DAILY RACING FORM, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1974
Rondinello: Long Climb Up
By HERB GOLDSTEIN
Lou Rondinello was a varsity pole vaulter and a junior varsity football and 
basketball player when he was 
in Harrison, N. Y. High School. He also had an interest in horses and left the 
family landscaping business 
to look for work at the tracks. It was not quick in coming and now, 25 years 
later the trainer of 3-year-old 
king Little Current, he can reflect on the long climb to the top.

"I started with a mare named Wick Star I bought for $2, 500. She was no champion 
and I was afraid of 
hurting her. I used to treat her as kindly as possible, never breezed her, just 
had her gallop in the mornings. 
"Wick Star did not make Rondinello famous and after the trainer was married in 
1959 he realized he would 
have to arrange for a steady income. He landed a job with Darby Dan Farm—as a 
bookkeeper.

Jimmy Conway was the Darby Dan trainer then. Rondinello worked there during 
Conway's time and also 
for Loyd (Boo) Gentry and Dave Erb. He had hoped with each change of 
administration in the barn that he 
would be considered for the trainer's spot. He learned to live with 
disappointment. In 1970, however, owner 
John Galbreath gave him the nod and neither has been unhappy about that since.

The Darby Dan fortunes had reached a low point. Getting a horse to the track, 
much less winning, was an 
experience. Slowly, however, Rondinello turned accounts around. He de-
veloped His Majesty. Next there was Good Counsel, True Knight, Java Moon, 
Shearwater, Maud Muller 
and this year Little Current. Through it all, Rondinello has maintained his 
theory that horses should be 
treated easily in the mornings so that they do their best in the afternoons.

"I usually gallop horses in the mornings, a mile and a half or a mile and three-
quarters. That's all they need. 
It takes three or four months to get them ready. It's like building up to a 
fight. It's not a matter of how many 
'sparring partners' you wear out, but how the horse does over a long period of 
time. "

Rondinello's year with Little Current reached a peak in mid-spring when the son 
of Sea-Bird II took both 
the Preakness Stakes and Belmont.

In all, the late-charging colt won three of 12 races during the year, finishing 
second twice and earning $345, 
534. In addition to his tallies in the Preakness and Belmont, Little Current won 
Hialeah's Everglades earlier 
in the campaign.

If Rondinello had one distinction it was his habit of running Little Current in 
front bandages. Yet, he took 
them off the colt on the off track in the Preakness. He had them back on in the 
Belmont.

When it was suggested before the Belmont that he was leaving himself open to 
second-guessers, he refused 
to be swayed.
"I have to do what I believe in, " he said. "If I changed my mind because people 
were watching me in any 
specific race, I wouldn't be much of a trainer. "

There were some disappointments this year, too.

"I got sick a couple of days before the Kentucky Derby and had to watch the race 
on television from a 
hospital room in Louisville. From what I saw and from what everyone tells me, he 
could have won, " 
Rondinello said. "Maybe with a smaller field he would have had a shot at winning 
and later becoming a 
Triple Crown winner. "

Then there was a scheduled trip to Paris and a date with the best in the world 
in the Prix de 1'Arc de 
Triomphe. Little Current, however, fractured a leg on the soggy Belmont Park 
turf in the Lawrence 
Realization and was retired.

"That was a terrible blow. Not just for the Arc, but that he couldn't go on and 
finish the year, " the trainer 
said.

There was also the two narrow losses to Holding Pattern in mid-summer— in the 
Monmouth Invitational 
and the Travers at Saratoga.

"We gave him lots of weight both times, " Rondinello said. "It was 10 the first 
time and five the next. Little 
Current met all the good horses in the division and met them under all types of 
conditions. He raced in 
Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, New York and New Jersey. I think he did everything 
required of a good 
horse. "