Frank Catrone

Who is Frank Catrone?

Frank Catrone, Jr. was an American Thoroughbred horse racing jockey best known for winning the 1965 Kentucky Derby as a trainer.

Catrone stood 4 feet 9 inches tall. While selling newspapers at a stand outside Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, New York, the diminutive 17-year-old was offered the chance to train to be a jockey by future U.S. Racing Hall of Fame trainer Sam Hildreth. Although Catrone met with some success as a jockey, he achieved nationwide recognition as a trainer. Battling weight problems, in 1936 he began his professional career as a trainer. In the early 1940s, he trained for Texan Emerson F. Woodward's Valdina Farms. Among his successes for Valdina, Catrone won the 1942 Derby Trial Stakes with Valdina Orphan, who then finished third to winner Shut Out in the Kentucky Derby.

By 1964, Catrone was the secondary trainer behind Clyde Troutt for the breeding/racing stable of Dan and Ada Rice. When the Rices decided to race at Santa Anita Park over the winter of 1964-65, one of the horses Catrone brought West was a colt named Lucky Debonair who had made only one start at age two at the Atlantic City Race Course, where he finished out of the money. In 1965, Lucky Debonair gave Catrone his greatest success in racing, winning the Santa Anita Derby, the Blue Grass Stakes and the Kentucky Derby. In 1966, Lucky Debonair won California's most famous race, the Santa Anita Handicap.