Obituary: LeRoy Jolley

Hall of Fame trainer LeRoy Jolley, known for conditioning some of the best racehorses of all time including Ridan, General Assembly, Genuine Risk, and Foolish Pleasure, has died of lung cancer. He was 80 years old.

One would have thought he was older since he had been in racing for so many decades, but as the son of another famous trainer, Moody Jolley, he started early. LeRoy Jolley was about as good a trainer as it gets.

One of his horses, Ridan, was one of the two horses, the other Jaipur, entered in and celebrated for one of the greatest races of all time, the 1962 Travers Stakes. It was a truly freak race, as Ridan and Jaipur leaped out of the starting gate together, and they went head to head the entire distance of the race.

I had never seen a race like that and still haven't. With the exception of the 1978 Belmont Stakes, this was arguably the greatest (contested) horse race of all time.

There are several postings of it on YouTube. Here is one:



It was unbelievable.

You can read more about it here.

Jolley also trained Genuine Risk, winner of the 1980 Kentucky Derby and the first filly to win the race since Regret in 1915. She placed in all three Triple Crown races.

He trained Honest Pleasure, another top horse best remembered for his epic race against Forego in the 1976 Marlboro Cup:



Additionally, he trained Foolish Pleasure, who won the 1975 Kentucky Derby and was also the horse who raced against Ruffian in the ill-conceived, ill-fated match race with the great filly Ruffian. As we know, Ruffian shattered a foreleg in the race and had to be euthanized when she thrashed and broke her cast coming out of the anesthetic following surgery.

More:

Jolley walked hots for his father at age 7, and spent summers working in his father's barn. After one year at the University of Miami, he returned to work for his father. He took out his trainer's license in 1958. His first stakes winner was Ridan, the co-champion 2-year-old male of 1961.

"My father and my uncle were trainers, so I grew up around the racetrack," Jolley told The Blood-Horse in 2015. "You think someday I'd love to have a horse good enough to run in this race or that race. And for me, Foolish Pleasure was the horse that won all of those races. He was an outstanding, great horse. He was a great competitor and now matter who you ran him with, he gave it his best and that's all you can ask of a horse or anybody else."

Foolish Pleasure was an outstanding racehorse. However, when he retired from racing, he was legendary for being one of the meanest stallions of all time. I visited him at Spendthrift Farm back in 1989, and believe me, the grooms warned us to steer clear of him. I did manage to get a photo or two of him, though they were not the greatest.

Apparently when he was sold and moved out west in his final years, he mellowed out.