Casse Reflects Ahead of HOF Induction

Just by waking up in the morning on Valentine's Day, Mark Casse filled the one hole on his resume to become eligible for the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame: he turned 55. Without question, Casse had more than enough statistical power to make him a powerful candidate for the ultimate honor in Canadian racing and he was promptly elected the first time he appeared on the ballot.

Casse and nine other Thoroughbred and Standardbred stars in the Class of 2016 will be inducted Wednesday evening at the Mississauga Convention Centre in suburban Toronto. For Casse, the ceremony will take place during a remarkable run of success, even by his standards, that includes his first two wins in the Breeders' Cup by the turf fillies Tepin (Bernstein) and Catch a Glimpse (City Zip), both of whom won important post-season awards. Casse added another major victory in June when Tepin won the G1 Queen Anne S. at Royal Ascot.

While overseeing his massive stable from Saratoga this summer, Casse has been working on his acceptance speech, which will include a section devoted to his father, Norman, an influential Florida horseman who died at 79 in March. Casse said being in Saratoga has made him reflect on his career and his father, a co-founder and longtime head of the Ocala Breeders' Sales Co.

“He brought me here when I was eight years old,” Casse said while standing near a bank of video screens on the ground floor of the clubhouse. “There are some things that have changed and there are a lot of things that haven't changed. I think about sitting over there with him.

“It's not just Saratoga. I have to write a speech, so I have been thinking about that a lot. When it's happening, it doesn't seem like a lot, but when you go back and you reflect upon all the things that have happened in those years, there have been a lot of things that have happened, a lot of great things have happened to me. I'm very fortunate.”

About a decade after that first visit to Saratoga, Casse took over training his father's stable. Though he's just old enough to qualify for consideration for the Hall of Fame, he's a 37-year-veteran with 2,060 victories and more than $114 million in purse earnings. Since returning to training in 1998 after spending the bulk of the decade managing Mockingbird Farm in Ocala, he has been the leading trainer at Woodbine the past nine years and 10 times overall and has won the Sovereign Award as the leading trainer in Canada eight times.

“If you asked me when I was 18 years old, 'At 55, this is what you're going to accomplish–would you be happy?' I would say, 'Absolutely,'” he said. “Obviously, there have been things that I wish I hadn't done, but I also look at as that's how I got to where I'm at. It's not been an easy ride. It's been a lot of ups and downs. Sometimes I've thought, 'why am I doing this?' There has been a lot of reflection.”

Casse, a native of Indianapolis, plans to handle the bulk of the speech before turning to his wife Tina for assistance.

“The last part will be about my dad and there is no way I can get through it,” he said. “I'm going to ask my wife to come in and do that part of it. I'm going to deliver the first part of it. I already have that part in my mind.”

While the move to Canada was important, Casse said that a personal setback and a hurdle he cleared in Toronto put him on the road to success.

“I think the turning point in my life was when I came to New York in my mid-20s and then decided that I wasn't ready for New York,” he said. “I then went to Kentucky and was the leading trainer [at Churchill Downs in 1988].”

He grew weary of the demands of the Bluegrass circuit, though.

“In Kentucky, you're at one racetrack, you're at another racetrack, you're at another racetrack. I got tired of the driving and doing all that.

“I was the leading trainer at Churchill at the time, had some decent horses and couldn't get them into Arlington, so I said 'I'm going to go to Woodbine.' It's funny, when I went up there as the leading trainer in Kentucky they only gave me eight stalls. I still remember that.”

The solution to the problem came by convincing the widow of trainer Frank Merrill to rent him their large barn five miles from the track. It took a hard sell. “One thing about me is, I may get discouraged, but I never quit,” he said.

Casse finally completed the deal by promising to rehab the facility, which he described as “a mess.”

“So we started with eight stalls,” Casse recalled, “but I had 40 horses and we would ship them every day, back and forth. It built and built and built.”

That anecdote about perseverance makes Casse laugh and recite a line he lives by. “Lee Iacocca said, 'If you stand still, you get run over,'” he said. “I never stand still. I'm always looking to try to be better. I try not to take myself too seriously. That's why I will always do interviews. I am so fortunate where I'm at, I want to share it with everybody.”

Casse's son Norman has become a top assistant and spends much of the year running the stable's division at Churchill Downs. The Casses won the spring meet at Churchill this year and the stable shared the Keeneland fall meet crown last season. Casse Racing has divisions at Woodbine, Saratoga, Kentucky and in Florida this summer.

Catch a Glimpse won the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf last fall, ending Casse's 0-for-23 run at the championship-making event. The next day, Tepin pulled of a victory over males in the GI Breeders' Cup Mile. She earned an Eclipse Award and Catch a Glimpse won two Sovereign Awards and was the Canadian Horse of the Year. Casse's frustration at the Breeders' Cup was over.

“That was huge,” he said. “I've had people all along tell me that I was going to make it to the Hall of Fame, not just in Canada, but here. Honestly, I didn't really believe that. I thought after we won those Breeders' Cups, 'Well, now I have a chance.' I didn't really think I had a chance, and even though I've had people telling me, I didn't feel like I deserved it. I never want anything I don't deserve.”

Those Breeders' Cup wins helped Casse finish 2015 ranked fourth on the North American earnings list with $13.7 million, a career high. Tepin's triumph in the Queen Anne was another top-of-the-resume accomplishment.

“Winning at Royal Ascot, it's a tight race with the Breeders' Cup,” he said. “I think the only thing that could ever top Royal Ascot and the Breeders' Cup would be to win the Kentucky Derby. I'm trying. It will come.”

If Casse is successful in the Derby and other Triple Crown races that would improve his chances of being elected to the National Museum of Racing's Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs. There are about a dozen horsemen, from Roger Attfield to George Woolf, who are in both halls. Already a proven and honored star north of the border, Casse has shown he can compete at the highest level anywhere.

“I take great pride in what we've accomplished in Canada, but it eats you up when you read things where people say, 'Oh, yeah, he only wins in Canada,'” he said. “I've heard that mentioned here before from commentators. I like to show everybody that it doesn't matter where we run we're going to win.

“When I go down through my competition and I look at the trainers, I don't look at the horses, I may say 'I've got to beat this guy, I've got to beat this guy, I've got to beat this guy.' What I want out of the other guys is to say 'He has one in there and I have to beat him.' I think that's the biggest accomplishment you can ask for. It's respect. I know I'm only as good as the people that we work for and the horses we have. All I ask for a is a little respect.”