Il Capitano
by Lisa Harkema
By many considered to be the best trotter in history, he was so popular that his name was even put forward as Foreign Minister of Italy at some point. Though he may have been the greatest trotter of all time, even after his career had started several people doubted that Varenne would amount to much on the track. He would prove them woefully wrong, however, and took both his young Finnish trainer and young Italian driver on a spectacular journey.
Jean Pierre Dubois owns horses in many countries, including Italy and, together with Italian Sandro Viani he bred the legendary Italian trotter. In the early 90s, Viani’s stud farm, Allevamento di Zenzalino, owned six broodmares in partnership with Jean Pierre Dubois. When their 1995-foals were young, Dubois bought out Viani’s share in the horses for 10 million lire, €5,164, each. Normally, all the horses bred by the Zenzalino stud are given a name with a “z” as the last letter, such as Varennes older brother Tatoz, but these six foals did not follow this naming convention. Instead, Viani chose to name the colt Varenne after the street in Paris where the Italian embassy is located. Early at two, the son of Waikiki Beach was sold as Paolo Bezzecchi coughed up 150 million lire (€77,468) but the deal was later canceled after a thorough examination found a potential problem with the horse. The Swedish breeding committee later found the same problem: “The X-ray shows a loose bone fragment in the inner and outer rear part of the tibia at the right hind.” Bezzecchi did not want the two-year-old because of he feared the colt wouldn’t have much of a future with the issue – and he wasn’t the only one. Dubois was also skeptical whether the brown horse had a future on the track.
The horse trained well, though, and on Apr 4, 1998, Varenne made his debut in the Premio Primavalle at the Arcoveggio racetrack in Bologna. The Swede Roger Grundin, who worked and trained for Dubois, took charge of the reins. Sitting third and then second over, Grundin tipped the horse right midway down the backstretch. Varenne flew past his competition, but going into the final turn the colt broke and was disqualified. Grundin did not actually hear that the horse was disqualified, and let Varenne loose out of the final turn. Down the final stretch the three-year-old flew at breakneck speed and almost caught the winner, but it didn’t matter as he was disqualified.