AUBURN — “I am going to win the Kentucky Derby someday,” the boy said confidently, while introducing himself to a visitor.
And what year?
“2035,” said Austin Evans, the 12-year-old son of Justin Evans, 42, the leading trainer last season at Emerald Downs and tied for the lead this year entering the weekend.
“I think he’ll do it,” Justin said, without predicting the exact year. “He’s so much more advanced at his age than I was.”
Pick any morning except Tuesday — when the track is closed for training — and you will find Austin following his father around, getting hands-on experience while learning the trade.
The two are inseparable at the track.
Austin Evans says he loves everything about the horse racing business, happily waking up about 4:30 a.m. to spend several hours helping his father, then going home to begin school, taught by his mother, Vanessa.
Like Austin, Justin grew up at the racetrack. His father trained horses at the racetrack in Prescott, Ariz.
His parents divorced when he was 9, and Justin helped his mother, Lynda Evans, train horses.
“When he left, I kind of took over and did a lot of trial-and-error stuff,” Justin said. “I was really doing it all by the time I was 13 or 14. She still had the license because I couldn’t get my license until I was 18. She was the license and I was the man behind the scenes back then.”
When Evans graduated from high school, his friends went on a senior trip. Evans went to the racetrack to work with his horses. When he turned 18, he got his trainer’s license.
He never wanted to do anything else but train horses, he said, and he has done it quite well, winning 2,534 races going into the weekend with an impressive 24% career winning percentage.
Austin, who began accompanying his father at work when he was a baby, is just as enamored with the sport, and already has his owner’s license.
“He’s a lot like me. He misses out on a lot of other stuff,” Justin said. “He’s so much smarter than me, it’s unbelievable. That’s why I’ve got big expectations for him because he’s so far ahead of me.”
Vanessa Evans, who is a jockey agent, said Austin was not pushed into helping out with his father’s stable.
“You have to want to be here,” said Vanessa, who also teaches the family’s 7-year-old twin girls. “It’s not easy to get up at 4:30 (a.m.), but that’s what he wants. He could be playing football or whatever, but this is what he wants to do, and he is so calm and good with the horses.
“What I push is school.”
Austin said some of his duties include taking bandages off, cleaning stalls, leading horses to the paddock for races, then helping out once the horses are in the paddock.
“And I ride a pony around the barn,” he said.
Austin’s safety is always a primary concern while he works with the horses.
“Horses are high-strung and accidents can happen, with good horses or bad,” Vanessa said. “He’s my first born and everybody’s afraid to get him hurt because they know that I would be very angry.”
Austin, who pays close attention to his father’s patterns for working out horses or claiming them, isn’t afraid to give his father unsolicited advice and criticism.
“I was kind of disappointed when Godsend got beat the other day, and Austin said you didn’t give him a workout here,” Justin Evans said. “I’ve kind of babied (Godsend) a little bit, and he didn’t want to say it, but he told me I screwed up.”
Austin chimed in, “I would have given him a workout.”
Justin said Austin’s interest took a leap last year when he began helping out with Zestful, who ran in three stakes races last year, including finishing seventh in the Longacres Mile.
“Zestful and Austin got to become buddies,” Justin said, with Austin agreeing emphatically. “He would hand walk him every morning.”
Austin got a tough lesson of the trade when Zestful ran for a $30,000 claiming price last October in Louisiana. Much to Austin’s dismay, Zestful was claimed.
He lost his buddy to another barn. Austin said that was hard on him.
“Austin was mad and he was about ready to give up on the races,” Justin said.
But he carried on and was back helping his father.
“I’m here every morning,” he said.
Austin became a horse owner a few years back, with two-time Triple Crown winning trainer Bob Baffert — who like Justin, got his start in the business in Prescott, Ariz. — giving Austin a couple of horses.
“Baffert has really taken a liking to (Austin),” Justin said. “He and Baffert are buddies. Baffert called me out of the blue one day and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to give this horse to Austin, but I want the money this horse makes to go to his college fund, because Baffert wants to see him go to the University of Arizona.”
Austin said he plans to go to Arizona, which is known for its racetrack industry program.
In the meantime, he will continue to help his father, at least until he can get his trainer’s license.
Justin treasures the time with his son, especially after not having time with his father after his parents’ divorce. After training, they will often go out for Chinese food, something they like, but the rest of the family doesn’t.
“I’d always heard that when you have a son, and you first see him and look into his eyes, you know that you want to do everything you can for him,” Justin said. “It chokes me up a little bit, just not having my dad around all that time for me, and to be able to share stuff with (Austin), it makes the wins so much better. It makes the wins count even more, and it makes the bad days good.”
Both dream of one day training a horse in the Kentucky Derby and having the other beside them while leading the horse to the paddock.
“Austin always says we aren’t going to watch a Kentucky Derby until we are in one,” Justin said. “That’s the ultimate goal for sure.”
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