The horses are instinctively drawn to assistant trainer Julie Clark, who looks to her for reassurance and guidance as she oversees their training and care on behalf of trainer Keith Desormeaux. Her calm, steady hands have helped guide the likes of Preakness winner Exaggerator and Breeders’ Cup winner Texas Red, and soon she’ll be heading to Churchill Downs to help prepare Call Me Midnight for her turn in the spotlight. .

Winner of the Grade 3 Lecomte Stakes at the Fair Grounds, Call Me Midnight is on course for the G2 Louisiana Derby on March 26. The late son of Midnight Lute easily beat Epicenter, the next G2 Risen Star winner, but will likely need at least a third-place finish to ensure he has enough points to qualify for the Derby start of the Kentucky.

Until Call Me Midnight heads to Churchill, however, the universe has other plans for Clark. Worsening old injuries to her spinal cord, including a pair of broken bones, forced her out of the barn day by day.

“I’ve always had back pain since I was a kid, and the doctors told me never to ski or ride a horse,” Clark said. “Of course, I did both, and it gave me so much core strength. When I stopped riding, I lost all that core strength.

“I fractured the wings on two different vertebrae, so it basically pinches on my spinal cord. Now, if I’m at the barn all the time, I’m doing way too much.

Clark has stepped back and now handles the logistical side of Desormeaux’s affairs, handling travel arrangements and paperwork for the trainer. She has also developed a travel blog, bringing together her passions for photography and seeing the world.

One such tour saw her take a trip through the Louisiana swamps in a kayak.

“I’ve never been so terrified in my life,” Clark said. “I was floating next to an alligator that was longer than my kayak, and since you’re sitting below the waterline in a kayak, its eyeball was at the same level as my elbow. I also saw five poisonous snakes I still got great pictures!”

Still, Clark looks forward to when the horses head to Churchill Downs, when she can return to the barn.

“When it comes to horses, you’re not going to hold me back for very long,” she joked.

Clark remembers making horse racing albums from the age of three. However, the Ontario native was not exposed to horses early by her family.

“The first time I took a horse near my grandmother, she peed her pants!” Clark remembered that. “We were city dwellers; we didn’t even have goldfish. Do you know how in kindergarten you bring hamsters home from school? Well, when they got to our house, they drowned in our basement sump pump.

Instead, the horse’s experience came from his fourth cousins, who lived on a Quarter Horse breeding and show operation. Clark moved in with the family for three years, showing up at local fairs, helping with breeding, foaling, training and riding.

“It was a complete immersion in horses,” she said. “We did it all and loved it.”

At 17, Clark followed his passion for horses to Vancouver after seeing an advertisement for a polo club. She worked her way into the team and soon started playing polo professionally. Clark made a career in the polo industry traveling with the circuit across North America, from Jackson Hole to Aspen to Palm Springs.

She never forgot this early love of horse racing and occasionally dabbled in pinhooking at sales, buying a weanling to sell as a yearling or a yearling to sell at 2-year-old sales. It was at a Fasig-Tipton sale in October that Clark first met Desormeaux.

“We started talking about Zenyatta and how she got beaten (by Blame in the Breeders’ Cup Classic),” Clark recalled. “His ideas were so cool… Two weeks later he called me and asked me to go to lunch because he was in Houston, where I lived. I said no.’ Eventually he convinced me, and here we are!”

The first group of horses Clark supervised for Desormeaux included Texas Red, although Exaggerator was easily one of his favorites. She drove the horse trailer carrying him from California to Delta Downs in Vinton, Louisiana for the Delta Downs jackpot, which Exaggerator won, and was with him throughout the Triple Crown.

Clark kept the colt calm in Kentucky ahead of his second-place finish in the Kentucky Derby, stood by his side throughout his Preakness victory and even hauled him from Pimlico to Belmont.

“The worst was the tolls!” Clark talked about that trip from Pimlico to Belmont Park. “The toll was $800 and they didn’t accept checks or cards. I was shocked. It was a good thing I bet a little on Exaggerator to get some cash!

Looking back on those experiences, Clark relishes the time she spent caring for such talented animals.

“We’ve been super blessed and had so many fun horses,” Clark said. “(Keith is) so protective of horses, and he thinks it’s really important for horses to rest. I’m kind of a mother hen myself. I might be super shy, but I would tell the president from the United States to walk away from my horse’s stall when he tries to eat.

“He also doesn’t think the horses have to go to the track every day; we always walk on Thursdays and Sundays. It’s so funny to be on the road with a good horse, and all the media comes back to the stable and freaks out that our horse didn’t go to the track that day. It took years for people to get it.

Although Clark had some experience selling thoroughbreds before meeting Desormeaux, the two took themselves to the next level when they came together.

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Desormeaux has become well known for his success in selecting talented prospects with cheap price tags. Texas Red cost $17,000 and grossed over $1.7 million; Exaggerator was bought for $110,000 and made over $3.5 million; and Call Me Midnight was an $80,000 buy that has earned $220,000 so far.

“We’re looking at totally different things,” Clark explained. “I learned a lot from him, but I think I also taught him some things. In polo, you never take a horse that ties up, and I can’t stand one that’s at knee level; there are little things that each of us does not like.

“The thing about Keith is he doesn’t look at the catalog – ever. He watches them step into the furthest ring, if they catch his eye and he wants to see when they come in to the inside, so he looks at the book. He likes to walk around the barns in the morning just to refocus his gaze, refocus it on the babies rather than the racehorses.

“He doesn’t shortlist or anything. It’s so frustrating sometimes! The year I went with him to OBS and wanted to buy a horse, it was a horse that I absolutely loved and cost about $100 more than I said I would spend, but he didn’t didn’t buy it. Once he decides a horse is worth that much, he doesn’t want it when the price goes over that.

Clark explained that another commonality between Texas Red, Exaggerator and Call Me Midnight is that all three are cared for by Victor Vargas, who Clark says has a “sixth sense” about horses that are truly special.

“One of the first times I met Keith on the track, he sent one to Sam Houston to race and my friends and I met him on the straight,” she recalled. “I saw a light on in a stall that looked like Keith’s, so I walked over to look and Victor had the horse on the wall, braiding his forelock, and I watched him pet him and kiss him on the nose. He didn’t know I was there, and that’s how he treated the horse. Victor really loves his horses.

With Vargas and Clark in their corner, Call Me Midnight has all the right tools to put on a big performance on the first Saturday in May. No matter what happens on the trail, however, Clark will be there to tell the colt he did his job well on the way back to the barn.

“I love them as if they were mine,” she said.