Like Father, Like …
Ferris Allen, Colonial Downs’ record-smashing trainer, learned it all from his dad

Here is a hot tip for betting the horse races at Colonial Downs this summer.
 

Put your money on horses trained by A. Ferris Allen III.
 

Since the New Kent County track opened in 1997, the Virginia native, now 58, has been the top trainer seven of the 12 seasons. Last summer, he saddled a single-season record 30 winners, according to official records. (Actually Allen says the number was 31 but, either way, it’s the best ever.) In all, he has saddled 201 winners at Colonial Downs.
 

“These years at Colonial Downs have been awesome for me,” said Allen, whose main training operation is in Maryland. “I shake my head and wonder why I have done so well.”
 

Ferris Allen’s passion for horses goes back to his childhood years at Warwick Stable, his father’s horse farm in eastern Henrico County’s Varina area.
 

“I was galloping horses at 11 and riding in races at 13,”  Allen recalled. “As I have said many times, if I wanted to be around my dad when I was a kid, I had to be around horses. We had a good father-son relationship. But that doesn’t mean he was easy on me.”
 

His father is Albert Ferris Allen Jr., whom everybody calls Bert. A fixture at the same table in Colonial Downs’ Turf Club when the horses are running, Bert Allen has missed just five racing days in 12 years.
 

Now 85, Bert still lives at Warwick Stable, a 13-acre property on Warwick Park Road, near the James River. In an interview in the kitchen of the house where he has lived for 60 years, Bert told his favorite story about Ferris’ boyhood.
 

“We had a little pony mare for the kids to ride,” Bert said. “One day, an old Thoroughbred stud – 16 hands high
– jumped on that little pony and served her right quick.
 

“On the Fourth of July that summer, we had a party at a lake where we used to swim before I built a swimming pool. We came home, put the kids to bed and I went out to the barn to check on the horses. There was a foal with that little pony. It was the Fourth of July, so we named him Firecracker.”
 

With Ferris aboard Firecracker in pony races, he went undefeated.
 

“His daddy was a Thoroughbred, so that pony could run,” Bert said. “When the starter dropped the flag, he was gone.”
 

Bert Allen grew up on his family’s farm in Varina.
 

“My father was a mechanic who had a radiator shop in Richmond,” he said. “But we grew vegetables. We had chickens and cows and horses. I never owned a bicycle when I was a boy. I rode a horse everywhere I went.”
 

In World War II, Bert served in the Army Air Forces as an airplane mechanic in North Africa and Italy. After the war, he spent a few years working in his father’s radiator shop. In 1948, he built his house and became a horseman, buying and selling horses.
 

“Me and the old man had some arguments about it,” Bert said. “He said, ‘Your grandpa lost all his money on horses.’ I said, ‘Well, he must have been a fool.’”
 

In the early 1980s, Bert bought a broodmare named Age of Miracles from Meadow Farm, the birthplace of Secretariat, considered by many to be the greatest racehorse ever.
 

Age of Miracles was mated with a stallion named Baederwood. The result was a colt named Miracle Wood, who won nearly $500,000 in purses. With Ferris training him, Miracle Wood won at least one stakes race every year he ran. In his most prominent race, he ran fifth in the 1986 Preakness.
 

“They say every horseman should have one good racehorse,” Bert said. “I had mine in Miracle Wood. He built me a new barn, bought me a new tractor and a new Cadillac.”
 

Bert Allen and Miracle Wood are still together. The 26-year-old horse lives at Warwick Stable, where he spends his days munching grass in a fenced pasture alongside another old horse. Health problems the past two years prevent Bert from taking care of his horses the way he used to. Fortunately, those daily chores are handled by his daughter, Hillis Allen, who lives across the road.
 

After graduating from The College of William & Mary, where he played baseball, Ferris Allen returned home to teach government and coach baseball at Varina High School. At the same time, he was training horses for Bert and running them at Charles Town in West Virginia.
 

“Ferris would van the horses home from Charles Town late at night,” Bert said. “I would put ’em to bed, because he had to go to school the next morning.”
 

Three years of being a high school teacher and a horse trainer nearly wore Ferris out, so he quit his teaching job  to condition racehorses full time.  It turned out to be a good move.
 

During his 35-year career, Ferris Allen has saddled more than 1,700 winners at racetracks from Delaware to Florida.
 

.....................................................


Steve Clark is a former columnist for The Richmond Times-Dispatch and, previously, The Richmond News Leader in Richmond, Virginia.