Veteran Trainer Smith Dies at 84

Veteran trainer Thomas Victor "T.V." Smith, who won nearly 900 races at 44 racetracks over a 47-year career, died Aug. 5 in Louisville, Ky., where he had been retired from racing since 2007. He was 84. Smith was born Nov. 19, 1937, in Mitchell, S.D., to the late Leonard and Hazel Smith. He learned the racing game from his father, an executive secretary for the South Dakota Racing Commission, while attending meets at Park Jefferson and county fair races at Aberdeen, Fort Pierce, and Winner. He graduated from the University of South Dakota, where he met his future wife, Ann, and launched his training career in 1960. The American Racing Manual in the 1960s only included the records of trainers with 10 or more wins and Smith's record does not appear until 1964. So from 1964-2007, he is credited with starting in 6,051 races and capturing 887 wins. His runners earned at least $13,868,074 in purses. Smith told Daily Racing Form in 1991 that he took his first string of four horses to Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans in 1960 and got his first winner with a 2-year-old named Papa's Mint. Barbaron, a horse he raced for Arthur J. Abbott, became his first stakes winner in the 1963 Ak-Sar-Ben Ambassador's Handicap. The Smiths lived in Omaha and raced at the former Ak-Sar-Ben Racetrack for 30 years. They moved to Kentucky in 1992 and made Churchill Downs their base after purses declined at the Omaha track. Smith's first graded stakes winner, For Once'n My Life, also became his first and only grade 1 winner with a victory in the 1982 Arlington-Washington Lassie Stakes (G1) for owner Joan Masterson. The Key to the Kingdom filly also finished second in the Sorority Stakes (G1) and the Gardenia Stakes (G2) that year. Smith conditioned six other graded winners, including Holy Bull Stakes (G3) winners Grits'n Hard Toast (1999) and Offlee Wild (2003). Offlee Wild was a son of Wild Again bought by Azalea Stables for $325,000 at the 2001 Keeneland September Yearling Sale from Middlebrook Farm, agent. He won the Holy Bull in his first start at 3 and followed with a third in the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes (G1). He went unplaced in the Kentucky Derby (G1), was moved to trainer Rick Dutrow Jr. in the spring of 2004, and went on to win the Suburban Handicap (G1) the following year. Grits'n Hard Toast, a homebred for Smith and Robert Anderson out of the stakes-placed mare Glory Spell—who the trainer and owner also co-bred and raced—won twice at 2 and was third in the Brown & Williamson Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes (G2). He also won the Holy Bull in his first start at 3. The Bates Motel gelding didn't start in the Kentucky Derby after finishing unplaced in the Florida Derby (G1), but went on to win the Iowa Derby. The other graded stakes winners Smith trained were Another, Five Percent, Top of My Life, and Sheets. Horses in his care won 66 black-type stakes, and among his stakes winners were eight that were also graded-placed. In various interviews, Smith was quick to give credit for his success to the equine athletes he conditioned. "Horses make people, not the reverse," he told Daily Racing Form in 1991. "A mediocre trainer might come up with an occasional good horse, because a good horse will run for anyone. But it takes a good horseman to consistently come up with good stakes horses." Smith is preceded in death by his parents and by his wife of 56 years. He is survived by his children, Tim (Mary) Smith and Trish Smith (Tim Meredith); grandchildren, Kyle (Christine) Smith, Peter (Kristina) Smith, and Christopher Borel; and great-grandchildren, Parker and Braden Smith. A service to celebrate Smith's life will be held at 11:00 a.m. ET Aug. 19 at Arch L. Heady & Son at Westport Village, 7410 Westport Road in Louisville. A reception and time of visiting will follow the service from noon to 2:00 p.m. at the funeral home. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made in Smith's honor to St. Matthews Episcopal Church.