Guillot not your average trainer
Colleagues often targets of barbs — or voodoo spells
Eric Guillot does not practice voodoo so much as he plays at it. He purposely perpetuates the image of an offkilter Cajun to keep himself amused and rival trainers on edge.
He has put a curse on Bob Baffert. He has stuck pins in a doll of Todd Pletcher. And he reinforced his reputation as racing ’s dark arts devotee Thursday morning by expressing concern that his Preakness Stakes mojo might be disrupted by the weather.
“If it rains too much, it kind of knocks the spirits back down to the ground,” Guillot said. “Then everybody’s in trouble.”
As the trainer of winless Laoban, a 30-1 long shot attempting to break his maiden in the middle leg of the Triple Crown, Guillot would seem to have more trouble than he could shake a gris-gris bag at. Yet the 54-year-old remains undismayed, undaunted and spectacularly unconcerned by appearances.
“Take away Nyquist,” he said, “the rest of them are just horses.”
Dressed in a dated Breeders’ Cup hoodie and a pair of plaid shorts, Guillot went about his preparations for Saturday’s Preakness looking the part of a stable hand on laundry day. Yet to walk within range of his Louisiana accent was to be swept up in a whirlpool of colorful, caustic and confident candor.
“A lot of horse trainers, they lie and cheat and steal,” Guillot said. “I’m as honest as they get. A lot of them have put themselves in that position to not be able to handle the truth. Most of the trainers need narcotics to get to bed at night because they have to cover all their lies. I don’t. ... “It gives me a lot of haters.” Before winning Saratoga’s 2014 Whitney Handicap with Moreno, Guillot attended the draw wearing a shirt that read, “I Got Haters Everywhere,” and he has sometimes given the impression of a man determined to make enemies. The Pletcher voodoo doll was a prop Guillot used in preparation for the 2013 Travers Stakes, a race that would later bring him into conflict with another leading trainer, D. Wayne Lukas.
After Moreno finished second to Lukas’ Will Take Charge, Guillot made the unsubstantiated claim that Lukas’ jockey, Luis Saez, had used an electric device during the race. When an investigation cleared Saez of wrongdoing, Guillot offered a public apology and blamed the emotions of the moment.
Even so, he has yet to back down completely from his original claim.
“Lukas and I have never had a problem,” Guillot said. “Lukas didn’t want to touch that (issue). He didn’t want no skeletons coming out of the closet. Who does in this business?”
Guillot said the Baffert curse dates to the early 1990s and an alleged attempt to take one of his clients.
“He started it,” Guillot said. “And you should never (draw) first blood on a vampire.”
Baffert acknowledged a vague memory of the curse Wednesday, but if it has had any impact on the Hall of Fame trainer, it has been imperceptible.
According to Equibase, Baffert has won 2,639 races, Guillot 243.
“Eric is very entertaining,” Baffert said. “He’s funny. He just likes to have fun.
“Racing has a lot of characters, (and) you need characters. That’s what makes the backside. He’s just a raw Cajun.”
Though the two trainers have appeared cordial this week while working in close proximity in Pimlico’s stakes barn, Guillot is not one to conceal his contempt.
“He likes to have an entourage and embarrass the little people,” he said of Baffert. “Not me, ’cause he’s scared of me. He likes to belittle and make fun of people to make his insecurities feel good. I’m just the opposite.”
Longtime partner Mike Moreno has compared Guillot to an onion whose layers must be peeled back to reveal its sweetness.
Guillot thinks of himself as the same guy who “pulled the bully off of the unfortunate” in grade school and as a “more polished” Donald Trump with “better hair and less money.”
Like Trump, Guillot is a man with no filter and few regrets.
“God made the windshield very big for a reason and the rearview mirror very small for another,” he said. “I very seldom look back. There’s only one gatekeeper to your destiny, and that’s yourself. The No. 1 respect that counts the most is self-respect, and I’m full of it.”