Dale Capuano: a legend in the making.

Knowing what you want to do with your life before the age of 10 is an amusing anecdote. Fulfilling your potential when you pursue that passion is another story, one still being written by Dale Capuano, one of America’s bright, young trainers.

“I fell in love with it,” the 40-year-old Capuano said. “I was probably about 10. I wanted to do it and be successful at it.”

He is. In 2002, Capuano led Maryland trainers in victories for the fifth time in the last six years and ranked sixth nationally with 201 wins, while his horses earned more than $3.5 million. The year before, he was fourth nationally with 235 victories and generated earnings of $4.4 million for his owners.

Yet he has no delusions of grandeur. He’s not ready to pass the Bobby Frankels, Bob Bafferts and D. Wayne Lukases of racing, trainers who routinely work with six or seven-figure yearlings and 2-year-olds. “They have a lot more to work with, there’s no doubt about it,” Capuano said. “Their throwaways would be kings in my barn. That’s just the way it is. I try to be realistic.”

The reality is that Capuano trained for 20 years before William Sorokolit’s Prized Stamp delivered his first Grade 2 stakes win in 2001, taking the $200,000 Barbara Fritchie Handicap at Laurel at odds of 17-1. He has never won a Grade 1.

Dale’s younger brother Gary impressed horsemen around the country when his Captain Bodgit just missed winning the 1997 Kentucky Derby and Preakness to Silver Charm. Yet six years later, Gary also has to search for top-quality horses.

“If he’d been anywhere except Maryland, he would have had a barn full after Captain Bodgit,” Dale Capuano said. “I’d like to have a barn full of nice horses, a lot more stakes horses, just better quality horses. They’re fun to train instead of patching them up. That’s what I ultimately would like to do. One day we’ll come up with that Derby win. I’d settle for the Breeders’ Cup, Preakness or Belmont.”

Capuano knows he will get that high profile victory. “I’m a driven kind of person,” he said. “When I put my mind to it, I usually do it.”

He was raised that way. His dad, Phil, trained for decades while supplementing his unstable equine income with a variety of other jobs ranging from driving a cab to selling vacuum cleaners. His mom, Connie, continues to do the books for both her trainer sons, born just a year and eight days apart. Their sister Gina is a licensed trainer who worked for Dale before moving to Canada when she married Canadian trainer Michael Wright.

The Capuanos tend to travel through life collectively, as a family. “They’re very close and they would do anything for each other,” said Ali Capuano, Dale’s foreman/exercise rider and wife of nearly three years. She would, too, especially since Dale came up with a nifty title for her: human resources coordinator. Besides riding, she supervises the schedules of their 35 employees taking care of 60 to 100 horses racing in Maryland, Delaware and occasionally New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

“She doesn’t get much credit,” Dale said. “She gallops horses, works them, helps run things. She does it all.”

So does he. A search party would be required to find a more complete and dedicated horseman than Dale Capuano, who has bought, bred and claimed multiple stakes winners without big bucks backing him up.

“Being in Maryland, and with the type of horses that I have, it’s tough for me to come up with horses that can take me to the next level,” he said. “We usually buy 15 to 20 yearlings a year. If you look at the average of what I spend, it’s $15,000 to $20,000. We keep trying to upgrade as best as we can. For me, I have to be successful enough with the claimers for my clients so they can reinvest. I’d be tickled to death if I could go to the sales and buy 10 to 15 yearlings and average $50,000. I’d be in high cotton. That’d be pretty good for me.”

When he gets them, they’ll be in good hands. Dale’s been doing this for most of his life.

“I can remember sitting on a bale of straw holding a horse in an ice tub,” Capuano said. “I was 6, 7 years old at Marlboro race track. My dad had cheap horses. That’s all he had. When we were a little bit older, he let me rub horses and then put bandages on. I was 8 or 9. He said you have to keep rubbing their legs. Now people don’t massage horses’ legs. Circulation is key.”

Capuano learned more than handling horses from his dad. “When we were young, he definitely led us in the right direction,” Capuano said. “He led us by example. The basic things are be a good family man, be honest with people and treat people with respect, the way you want to be treated. I think that has a lot to do with all of us being successful.”

Dale was all of 18 when he became a trainer. “I guess it was a little scary at first, but I had already done everything,” he said. “To be successful, you have to be all-around: a good trainer, a good horseman, a good business person. If you do one thing well, you might not be able to survive. I think you have to put all that together. It all seemed to come to me pretty easily.”

Clients did not. “When you’re 18 years old, when you don’t have any good horses, it’s not easy,” he said. “It’s a funny thing about the horse business. You can work as hard as you possibly can and you still might not have a horse that’s able to compete at your level. When you’re young, you have to believe in what you believe in. I just stuck with it. Once I got a couple of good horses, it kind of snowballed. Good things seemed to happen after that.”

Few people who knew Dale were surprised.

“I don’t know anybody who has the work ethic Dale does,” said brother Gary. “Even growing up as a teenager with my father, he was the first one up in the morning. On the weekends, he was at the track. Morning and night. And he still is. I couldn’t keep up with him. I don’t know many people who can. He checks every horse every day. And his memory is unbelievable.”

Ali Capuano witnesses her husband’s work ethic daily. And she, too, is impressed. “He looks at every one of his horses every day and keeps on top of what they’re doing,” she said. “Each horse jogs by him every day and he checks their legs. He also watches them train. He knows what he has in a horse. It’s amazing. And he doesn’t sugarcoat it. If an owner has a claimer, he’ll tell him he’s a claimer. I’ve worked for other trainers and they don’t want to tell owners those things. Dale is really straightforward. He’s honest.”

Capuano has been watching his horses’ legs and giving his owners frank opinions for more than two decades, but Ali Capuano was not overly impressed with him the first time around.

“We knew each other from 11 or 12 years ago,” Ali said. “I didn’t take much notice of Dale back in those days. About five years ago, I was riding a horse on the track and pulled him up and Dale was standing there watching his horses train. We struck up a conversation and I said to myself, ‘I don’t remember Dale looking that good?’” She laughed and added, “He got better looking with age.”

He’s getting better horses with age, too, but it’s been a slow, steady climb. One of the horses he’s proudest of is his homebred Private Slip, a handful of a horse still racing at age 9. Through 2002, Private Slip had won 14 of 34 grass starts, including the 1999 Maryland Million Turf. He also won three of 19 starts on dirt. Private Slip has $541,588 in total earnings, $477,460 reaped from racing on the turf.

Private Slip highlights Capuano’s lesser known but still relatively successful involvement as a breeder. He and Ali have not progressed to keeping broodmares at their 17-acre farm in Howard County, but Capuano is part-owner of five broodmares, and has co-bred several other stakes winners.

“I still have Private Slip and he’s still running,” Capuano said. “His sire is Private Key, a horse my dad bought from Buckland Farm at Timonium for about $7,000. Private Key was by Private Account. He had problems and never raced. But he was a pretty good-looking horse. So we bred him to the mares my dad had, my brother had and I had.”

One of the family mares was Blue Slip, a daughter of Lines of Power who had one win and three seconds in seven lifetime starts and earnings of $9,770. Blue Slip is the dam of Private Slip, who gives his exercise rider, Ali Capuano, all she can handle.

“Private Slip is a pistol. He’s a monster of a horse and still acts like a crazy 2-year-old,” said Ali. “You can’t trust him when he’s fit and feeling good. He’s very strong and very tough. I spoil him with peppermints.”

Ali, 32, was born in Howard County, Md., and showed horses through her teenaged years. She has become a valuable asset to her husband.

“It works out good,” she said. “We share in a lot of things about training the horses because I ride for him. I can give him a hands-on opinion. We can disagree on things, but it’s his name hanging on the shingle. You can’t have two people trying to control everything, and I don’t. This is his. I’m just there to help out.”

She did a lot more than just help out with Prized Stamp, who followed her victory in the 2001 Barbara Fritchie Handicap by finishing second to Xtra Heat in last year’s running of the same race. After winning eight of 28 starts with seven seconds and six thirds and earnings of $438,703, Prized Stamp was retired and bred this year to Gone West.

“Ali was her exercise rider all the time,” Capuano said. “She always worked her because she was hard to handle. She was a high-strung filly, and Ali got along with her really well. She had a lot to do with her success.”

Much of Capuano’s success has come with claimers. Two of his best were Wind Splitter and In the Curl. Capuano claimed Wind Splitter for $23,500 on behalf of owner Randall F. Williams Jr. in his second start as a 2-year-old and took him the following spring to the 1989 Kentucky Derby, where he finished 11th in the field of 15 dominated by Sunday Silence and Easy Goer.

“He got beat by eight, nine lengths, which was no disgrace,” Capuano said. “It was exciting to run a horse there. I was 26. I was thinking this is great. I thought it’d be nice to get to this race with a legitimate chance to win.”

Wind Splitter went on to earn $332,239 in his four-year career, winning nine of 26 starts including the $100,000 Trenton Handicap at Garden State in 1990, Capuano’s first of two Grade 3 stakes victories. Wind Splitter’s career nearly ended prematurely when the son of Cut Throat (GB) fractured a sesamoid in the second half of the 1990 season. But Capuano brought Wind Splitter back after nearly a year off to win three of his first four outings of 1991, including a track record-equaling performance at Philadelphia Park when winning the six-furlong Delaware Handicap in 1:09Z\b. Wind Splitter also accounted for that season’s Broad Brush Handicap at Pimlico.

Capuano has not started another horse in the Triple Crown, which did nothing to diminish his joy in sharing his brother’s near-miss by a head with Captain Bodgit in the 1997 Kentucky Derby.

“That was so cool with Gary,” Capuano said. “Captain Bodgit was the favorite. That was something else. Watching the Derby, from where we were at, we thought he’d won. It was so close. For us to get that far, that was amazing. Gary’s an excellent trainer. He gets a lot out of what he’s got.”

So does Dale, even when he spends an uncharacteristically large amount of money to buy a horse. On March 10, 1989, Dale Capuano set a Maryland record when he claimed stakes winner In the Curl for $75,000, on behalf of owner Nick Rinaldi. The 5-year-old Shelter Half mare, in for a tag for only the second time in her career, won that race, and when Capuano moved her up to allowance company for her next start, dead heated with Kerygma, only to be disqualified and placed second.

Undeterred, Capuano wheeled In the Curl back to win an allowance race, then the $50,000 Primonetta Handicap at Pimlico. Later that year, she finished second to Safely Kept in the Maryland Million Distaff. Safely Kept went on to finish second by a neck in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint-G1 and was voted the nation’s champion sprinter.

In the Curl continued her own successful career, taking several stakes at Mid-Atlantic tracks, running second again to Safely Kept in the 1991 Maryland Million Distaff, and retiring with a career record of 26 wins, 24 seconds and 14 thirds in 85 starts and earnings of $749,891.

Capuano also pushed the envelope when he bought Just Call Me Carl, on behalf of owner Steven Newby, for $80,000 at the 1996 Keeneland September Yearling sale.

“That’s a lot of money for me,” Capuano said. Just Call Me Carl was worth it, winning 12 of 25 career starts, six of them stakes, and $525,708 (including a $25,000 bonus for winning the sprint division of the Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred Championships series in 2000). Just Call Me Carl was also one of four horses who participated in a streak for Capuano during the 2001 Pimlico spring meet. Over three consecutive weekends, from April 22 to May 6, Capuano won four stakes races—Kimbralata (Smart Halo Stakes, April 22), Prized Stamp (Gold Digger Stakes, April 28), Private Slip (Henry S. Clark Stakes, April 29) and Just Call Me Carl (Ben Cohen Stakes, May 6).

Just Call Me Carl nearly gave Capuano his first Grade 1 stakes win when he finished second, a length and three quarters behind the outstanding sprinter Richter Scale (who set a new track record of 1:07V\b) in the $300,000 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash in 2000.

“In Grade 1s, in this business, nobody cares if you’re second,” Capuano said.

Kimbralata, a 5-year-old mare bred by Gary Capuano and owned by Dale’s client Donald Mensh, didn’t win a graded stakes but still made $340,594 from nine victories in 29 starts. She made her final start at Laurel Park in late March and has been retired. She is scheduled to be bred to Forestry.

Capuano might have a filly to replace her. At Saratoga in 2001, Capuano shipped in 2-year-old first-time starter Many Smiles, a daughter of Polish Numbers. Campaigning in the name of Fortunate Stable (a partnership of Capuano and his major clients Costas Triantafilos, a Baltimore restaurateur and Louis J. Ulman, who is an attorney as well as chairman of the Maryland Racing Commission), the filly won her debut by 12C\v lengths under Edgar Prado.

“We bred her, and we were offered a lot of money for her,” said Capuano of the filly, who is a half-sister to stakes winners Saratoga Cure and Smile My Lord, all three bred in the name of C & T Stable (Capuano and Triantafilos). “Then she got hurt and the deal fell through. She was going to race in the Spinaway against Cashier’s Dream, but she had a bruised foot and a cracked pastern. She missed all of her 3-year-old season, but is back in training.”

All these good horses have taken Capuano to the edge of national attention without pushing him over the top. Yet his 19.7 percent career winning percentage—2,095 victories from 10,654 starts through March 3 of this year—is outstanding.

“He does a super job,” said one of his major competitors, trainer Scott Lake. “He works real hard and he’s very good at placing his horses.”

Even when he takes a shot. Last Preakness Day at Pimlico, Capuano entered No Pressure, a $5,000 yearling he’d purchased at the 2000 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Eastern Fall Yearling sale at Timonium, in the $100,000 Sir Barton Stakes. The average price of the 566 yearlings sold at that fall sale was $19,946, nearly four times what Capuano paid for No Pressure.

No Pressure’s rivals in the Sir Barton included Sarava, whose half-interest had been purchased the year before for $250,000, and Shah Jehan, a $4 million yearling. No Pressure, carrying the colors of Lou Ulman, was second most of the way, then tired late to finish third, half a length off Shah Jehan in second and four and a half lengths behind the winner, Sarava, who captured the Belmont Stakes in his next start.

That 7-year-old boy holding a horse standing in an ice tub has come a long way, but anyone who knows Capuano knows his journey is almost certainly far from over.