Gordon Waterstone

Lexington, KY — When 24-year-old Wyatt Avenatti won the Great Midwest Pace at the Martinsville (Ill.) Agricultural Fair on June 8 with Drivin Me Crazy in 1:57.2, it was a special moment as it brought together his father Dave Avenatti and grandfather Earl Avenatti Jr., who won that same race in 1985 with the family homebred Lovin Rainbow.

“Lovin Rainbow was one of my grandfather’s favorite horses,” said Avenatti, who in addition to his Martinsville victories has five wins in 35 starts this year at Hawthorne. “I think it meant a lot, not only for me to win it, but for my dad and grandfather to be there. They were pretty emotional. My grandfather is 83. He drives out every day to check on us, and owns a horse with both me and my older brother Matthew. He told my dad, ‘I’m 83 and still looking for the good one.'”

Wyatt Avenatti prepares to head to the track with Drivin Me Crazy at Martinsville. Kurt Becker photo.

But while the youngest Avenatti celebrated the Great Midwest win — one of 122 over his short career that saw him win his first race on June 14, 2015 with Fox Valley Sienna at Bluegrass Downs — it’s far from being the biggest victory of his life.

In March 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down everything, including racing, Avenatti’s world came crashing down when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, cancer of the lymphatic system, which is part of the immune system. It’s a cancer that well-known sports stars such as NHL Hall of Famer Mario Lemieux, Chicago Cubs player Anthony Rizzo and Kansas City Chiefs star Eric Berry, all successfully battled.

“My doctor told me, ‘Normally I don’t tell patients to go google their cancer because what you see are horror stories. But yours, go google it because there is about a 95 percent survival rate,'” said Avenatti, who turns 25 on July 11. ‘”And there are multiple professional athletes who got it in their mid-20s, go through the chemo, and they come back and they are professional athletes again. If you are going to have cancer, this is the one to have.'”

In addition to juggling his cancer treatment, taking classes toward a degree in Agricultural Business, training and driving horses, Avenatti has been planning a wedding to his longtime girlfriend, Kallie Helton, which will take place on Saturday (June 19).

Avenatti and Helton met in high school, and while she was not raised in the harness industry, she took a quick liking.

Wyatt Avenatti and Kallie Helton will be married on June 19. Kurt Becker photo.

“She’s from a local town and school near me and we had mutual friends in high school,” he remembered. “When we were 17 we started talking and dating. She jumped right in and when she turned 18 she moved in with me and we started racing horses, traveling all over the country.”

The couple got engaged last winter and will take only a few days off after the wedding as a short vacation before a full honeymoon this winter. Avenatti said Puerto Rico is the destination point.

As for his Hodgkin’s diagnosis, Avenatti said it took awhile for doctors to pinpoint the issue.

“We chased it for about a year,” said Avenatti. “I had a swollen lymph node. I didn’t necessarily feel that bad, but I would feel tired. I would start out the day fine and running all day I would start to feel fatigued. My bloodwork wasn’t really that bad. Eventually they sent me to an oncologist, and he said they’d just take the lymph node out and biopsy it just to make sure that it’s not what it is. They had done a needle biopsy, which was a small sample, and it came back negative. When they went in and took a full biopsy of it, it came back as positive for Hodgkin’s.

“My doctors were excellent. As soon as I got diagnosed, within five days I was taking my first round of chemo. They said I needed to have a very intense regimen of chemo. An old regimen, but very effective. But it was very hard on the system and the rest of the body, but they thought I was young enough and strong enough to handle it.”

At the time the Avenatti barn consisted of 14 horses, but Avenatti’s health issue forced a cut back to seven.

“The workload was going to be too much with me going through chemo,” explained Avenatti. “Kallie was helping us out and she was already doing a lot of the work as all women in the horse business do. It was just me, her and my dad doing it, and she couldn’t do it mostly by herself.”

Avenatti said he saw immediate progress with the chemotherapy, and that the doctors approved his work schedule.

“I hadn’t been sleeping well, but the first day I had chemo, I went home and it was the best I had slept for two years,” he said. “I woke up the next morning at six o’clock and went and shoed a horse. I kept working through the whole thing. I didn’t want to slow down too much and become depressed. If I kept working it would keep my body in shape. The doctors said don’t get depressed and lay on the couch, and that the horses would be the best medicine for me and keep me motivated.”

The Avenatti family then suffered another setback when Dave suffered a stroke, from which he has fully recovered. That led to another cutback down to three or four horses. While Avenatti tried to remain as active as possible, he discovered his health impacted relationships with other horsemen.

Kallie Helton and Wyatt Avenatti race horses together. Photo courtesy of Wyatt Avenatti.

“I would catch-drive a little bit, but it slowed down,” said Avenatti, who had more than 200 starts each of the prior four years, including 323 in 2018, before dropping to just 92 last year. “I think a lot of people were scared to use me. It was at the beginning of the pandemic so I didn’t get to see very many people at first with the tracks shut down. So all they had heard was that I had cancer. When things opened up and we started racing again, everybody was like, ‘Shoot, we thought you were dying.’ I think a lot of people were scared to use me, thinking I was weak and couldn’t do it.”

Avenatti remembered his biggest fear when he learned he needed chemotherapy.

“I lost my hair, and when I first started the chemo I told (Kallie) that all I want to do is not lose my eyebrows,” he said with a laugh. “I did lose my eyebrows and was never so happy when they grew back. I was worried they’d be gone forever.”

Avenatti said he is still regularly being monitored by his doctors, and a recent scare turned into good news.

“After all the chemo, they want to do scans, and I was actually clear halfway through my chemo sessions,” said Avenatti. “They said I had four rounds left and they went ahead and did it so they didn’t miss a spot. When I finished they scanned again and I was good. They waited three months and they scanned and there was a small mass in my chest that lit up like it was cancer. They wanted to monitor it. It didn’t grow much in size and they thought it was scar tissue. They got a little nervous and went in three weeks ago and biopsied it, and it came back clean. Just a fatty mass that was regenerative tissue like they thought.

Avenatti said he was overwhelmed by the reaction of the harness racing community.

“I didn’t want to show up after the pandemic and be bald and not look like myself so I made a post on Facebook and I was very shocked at the outpouring of love, not only from my family and friends, but the horse community as a whole,” he said. “All the people across the United States and Canada that I had really rooting for me. It meant a lot. I had a lot of people checking up on me and seeing how I was doing.

“I told my dad from the beginning that I was not going to let the disease or the pandemic ruin my life. I wasn’t going to stop and be a recluse and hide away. One thing that the cancer taught me is that you have to live your life. Because you never know.”