Sport: When the Fat Man Talks, Listen

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And Johnny Campo is saying that Pleasant Colony is no fluke

Early one morning last week, a crew of painters arrived at Barn No. 48 on the backstretch of New York's Belmont Park. They started to work, patching cracks in the walls of the cramped two-room office next to the stables and applying a fresh coat of paint to the weathered picket fence. "Just regular maintenance," a workman explained. Then he added, "Of course, the big horse always gets regular maintenance just before the big race."

The big horse is Pleasant Colony, winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. The big race is Saturday's Belmont Stakes, final jewel in the Triple Crown of American Thoroughbred racing. Pleasant Colony occupies a stall midway down the shed row, his needs tenderly ministered to by a groom, his well-being protected by a round-the-clock guard detail. But Barn No. 48 is more than the home of Pleasant Colony. It is the domain of Johnny Campo, the controversial trainer who violated one of the conventions of the racing world by brashly predicting victory for his once obscure colt: A new coat of paint might spiff up Pleasant Colony's stable, but no amount of maintenance will transform Johnny Campo into a gentleman. A combative New York City street kid who worked his way up, Campo is loud, untidy and embarrassingly blunt.

If Pleasant Colony is an unlikely Triple Crown candidate (he had never won an important stakes race until Aqueduct's Wood Memorial two weeks before the Derby), his trainer is more improbable still. Campo was born 43 years ago in Manhattan, the son of Italian immigrants. His destiny was sealed when his father, a tailor, moved the family to the relatively greener pasture of Ozone Park, Queens. From his classroom window at P.S. 108, young Johnny stared at Aqueduct across the street, dreams of flying hoofs and flowing silks dancing in his head. At 15 he showed up at the track looking for work; as always, there was a job for a youngster willing to do the hard, dirty work of mucking out stalls and hot-walking horses in endless circles to cool them down slowly after a workout or a race. When he turned 16, he quit school and went to the track to stay. Says he: "I started out walking hots, carrying manure on my back, being abused. I gave up my whole life to be a trainer."

His first job was for Lucien Laurin, who later would leave his mark on racing history as the trainer of Secretariat, Triple Crown winner in 1973. Then Campo worked as a groom for Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, trainer of Triple Crown legends Gallant Fox (1930) and Omaha (1935). Finally Campo joined the stables of Eddie Neloy, trainer of the great handicap horse Buckpasser.

That was Campo's big break. He started as a groom, and after four years Neloy promoted him to assistant trainer —and full-time protégé. In hopes of smoothing some of Campo's rough edges, Neloy went so far as to enroll him in a Dale Carnegie course. That effort failed. Though Campo could never acquire the social skills of the racing swells, he learned well the lessons of the barn and backstretch. Says Trainer Woody Stephens: "Johnny was a very hardworking guy. Eddie gave him his first push when he sent him out to California with some horses. Buckpasser was one of them, and Johnny handled him well. Step by step, he went on from there."