Trainer Roger Attfield's latest horse, Not Bourbon, pictured with jockey Jono Jones up, is gunning for the Queen's Plate this Sunday at Toronto's Woodbine race track. (Woodbine/Michael Burns Photo)

It's hard to imagine trainer Roger Attfield being treated with anything but the utmost respect around Woodbine race track.

After all, he's a three-time winner of Canada's Triple Crown of horse racing, has saddled seven Queen's Plate victors (with a possible record-tying eighth coming this Sunday afternoon), won scores of stakes in more than 30 years of conditioning animals and, by absolutely everyone's account, is a complete gentleman.

None of this stopped Palladio, an accomplished six-year-old horse who won the 2007 Eclipse Stakes, from coming within about a centimetre of biting the 68-year-old's left ear off as Attfield gave a visitor the full tour of Barn 4 at Woodbine on a recent sunny morning.

"Oh, geez," Attfield exclaimed, laughing, as he nimbly danced out of the way. "And I was about to tell you to watch out because this one will bite."

Actually, a horse on the other side had already had a nibble at the visitor's shoulder.

Roger Attfield has experienced many highs and heartbreaks in his 30 years as a trainer. (Woodbine/Michael Burns Photo)

Attfield's genuine surprise only underlined one of his core beliefs about the training of equine athletes, even after all these years:

"The main thing is, you have to really understand the horse," he says, relaxing in a small trailer out back that serves as his office practically every day from spring to fall, starting from before dawn.

"That's a big learning process, and I've been doing it all my life, and I'm sure I don't know as much as there is to know. I know that."

(Including knowing for sure when one of his charges is going to bite the hand that feeds it. Or an ear, for that matter).

That life began in England back in late 1939, and it included a career jumping horses as an accomplished equestrian, followed by a switch to steeple chasing.

Moving to Canada for what was supposed to be just a couple of years in 1970, Attfield wound up helping train at a small six or seven horse stable owned by a local auto parts manufacturer named Frank Stronach.

They've both gone on to much bigger things.

Since then, Attfield's list of accomplishments has become so long it goes for pages, and it includes all the various roles of the trainer such as handling the business side (there's currently 27 employees at his barn and he writes the cheques), the choosing and buying of future thoroughbred prospects at the big annual sales, picking jockeys, etc.

But ultimately, his life comes down to one key thing — the relationship with those horses.

Remembering each detail

Walking with Attfield as he goes through the barn, stopping to chat about each of more than four dozen horses currently at home including the Plate favourite Not Bourbon, you quickly realize a key to his success.

He remembers everything about every one of his athletes — their breeding, their training, the idiosyncrasies, the times they've been running, how they handle different track surfaces and a hundred other items for each.

Many come up to the stall gate to say hello, but some are sleepy after a morning workout, cool down and breakfast, a few are out and out surly and one or two actually seem to be sulking. Knowing who's who, and what they are about, is the fun of the training game, he says.

"The main thing is to have your horses happy, and have them want to go out there and race," he says. "And then, how well they race is totally up to the genes in the horse and their desire when they actually do race."

Having an animal mentally and physically "top notch" is vital.

That includes making sure the right morning rider is up on the horse, that he has the proper hot walker, groomer, companion and finally the right jockey up.

Roger Attfield, on the right, walks out with Not Bourbon, on the left, for a workout. (Woodbine/Michael Burns Photo)

"If you go to school and you have a nasty school teacher and you hate going to math or something, you're never going to do any good at it," he says.

"Animals are the same way. If they are happy, they are going to try and please you as much as they can."

Their true ability will then come out as the training and racing goes on. That is, if the horse itself wants it to.

"You actually get more horses that don't have the desire than the ones that really have the desire," Attfield says, as the conversation turns to one of his all-time favourites.

"A horse like Izvestia, you have the genes to be a good horse in the first place. Then you have the desire along with the ability, then he has to be sound and mentally able to cope with the competition."

In 1990, Izvestia turned out to be one of his Triple Crown winners (alongside With Approval and Peteski) and one of the half-dozen Canadian horse of the year honourees (those three, plus Norcliffe, Play the King and Alywow).

Izvestia also was one of his two real tragedies.

'I went home and cried'

If you train horses it's inevitable you're going to lose some to injury and illness. There have been two for Attfield so far this year.

All are mourned, and in his case that's not some throwaway line. You can see in his eyes he means it.

Two, however, still bring the deepest sadness.

In 1988, Play the King won horse of the year honours and was still racing the following season. Attfield took him to the Maryland Breeders' Cup Sprint Handicap at Pimlico (the last race of the day before the Preakness Stakes) and he broke an ankle so badly at the line he had to be euthanized.

Izvestia won Canada's Triple Crown in 1990. In October of 1991, he was entered in the Rothman's International on the turf at Woodbine where he broke his left hind leg in three places while still in the early going and on an average pace. He was euthanized.

There was no rhyme or reason for either. Both horses, he said, gave everything they had all the time and were, as he says of Play the King specifically, "sound as a dollar."

After Izvestia's death, "I went home and cried. The hardest part was putting on a face and looking after other horses [the next day]."

Play the King was "my favourite horse of all time," and in an instant, he was gone.

That memory leaves him shaking his head just a little, as he stares out the trailer window for a moment.

The traditional gentleman

This Sunday, as he has always done, Roger Attfield will don the morning coat and tails (he's the only trainer that still does) and walk Not Bourbon from Barn 4 the half mile or so to the paddock for the Queen's Plate.

Those trappings of tradition are important to him when it comes to Canada's oldest horse race and he's going to continue them for as long as fate and time allow him to be around Woodbine.

But those who know Attfield all say that even in his regular jeans and boots, t-shirt and still-intact left ear, he's always the true gentleman. Every day of the week.