Lydia Anglin is the embodiment of a go-getter.
And, even as she transitioned from an informal commercial importer to today being an owner and trainer of five horses, Anglin is nowhere done writing new adventures to her life story.
“I used to sell at the Bob Marley Museum and Jus Natural. Anywhere the hairdressing salon is, I would go there and sell clothes I bought in Panama, Curaçao and Miami,” the enterprising Anglin shared of her former professional life of buying and selling attire procured from overseas trips. “I was doing that for about 25 years.”
Her professional interests, however, took an about-turn in 2000 when Anglin made it into the stands of Caymanas Park. She had only just recently returned to Jamaica from a North American trip to New Jersey.
Anglin’s presence at the Caribbean’s most famous racetrack was in and of itself significant, as she had long resisted going. Yet, there she was.
“My brother Carl invited me but I have a little sister who used to come to Caymanas Park every Saturday and I used to make a fuss out of it. [There was] the house to clean, the plates to wash, and the yard to sweep, and every Saturday she gone a track,” she reflected on the disinterest she formerly had of her family’s long-standing association with Caymanas.
From her grandfather Sardre to her father Hernel, uncles to brothers, and even her sister Jilly, the Anglin clan had been, and still are, groomers, starting gate attendants, and vendors throughout her life.
“I enjoyed myself that Saturday. I was with my brother and sister and we sat in the stands. I catch a horse that V. McBean was riding. The horse won at 46-1. I get a good amount of money, it was about $10 or $20 for the ticket,” recalled the plain-spoken Anglin.
This newly discovered passion for horse racing took hold. Anglin was back at Caymanas Park the following week.
“Nobody had to invite me this time. I was ready from early,” she fondly recounted. “When I was there, my big brother come and sit in the stands and said to me, ‘Sis, I want to talk to you … I want you to buy a horse’, and I was like, “Where me going to put him, roun’ a back?”
The horse her brother proposed she purchase was being sold for $60,000 by a trainer at Caymanas. Lydia’s siblings vowed to let their uncle Joseph, a trainer who also worked at the track, tend to the horse.
But, again, she expressed concern as to where the animal would be kept.
Nonetheless, her gut instincts persisted.
“Monday bright and early, my brother came back. I brought $80,000 with me,” remembered Anglin, a resident of Caymanas’ neighbouring Meadowvale community. “When I went, I saw a horse, I don’t know if him good or not, [but] I know I see a horse and paid the man. So, when we got the horse, my big brother was like, ‘Mek we go tell Uncle Joe’. So me go and tell Uncle Joe that me buy Rude Boy, and him say, ‘What you going to do with that?” … I said, “I am going to run him,”[to which he replied] ‘Me nuh want that.’
Momentarily sidelined, a quick-thinking Anglin left Rude Boy tied up on the range and sat in her car. She patiently waited until she saw her uncle, riding his bicycle, turn onto the range. She then drove off.
“Me go away and leave the horse, me nuh business with that again, that’s what my big brother tell me to do, that’s what I did.”
She returned the following day to assess whether any developments had taken place.
“When I came back the next morning, the horse look good, him bathe and feed. So my uncle said ‘Madix, come here, you see like how you buy horse? See the feeding man coming there, buy two bags, and he wants sawdust too’. So, when the truck came, I ask how much and they said 30 bags.”
Lydia, the then-new horse owner, shared that, after acquiring Rude Boy “me run the horse about four or five times, and run some second and some third [placed positions].”
Then, victory smiled, but it came with a hard lesson when Rude Boy sold.
“Rude Boy run in my uncle’s name and won. My uncle then sold the horse … . He won on Saturday and sell him the Sunday morning.
“My uncle taught me the biggest lesson at Caymanas. Never put your horse in anybody else’s name. If you can’t take out a licence, that’s a big gamble. When I started talking, my uncle said: “That’s my horse, is me own and train him.”
She used that lesson to secure an owner’s licence from the Jamaica Racing Commission in 2001 after her uncle paid what he felt she was due from the winnings. Anglin then went about educating herself on the ins and outs of the profession she had taken on. “I decided to go with assistant trainer Roy Matthews. [By that time] I had five horses, so I went with him. Also, I had to learn from the groomer as well. I had a groom, ‘Prentis’, a Rastaman. Him a teach me, and my brother teaching me at the same time, so it was teamwork. I was paying them for the work but I, too, was doing the work and learning at the same time.”
Among the multitude of things she absorbed in her crash course on the sport were how to bandage horses, how to hold the animal, and picking the stall.
She expressed confidence that she is a better owner and trainer, having taken this collaborative approach.
“The groom spends most of the time with the horses, so they teach you. It’s important to listen to your groom, look, observe and move along. The trainer, the jockey, the groom, the farrier – it’s all teamwork,” she explained.
For the woman who spent two prior decades in the business of selling garments, she has fully devoted the last 20 years of her life to horse racing.
She now has her own Caymanas Track stable (#13) where there are four horses in training: a mare, a two-year-old, a three-year-old, and a six-year-old. Then, there’s a United States colt on her 10-acre farm at Salt Pond, St Catherine, in line to join her equines any day now. Anglin has officially been a horse trainer for 20 months. She is one of three female trainers at the track.
“This is where I wanted to be,” Anglin said with a satisfactory exhale when asked about her ambitions.
“Coming along with the groom teaching me, and a family of trainers giving me guidance, they are my extended family. I am female but they don’t let me feel like a female. They treat me equally, so I have to say thumbs-up to all the trainers. Thanks to all those who are still teaching me along the way. I am elated to be here.”
What keeps her focused is an enduring love of horses.
“We are like a family. I talk to them all the time, just like a would to somebody. Even at the farm, they will say, ‘Hear her over there’, I am like ‘We a hol’ a vibes’. They understand me. We all talk to the horses: jockey, groom, trainer, and owner. They do understand what we are saying.”
Anglin said that while attending trainers’ school, participants are taught that communication with the animals is paramount to creating a bond.
She explained one of her prep routines. “If they [the horses] are going to race, you tell them ‘we are going to war, when you go down there, this is what I expect you to do, if you can do it. If you can’t, do your best. I will understand’.”
For Anglin, there is no time off from the job.
“If I am not at the stable, I am on the farm … most of my time is spent around the horses. Only at nights I’m home. I work 365 days, horse people don’t get vacations.”
And, she feels a true sense of belonging among her tribe at Caymanas. “I think they do respect me but, in the same breath, they are not going to [be] lovey-dovey. You have to fight, it’s not an easy game. It’s a game that you have to be strong, you have to persist. It’s not something you learn overnight and grasp everything. Every day it’s something new.”
The horse trainer and owner is perfectly content with life as is.
“Whatever God has plans for me, that’s what I will go after,” she reasoned. “So I will keep humble, and look wherever the game takes me.”
