In the annals of Canadian horse racing history, trainer Dan Vella will be known as one of this country’s great horsemen, a true master of the sport who studied his equine students and got to know each one in mind and body.
That knowledge and dedication to the sport he loves led him and dozens of great horses he had trained, and their owners, into winner’s circles all over North America. He prepared two Queen’s Plate winners, trained 30 graded stakes winners and a litany of Sovereign Award champions, and twice, Vella won his own Sovereign Award when voted Canada’s Outstanding Trainer.
Vella had saddled 869 winners by the middle of January 2023 when he told his staff and his owners that he was going to retire from training. He won’t be far away from the horses and the track, as he owns shares in a few horses with close friend Stephen Shefsky – and he may even have a role at Woodbine at some point – but for now, he is leaving the daily grind behind.
“I’ve decided not to train anymore,” said Vella, 67. “I have been getting up before 4 a.m. for 50 years, six or seven days a week. I’ve done enough of that for now. I still want to be active and be around the track, but I also want to reduce the stress.”
Indeed, for half a century, Vella has run one of the most notable stables in this country, training for the likes of Frank and Frieda Stronach, the Sikura family and Knob Hill Stables. With that came preparing horses of all types to do their best, managing staff, paying feed bills and communicating with owners.
“I’m not sure a lot of people understand how stressful training can be and at times, how little money you make. I consider myself very fortunate to have been around a lot of great horses.”
The soft-spoken Toronto-born Vella came into horse racing through his Uncle Jim Saliba, a vegetable farmer who would take his young nephew to the track. When Vella was on the cusp of becoming a teenager, his family moved to Oakville where he went to work at a nearby riding stable. Soon after high school, he was working at the track and climbed the ladder to become assistant trainer for Pat Collins, who was running Steve Stavro’s Knob Hill Stable. Vella trained some Knob Hill horses at that time as well and won his first stakes race with Stavro’s Bert James at Greenwood in 1985.
Vella joined the powerful Stronach operation in 1991 and provided them with their first Queen’s Plate winner in 1984 when Basqueian muscled his way to a big win. A flashy bay gelding, Basqueian has always been one of Vella’s favourites.
“He was a very special horse and he was pretty,” said Vella. The trainer worked his magic on dozens of other Stronach horses including Explosive Red, winner of the Grade 1 Hollywood Derby, graded stakes winners Hero’s Love, Blitzer, Mysteriously, Phantom Light and Mark One, and champions such as Honky Tonk Tune and Cash Deposit.
“Blitzer was one of my favourites, a really top horse. And Mysteriously, she was wonderful. Those two, in addition to being great racehorses, had great personalities.” Vella was voted Canada’s Outstanding trainer in 1994 and ’95.
Vella went on to spend seven years training the Stronach horses at the owner’s lavish Ocala, Florida farm, preparing young horses for their careers and bringing back older horses from layoffs. He lived in Ocala with his children Jillian and Christopher and wife Teri, who would sadly pass away a few years later.
Vella’s second Plate win came in 2012 with the feisty Strait of Dover, a speedy British Columbia-bred for Wally and Terry Leong, who had a small stable. That was in 2012 at a time when horse racing’s future looked bleak following the cancellation of the slots-at-racetracks partnership program. “He was a great horse but he was a handful at times, a bit difficult to work with.”
The list of top horses that blossomed under Vella in his post-Stronach years is a long one. There was Field Commission, Alpha Bettor, Big Band Sound and others.
Seven years ago, Vella welcomed a very green two-year-old into his barn by the name of Channel Maker, owned by Joe Guerrieri. The tall and lanky chestnut, who had a habit of racing with his head high, became a stakes winner at two, took Vella to the Breeders’ Cup that season and then was sold to American interests. Channel Maker, still racing at age nine, is the richest Canadian-bred racing today.
Soft-spoken and humble, Vella has also assisted plenty of top horsepeople along the way. Successful trainers such as Gail Cox, his first exercise rider, and Bev Chubb are two of them.
Heading into the 2022 racing season, Vella began streamlining his stable and recommended young trainer Katerina Vassilieva to some of his owners. Vassilieva won a stakes race for one of those owners when Rondure won the Marine Stakes (G3) for Borders Racing.
In 2022, Vella won stakes with The Minkster, a top three-year-old, and the two-year-old filly Jumpin Junie, both horses owned by Sea Glass Stable.
Vella has been on the board of the Ontario HBPA for nearly 20 years and has enjoyed being a part of helping fellow horsepeople and working with the organization and its partners. He is open to continue working with horsepeople should an opportunity arise. “I was to spend more time with my wife Catherine [Martin] and do fun things but I will still be around.
“I have a young woman who worked for me for 35 years and her husband said about retirement, “It’s a limited-time offer, so use it wisely.”
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