Edition: U.S. / Global

HORSE RACING; An Unconventional Style And a Major Challenge

Published: August 4, 2001

The spurs click in the dark each morning around Barn 70 at the Oklahoma Training Track. The belt buckle -- a trophy for winning a quarter-horse race at a bush track that is now defunct -- gleams at first light. Finally, there's the hat, a wide-brimmed white one, that is showing up in winner's circles alongside young runners and prompting the question: ''Who's the cowboy?''

The answer is Ronny Werner and he really is a cowboy, the kind that grew up breaking horses in central Texas, riding bulls and bareback in rodeos across the state and racing quarter horses from Sallisaw, Okla., to Ruidoso, N.M.

Last Saturday, Werner got his picture taken here with a colt named Thunder Days to complete perhaps the rarest of training trifectas. In each of his first starts at Keeneland, Churchill Downs and now Saratoga Race Course, Werner saddled a winner. In each instance, it was also the first time he had stepped foot in Lexington, Louisville and upstate New York.

The next territory for Werner to conquer is the Jersey Shore. He is taking a 3-year-old colt named Touch Tone there for the Grade I $1.5 million Haskell Invitational on Sunday at Monmouth Park. Also there will be Bob Baffert, a trainer who has won two Kentucky Derbys and sends out Point Given, the Preakness and Belmont Stakes winner, in the Haskell's field of seven.

''We're jumping in with the big fish,'' Werner said. ''But I'm used to everyone doubting us. When we were winning at Keeneland, everyone said, 'Well, it'll be harder at Churchill.' We did all right there and then, they were like, 'Wait until Saratoga.' All I know is we're doing pretty well and I'm getting a chance to see the world.''

In turn, the thoroughbred world is getting the opportunity to see an unorthodox horseman unloose precocious and professional young horses on the racetrack. Werner tied for second in the training standing at Keeneland by winning five of seven races for the owner, Tom Durant -- four of them with 2-year-olds making their first start.

One of them, City Street, followed it up with a victory in the Three Chimneys Juvenile at Churchill Downs on the day of the Kentucky Derby. Lunar Bounty captured the Grade II Bashford Manor Stakes last month at Churchill in his second race after winning a maiden race at Arlington Park in Chicago.

Baffert and, before him, the Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas have demonstrated that the skills needed to get the bigger and faster quarter horses out of the gate for a short all-out sprint do translate to thoroughbreds. But Werner reaches back to his rodeo days for training tactics. His young horses start with stock saddles rather than flat ones and are drilled in a pasture rather than on the track.

They cut figure eights, for example, to make them recognize various cues and commands from a rider. In essence, Werner tries to make a horse smarter the same way parents try to educate their children with the repetition of flash cards or word games. Even at a rock-solid 170 pounds, the 41-year-old Werner often gallops his runners.

''I want them patient, confident, and prepared for the races,'' said Werner, whose winning percentage with first-time starters -- better than 25 percent -- as well as their polished demeanor on the track, validates his methods. ''It's no use putting them on the track if they don't know why they are there. I can tell when I'm on them how they're feeling and correct any bad habits they may have picked up. And they can quickly develop a bad habit.''

Both Werner and Durant have had to learn lessons as well. They switched from quarter horses to thoroughbreds four years ago by claiming horses at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie, which is near both men's homes in Granbury, Tex.

''The thoroughbred meet was longer, the money better and it was in our backyard,'' said Durant, who owns four auto dealerships in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. ''We did well the first year, but the second time around was a disaster. Everything we had was either crippled or slow and had to be turned out.''

They began buying yearlings and 2-year-olds at sales, spending up to $200,000 apiece for six or seven horses. While Werner discovered the fine points of thoroughbred training -- everything from building a fitness foundation with more frequent works to the type and frequency of their feed -- Durant was learning how to eye a horse and sort through pedigree. He was also spending more money -- Touch Tone cost $230,000 as a 2-year-old, City Street $250,000 as a yearling.

''When it came time to step, I wanted it to be me who made the mistake,'' Durant said.

So far, the owner and the trainer have made very few. They rested Touch Tone, a son of Pick Up the Phone, as a 2-year-old because he had white line disease, a condition that eats away at the hoof. Werner schooled him for much of the spring before sending him off a winner in the colt's first start at Keeneland on April 18.

Touch Tone followed that with a stakes victory at Lone Star Park, a third-place finish in the Grade II Riva Ridge on the day of the Belmont Stakes and then a seven-and-a-quarter-length victory in the Iowa Derby at Prairie Meadows in Altoona, Iowa. The colt has never attempted the mile-and-an-eighth distance of the Haskell or tackled a field with a horse as seasoned as Point Given.

''If we get beat up, we'll know to stay away from the big boys,'' Werner said.

Photo: Ronny Werner has used rodeo tactics and quarter-horse techniques in his training. (Dave Oxford for The New York Times)