Profile: Hartman finds success after move to Kentucky
Daily Racing Form
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – To find better horses, Chris Hartman figured he had to go east, young man.
“I wanted to upgrade my stock and see if I couldn’t pick up some more clients,” said Hartman, who was born in Phoenix and raised on the racetracks of Arizona and New Mexico.
So far, Hartman’s plan is coming together nicely. Last Saturday, Hartman won his first stakes in Kentucky when Alsvid defeated Work All Week, the reigning North American sprint champion, by pulling away to a two-length victory in the Grade 3 Aristides at Churchill Downs. Work All Week had been 10 for 10 on dirt until the Aristides.
A little more than two years ago, Hartman, now 42, removed the vast majority of his horses from Sunland Park and migrated east after having maintained split divisions for several years between his home tracks and – depending on the time of year – Iowa, Texas, or Oklahoma. He set up shop at Oaklawn Park for the first time in January 2013, and by the 2015 Oaklawn meet, he was the leading trainer with 34 wins at the Arkansas track.
Flush with success, Hartman moved all his stock in April to Kentucky for the first time, and now he’s here with 46 horses split between Churchill and the nearby Trackside training annex. Heading into Thursday’s action, Hartman had won with eight of his first 41 starters at this spring meet.
“We thought about doing this a while back, but the kids were too young to move around everywhere,” he said. “Now that they’re older and out of school, we thought this was the time.”
It’s a family operation, with his wife, Hillary, and his 22-year-old stepson, Lukas (yes, he’s named after the Hall of Fame trainer), working as assistants. That type of setup comes naturally to Hartman since his father, Stan, has been training since 1978 and remains active at Turf Paradise in Phoenix.
Alsvid, a 6-year-old gelding by Officer, easily is the stable star with earnings of $994,225 from 30 career starts. Named for a horse who in Norwegian mythology pulled the sky across the sun, he is owned by the Black Hawk Stable of western Oklahoma oilman Jim Rogers, who happened to be alongside Hartman on a recent morning during training hours at Churchill.
“We bought him for $55,000 at the 2-year-old training sale at
Hartman has a couple of tangential ties to the Kentucky Derby from his days back home. He was friends with Luke Kruytbosch, the late announcer who called 10 runnings of the Derby (1999-2008) as the Churchill race-caller. Kruytbosch spent his winters as the caller at Turf Paradise.
“We’d hang out after the races all the time,” said Hartman. “Luke was a special guy with a whole lot of friends.”
Hartman also has known Chip Woolley, the trainer of 2009 Derby winner Mine That Bird, since Hartman was a boy.
“After Chip won the Derby, there was this article that quoted Joel Marr and Henry Dominguez saying all these nice things about him,” Hartman said with a laugh. “I said, ‘Hell, I wouldn’t bet on Chip in a non-two for $5,000, so how could I bet him in the Kentucky Derby?’ If Mine That Bird doesn’t win, I’ve got the super cold-wired with Pioneerof the Nile on top to hit for like $50,000.”
With 1,065 wins since he began training in 1992, Hartman acts, talks, and walks like a lifelong tracker. He’s a burly guy not lacking for confidence, and racing stories come easily and with laughs. He knows a certain degree of luck is involved in succeeding in any endeavor, but old-fashioned hard work mostly is what has gotten him to this point in his career.
“I do feel blessed,” he said.
