Dubai: It seems almost unbelievable to think that a guy who didn’t actually have a race horse trainer’s licence back in January could now have a horse that he trains running on Dubai World Cup night.
But this is true of 32-year-old Chad Summers. And to add the incredulity of it all he has only had four runners and none of them a winner, yet. Although one of those four was a second in a Grade 3 Sprint at Gulf Stream Park, the track he was granted his licence at. The horse was the delightfully named Mind Your Biscuits, who had previously won the Grade 1 Malibu Stakes at Santa Anita and been second to Bob Baffert’s Drefong in the Breeders Cup Sprint last October before being placed into Summers’ care. All in all a very nice horse to have at the start of a training career. But lets look at how Chad got started.
Summers was born and raised on Long Island in New York and developed a love for racing at an early age. His father Scott, who was an electrical contractor, would regularly take Chad and his other son, Danny, to the New York tracks, including to Saratoga during their summer vacations.
By the early 2000s, Chad was determined to learn racing from numerous vantage points. At various times through the years, he worked as a hot walker, groom, stable foreman, racing manager, clocker’s assistant, press-box go-fer, radio-show analyst, neophyte turf writer, and in other niche jobs. He ultimately began concentrating mostly on buying and selling horses, attending auctions, and working out private transactions while trying to leverage the many connections he had made.
I Fully expect Chad Summers to reach great heights and receive accolades in his training career and they could well start right here in Dubai on Saturday night.
— The author is a former trainer from the UK and the mother of leading international jockeys James and Sophie Doyle.
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