Frank Y. Whiteley Jr.
horse trainer
Frank Yewell Whiteley Jr. (January 31, 1915 – May 2, 2008) was a Hall of Fame Thoroughbred racehorse trainer.
Born and raised on a farm in Centreville, Maryland, Whiteley grew up around horses and from a very early age was intent on racing them. Developing his skills, by age twenty-one he had embarked on a professional training career in his home state. He retired forty-nine years later having trained some of the most famous American racehorses of the second half of the 20th century.
U. S. Triple Crown series
Whiteley's first Champion was Tom Rolfe, who gave him his first win in the U.S. Triple Crown series in 1965 when Ron Turcotte rode him to victory in the Preakness Stakes. In 1967, Whitelely had his second Champion in Damascus, who won two more of the Classics and was voted the 1967 American Horse of the Year. Long reticent about talking to the media, leading up to the 1967 Kentucky Derby, Whiteley finally gave in as a result of all the hoopla surrounding Damascus. According to a New York Post newspaper article, "The first question was 'How did Damascus sleep last night?' To which Whiteley replied, 'How the hell would I know? I didn’t sleep with him.' Then he turned and walked back into the barn." [1]
Ruffian
For the 1974 racing season, Whiteley conditioned the horse with which he was most famously associated.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frank Y. Whiteley Jr.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.