""When I got back from Vietnam, I had no place to go, but I had a friend who knew somebody, so they they said, 'Come on out West,'""
""So here I'm in New York, I don't know anything about [horses] except I've seen a lot of cowboy movies. So here comes Jim Matthews, pulls up in his trailer, he has his horse set and he it backs his horse out of a trailer.""
""A week or so later, Jim's just calls me and says, 'Do you want to come to work for me?' I said 'Yeah, that'd be great," Shirreffs said. "So, I went to work for him and didn't get paid a""
John Shirreffs died in Southern California at age 80; no cause of death was announced. He trained 3,589 starts with 596 wins and earned $58.5 million in purses. He frequently ponyed horses to morning training, stayed on the racing surface after wins, and avoided the Winner's Circle, while his wife Dottie Ingordo handled publicity. He won the 2005 Kentucky Derby with 50-1 Giacomo and trained Zenyatta, who won 19 straight races including a last-to-first Breeders' Cup Classic victory in 2009. Shirreffs was a Marine veteran who entered racing after returning from Vietnam and began working for trainer Jim Matthews without pay.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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