tons of Fun, that is dealing with some foot issues and won’t likely run until the fall at Fair Grounds, where DeVaux will be based.
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The timeline for DeVaux’s ascension to a trainer was moved up as trainer Chad Summers ponders retirement. Summers is one of several trainers employed by owner Al Gold, and Summers also does the majority of the bloodstock work for Gold. While Summers sees how far the 2-year-old Filoso can take him, other horses he previously trained have been moved to trainers such as Melanie Giddings, Jose D’Angelo, and Kevin Attard.
In a span of eight days in the first week of September, Gold’s runners Howard Wolowitz (Franklin-Simpson at Kentucky Downs) and Full Count Felicia (E.P. Taylor) have won Grade 1 stakes that put them in consideration for Breeders’ Cup races. D’Angelo trains Howard Wolowitz, while Attard trains Full Count Felicia.
DeVaux, who will likely be stabled in New York until late October, said she will have five or six prospective turf horses for Gold with her at Fair Grounds.
“I’ll go down there and Al wants to claim some down there and have some fun,” DeVaux said.
DeVaux said she would likely maintain a stable much smaller than her sister Cherie, who has 120 horses.
“It was really nice working with her for the last four years. It was really cool to work with horses at that level and have so many of them, so many turf horses, so many dirt horses, colts, fillies, 2-year-olds,” Adrianne DeVaux said.
Spirit of St Louis to Coolmore Mile
Spirit of St Louis was conspicuous by his absence from Friday’s Ashley T. Cole Stakes for New York-breds at Aqueduct.
A five-time winner, Spirit of St Louis will be pointed to the Grade 1, $1.25 million Coolmore Mile on Oct. 5 at Keeneland, trainer Chad Brown said.
“I think he’s better a little shorter,” said Brown, who added that in the New York-bred stakes “they keep putting all the weight on him, so I’m going to try him in open company.”
Spirit of St Louis did win the Danger’s Hour Stakes, a listed open-company stakes going one mile in April.
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