Photo by Lisa Photo - Lambeth Media

DREAMING IN TECHNICOLOUR
Toronto, the horse would have stayed with him. That’s the way
the ball falls sometimes.”
Beaulieu is equally gracious. "I don't regret anything. You
can't be everywhere. I made a lifestyle choice that works for me,
but I still love the horse and the people who own him."
His loss turned out being Frank O’Reilly’s gain.
Cianci and Russo weren’t sure who to entrust with their gelding
initially, but ultimately were convinced by a glowing recommendation
from Quebec friends, the Mondoux family. Norman
Moundoux had long been associated with Quebec’s famous Filion
clan, having co-owned 1987 North America Cup winner Runnymede
Lobell with Yves Filion.
O’Reilly had worked for Yves’s brother Denis in New Jersey
and Quebec in the 1980s. In fact, he used to date Denis’s daughter.
“She dumped me, Denis and his wife (Fleurette) didn’t,”
O’Reilly, 48, recalled with a laugh.
Quebec was just one of many stops on O’Reilly’s well-travelled
career path. The native of Wolfe Island, Ontario (near
Kingston), 10th of 13 children in a family of dairy farmers, didn’t
grow up with horses, but became smitten after attending the
races in Kingston a few times with his parents. Wolfe Island horsemen
Joe Hogan and Joe Hawkins were instrumental in his introduction
to the sport. By the time he was a teenager, it was all he
could think of doing.
After a chance meeting at a restaurant with trainer Ernie
Spruce, who was on Wolfe Island duck hunting, O’Reilly left for
the plush lodging of Greenwood and Mohawk tack rooms. “You
September 2010 • The Harness Edge
“He was wild and dangerous at two. He
hit two of my employees on the head.
He just wanted to kick everybody.
That’s why we cut him.” – Jean Beaulieu
could hear the rats and raccoons running across the ceiling at
night,” O’Reilly said.
“My parents thought I was crazy when I left . . . and they
were right. I think they thought I’d smarten up and come home,
but I never did, though if I’d known how hard it would be to get
where I am, I might have reconsidered.”
Spruce put O’Reilly right to work. Among the horses in his
charge was accomplished pacer Bregman Hanover, who’d earned
$500,000 at that point.
The Spruce stable used to campaign at The Meadowlands
each year, and that’s where O’Reilly met a couple who’d play a
pivotal role in his life: Carol and Steve Crevani, whose horses race
with the Bullville name.
“Carol was in the same barn in New Jersey. She kind of
adopted me, and Steve was stuck with me.”
The Crevanis hired O’Reilly as their full time trainer, and for
eight years, he campaigned their small stable at the Meadowlands,
Freehold, Yonkers and Roosevelt. “They’re special people,”
O’Reilly said. “I actually lived with them and their kids. Had my
own room at the house.”
When the Crevanis scaled back the racing side of their operation,
O’Reilly went to work for Denis Filion, then based at The
Meadowlands as well.
Filion subsequently decided to move back to Quebec and
O’Reilly came with him. They went their separate ways a few
years later, when the native uprising in Oka complicated operations
at the farm that had been their base of operations.
“It was time for me to hang up my own shingle anyway,”
said O’Reilly, who opened a public stable at Blue Bonnets and
began to drive horses regularly, both for himself and others.
He enjoyed considerable success and by 1993, had expanded
the stable to 25 horses. But a lengthy horsemen’s strike at Blue
Bonnets triggered the sale of his best horses and an eventual
move to Ontario.
“It was a tough couple of years after Montreal. I made the
mistake of selling my best horses in New Jersey and keeping the
others, which is exactly how not to do it.”
O’Reilly tried Ottawa, Windsor, “wherever my stock would
do,” without making any real waves until 1998-1999, when King
Conch colt Armbro Scribe raced productively on the Ontario Sires
Stakes circuit.