John Clay: I didn't know the late horse racing trainer Christophe Clement. Now, I wish I had.

John Clay, Lexington Herald-Leader on May 28, 2025

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LEXINGTON, Ky. — I never met Christophe Clement.

As far as I can tell, I never talked to the man. When his horse Tonalist won the 2014 Belmont Stakes, the big story that year was California Chrome’s unsuccessful bid for a Triple Crown. I remember talking to and writing about Chrome’s connections after the race. I didn’t pay much attention to Tonalist or his trainer. Now I wish I had.

Christophe Clement died Sunday from metastatic uveal melanoma. He was 59. A native of Paris, France, Clement trained horses in Europe and was an assistant to Shug McGaughey in the U.S. before he established the Christophe Clement Racing Stable in New York in 1991.

He won his first Grade 1 race in 1994 at Keeneland with Danish in the Elizabeth II Challenge Cup Stakes on the turf. According to BloodHorse, Clement trained 24 individual Grade 1 winners and won 286 graded stakes races.

Though certainly Clement experienced a successful training career that ended far too soon, that apparently was not his greatest trait. What has struck me is the outpouring of condolences and tributes posted on social media since his passing.

“Class act always,” wrote NBC and Lexington’s Kenny Rice.

“Christophe Clement, a true gentleman, and lifelong advocate for the horse,” wrote Eric Hamelback, CEO of the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association.

“The epitome of a gentleman and a great trainer,” wrote Bill Finley of the Thoroughbred Daily News.

“If the backstretch was filled with Christophe Clements, our game would be a lot better off,” posted Matt Dinerman, track announcer at Oaklawn Park.

Those are just a few.

Then there was this from Patrick Moquin of the Daily Racing Form, who as a 22-year-old aspiring journalist emailed Clement in hopes of talking to the trainer for a story he was hoping to write about Maddy Olver, an apprentice rider at Aqueduct, for a class assignment.

“I was already planning ways to work around his absence in the piece when he promptly responded, ‘Call when convenient,’ ” wrote Moquin. “We spoke for a half hour. It was the first and last time I was ever starstruck conducting an interview.”

According to Moquin, after he finished his questions, Clement had questions of his own about the young student’s background and aspirations. When the two met in person in 2023, Clement “suggested that I reach a few people to stay on the right track.”

Wrote Moquin, “If Christophe had not picked up my call, my class assignment on Maddy Olver might not have turned into my first published article about horse racing. If he hadn’t given me contacts later on, I never would have spent a crucial weekend that summer working for the Saratoga Special. These glimpses of something greater gave me the barest of scraps of a resume to hand to Daily Racing Form. Which has given me this profound opportunity.”

This, as Moquin acknowledged, is just one of many shared stories about Clement that, even though I never met the trainer, have made me stop and think.

So much of what we hear and read about horse racing these days involves drugs and violations and suspensions and controversy and the very survival of the game that is busy fighting to stay relevant in a sports world that becomes more crowded every day.

And yet there are so many good people in thoroughbred horse racing. People who care about the animals. People who work hard. People who love the competition. People who operate behind the scenes as exercise riders, backstretch workers and trainers who will never receive the notoriety of a Bob Baffert or a Todd Pletcher.

Christophe Clement earned a bit more notoriety than most of those people. Still, he never won a Kentucky Derby or an Eclipse Award for best trainer. He won one Breeders’ Cup race, the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf in 2021. Then again, maybe he won something bigger.

“RIP Christophe,” posted David Grening, who covers New York racing for the Daily Racing Form. “Thank you for three decades of interviews, insights, general conversations, and your optimism and passion for NY racing. You will be sorely missed but surely not forgotten.”

I wish I’d known him.