TV analyst Simon Bray brings insider’s perspective to Del Mar races

Simon Bray grew up about 30 miles north of London and decided early that he wanted to train thoroughbreds. He apprenticed under some of the best to ever do it, had success into his early 30s and then, due to a confluence of factors, decided to make a change.

While he was still training, the horse racing network then known as TVG featured him on an all-access “mic’d up” segment. That led to a job offer, which led to a second career that’s still going strong after more than 20 years.

“It wasn’t planned,” Bray said the other day by phone from his home in Orange County. “It was fate. You hear people in life, whether it’s business, sports, whatever it may be, say it’s all about timing. Believe me, I’ve learned that. … The transition to television was exactly at the right time when it needed to be.”

It’s worked out for horse racing fans as well. While Bray, 55, says if he went back to training he’d be “hands down” better than ever, he has no intention of doing so. He plans to continue to bring his insight, wisdom, humor and, of course, ability to pick winning horses to viewers of FanDuel TV, as TVG is now known.

The network employs many analysts, but none have Bray’s CV, as they’d say in his hometown of Hertfordshire. Introduced to the sport by his father, who owned horses, Bray worked first as a teen for Robert Armstrong, a trainer of multiple champions, and then for Henry Cecil, a British training legend.

But no one influenced Bray’s career more than his next boss. A trainer friend introduced him to Bill Mott, who was already on his way to a Hall of Fame career that would include the likes of Cigar and this year’s Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes winner, Sovereignty.

“In December 1992, I showed up with a suitcase and a few hundred dollars and went to work as a hot walker for Bill Mott at Gulfstream Park,” Bray said. “And when you work with him, it’s literally like going to a college or an academy to be a horse trainer.

“Everything that I learned in this business about horses is pretty much directly through him.”

Bray worked his way up to being an assistant for Mott, which led to him meeting Allen Paulson (Cigar’s owner), who lived in Rancho Santa Fe. Paulson eventually hired Bray to be his trainer on the West Coast, starting in the summer of 1999. Bray had success, but Paulson died the next summer. And even though Bray won a pair of Grade I races in 2001 with Astra and Startac, he was fired the day after Startac’s win by Paulson’s son Michael.

Bray became a public trainer and did OK. But it wasn’t easy getting good horses and with workman’s compensation rates rising, he made a “business decision” to stop training. “I didn’t want to be a trainer that just trained to train and hang on,” he said.

He had another option. After the all-access feature with TVG showed off his gift for talking horses, Bray was asked if he wanted to join the network. He declined at first, then decided to do it while continuing to train, and finally full-time.

Bray didn’t have the handicapping and gambling background of his co-workers, but he brought a different kind of experience, which is particularly evident during the morning shows FanDuel does at the Breeders’ Cup and Kentucky Derby. Those shows, which Bray calls his favorite of the year, highlight horses during their regular exercise and workouts, giving him an opportunity to spot things his co-workers, let alone the average viewer, usually would miss.

Whether working at the track, where he’ll be this weekend and the final weekend of the Del Mar meet, or at the studio, Bray said his goal remains the same: inform and entertain.

The former is obvious, but Bray believes the latter is just as important. He said he always has in mind that casual viewers, not just hardcore horse players, are watching.

“Sitting down for five hours watching horses go in a left-handed circle from four different tracks, I mean, I don’t know whether my boss would say it, it can be like Ambien,” Bray said. “So the balance has got to be where you make it somewhat entertaining.”

Bray’s chemistry with his on-air partners, usually Todd Schrupp, is apparent.

“I’m exaggerating, but you could give out 10 winners in a row and if the chemistry’s not there, it’s just unappealing TV,” Bray said. “You could be on with two guys that you like and you give out two winners instead of 10 and people will DM you: ‘That was so entertaining. We had so much fun.’ The chemistry is a lot. I’ve worked alongside Todd for a long time.”

But his job no longer is everything for Bray. Not for the last decade, since he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a treatable but incurable blood cancer.

“Everyone that’s interviewed about it, a disease like this, has said it changes your life,” said Bray, who has been married for 23 years and has a 12-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter. “And let me tell you, it changes it. And not over months, weeks, days; it changes it in a second. The minute you hear the diagnosis.”

He said doctors gave him five years to live – and that was 10 years ago. Bray said he was just “given full remission” a couple weeks ago and taken off all medication by his doctor at City of Hope.

And he has new perspective on his life. He never would have imagined a day when he took time off during Del Mar, but earlier this summer he did just that so he could take his baseball-crazy son to a game in Atlanta as part of their quest to visit every ballpark together.

“I hate the cliches, but they’re my whole life,” he said. “I give 110% of my time to being a dad and a husband, and the rest kind of just follows.

“The world is keeping on,” he added. “FanDuel’s gonna operate on a Wednesday without me covering Belterra Park.”

It just won’t be quite as good.