by Rich Fisher, USTA Web Newsroom Senior Correspondent

Rich Fisher

Trenton, NJ — Ronnie Gillespie is the epitome of a self-made driver/trainer.

And what a driver/trainer he has made himself into.

The 40-year-old Gillespie was born in Chicago but raised in Mississippi. He returned to Illinois in his late 20s and this summer is enjoying a breakout season.

“My problem when I came up here was I didn’t know anybody,” Gillespie said. “I didn’t even have anybody to show me how to jog a horse. So I just started teaching myself. I read books, I looked on the internet. People are always amazed by that.

“I would have liked to have worked under Erv Miller or somebody like that, but I didn’t have anybody to really teach me. So I watched the drivers, watched the other trainers and saw what they did. It’s starting to pay off.”

Is it ever.

Show Stopin Monkey and driver-trainer Ronnie Gillespie left no doubt as to who was the best in the $54,000 Plesac Stake.

On August 1 Gillespie drove Show Stopin Monkey to victory in the $54,000 Plesac at Balmoral Park. Prior to that, he earned his initial win in a major stakes race when he guided NJ’s Big Deal to first in the $123,000 Maywood Pace. That was the first time an African-American driver ever won a six-figure stake on the Chicago circuit behind a pacer.

When he steered Blue’s Rocket Man to a Hanover Stake win in a $28,300 division for 2-year-old colt pacers it was his 40th dash win of the season.

Gillespie’s purse earnings total nearly $300,000 this year. Coming into the season he had totaled just shy of $600,000 since his career began in 1997.

Currently, Gillespie ranks fourth in UDR (.446) among all drivers in the 10-299 starts category. His training percentage of .467 ranks him fifth in the same category among conditioners.

Last year Ronnie was the Illinois County Fair Circuit’s leading driver while competing with mostly young horses. Fellow driver and Mississippian Jamaica Patton, a close friend of Gillespie who also drives in Chicago, is not surprised at his friend’s achievements.

“I could see he had it in him,” said the 31-year-old Patton, who is also enjoying success. “He’s finally getting the good horses to drive. He’s worked hard and he’s really made something of himself.”

The journey started when Gillespie was 15. He and his father — who owned a trucking company — were driving around one day when Ronnie saw someone jogging a horse.

Balmoral Park photos

Ronnie Gillespie is enjoying a career year as a driver with nearly $300,000 in earnings.

“That really interested me,” he said. “I just started hanging around it from there. I started driving when I was 17 and had my first win at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia (Miss.), and it just kind of took off.

“I have to say I started out as a trainer. After I started riding saddle horses, I started hooking them up to a buggy. My dad saw I was deeply interested, we bought a Standardbred and I just started out training.”

But he drove as well and he and Patton paid their dues racing matinees on small dirt tracks for several years. While talk often surfaced of getting a major track in Mississippi, Gillespie decided not to wait and branched out to Indiana and Illinois.

It was there where he began to study how things were done. As far as drivers were concerned, Gillespie picked one of the best to pattern himself after.

“I drove against Tim Tetrick and I always liked his style, liked the way he picked a horse up,” Gillespie said of the legendary driver who just won his first Hambletonian. “You have to give credit to where credit is due. He’s done a great job and he’s a great role model.”

Gillespie likes to joke that he’s Patton’s role model.

“He probably won’t admit to it, but he likes my style of driving,” Ronnie said with a laugh. “He’ll probably give Tim Tetrick all the credit but he got his style from me.

“He’s a very talented driver and we get along real well. We had no ideas coming up that we would do what we’re doing, so we can relate real well (to each other’s climb to success).”

Patton stays in Chicago year-round while Gillespie goes back to Mississippi, but the two remain close and help each other out constantly.

“I’ll give him advice, he’ll give me advice,” Patton said. “We work with each other, we both know where we came from and we work together to do our best.”

And when they drive in the same race, they work to beat each other.

“We kind of look out for each other if we’re in a bad spot,” Patton said. “But we are both out there trying to win.”

As for his training, Ronnie runs Gillespie Stables, which almost started by accident.

“After I started coming to Illinois, people noticed my talent and asked me to train a few horses and I started doing that,” he said. “It started to get bigger and bigger, so I decided to officially name it my stables. I really only started training for myself but (later) got into training for other people.”

Some of Gillespie’s success stories include JPs Mini Me, Master Of Excuses, Shedrow Sensation, Fox Valley Hermia and Blue’s Rocket Man.

His entire season has gone beyond expectations.

“If you had asked me what type of year I would have had I would have told you it might be a regular, average year,” he said. “Once I got up here and started to train them down on a mile track, they started to get good and they really started to turn on.”

Adding to the summer accomplishments is that Gillespie recently obtained his ‘A’ license after several frustrating attempts.

“That made me feel good, it let me know I was moving in the right direction,” he said. “I was tired of people calling me asking me about getting it. The reason was, I felt like I made the license, the license didn’t make me.”

What more could one expect from a self-made driver?