Delmer Webb: Hottest Horse Trainer At Portland Meadows

SALEM, Ore. - Ted Nonamaker watched him mature from a young hothead into the hottest horse trainer at Portland Meadows.

"You learn a lot as you go along by making mistakes," said Nonamaker, 81. "He's a boy who's grasped it all."

The boy is now 67, after 49 years of training at Portland Meadows.

Delmer Webb has been Trainer of the Year at Portland Meadows two of the past three years.

Webb was born on the same Turner farm where he still lives, where he literally grew up with horses.

"As a young man I galloped all my dad's horses, worked them and had a few horses of my own," Webb said. "It's just the only thing I ever cared for."

Webb's father, Tom, was killed in a traffic accident near Portland Meadows when Delmer was in his 20s.

"He'd just won a big race with a good horse, and leaving the track he hit the underpass by the track," said Nonamaker, a trainer who had shared stalls with Tom Webb.

Delmer's start was as a cowboy.

"We got into rodeoing, then into racehorses," he said. "I thought I was pretty good, but I really don't know. But you could make $100 in an afternoon in some of those little towns, and that was pretty good money back then."

Nonamaker remembers Delmer "as a little outlaw, although he's gotten over it. As a kid he used to have a temper that was out of this world."

Most everyone now regards Webb as soft-spoken.

"He's a quiet, do-your-work nice guy, not a boastful person at all," said Gordon Tallman, director of public relations at Portland Meadows.

There's plenty that Webb could be bragging about. He won 45 races in 1996-1997, breaking the Portland Meadows track record of 41 set in 1967 by George Dimick and tied in 1982-83 by Clint Roberts.

"I was glad I could do it, but I don't let it worry me one way or the other," Webb said. "When you get close to the record, it's nice to go ahead and do it."

Nonamaker, who has never won more than 26 races in a meet, says the 45 wins stand out like Roger Maris' 61 home runs.

"That's big," he said. `It'll be hard to beat that."

Webb has trained the Horse of the Meet each of the past two years, Staff and Flying Huey, both owned by his neighbor, Jerry Martin of Turner. He also trained Oregon Futurity champion Aglow Pilgrim, owned by George and Ruth Hurliman of Tillamook. Webb's clients also include the Coleman brothers of Jefferson, who own top filly Booty Booty.

"I have owners who keep decent horses, and that's the main thing," Webb said.

Nonamaker said: "Delmer has a good stable carrying over from last year. What makes a good trainer, what makes a good rider, is good horses.

"Sometimes a good horse can run in spite of you. But Delmer is a good feeder, knows horses. A lot of people feed a horse half of what they need, or feed them crap. Horses are athletes, they need a blood count, and you don't short them or they'll short you. Delmer feeds 'em right. And he doesn't over-train `em, then try to run a tired horse."

He said Webb is good at knowing at what level of competition to enter a horse. In 226 starts last season, Webb's horses won, placed or showed 52 percent of the time. In addition to 45 wins, he had 38 seconds and 34 thirds.

"You can go to the gate with a $100,000 horse and leave with dog food - it's happened to me," Nonamaker said. "Delmer knows what he's doing - can overcome a lot of that - because it can happen if they get sore, get crippled, their ankles go bad. The care you keep of them takes care of a lot of that."

He says Webb is one of the few really good trainers.

"He is one of those guys who belongs where he is," Nonamaker said. "There's only one out of 25 that belongs there. We see guys come in with big money and buy horses, and they get nowhere. It's sad to see that. It's a winner's game, and if you don't win, you don't stay."

Webb has stayed. He's done that by staying late when necessary, but he also leaves home at 4:30 each morning to get his horses ready at Portland Meadows.

"I hope to have a good year," he said. "Maybe not as good as last year, but a good one."

Will his record of 45 wins be broken? "It'll be a hard one for me to break, I know that," he said.