I had quite the revealing visit to the home of jockey Robert Landry yesterday. I’ve written a small feature on Landry, which will appear in the next issue of Down The Stretch, Canada’s most informative and entertaining horse racing newspaper and to be honest, I’ve completely missed the real story.
My piece is more or less a side bar to the report on Careless Jewel, the Josie Carroll trained filly who smashed the field in the Grade 1 Alabama Stakes a couple weeks ago at Saratoga. Careless Jewel was ridden by the 46 year-old Landry who was thrilled to win for the first time at the historic racetrack. Considering that just six days earlier, Landry had won four races on the same card at Woodbine, I decided the timing was right for a full page on Landry.
He does’nt exactly fit the mold of many jockeys ( not that you can easily generalize the jockey culture). First of all, as Landry pointed out, he’s the only rider born and raised in Toronto and maybe that’s the key here. There is just something so decent, so Canadian, so un-screwed up about Landry.
He doesn’t smoke and most assuredly he has no alcohol or substance issues. I was talking to him about my use of pot in the 70s and he barely seemed to grasp the idiom (I was explaining how to clean an ounce of pot by letting the seeds roll down a board and he just stared at me wide-eyed). Landry has a real love of animals. He serves as a director of Longrun which finds homes for retired horses, he and his wife Samantha own three cats and he even takes care of a squirrel that he found floating in a pond barely alive several weeks ago.
His house in Nobleton down the scenic 16th sideroad is a clear reflection of who he is. There is, not surprisingly, seemingly endless racing references on the walls – beautiful prints of historic racing oil paintings and countless pictures of the jockey in the winners circle. Landry recently passed the 2,000 win plateau for his career and on one long spacious wall in his den, he has the winners circle picture from every Stakes race he’s ever won. Since the records show that Landry has captured 162 added money events, this particular wall of fame is spectacular.
Landry has completely and almost single-handedly rebuilt his home from the inside, putting up new door frames and windows and shelving. The original floor was a faded green linoleum; he put down elegant tiles and warm wooden slats. A huge deck accommodates the back of his house, looking over a couple of acres of friendly green around a large pond. He built the deck as well as the gazebo. He’s serious about the woodworking. His garage has been converted into a fully stocked shop with hundreds of tools aligned neatly.
Landry has been married to Samantha for two years; they’ve been a couple for 14. She is a former trainer’s assistant who now teaches. Because I couldn’t get him to admit anything, I asked Samantha if her husband had any vices.
“Well, he is a perfectionist,” she replied with a giggle, suggesting much more pride than grief about that. And nowhere is that issue of perfection emphasized more than in Landry’s documentation of his riding career. He invites me inside to see his computerized database and this is something I have never seen. He has every race he’s ever ridden computed and compartmentalized.
“See this,” he says, pointing at a number on the screen. “I’ve ridden 17,268 times. If I want to see how many times I’ve won for a certain trainer, I can do that.”
Landry types in the the name Danny Vella. Up comes the number of times he ridden a Vella trained horse and the number of times he’s won for Vella. Each entry identifies the date and race, the name of the horse, the name of the trainer and the surface (dirt, grass, poly). In less than a minute, he can determine how many times he’s won four races on a card and how many times he’s won three times in one day.
“Aside from being really interesting,” I say, “Does it ever do you any good?”
A big grin crosses his face.
“Well let’s say a trainer tells me that we don’t get many winners together, ” answers Landry, “ I go into the date base and show him otherwise. That’s paid off for me.”
I’ve seen Landry in the jocks room and he always seems to have a racing program with him, always making notes. He brings those home and on pretty well a daily basis, feeds that stuff into his database. Landry the perfectionist.
Landry readily admits that he won’t ever again be the leading jockey at Woodbine. Even with four wins one one day at Woodbine, he only has 22 wins in 237 rides, good for maybe 14th in the standings. He rides a lot for Sue Leslie and Roger Attfield and Danny Vella and the ride on Careless Jewel is one of many provided for him by Josie Carroll.
“I’ve had a great career,” Landry asserts. “I’m a very lucky guy.”
There’s more evidence of Landry’s makeup inside his home. He’s a hockey nut and has assembled a veritable hockey hall of fame exhibit in his den; a couple of seats from the old Montreal Forum, signed sticks from Wayne Gretzky and Eric Lindros, hockey pucks signed by Jean Beliveau, a great framed black and white photograph of Gordie Howe scoring on Johnny Bower. Much of this memorablia is the residual benifit reaped from Landry’s charitable work. The guy rarely says no to a good cause and often ends up at events that also feature stars like Wendle Clark, Darryl Sittler, Gretzky, Howe and many other NHL stars. Landry’s collection of autographed jerseys would make most die-hard hockey fans salivate.
Anyway, in the next issue of Down The Stretch, Canada’s most informative and entertaining horse racing newspaper, you will find a not-award winning article on Landry with only a slight reference to his database. I told him, I would be coming back to do a second story on him; a piece that shows how carefully and thoughfully he has carved out a near perfect life for himself and Samantha.
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