Librado Barocio lived his dream as a football player, in part. He made it onto the UCLA roster as a defensive back – at cornerback, covering the wide receivers, and at safety, the last line of defence – but his college football career never progressed to the pros, he never made the NFL.
“I aspired to be in the professional ranks, and I made it to a level below that, but I could not break the barrier,” he tells Idol Horse.
For a guy whose main role in his football days for the Bruins was to block, tackle and basically stop the other team scoring, he has an infectious, consuming positivity, a “shoot for the stars” mindset. And it’s manifest in the old grey gelding, Lovesick Blues.
The eight-year-old has already taken him to horse racing’s pinnacle, unexpectedly. How many people buy a seven-year-old gelding without a stakes win to its name and wind up winning a Grade 1? That’s what Barocio did.
Lovesick Blues’ G1 Bing Crosby Stakes victory came at his fifth start for Barocio and the 36th of the horse’s career. He was a $18.60 shot, but Lovesick Blues didn’t know that, he was reinvigorated by his new trainer, he was feeling at his peak, he was loving life, he was loving racing: just like Barocio, he was alive again in the sport.
Horse racing first grabbed a tight hold of Barocio not long after his football career was over. He had not long graduated film school at UCLA and was introduced to the racing scene by a cousin’s husband, “he was an ex-jockey turned trainer.” From there, he bought into a horse called Lucky Lenny, a small share, and he went to the races to watch him run.
“When that horse was coming up the stretch, I felt like I was back on the football field,” he recalls. “When that horse was coming down the stretch and the crowd was yelling, I just felt like ‘that’s you right there’. It was at Santa Anita, it hooked me and I wanted to feel that again. So I bought another horse.”
Barocio progressed as a film director and producer but found that “there are high points and there are a lot of low downtimes” in the film business and during the downs, he started spending time at the barn.
“I started going up and watching the training and then I started working on the horse. I watched a lot and I helped a lot. I loved it, taking care of a horse, and then I had a horse and it won and it was exciting.
“When the horse is on the track, that’s your horse, whatever is going to happen, that’s your horse; if he doesn’t win, you go back to work on him. That’s your representative, that’s really you on the track, that’s the way I look at it. I started off learning little by little, just during those low times in the film process, and now I’m here.”
He is at King Abdulaziz racecourse, Riyadh, a couple of days out from the world’s richest race, the US$20 million Saudi Cup, and Lovesick Blues will run for him on the lucrative undercard in the US$2 million G2 Riyadh Dirt Sprint.
“Lovesick Blues (being here), I take a bit of pride in it,” he says. “ Pride that I took him to another level and he’s taking me to another level too, it’s exciting.”
Barocio first held a trainer’s licence in 1999 and has trained on a small scale on and off since – more on than off, it has to be said. He has a small team out of Santa Anita, and has 117 wins to his name all-time from 894 starts. His best season for numbers came in 2023 when he had 24 winners and earnings of US$1.27 million; but he pushed that close last year with 23 winners and earnings of US$1.25 million.
But last year brought a superior strike rate of 20 percent, and, of course, that first career Grade 1 win. It will be hard to top, but Barocio is not one for settling back.
So far this year, his 10 starters have delivered four wins, and if Lovesick Blues could deliver a Saudi win en route to another lucrative challenge in Dubai next month, the G1 Dubai Golden Shaheen, then 2026 would be a year beyond his wildest dreams by the end of the first quarter.
“I dream big,” he says. “And sometimes people look at me and say ‘it’ll never happen’ but in my heart, I just think if you dream about it and make a goal, it happens. I did that in the movie business, I went to UCLA and I learned the craft and I exceeded my wildest dreams in that business, and as a horse trainer I want to be the best and I want to find the best horse. Lovesick Blues came into my life and changed it completely.”
Barocio is known as Lee Librado in the movie business and his productions include the boxing documentary Champions Forever: The Latin Legends; The Original 7ven Formerly Known as The Time, a film he directed about the 1980s Minneapolis funk band The Time; and the family comedy Boyz Klub. He has two projects in the pipeline, both biopics of music legends: Marvin Gaye and Louis Armstrong.
He says Boyz Klub was a film he made because he wanted to produce something his parents could watch. Family is at the core of his life – his operation is Mia Familia Stables – and his son, Librado Barocio II has followed his father’s love and aptitude for football: he too played on The Bruins’ defensive team, and he spent the last two seasons on the coaching staff there, after a year on the coaching team of the NFL’s Washington Commanders.
Barocio senior has a familial affection for his horses, too, and Lovesick Blues has benefited from that kind of attention from a trainer who says he got up to 35 horses last year but felt that was too many.
“I don’t know if I enjoyed it,” he says. “I became a manager, I couldn’t give 35 horses my attention. That’s just me, I’m sure other trainers could do that in an instant but I prefer to keep it simple.”
Whatever he does, it works for Lovesick Blues who he bought from the gelding’s owner-breeder Nick Alexander. That came after he finished ninth in a Del Mar allowance race and was at the farm recuperating. Barocio had done well with another Alexander horse, Johnny Podres, who won the Listed Siren Lure Stakes in 2024, a race Lovesick Blues went on to win last year for the team before going on to his Bing Crosby win and a luckless sixth in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint.
“Lovesick Blues came home and I loved on him a lot,” he says. “I have really good staff who worked with him and got him to refocus on how to run, when to run and when not to run, and he seemed to like it.
“I’m not saying the other trainer didn’t love on him, but I gave him a lot of love. But he knows a bit too much, when you do too much, as you see on the track, he’s got his ways, but I think I’ve got him figured out.
“Like all of us as we get older, I think love and tender care (is important),” he continues. “And just watching every single ache and pain he has, and make sure he’s not feeling that, and if he goes to the track and I see him walking funny, I’ll take him back and make sure that when he goes on the track he’s feeling good. And I think he knows that I’m not going to put him on the track when he’s not comfortable, and I think I’m taking care of him and he’s really taking care of me.”
Barocio certainly doesn’t talk like one might imagine a once tough-tackling defensive back would, but that love for sports, the drive to succeed, and the desire to dream that got him onto the field for UCLA is prevalent in all he does as a racehorse trainer.
So he didn’t make the pros as a footballer, but he’s won at the highest level in horse racing, and Lovesick Blues being in Riyadh, chasing a big purse and international fame is testament to Barocio’s approach.
“The reason for me being here today is that I dreamed and I believe,” he adds, “but I think the love is the most important part of it all.” ∎
