Todd Pletcher, winner of a record seven Eclipse Awards as the leading trainer in North America, learned invaluable lessons as a top assistant to Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas. Chad Brown points to the mentorship of the late Hall of Famer Bobby Frankel and an association with Frankel that he will always treasure in discussing his ascent.

The late Phillip “P.G.” Johnson, in contrast, was self-taught. He learned through trial and error and countless hours of hands-on toil, adding to the luster of his accomplishments.

Anne Eberhardt/BloodHorse

His six-decade Hall of Fame training career finally culminated in one of the great upsets in the history of the Breeders’ Cup World Championships, when 43.50-1 homebred Volponi shocked the world with a 6 ½-length romp in the 2002 Breeders’ Cup Classic.

The road to lovable longshot Volponi was anything but easy. It started with Song Master, a $75 auction purchase for Johnson in 1942 that represented the first Thoroughbred he bought. That transaction literally involved a fire sale. Song Master had suffered smoke inhalation during a fire.

The scenario that unfolded after Song Master entered the barn would say everything about Johnson’s career. He worked with Song Master and they worked together some more until the Chicago native led the horse into the winner’s circle at Hawthorne Race Course two years later for the first of his 2,315 victories. Johnson’s lifetime earnings would total $47,519,937.

Johnson was respected throughout the racing community for his devotion to his wife, Mary Kay, and then to their daughters, Kathy and Karen, who enjoyed spending time and helping at the barn.

“He was very passionate about what he did, but he was also very passionate about the family,” said Karen, now a veteran turf writer. “He always made time for family away from the races when he could.”

Johnson enjoyed watching Kathy’s handiwork with show horses. When Karen ran track in high school, he attended as many meets as possible.

At the barn, he was astute in assessing what each horse offered and what could be done to make that horse better. “His ability to judge a horse in the flesh, he really knew what he was looking at and he was a student of it since he was a teenager,” Karen said.

The two years needed to turn Song Master into a winner typified Johnson’s willingness to give promising runners the time they needed.

“He was very patient with horses. He never wanted to rush the 2-year-olds. He always wanted to take more of a wait-and-see approach,” Karen said. “If you saw him go on with a 2-year-old early, you knew he thought they were very fast and sound and they would be able to sustain that.”

Johnson trained at Arlington Park near Chicago, Detroit, Florida and Maryland before settling in New York and making his mark on that ultra-competitive circuit. He won four training titles at Belmont Park, three at Aqueduct and one at Saratoga.

Volponi wins the 2002 Breeders' Cup Classic. (Skip Dickstein)

In a remarkable stretch considering the prestige of the meet, he won at least one race at Saratoga from 1962 until 2003. He recorded major victories with Geraldine’s Store (Diana Handicap, 1983), Kiri’s Clown (Sword Dancer Invitational, 1995), and Maplejinsky (Alabama Stakes, 1988).

He became a student of bloodlines and longed to breed a first-class horse. Volponi, a son of Cryptoclearance bred in Kentucky in the name of the family’s Amherst Stable, became that horse.

No one debated that Volponi was talented, but it appeared that he would be hopelessly overmatched in the Classic. Many wondered why he was being entered. Johnson, then in his sixth decade in the business, saw signs that others missed.

“He felt really, really strongly that the horse was going to run a good race,” Karen said. “Could you predict he was going to win and win as easily as that? That’s hard. But he knew that horse was sitting on a good race.”

Volponi ran the race of a lifetime at Arlington Park, bringing everything full circle for P.G. and Mary Kay, the love of his life.

“To have that Breeders’ Cup was everything because two years later my parents died within 11 weeks of each other,” Karen said. “To just think back on that moment and to see their joy, them holding hands as they walked to the winner’s circle, it was very special.”

A moment that was a lifetime in the making.

Fun Facts

• Volponi was named after writer Paul Volponi.

• Volponi means “Sly Old Fox” in Italian.

• Johnson co-owned Volponi with Edward Baier, a long-time friend.

• Volponi finished second or third in six consecutive graded stakes races after the Classic, including the Suburban and Whitney Handicaps, both Grade 1 contests.

• Veteran turf writer Steve Haskin of BloodHorse selected Volponi as his Best Bet of the 2002 Breeders’ Cup.