Hawkinson Closing Book on His Long Career

Sometime in late December, after he has seen to it that the last horse under his care has been groomed and fed, Bruce Hawkinson will shut the door of his barn at Los Alamitos Race Course and bring to a close the final chapter of a trainer’s career that has spanned five decades.

Hawkinson, 62, recently announced that he was retiring after 46 years of conditioning horses, most of them at Los Alamitos, where he has held a barn since 1951. He has purchased a home in Ruidoso, N.M., and not long after the track’s 47th meet closes with the Champion of Champions Dec. 21 he’ll pack up what few mementos he keeps in the office of his small, wooden barn, put them in a U-Haul and head east.

The New Mexico legislature recently approved the use of slot machines at Ruidoso Downs Race Course. Hawkinson took his first job at 17 in one of the old gambling houses in Reno and he has been offered a job running the Ruidoso slots by Los Alamitos majority owner Ed Allred, who owns a 50% stake in Ruidoso.

“I think it’s time to go,” Hawkinson said. “I’ve been here a long time, and after a while the job starts to get to you. I’ve kept a steady pace. A lot of people want to stay on a job too long. It’s time to move on.”

Hawkinson, who missed only seven racing meets at Los Alamitos during his tenure, says a new breed of sophisticated trainers have made horse racing more a business than a sport.

“It’s more of a political game now than it used to be,” he said. “It used to be just a bunch of horsemen who came out here to compete to win. Now, with all the new trainers, there’s not a lot of good horsemen, just really good promoters. They’re smart and intelligent and it’s a different game with them.”

As the main trainer for Allred, who owns nearly 500 head, Hawkinson often sent out horses before they were ready to race because Allred needed to fill slots in small purse races to keep Los Alamitos running smoothly.

Allred, who has known Hawkinson 24 years, agreed, saying the business of running a race track often dictated how Hawkinson operated his barn.

“In the 1980s, he was a very successful trainer,” Allred said. “He could rest a horse. Bruce has never won a futurity because we could run horses sparingly and then win the derbies. But nowadays we need them to run more often than a high-percentage trainer would like to run them. I’m the main reason he has dropped to a 10% winning trainer when he used to be an 18% winning trainer.”

Hawkinson was the 10th-leading money-winner among trainers in 1996.

Hawkinson prefers to look ahead to new endeavors rather than dwell on the past.

“I’m not sick. I’m not unhappy, nothing like that,” he said. “It was just getting to the point where I felt it was time to move on and, so, I went ahead and found something else to do.”

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Allred announced that the majority of his stock will be turned over to trainer Kelly Long. A smaller number of horses will be handled by newcomer Heath Taylor, who has been working mostly with thoroughbreds in Kentucky.

Long and Taylor fit into that new mold of trainer. Taylor is a graduate of the University of Arizona’s race track management program and interned one summer at Los Alamitos. Long is another in a growing line of women who have cracked the good-ol’ boy network on which Los Alamitos was founded.

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Allred confirmed reports in QuarterWeek magazine that he and partner Chris Bardis, who owns 25% of the track, had received a lucrative offer to purchase Los Alamitos, but said it is unlikely they will sell. He said the offer was “substantially more than the $33 million we paid for the track.”

Allred said some portions of the race course’s land, particularly along Walker Avenue, would be developed, perhaps into small shopping centers. He has turned down one offer to build a motel on track property adjacent to Katella Avenue, but is entertaining hotel offers. He said his prime goal is to persuade the state legislature to allow slot machines at the track, as has been done in New Mexico.