HORSE BUSINESS IS A FAMILY BUSINESS.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

ELMONT, N.Y. - Don Chatlos Jr. started down the road to being a Breeders' Cup thoroughbred trainer when he was a little boy tagging along to Chicago racetracks with his father, a trainer. Mike Mitchell jumped on this career path as a teenager wrestling with yearlings and strong-willed stallions at the California farm of his father Earl, a trainer. Gary Mandella began as a kid helping out around the Del Mar barn of his father, Hall of Fame trainer Richard Mandella, himself the son of a blacksmith.

Anybody notice a pattern here?

The Breeders' Cup, the eight-race event to be held at Belmont Park on Saturday with guaranteed purses totaling $14 million, provides annual snapshots of the sport.

This year, probably any year, those snapshots would be family portraits.

``A lot of kids are raised under what their dads do and go into those businesses,'' Mitchell said with a shrug Thursday morning among the Belmont stables.

But - maybe more frequently than people in this most insular of games realize - horsemen tend to be the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters and nephews and nieces of horsemen.

A fine-tooth-comb review of the official biographies of the 69 trainers with horses in this Breeders' Cup reveals the startling fact that nearly two-thirds of them come from what could be defined in one way or another as racing families.

Many are simply the children of trainers, but at least one (Beau Greeley III, here with Breeders' Cup Classic contender Borrego) gets his training genes from his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, and an extreme case (London-born Patrick Byrne, saddling Sorcerer's Stone for the Breeders' Cup Juvenile) is described as a ``fifth-generation horseman.''

In all, according to the bios, 43 Breeders' Cup trainers followed an older relative into horse racing - or, put another way, seem to have been bred for the track just as much as the horses.

``When you're around something all your life, you have an advantage,'' said Chatlos, who trained Singletary to an upset victory in the Breeders' Cup Mile at Lone Star Park in 2004 and will seek a repeat at shorter odds Saturday. ``Look at Barry Bonds, who practically grew up in the Giants clubhouse (as the son of Bobby Bonds).

``I learned basic horsemanship from my father. But more than that, I learned the love of the game. I think the guys who love the game are the ones that are going to be successful. This is not an ordinary lifestyle. Who gets up at 4 in the morning seven days a week?''

There are great trainers who had no family connection to the track, discovered racing by themselves, made it on their own. Among them: Hall of Famers Bobby Frankel, D. Wayne Lukas, Nick Zito (whose father was a racing fan but not a horseman) and Shug McGaughey (whose father was a real-estate agent).

``Maybe it's an advantage (to be an outsider),'' Frankel said with awry smile. ``You don't have some ideas set in your head. There are ideas that are passed down from generation to generation and they're bull.''

Frankel might want to keep that opinion away from the two father-son duos who have trained Breeders' Cup winners - the late Charlie Whittingham (Ferdinand, Sunday Silence) and son Michael (Skywalker), and Wally Dollase (Jewel Princess) and son Craig (Reraise).

This year, there are two father-son combos with horses in Breeders' Cup races - Richard Mandella (Rock Hard Ten in the Classic, Laura's Lucky Boy in the Turf) and Gary (Taste of Paradise in the Sprint), and Allen Jerkens (Society Selection in the Distaff) and Jimmy (Artie Schiller in the Mile).

``(Richard) used my job (at the track) to teach me a work ethic,'' Gary Mandella said on another frosty morning at Del Mar. ``I was walking hots at Del Mar when I was 12 years old - I think the statue of limitations has run out. He told me, 'Go to school and figure out anything else to do, because this is tough work.' ''

Gary, now 33, attended Long Beach State and Pasadena City College for a while, became Richard's assistant, was lured away to an on-camera job at the TVG racing network for two years, then went back to the track to run his own stable in 2002.

``Once this is in your blood, it's hard to get out,'' Gary said.

Richard joked: ''I don't know what he explored (in college), but it wasn't education.''

Mitchell's father tried to direct him away from the racetrack, too. Young Mike, he says now, was showing signs of a gambling problem. Mike spent five years after high school working on the family farm in Tipton, Calif., and hating it.

``That broke me pretty good,'' Mike said, meaning that handling yearlings and stallions prepared him for the worst. ''If it wasn't for my dad, I'd be a gas-station attendant in Bakersfield.''

Instead, Mitchell is training Leprechaun Kid for the Breeders' Cup Turf.

That's the way it seems to work in racing. Bloodlines for horses, bloodlines for horsemen.

In the 14-horse Breeders' Cup Classic, nine horses are trained by legacies, including favorite Saint Liam (Richard Dutrow, son of the late trainer Dick).

Who needs TVG? The races belong on the Family Channel.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, 3 boxes

Photo:

(1) Donald Chatlos Jr. (not pictured), who trains Singletary, is second-generation horse trainer.

Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

(2) Rock Hard Ten will compete in the Breeders' Cup's $4 million Classic race on Saturday.

Al Bello/Getty Images

Box:

(1) BREEDERS' CUP

(2) OUT OF THE GATE

(3) KEVIN MODESTI'S BREEDERS' CUP PICKS