LITTLE ROCK — Peddling one jockey to two owners, the novice agent’s day of reckoning came when both men entered horses in the same race.
The agent had to choose and the owner on the short end demanded an explanation. On the fly, 16-year-old Chris Klenakis began to figure out salesmanship, diplomacy, conciliation, and slow-playing a target.
Years later, those well-learned skills are useful when the man who coaches the offensive line at Arkansas is recruiting.
A recent phone conversation with Klenakis lasted more than 20 minutes. There was very little football talk; mostly it was about his background in thoroughbred racing.
The tip-off that he knew his way around a racetrack occurred recently when Klenakis and other Razorback coaches visited Oaklawn Park. He checked the fractions on the tote board and accurately predicted the fate of the horse leading the race.
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A few days later, TVG cut away from Oaklawn races long enough to show the field for the Turf Paradise Derby, including a longshot saddled by Tony Klenakis. Twice the leading trainer at Turf Paradise in the 1990s, the father of the UA assistant is still in the game at 71.
These days, he has about 15 horses and stays at tracks in the Southwest except when he takes a vacation to watch a couple of Razorback games.
Back in the ‘70s, when his dad was trying to get established, it was a tough go. Home base was Boise, Idaho, and weekend destinations via truck and trailer were half-mile bush tracks in Nevada and Oregon that Klenakis identified by name. Even though I have played the horses in East St. Louis, Ill., Sallisaw, Okla., and Pomona, Calif., I had never heard of the tracks at Tillamook, Ore., or Winnemucca, Nev., or the others he mentioned.
At such tracks, where saddling a winner might have been worth $100, Klenakis is bound to have witnessed some shenanigans. For sure, he enjoyed the story about the jockey who hid in the fog at a small track in Louisiana in 1990, waited until he heard the other horses coming around again, and then took off and “won” the race. Race officials picked up on the fact that the 23-1 shot came close to the track record while finishing 24 lengths in front of the second horse.
Klenakis called his upbringing unique and added, “I learned a lot of life skills and life smarts.”
Chris was in high school when his dad moved up to the California fair circuit during the summer and Turf Paradise in Arizona from October through April. “I experienced every aspect of the business,” he said. “Being a groom, I mucked many a stall.”
A partial scholarship to play football at Carroll College in Helena, Mont., — Bobby Petrino was a teammate — extricated Klenakis from the barn area. Both he and his dad figured he was on the road to becoming a racetrack veterinarian.
After a year, Klenakis decided he wanted to coach football. “He was fine with it,” he said of his dad.
From racetrack to the football field, there is some carryover. On occasion, changing a bit or adding blinkers will wake up a horse. With a talented athlete, Klenakis said, “you turn over every stone before you give up.”
A trainer will schedule a fast workout for a thoroughbred and then back off. “You can overtrain a horse and you can overtrain a football player,” Klenakis said.
Talking horses was a brief respite; spring practice begins March 14.
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Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media’s Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is hking@arkansasnews.com.