KY Derby owner started career in harness racing

When the band strikes up My Old Kentucky Home at historic Churchill Downs on Saturday afternoon, only minutes before the 141st running of the Kentucky Derby, Donato Lanni will get goosebumps, just like every other year.

The difference this time is that he will there in person, alongside star trainer (and friend) Bob Baffert, and he’ll have a professional interest in the outcome of the race still touted as the most exciting two minutes in sport.

Lanni, 46, a native of Beaconsfield, has become one of thoroughbred racing’s leading bloodstock agents, helping trainers select top prospects from among the thousands of young thoroughbreds available to buy each year in North America and Europe.

Working for clients for a standard five-per-cent commission or on retainer, he inspects — by his count — about 15,000 horses a year. In 2014, one that caught his eye was Dortmund, which he purchased as a two-year-old for US$140,000 at a sale in Maryland just after the 2014 Preakness Stakes. Now in Baffert’s stable, Dortmund has won all six of his races, including the prestigious Santa Anita Derby, earned more than $1.2 million and will be one of the favourites in Saturday’s “run for the roses.”

“I’d love to win the Derby,” Lanni said in a telephone interview from his base in Lexington, Ky. (“Which is home now, except that I’m never there.”)

“Just to be in this situation is a dream come true. Coming from the West Island, I never imagined this could be possible. I’m lucky to be where I am. The man upstairs has been looking out for me.”

Lanni has been interested in horses since childhood. His father Giuseppe, a construction contractor, owned harness horses, which he raced (and occasionally drove) at now-defunct Blue Bonnets racetrack on Décarie Blvd.

As a teenager, Lanni worked as a stable hand at Blue Bonnets, shovelling manure and grooming horses for a number of trainers.

“Duncan MacTavish (a longtime local trainer) lived on the same street as we did in Beaconsfield. If I was out there waiting at the stop sign when he headed out at 5:30-6 (a.m.), he’d pick me up and we’d drive to the track. If I wasn’t, he’d drive on.”

At 16, Lanni already owned his own racehorse and was soaking up knowledge from veteran Montreal trainers like Onil Patry and André Lachance, “my mentor, who taught me how to keep a horse, what keeps them sound.”

Lanni didn’t spend all his time at the track. He also studied at Concordia University, obtaining a commerce degree.

In summer 1996, after completing his final exam, he packed up his car and headed for Kentucky in search of a job that would combine his passion for horses and business schooling.

“I was focused on thoroughbred racing, because it’s a bigger business than harness racing, and international,” he said.

He didn’t know anybody in Kentucky and found no takers for his services early on, but was undeterred.

“I wasn’t coming home with my tail between my legs. I knew this was what I wanted to do for a living. I’d done construction already and I knew that wasn’t for me. What made me happy was dealing with horses. I get along with them and they get along with me.”

He caught his first break with a standardbred operation, Castleton Farm, which took him on as a foreman in charge of yearlings.

John Cashman, his boss at Castleton, is the one who suggested he apply at Walmac International, which at the time stood influential thoroughbred stallions Miswaki, Alleged and Nureyev. Walmac owner John Jones gave him a one-month trial selling stallion breedings.

To read the rest of this article by Paul Delean of the Montreal Gazette click here.