KENTUCKY DERBY Dollase stages comeback behind family

The trainer has a Kentucky Derby contender with Ten Most Wanted.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Quite a family, those devoted Dollases.
There's Wally Dollase, the 65-year-old trainer of Ten Most Wanted, this year's "hot horse" coming into Saturday's Kentucky Derby.
And there's his wife, Cincy Dollase, the business whiz of a Southern California-based operation that oversees about 30 horses for Horizon Stable, a partnership of nearly two dozen owners.
Two of the Dollases' three daughters -- Aimee and Michele -- are thoroughbred racing rats, too. Aimee, a budding trainer in her own right, is first and foremost her dad's assistant; former trainer Michele is the wife of jockey Corey Nakatani; and Carrie, "the smart one," Aimee jokes, is a pediatric nurse.
Oh, and son Craig has his own stable, including Elloluv, the expected favorite for Friday's Kentucky Oaks. All the talk this week, though, is about dad being in the Derby.
Happy time
"To see him in this position, with a chance to win the Kentucky Derby, is awesome," Aimee said Tuesday morning outside the family's barn at Churchill Downs. "It's great to see him get this chance."
Dollases are smiling everywhere this week, a scene that would have been hard to imagine just four years ago. On March 14, 1999, Wally Dollase was fired by The Thoroughbred Corp. -- just 15 months after he disbanded Horizon Stable to be the private trainer for the late Saudi prince Ahmed bin Salman.
Just like that, 40 horses were gone.
"It was really devastating, kind of shocking," Craig said. "But as dad likes to say: 'They can take away my horses, but they can't take away my ability to train.' "
Wally Dollase won't discuss the specifics of his dismissal, but there was no doubt he was going to regroup.
"It wasn't like a crash because we were able to earn a lot of money with some pretty good horses," he said, naming such stakes winners as Itsallgreektome and Jewel Princess, a pair of Eclipse Award winners, and Deputy Commander, the sire of Ten Most Wanted.
Aided dad's comeback
His kids, raised on the family's 150-acre farm in Northern California, lent their support to dad's comeback.
And after Dollase and his wife returned home from a vacation to New Zealand and Fiji -- their phone began ringing. And ringing.
Former owners such as Michael Jarvis, James Chisholm and Ken Smole, part of the partnership that owns Ten Most Wanted, were calling.
" 'Let's start buying some horses again'," Dollase said they told him. "They are good friends and have been very loyal. We rebuilt Horizon and it's really worked well for me."
His owners knew he'd eventually be back.
Smole, an insurance executive from San Francisco, said the partners supported Dollase's decision to work for the wealthy Thoroughbred Corp.
"But now he was working for someone who wanted to go to the big races all the time," Smole said. "Wally is very patient with his horses. So we told him, 'When -- not if -- you come back, we'll be waiting. He ended up coming back sooner then even we expected."