John Pricci

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - The quote in the headline belongs to trainer Eddie Neloy. Those words were revisited this week because Johnny Campo, the best assistant trainer Neloy ever had, died Nov. 14 and because Neloy could see through the brashness of a high school dropout and help him become a great horseman. That’s how it works on the racetrack: teacher today, rival tomorrow.

Neloy worked and developed champions for the Phipps family including the great Buckpasser, winner of 25 of 31 lifetime starts and 15 in a row from February of 1966 to May of the following year. Considering that horses race far more often than the every six-to-eight weeks they do today, a trainer deserves almost as much credit as his horse. It follows that if Neloy could develop a Buckpasser surely he could know a rough diamond when he saw one.

So Neloy groomed Campo as he would Buckpasser, even enrolling him in the Dale Carnegie School to polish his people skills. A little of it took, said Neloy at the time, but Campo likely never let the message get to the bottom of him the way he got to the bottom of his horses. Above that gruff interior lay a gruff exterior. During Pleasant Colony’s Triple Crown chase, Campo was a celebrity for reminding Jim McKay on national television: “I’m a pretty good horse trainer, pal. Don’t ever forget it.”

But that was 13 years after Campo left Neloy’s employ, 21 years after first hooking up with him. It was Campo who rubbed Buckpasser for Neloy. But by April of 1968 Campo was out on his own with a three-horse stable. In two months he saddled his first winner.

On June 28, I was standing on the edge of the Belmont training track with my college buddy turned assistant trainer, John Parisella. Parisella worked for Tommy Gullo, who was ill, and Parisella was entrusted with Gullo’s operation. Parisella often sought out Campo for advice.

“Who’s that?” I asked, as an energetic bowling-ball of a man walked rapidly by with one hand in his pocket while the other was used for balance and emphasis. “That’s Johnny Campo. He won the daily double yesterday.”

Campo’s first winner was either Dollar Sign in the first race June 27, or the $102 double when Shotgun Miss won the second. Then, trainers rarely won two races in an afternoon on the highly competitive New York circuit. This unknown had just won with two-thirds of his stable in under 30 minutes.

“John Campo was a genius,” said Parisella, who ought to know. Campo who was Parisella’s mentor the way Neloy was Campo’s. Parisella, a winner of four New York titles and a Turfway Park record holder in that category, is the trainer credited for putting New York winter racing on the map. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for John Campo.”

Though Pleasant Colony failed to sweep the 1981 Triple Crown when a quick thinking George Martens made shrewd middle move and stole the mile-and-a-half Belmont with Summing, the chase validated Campo’s former accomplishments. He simultaneously developed the juvenile colt and filly champions of 1973, Protagonist and Talking Picture, after becoming only the second trainer in a shorter New York season to saddle 100 winners in a single year.

Johnny Campo was as much of a controversial figure on the backstretch as he was off the track, which might say something about why Campo and Hall of Fame are never connected in the same sentence. Even if he took the backstretch cliché “no foot no horse” to a higher level.

Slide show   Images of the Triple Crown See images from the 2005 Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes.

If he could find a blacksmith skilled and willing enough to pare a horse’s frog, Campo believed he could alleviate pain and promote soundness. The procedure was widely criticized then as now, “inhumane” because blood would be shed in the process. Today, many blacksmiths have neither the skill nor courage to even try.

(The frog is a thorny under-patch of a horse’s hoof that acts like a shock-absorber. Frogs often become bruised, causing lameness. Sometimes surface dirt can work itself beneath the frog, resulting in referral pain or other forms of unsoundness in the ankle and, more commonly, the shoulder. The accepted practice is to pull the shoes, soak the hoof, and re-shoe the horse).

Slide show   The Breeders' Cup See images from the 2005 World Thoroughbreds Championships at Belmont Park.

Campo’s theory took the process a step further. By relieving pressure on the frog or cleaning out the effected area, he found horses responded quicker and remained sound longer. “Five out of 20 times it made no difference one way or another,” Parisella said. “Five times it didn’t work at all. But 10 times you’d hit a home run. Afterwards, John gave the horse a tetanus shot. He was very thorough. He was the first trainer I saw sew-up fillies. Some fillies take in air when they run and track particles can get inside and cause infection.”

At a time when breeding nurseries dominated the entries on the good-horse circuits, horses were trained by guys named Fitzsimmons and Stephens and Nerud. Campo came along and made that rare leap from New York City dropout to visionary horseman. He crossed over from claimers to champions when top horsemen came from places with country sounding names. Campo was from mean streets and he paved the way for Frankel and Zito and Parisella. Even an unpolished diamond can have brilliance.

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