HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Agent Bill Castle, who through last month at Oaklawn Park was representing jockey Ramon Vazquez, said Saturday he is leaving his role in the racing industry after being diagnosed with a rare blood disorder. He has returned to his native New York.
Castle, 60, has been receiving an aggressive series of treatments for polycythemia vera, a form of blood cancer. He is home, but has to regularly have blood, which regenerates, drawn out of his system at Mount Sinai Hospital.
“I produce too many red blood cells, so if I don’t extract blood, a stroke will happen,” Castle said. “I have it where it’s manageable. I’m comfortable with that, as long as I stay very proactive.
“The disease has to be monitored very correctly and carefully. In regards to where I’m at in the horse industry as an agent, I don’t believe I’ll ever return as an agent, sadly. I’m going to focus on keeping my health in check, my personal affairs with my family, and building out a resort in the Dominican Republic.”
Castle is the son of Jerome Castle, a prominent businessman and philanthropist who in 1974 won the Frizette with his homebred Molly Ballantine. The 89-year-old Castle was a leading owner in New York for more than three decades and was one of the pioneers of the state’s breeding program by standing a multiple stakes-winning half-brother to Riva Ridge named Hydrologist.
When Bill Castle retired from serving as a vice president of Morgan Stanley and Prudential, he decided to follow his father back into racing. Earlier in his life Bill Castle had been an owner, buying his first horse at 18.
“Someone said, ‘Why don’t you become an agent?’” Castle recalled. “So I became an agent. The first rider I had on dark days out of New York, and what happens? He doesn’t show up. So, I get Mario Pino, a guy who’s won thousands of races. I said, ‘This guy’s paying me? He’s teaching me!”
Around 2006, ahead of the Delaware Park meet in which Pino was to ride, Castle set out to meet trainer Larry Jones. The horseman was working on setting up his stable, and Castle, to strike up a conversation, began hammering nails with Jones.
“I said, ‘Larry, I’ll be back in a little while,’ and I went and bought 30 sub sandwiches for his employees,” recalls Castle. “He tells his wife, Cindy, ‘We found our agent!' ’’
Pino became the regular rider on the barn’s Hard Spun, who ran second in the Kentucky Derby in 2007.
Castle also credits the early-on support of brothers Bobby and Steve Klesaris. Castle has since represented such riders as David Cohen, Cornelio Velasquez, Angel Cruz and Manny Esquivel. He spent time in Southern California with Ramon Vazquez before the two returned to Oaklawn.
Castle said he has been humbled by the outpouring of support from so many in the industry since they have learned of his health battle.
“I’m grateful for their kindness to me, so respectful, so decent,” he said. “It makes me happy. That’s valuable. It’s one of God’s blessings.”
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