Wayne Cutler always asks. And he always asks his dad and his brother. Just a wink, a nod, a glance to the sky.
A little help, boys.
Thursday, Cutler switched it up.
The 64-year-old looked up like he always does as the horses approached the gate for the feature but this time it wasn’t to Burt or Mitch.
“Leon, Rick…come on guys.”
Leon Blusiewicz and Rick Violette did the rest. Well, Leon Blue, the 3-year-old gelding named after the former, did the rest in a stakes named after the latter. Trained by Melanie Giddings and ridden by Christopher Elliott, the son of Mo Town sliced between a tiring Sounds Like A Plan and a rallying Smooth Breeze to win the 3-year-old New York-bred turf stakes by a neck. Leon Blue improved his record to two wins, three seconds and a third in six starts.
“I usually do it to my brother and father. This one, I just felt like it was right to do it to the two of them. The forces came through. Just a thrill, it’s special,” Cutler said. “You think about people. I’m not superstitious, well, I am superstitious, I don’t know what the afterlife is, but I feel like they’re watching and enjoying the day.”
Blue and Rick. A man of stories and a man of opinions, both racetrack lifers, watching from the clouds. And arguing over which is better, to have a horse named after you or a stakes named after you. Hey, it’s a great image.
“We were up against some great, great competition today. We knew it would be a tough race, but he’s just a fighter. The horse just shows up every time. Six for six in the money. He didn’t get a lot of respect today but he showed up,” Cutler said. “Just thrilling. To win the Rick Violette. We had dinner seven or eight months before he passed away. This is really special.”
Purchased for $100,000 at the New York-bred yearling sale at Saratoga in 2023, the dark bay colt was split between AWC Stable, Gold Square, Paul Braverman and Scott Akman. Cutler, who races under AWC Stable (A for his wife Adriana and W for Wayne), was deemed managing partner while Al Gold of Gold Square got naming rights. He named the colt Duke Of Detroit, a reference to Motown. Cutler was lukewarm at best. It didn’t stick.
“Al was like, ‘Ok, let me think about it,’ ” Cutler said. “We had seen Leon Blusiewicz with Coach Parcells, he was near our box, just a nice man, my wife would bring him these chocolate balls she would make. When he passed away, Al and I were talking and he was like, ‘Let’s name him after Leon Blue.’ So, Al gets all the credit.”
Cutler grew up riding his bicycle to Roosevelt Raceway where his dad owned harness horses. He would trek 15 minutes by bike every weekend to muck stalls, watch horses, handicap horses, go to lunch with owners. Pedal home, type and print a tip sheet and go back each race night with an arm full of winners.
In Front was the beginning of it all.
“Stan Bergstein and Spencer Ross were the announcers. My dad had a horse who did very well named Romeo Allegro and they would always say, ‘Romeo Allegro…in front.’ I said, ‘OK, that’s the name of the tipsheet,’ ” Cutler said. “We had one of those rolling mimeograph copying machines. I would copy it and ride back to Roosevelt and hand out those tip sheets. It was gratifying at the end of the night. I would see them on the floor and see people had circled horses. I figured they were at least looking at it.”
Analytical by nature and racetrack nurture, Cutler clocked the harness horses when they did their warmup laps each night.
“In harness racing, they run a mile six races before their race and three races before their race,” Cutler said. “So, you can stand there with a stopwatch and get the last quarter, I would stopwatch and get a good indication if the horse was sharp or not. My mother was worried.”
Dad wasn’t.
“It was special times with my father. Driving out to Monticello, coming home at 2 in the morning,” Cutler said. “He got me into racing. It’s wonderful to see the journey of my family.”
Cutler built a career in bank consulting and started an analytical software company to help banks create pricing strategy and distribution strategy. In 2004, he had enough disposable income to dip back into horse racing. He started with a couple of claimers and wound up partnering on Grade 1 winner Mo Town, millionaire Pat On The Back and, yes, Mo Town’s son Leon Blue. Cutler now owns parts of 31 horses.
“My dad was around for a few years when I had some horses. He and my brother would be my first phone calls. We need more people to pass on the excitement of the sport. It’s a privilege,” Cutler said. “It’s thrilling to be around it, it’s the team of the owners, the trainer, the jockey, the horse and the groom. I go to sleep thinking about the horses, and I wake up thinking about the horses.”
Just like Blue and Rick.
