Warren Stute

Warren Stute

ARCADIA, Calif. (AP) _ Warren Stute, a longtime Southern California trainer who gave Bill Shoemaker a leg up in the Hall of Fame jockey's first $100,000 stakes win, has died. He was 85.

Shoemaker survived three strokes in recent years and died at his home in Arcadia, near Santa Anita, on Thursday, track spokesman Mike Willman said.

Stute's career spanned nearly 70 years. Until 2002, he regularly galloped his horses on the backstretch in the mornings.

Stute and Shoemaker teamed to win their first $100,000 race in the 1951 Santa Anita Maturity with Great Circle. Now worth $300,000 and known as the Strub Stakes, it was the track's richest race at the time.

Stute owns the distinction of longest time between Kentucky Derby runners. In 1967, he saddled Field Master to a 13th-place finish. Two years ago, Illinois Derby winner Greeley's Galaxy finished 11th.

Stute went 51 years between victories in the Del Mar Debutante. He saddled the race's first winner, Tonga, in 1951. He won again in 2002 with Miss Houdini.

That year, at 80, he trained Grey Memo to victory in the $1 million Godolphin Mile in Dubai _ the richest race Stute won. He won four stakes at Del Mar that year and finished with more than $1.2 million in purse earnings.

Born in Fort Wayne, Ind., Stute's family moved to Southern California in 1934, the same year Santa Anita opened. He began walking horses that had just finished morning workouts. He moved up to exercise rider during the time Seabiscuit became a national sports hero.

Stute's small stable was based at Santa Anita in Barn 38, Seabiscuit's old home. In 1940, he took out his trainer's license at Caliente in Mexico and opened his own stable in 1948.


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