From the August 2021 edition of Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred
By Joe Clancy
Trainer Neil Howard talked about former assistant Kevin Kahkola’s horsemanship, work ethic, professionalism and skill with young horses-and then went another direction. “He’s got this quiet way about him, but his sense of humor is unlimited,” Howard said. “If you get him alone, he’d probably kill me for telling you this, but he can do people’s voices. It sounds just like the other person, not Kevin, where if you couldn’t see his face you’d think it was that person.”
With a lead-in like that, there’s only one question to ask Kahkola. Can he do Howard?
“Now Joe … Joe … This is embarrassing … ” said Kahkola through the phone sounding every bit like his former boss, a native New Yorker who has lived in Kentucky for decades. “It looks like Beulah Park around here … That’s it, that’s it, it’s all in the hands of Philistines now.”
You could almost see Howard, hands waving, eyebrows dancing, growing ever more exasperated as he tried to make his point. And then Kahkola started laughing. All in fun, and part of life in a barn, the impersonations would have helped deal with the long hours, the pressure of caring fur top-class horses, the personalities involved.
“I did a little bit of those around the barn when I worked for Neil,” said Kahkola. ”A couple of the hotwalkers and people around the barn, for fun, we’d do stuff like that. We had some characters. You could write a book.”
Kahkola grew up in Michigan, just outside Detroit in Redford Township. His family watched the Kentucky Derby every year, but the horse interest didn’t go much further. He credits 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew with the proper introduction to racing.
“I was 9 years old, I liked that name I guess,” he said. “I watched him win the Derby, then started hearing about this thing called the Preakness and then when he won that we started hearing about the Triple Crown. That’s how I got hooked on racing.”
And now he’s a successful trainer of young horses at Camden Training Center in South Carolina with a resume full of big names and big racetrack performances including 2021 Kentucky Oaks-Gl winner Malathaat and more recent Grade 2 winner Zaajel. They both eyed even more important starts this summer, and can thank Kahkola for the early lessons. He spent 14 years with Howard-working with Horse of the Year Mineshaft among others-and in 2008 was hired to break and train young horses for high-powered Shadwell Stable. That job recently morphed into the creation of Kahkola Racing, a public stable handling breaking, training and other prep work for outside clients in addition to Shadwell. ”They sent mt: 24 yearlings last year and for a public stable that base is important,” said Kahkola, whose stall list was up to 32 over the winter. “I’m hoping to pick up some more and hoping to grow.”
Now 53, he can thank Seattle Slew and his hometown for the initial racing interest.
Not long after the Triple Crown winner stormed home by 4 lengths in the Belmont Stakes-G 1, Kahkola was going to Detroit Race Course and following the sport for real. A high-school teacher, Joe Soukup, used to walk hots at DRC and let Kahkola know that a summer job at the track wasn’t that far-fetched.
“Honest to God, I wanted to be a jockey,” Kahkola said. “Freshman year of high school, I was 4-foot-11 and a half and I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to make this.’ I probably grew three inches a year after that and was 5-foot-11 by the time I graduated.”
Srill, racing was what he wanted to do. After graduating from Redford Union High in 1986, Kahkola spent seven years at his local track-rising from hotwalker to groom to assistant trainer for Greg Sanders and Brenda Hill. Sanders, whose most recognizable trainee was graded stakes winner Glitterman, trained for his family’s Sandera Farm-aleading breeder in Michigan-and was always among DRC’s leading trainers with a host of Miichigan-based standouts. Hill trained Michigan-bred stars Karate Miss and Sefa’s Rose among others.
The small-time track, and its people, provided a ready-made course in racing.
“I started out just hotwalking, for a year-and-a-half,” Kahkola said. ”A guy taught me how to groom, another guy taught me how to put on bandages, they taught mt: about legs. I groomed fur two years, and then was the shed foreman. I took the trainer’s test just to get an assistant’s license.”
Early on, Kahkola was a fan of the Sanders-trained De Jeau, whose 3-year-old season in 1985 started with four consecutive wins, a third in the Michigan Mile and One Eighth-G2, a second in the Omaha Gold Cup-G3 and a win in the Michigan Derby. Sanders-bred on top and bottom, the chestnut was a son of Private Thoughts (second in the 1977 Marlboro Cup-Gl at Belmont Park) and the Rattle Dancer mare Christi Deddle. A local hero, De Jeau won 16 races-all but one at DRC-and earned $394,997.
“He was a Michigan-bred who was competitive other places too,” said Kahkola. “He ran times like the big horses, a mile in 1:35 and change. They didn’t see that up there too often. He was a pretty special horse and probably the horse who got me encouraged to go to the racetrack. I did get to work with him, too. I was hotwalking when he was there.”
Like plenty of other horsemen, Kahkola credits his early days at a small-time track-far from the spotlight of races like the Kentucky Oaks-with planting a seed.
“I wouldn’t trade my days in Detroit for anything,” he said. “Sometimes working at smaller tracks and seeing operations do things the way they do them is really important and a good way to learn. When you’re working at small tracks, the horses are older, they’ve got physical ailments, you’ve got to learn to patch them up and get them back to the races or keep them going. I’m glad I didn’t just get born into a top outfit where you’re seeing nothing but blueblood horses. I got to see all kinds of horses and operations. You have to think outside the box sometimes.”
While at DRC, Kahkola met Howard and his team when the trainer would ship in for stakes races. The Michigan track may have been the minor leagues compared to the trainer’s normal stops at Keeneland, Churchill Downs, Saratoga and so on but it was an ideal spot to tackle stakes company with well-bred fillies and mares from Will Farish’s powerful Lane’s End Farm. When the Howard horses came to town, they typically stayed in the Sanders barn. The young shedtow foreman was impressed.
He didn’t know it then, but Kahkola arrived near the end of DRC. Ladbrokes, the English-based bookmaking firm, bought the track with eyes on bringing other forms of gambling to Detroit. It didn’t happen, but pressures like a casino in nearby Windsor, Ontario, year-round racing in other states, decreased handle, competition from other states’ breeding programs and lower purses conspired to put Michigan racing on the defensive. Kahkola had done enough to consider starting his own training business, but handicapped the race he was about to start.
“Things just started to add up, and racing was struggling a little bit,” he said. “People wanted you to take horses on a deal. I couldn’t blame them, but I couldn’t money at Dettoit was going down and you could tell it wasn’t going to last.”
Kahkola saw how difficult it would be, and accepted a job offer from Howard instead, leaving for a spot with the stable at Camden in the winter of 1993 (make your own assessment of the weather differences between the two). Detroit Race Course closed five years later.
Since Howard already had two assistants, Kahkola started as a groom and-like he did in Michigan-worked his way up to foreman and then assistant. Howard’s horses spent the winter in Camden then, moving on to Kentucky and New York in the spring. The barn was peppered with major names.
“I was awestruck the first day I walked into the shedrow,” Kahkola said. ”This horse is by Danzig, this one’s by Seattle Slew, this one’s by Kingmambo. I was here every winter and would go up in the spring to Churchill, Belmont, Saratoga, Belmont and back to Camden to do the babies.”
The Howard barn won the 2000 Kentucky Oaks-G 1 with Secret Status, and came up with others such as Grade 1 winners Runup the Colors, Tomisue’s Delight, Shadow Cast and America Alive on a long list of quality runners. Kahkola had Mineshaft in New York in 2003 when the 4-year-old reeled off three consecutive Grade 1 wins in the Suburban, Woodward and Jockey Club Gold Cup en route to a seven-win season and Horse of the Year honors.
As Howard put it, Kahkola wasn’t just part of the team. “Kevin, and I don’t say this lightly, was a quick study,” Howard said. ”There was no hesitation on my part when I was able to hire him. A good assistant made a difference and I was lucky to have Kevin and some others who worked for me. Not just their horsemanship skill, they have to have that, but when you’re dealing with the stress of the upper-level horses and the everyday problems with emphasis on every day, you had somebody you could talk back and forth with and go over things with. They helped you keep much more relaxed than you normally would be. It makes a difference. Llke a baseball manager having a bench coach.”
Kahkola soaked up everything he could from a man now in his sixth decade of training. Howard started out riding show horses and found racing while looking for prospects at Waterford Park in West Virginia. He worked for Hall of Famers Woody Stephens and Mack Miller early on, started as a trainer on the Ohio circuit and turned it into 1,253 wins (and counting), a Preakness Stakes-G 1 victory with Summer Squall in 1990, that Horse of the Year crown with Mineshaft and a long list of loyal clients.
“He taught me more than anybody I worked for;’ said Kahkola. ”The biggest thing you learn from Neil is the attention to detail. He’s meticulous. He doesn’t miss a thing. He taught me you’ve got to have your eyes going all the time. Pay attention to detail. It will matter. He’s a really good horseman.”
Older brother Ken joined Kevin on the Howard staff for a time and Kevin also met his wife Jennifer while they both worked for Howard. The idea of finding a more permanent home-as opposed to the South Carolina-Kentucky-New York carousel-became a goal as the family grew to include son Brandon and daughter Kirsten. Kahkola left Howard in 2008, the idea being a public stable and a breaking/training business along the lines of Camden horsemen Donna Freyer, Frankie Wooten, Mickey Preger, Kip Elser and others utilizing the area to start young horses and freshen older runners. Shadwell, the powerful racing/breeding program of Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, was there with a private operation headed by Bob Witham.
From his years with Howard, Kahkola had ties to the area and fit right in, even if starting a business came with uncertainty. He wasn’t at it long. Witham died in December 2008, after falling from a horse at Camden, and Shadwell needed a replacement. Kahkola was an early call, and he stayed 12 years.
“He’s very important to the operation, has always done a great job and he broke a lot of very good horses for us,” said Rick Nichols, Shadwell’s vice president and general manager. “He was in Camden, had leased a barn [at the training center] and was trying to make it on his own. Bob really liked him, I remember that. It was a tough thing losing Bob that way, but he died doing what he loved.”
Witham would appreciate the success of his successor, as Shadwell runners continue to produce on big stages. Mohaymen won his first five in 2015-16, finished fourth in Kentucky Derby-G 1 and earned just shy of $1 million, for Kiaran McLaughlin before retiring to the Shadwell stallion barn. His first crop includes six winners, second in the early national standings. “He was a good-feeling colt, but did everything classy at the track,” said Kahkola. ”A little playful sometimes, but you could tell he was going to be a good horse. He had a ton of talent.”
Shagaf, part of the same crop, won the 2016 Gotham-G3 for trainer Chad Brown and tested Kahkola’s skill-and patience. “I have a little thing for quirky horses, and he was very quirky,” said Kahkola. “He got loose seven times down here, he’d just wheel going to the track and be gone. Once you got him on the racetrack though, he was a machine. He’d walk in the starting gate like he’d been doing it his whole life, but he’d see a bag on the horsepath that wasn’t there the day before and he’d turn around and run for his life.”
Shadwell veteran Almanaar (GB) also frequently jumps into Kahkola’s mind when discussing the job. The foal of 2012 raced in France for two seasons before coming to the United States in 2015. After some time on the farm, the horse came to Kahkola in Camden and joined Brown’s string in the summer of 2016. He lost twice late that year, but rebounded to win the Gulfstream Park Turf Handicap-G1 in February 2017 before an injury put him back on the farm and eventually with Kahkola. Off nearly 16 months, the son of Dubawi (Ire) returned to win an allowance at Belmont in June 2018 and finished second (beaten a half-length) in the Arlington Million-G1. Almanaar spent the winter of 2018-19 with Kahkola, and set a track record while winning the Monmouth Stakes-G2 in May 2019. He didn’t race until that race’s 2020 version in October-recuperating and resting on the farm and once again going to Kahkola in Camden-and won again off another nearly 16-month layoff.
“He was a cool horse to be around,” said Kahkola. “He won that race again off a big layoff and I was really proud of him. He did everything they asked of him.”
Retired to Shadwell’s stallion barn-even though he’s a gelding-9-year-old Almanaar lives a life horses only dream about. “Kevin loves Almanaar,” said Nichols. “He probably could have brought him back again, but he won [almost] a million dollars and we thought we’d give him the penthouse for his retirement.”
The past two years brought change to Shadwell’s operation as the private division at Camden was closed in favor of sending young horses to Kahkola and others independently. Sheikh Hamdan died in March, adding further change until an announcement in June put his daughter Sheikha Hissa at the helm of the international operation that includes farms in Kentucky and England.
