Trainer Robert Bean enjoying life at Emerald Downs

Discouraged by the Southern California racing scene, the 79-year-old Bean isn’t sure how long he wants to stay in the game, but he doesn’t regret walking away from a successful electrical engineering business to give training a try decades ago.

Not many racing fans blinked an eye when Robert Bean, who has been training in Southern California for more than 30 years, packed up his 12 horses and headed north to Emerald Downs in Auburn, Washington, in March.

He’d had enough. He was having trouble getting stalls at Santa Anita, Del Mar, Los Alamitos and San Luis Rey. This wasn’t what he had in mind when he gave up an electrical engineering business in Las Vegas that was raking in $4 million a year.

Remember the tragic MGM Grand Hotel and Casino fire in Las Vegas that killed 85 people in November 1980? Bean vividly remembers it.

“I was working as an electrical inspector for Clark County and I was the first inspector in there,” Bean said during a telephone interview Thursday before saddling two horses on Emerald Downs’ eight-race program later that night.

For a man who doesn’t have near the career résumé in the training business as Hall of Famers like Bob Baffert, Richard Mandella and Ronald McAnally, Bean’s done all right for himself.

He turns 79 in August and isn’t sure how long he wants to remain in the game, saying, “It’s so discouraging down there in California.” But he holds no regrets that the late actor Jack Klugman talked him into giving training a whirl.

Bean was the groom and hot walker for the Riley Cofer-trained Jaklin Klugman, who finished third in the 1980 Kentucky Derby and was co-owned by Klugman.

After the colt finished fourth in the Preakness, Bean and Klugman were having dinner one night in New York.

“He looked at me and said, ‘If I had 20 years, I’d be a trainer,’” Bean said. “Then he looked me square in the eye, he was 58 and I was 38, and he said, ‘You’ve got like 20 years. Why don’t you be a trainer?’”

That’s all Bean needed to hear.

He went home and the conversation with his third of six wives, Karen, went something like this:

Bean: “I know what I want to do the rest of my life.”

Wife: “What?”

Bean: “I’m going to train horses.”

Wife: “What do you know about horses?”

Bean: “Nothing.”

She eventually gave Bean an ultimatum: “It’s the horses or me.”

“I ended up choosing the horses,” he said.

Bean’s current wife, Luanne, is a civil engineer and lives in the couple’s home in Norco while caring for the 30 yearlings, 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds they have in their backyard.

After Cofer, Bean worked for Skip Retherford at Golden Gate Fields and Bay Meadows for five years. He also worked for Southern California mainstays Leonard Dorfman and Noble Threewitt before taking out his license and branching out on his own in 1984.

Everything had been going smoothly until Bean purchased a filly named Don’t Stop Looking privately from Los Alamitos owner Doc Allred last year for $1,000. He won two races with her and she earned nearly $45,000 before she broke down during a workout and had to be euthanized.

In 37 years of training, it was only the second horse he’s had that broke down. He’s also had only one drug violation since 1984, but the second breakdown was all it took for him to get the boot.

Initially, he was ruled off the grounds at Los Alamitos for 60 days. Then track officials relented and said he was welcome back, but they gave him a barn that, according to Bean, hadn’t been used in three years.

Santa Anita management sent him an email that essentially told him, “Sorry, your horses don’t fit our program.”

Del Mar officials told him they’re too full, they don’t have room for him this summer. He said he’ll try again before their fall meet.

In the meantime, he’s enjoying life at Emerald Downs. Their meet ends in August and Bean said he’ll send his string to Fresno when it’s concluded. It was tough at first, getting the jockeys and their agents to trust him, but he saddled his first winner the other day and he’s had a few seconds and thirds.

“Emerald Downs is probably the best facility I’ve ever been to,” Bean said. “You can eat off the bathroom floors.”

Bean was excited about a horse he had running in Thursday night’s fifth race. He had Alex Cruz, the meet’s leading jockey, lined up to ride King Charlie, 5-1 on the morning line.

“I’m going to bet $2 on him,” Bean said.

Follow Art Wilson on Twitter at @Sham73