Originally Posted by
skilldawg
There was a story a couple of years ago on Calvin Borel's background.
Born and raised in South Louisiana. He quit school at 13, I think, because all he wanted to do was work with horses. His much older brother was a trainer at Evangeline Downs and tried to discourage him, but Calvin would have none of it. The brother finally put him to work mucking out the stables and he eventually worked up to riding the horses on training runs. He slept in the stables at night.
Eventually it became obvious that he was gifted and they started letting him ride the horses for real.... he tore up all of the South Louisiana tracks and the rest is history.