When I heard of Christophe Clement’s passing Sunday morning, my immediate thoughts went to his wife Valerie, children Miguel and Charlotte and extended family at the barn and beyond. Then I replayed various moments from my job trying to interview him about horses and his job training horses.

He once took me to his “favorite coffee shop” in Saratoga to complete a morning conversation for a stakes preview in The Saratoga Special. On the way, he asked more questions than I did – about “this newspaper,” my kids, his kids, their college choices and careers, where I lived, how I got involved with horses. Then we pulled into the Stewart’s parking lot on Route 29. He laughed, and I stopped worrying about doing something wrong with an espresso. We poured our own coffee, got back in the car and talked all the way to his barn in the Oklahoma Training Track stable area. I forget the horse we talked about.

Last summer, for The Special’s Fasig-Tipton Stable Tour feature, Clement asked if we needed to discuss every horse. Informed that there wasn’t enough time or space to handle the several dozen horses in his care at Saratoga and Belmont Park, he settled and brought up 22 without playing favorites. We sat on the “therapy bench” outside his barn and he ran through a list – Annascaul to Vespera and as many in between as we had time for while monitoring sets, checking with Miguel for spelling help, ignoring (mostly) phone calls and trading barbs with jockey Dylan “Dye-lan” Davis.

In 2014, when Clement won the Belmont Stakes with Tonalist to spoil California Chrome’s Triple Crown bid, he saddled two horses in the next race and was for a moment alone in the paddock. We walked out together, and I could tell how much it meant to win an American classic at his home track. Then we got swallowed up by some of the 102,199 in attendance. Nobody really recognized him as we pushed through traffic toward the track, and he didn’t seem to mind. He did try to tell some fans that I was a “very important man” worth making room for.

On another Belmont afternoon, my brother Sean and I wound up in the paddock after the last race. Clement asked if we had dinner plans. In town for the first of two days of steeplechase races, we didn’t. Soon we were having Peking duck and world-class conversation in Garden City with Clement and jockeys’ agent Ron Anderson. Still one of the great racing dinners of my life.

Clement died of a rare cancer of the eye, metastatic uveal melanoma. He was just 59. Born in France, he was the son of successful trainer Miguel Clement and worked with legendary French trainer Alec Head among others. In 1986, he spent time at Kentucky’s Taylor Made Farm and with trainer Shug McGaughey before working for Luca Cumani in Great Britain and returning to the U.S. in 1991. That October, Clement won with his first starter, Spectaculaire, at Belmont Park. Clement won 2,576 races as a trainer. His horses earned $184,119,069, paced by three-time champion Gio Ponti and four others to earn at least $2 million – classic winner Tonalist, Grade 3 winner Dynever, Grade 1 winner Gufo and turf-sprinting hero Pure Sensation. That list could go for a while. Clement trained turf horses, dirt horses, New York-breds, fillies, colts, older horses, 2-year-olds, sprinters, stayers and every horse in between.

Clement could be funny, he could be in a hurry, he could be short with you, he could give you all the time you needed. He could talk about anything but his horses or nothing but his horses. His accent could be inscrutable on a recorder, and even more so on the transcription apps of the last couple years, but he could talk about horses and life. Both mattered. He loved training. He loved working with Miguel.

Last spring at Saratoga, he watched Roses For Debra on the walking ring before a start in the Grade 2 Intercontinental and summed up the high-energy mare.

“She’s a sprinter with an enormous amount of life, a great amount of energy,” he said. “It’s her last week before the race so we don’t do much. We just jog her once around the track, go for long walks, that kind of thing. When she’s right, she’s very, very good.”

Three days later, she finished second by a head. In September, she won the Grade 2 Presque Isle Downs Masters and in November she sold at Keeneland for $2.4 million.

Inexplicably, Clement’s horses and people must carry on without him. The rest of us too.

Moments like those above will help. So will a few more such as:

• Last summer’s Saratoga stakes win by Dontlookbackatall and Clement’s reaction to the cheers from her ownership group with West Point Thoroughbreds. “I’ve never heard anything like that,” he said of the crescendo on the first floor of the clubhouse. “I think it’s great for people to enjoy racing the way they just did.” Then he tried to duck out of the winner’s circle photo.
• His pride in his Saratoga barn between Hall of Famers McGaughey and Bill Mott. Like many trainers, Clement used to get moved around to different barns depending on space, stable size, the needs of others. Then he said no. “One year, I got upset. I said, ‘I’m staying here.’ ” He planted grass and willow trees, installed that bench, upgraded the walking ring, created an oasis amid chaos and never left.
• Horses decked out in blue “CC” saddle towels – quarter sheets on chilly mornings – and standing in a row along the outside rail of the turn before training. Horses and riders waited, Clement studied, asked questions, gave instructions and eventually sent them on their way.
• In 2007 or 2008, Clement tried to explain the stature of the diminutive Rutherienne to me and eventually gave up and instead led me to her stall. She won eight graded stakes, but she may have actually been “smaller than a pony” just like Clement said.
• After a Stable Tour interview in 2019, I handed Clement a Saratoga Special hat as a thank you. We’re terrible at marketing, but the hats seem like a gesture – at least – for trainers, readers, advertisers, anyone who helps the cause. Clement put his on his barn desk and I pretty much forgot about it – until I saw it on him during a post-race interview at Belmont that fall. He wore it, often.

Last summer, he asked for a new one. “It’s a very good hat,” he said. That’s a conversation I never thought I’d have.

Sunday, the Clement Stable Twitter account announced his death in a post – he wrote it, and somehow covered pretty much every base – accompanied by a photo of a smiling Clement in his Saratoga Special hat.

It’s a very good hat.