'I just need to win a championship'

Orville Clarke, Sunday Gleaner Writer

Top-line trainer Anthony 'Baba' Nunes is enjoying another successful season, yet the championship keeps eluding him with Wayne DaCosta continuing to be the dominant trainer at Caymanas Park.

But the second-generation trainer is not perturbed as his time will come.

Nunes recently notched his 500th career win with Courtney Walsh's grey filly TREND SETTER and the milestone was more than welcomed by the Nunes family, including his mother Hillis.

A past student of Hillel Academy, Nunes received higher education at the University of South Florida, obtaining a bachelor's decree in management and marketing. But despite this, he chose training as a career.

For 'Baba' Nunes, racing is a family tradition.

His late father, Nigel Nunes, was a top flight trainer during the seventies. He not only won the trainers' championship in 1976 with a total of 71 wins, but saddled his first Derby winner, the 26-1 outsider BALLADIER under Panamanian jockey Jose Bravo in his first year as a trainer (1972) and added a second in 1979 with the Emilio 'Bimbo' Rodriquez-ridden LUCKY OLE SON in a blanket finish.

Anthony's older brother, Andrew Nunes, is a top trainer as well, also winning the Derby with the classy filly RESTLESS BABE in 1983 and the Superstakes with her the following year, before moving to Barbados over a decade ago, where he is one of the leading trainers. Anthony, surpassed his brother and father by saddling TERREMOTO to win both the Jamaica and Trinidad Derbies for leading patron Elias Haloute in 1998. And if that wasn't enough, he has posted three Superstakes winners in TERREMOTO (1998), PITTACUS, who was part-owned by Haloute, in 2003 and AD INFINITUM in the familiar maroon-and-white silks of Haloute in 2008.

Big races

To say that Nunes has proven himself in the really big races would be an understatement.

Although failing to win any of the classics this year, his three-year-olds PRINCE ROHAN, REGAL SENSATION and JUNIOR MINISTER all ran creditably in the major age-group races, including a third-place finish by JUNIOR MINISTER to subsequent Triple Crown winner MARK MY WORD in the 2000 Guineas, and also PRINCE ROHAN occupying the runner-up slot to LIFEISJUSFORLIVING in the Lotto Classic for the Governor's Cup in May.

Those performances, among others, from his large string of horses, have enabled Nunes to be a clear second in the trainers' standings with $31.1 million, thanks to 47 winning horses up to December 22.

When quizzed about the best horse he has trained, his reaction was mixed.

"When it comes to accomplishments, there's no question that TERREMOTO is way ahead, having won both Derbies and, of course, the Superstakes before his untimely death from laminitis as a four-year-old.

"However, ROYAL IMAGE, who won the Guineas in impressive fashion two years ago, is the most talented horse I have trained.

"True, he never lived to achieve as much as TERREMOTO, having injured himself in winning the Guineas and was never at his brilliant best after that. Unfortunately, he broke a leg at exercise later in the year and, like TERREMOTO, that was another sad loss for us," recalled Nunes, who turns 44 in January.

Through the peaks and valleys, Nunes said he truly enjoys training. However, he was quick to add that it takes hard work, dedication and sacrifice.

Married to Tara Nunes and the father of teenage girls - 15-year-old Kelly, a noted show jumper and 12-year-old Brooke - 'Baba' was naturally influenced by his father and when he died in 1982, became farm manager and shareholder of the now defunct Grange Farms in St Catherine (subsequently bought by HAM Stables). Then it was on to the University of Florida in 1990.

On his return home, Nunes, who, like his father and brother before him, has represented Jamaica at polo, realised that racing was in his blood. He hooked up with his brother as assistant trainer and eventually got his licence in early 1994, saddling his first winner with his first starter, CENTRE STAGE, in March of that year. He has never looked back.

But something is missing from his resume. As he puts it: "I just need to win a championship".