Wooley would be the complete opposite of anyone with delusions of grandeur. I don't know about the owners.
MTB, on the other hand, seems to enjoy attention.
"Hall of Famer and two-time Derby winner
Carl Nafzger remembers from his days when he trained on the New Mexico circuit: "They are very good horsemen," Nafzger said. "
For them the horse was not a means to glory. It was a means to a lving...."
Nafzger is from a little place in texas. He understands.
"I wanted to meet Chip," Nafzger said, which he did, in the immediate wake of the Derby. "I wanted to see if he was what I was. I doubted Chip's horsemanship a little at first, only from what I'd read. But it was nothing unusual, hauling your own horses, doing your own work. Then I watched him, and
got to knowin' him a little, and you could really tell he had a sense of horse about him. And there was none of that, 'I did this. I did that.' "
"Chip Woolley got my respect the first night we had dinner," Nafzger added. "He wasn't worried about anything. He was like, 'If you want to make me into some kind of hero, that's fine. But I'm not going out of my way to change anything to be that hero for you. I'll ride my horse.'"
http://www.drf.com/news/article/107913.html
Wooley is not somebody who craves attention. Anyone knowing him, or even watching him would know that. He was suddenly thrust into the limelight when MTB won the Derby, a quiet cowboy type, who has been doing the tough grind that is New Mexico horse racing.
He's just a hard working small trainer trying to make a living.
"Chip Woolley has had about as much fun as a man can have spending most of the year on antibiotics and crutches. His broken leg, sustained in February, was supposed to get plenty of rest. Instead infection set in, mostly because Woolley's constant attention to the details of taking a horse through the Triple Crown seemed to take priority.
"I never missed a day and I never missed a minute," Woolley said, shrugging off the inconvenience. "I never let it get in the way."
Looks like somebody with a terribly good work ethic to me.
