
March 25 & 26, 2023
Back to Top
Page 11
Wire to Wire
BY FAIR GROUNDS PRESS OFFICE ___________________
NEW ORLEANS – Cagliostro should count his lucky stars. The
3-year-old Florida-bred colt by Upstart trained by Cherie DeVaux
will be making his fourth start on
Saturday in the $1 million Twin-
spires.com Louisiana Derby
(Grade 2) at Fair Grounds Race
Course & Slots. Stepping for-
ward in every race, he’s earned
the right to be there, but he
lucked out to find three women
ready to tolerate his antics, to
teach him the rules of barn life,
and to capture his overactive
mind to show him his potential
as a racehorse.
Physically the potential has
always been there, as trainer
Cherie DeVaux recognized when
selecting him at the 2-year-old
Spring 2022 Ocala Sale. Men-
tally, well he’s a Thoroughbred,
and each comes with their own
challenges. Possibly the best
way to understand the project
known as David Ingordo, Talla
Racing, James Spry, West Point
Thoroughbreds and Nice Guys
Stables’ Cagliostro is to know
a few things about the real-life
Cagliostro.
An Italian psychic healer and alchemist living in the 1700s,
Cagliostro was also a scoundrel whose writings were burned by
the Catholic Church. Infamous across Europe for his antics, so
much so that the real-life Cagliostro was also the basis for Goethe’s
title-character Faust, who sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads
and lived a sinful life.
The parallels are uncanny, as the DeVaux barn has worked hard
to sort out all the biting, the breaking loose, the misbehavior and
get their Cagliostro back on the righteous path. The path of Ken-
tucky roses, perhaps. But first, he’ll need to outrace eleven others
in Saturday’s Louisiana Derby.
Cherie leads the team but her younger sister Adrianne DeVaux
is the assistant trainer on the grounds and Rachel Beaulieu is the
barn foreman. With Cherie at Ocala early in the week ahead of
Cagliostro’s run in the Louisiana Derby, Adrianne and Rachel kept
to task overseeing the 16 Thoroughbreds on the grounds, preparing
Cagliostro for his first stakes race, and making sure their promising
3-year-old has plenty of bananas.
“He eats bananas every day,” Adrianne DeVaux said. “His
favorite part is the peel.”
A banana-loving colt, who in the beginning could readily be
described as “bananas” – some things are just funny that way.
Cagliostro, the Italian alchemist. Alchemy is a perfect way to
describe the task which was laid upon the DeVaux barn as they’ve
been hard at work melding Cagliostro’s reckless, unbounded mind
with his raw physicality to transform it all into a new substance – a
racehorse.
“When he first came into the barn, he was all over the place
mentally,” Adrianne said. “He wasn’t focused on the track or in
the barn. He wasn’t very friendly. You couldn’t put a lip chain on
him, couldn’t put a bridle on him. He didn’t want to get medica-
tion, catching him in the stall was difficult. In July at Saratoga
when Rachel (Beaulieu) joined our team I said ‘here, he’s your
project. Work with him.’ Rachel was his punching bag for a while.
He would grab her, bite her and
she would stand there and take
it, and he eventually realized
he had one person who was in
his corner. Rachel has helped to
show him life’s not so scary.”
“It was a little bit of a strug-
gle,” Rachel said. “When I
showed up at Saratoga I saw
this horse who was (reduced to)
walking the shed row because he
kept getting loose when he went
for a walk outside. I took it upon
myself to be like ‘well, you are
going to need to be able to walk
like a well-mannered boy’.’”
Adrianne and Rachel have a
subtle yet infectious joy in them.
They are thoughtful and quick
to infuse humor into any diffi-
cult task. They both put off an
unflappable air, and once upon
a time, Cagliostro was by all
means a flapper. Another barn
might have met his antics with
forceful antics of their own. Not
these horsemen.
“Patience is the key,” Rachel
said. “Being calm. If anyone acts up around him, he’ll start freak-
ing out.”
“He does like women, and I think being a team of women has
been a big part of it,” Adrianne said. “In general women have the
touch. Our stature, yes, but our demeanor – it’s Cherie, Rachel,
and me. You have a team of women and a horse like him is able to
understand ‘okay, it’s alright.’ Slowly he’s kind of realized every-
one is here to help him. He’s had the same groom, he’s had con-
sistency, and I think that’s really helped him. He loves Cherie, he
loves Rachel, and well, he tolerates me.”
“For the most part, women don’t try to outmuscle the horse,”
Rachel said. “If something happens, it’s like okay what happened?
We figure it out, and do something different. Women know how
to tolerate and give the horse space to learn. But if he crosses the
line, then we let him know he crossed the line, correct him. It’s all
about understanding how insignificant things become significant.”
After finishing sixth on debut at Saratoga as a 2-year-old,
Cagliostro didn’t make his next start until January’s Lecomte
undercard. He won his first start as a 3-year-old, then he stepped
up to a salty allowance on the Risen Star undercard and would
have made it two wins in a row if it wasn’t for Denington’s late
jump past him at the wire. He’ll face Denington again in the Lou-
isiana Derby.
“Most of the time you can tell horses what you want them to
do,” Adrianne said. “(Cagliostro) has to have it spelled out for him.
We can’t just show him two and two, he’s got to also know that
it equals four. Then he’ll be like ‘oh, I got it now.’ Once he ran at
Saratoga, he came back and you could see the wheels were starting
to spin, like this is fun. Then he started getting into his works, and
Florida-Bred Cagliostro Seeks Derby Path
See CAGLIOSTRO on page 12
Cagliostro with Rachel Beaulieu (left) and Adrianne-DeVaux/
FGRC PHOTO