Jerry Namy & Philip A. Sims

Trainer and co-owner Phil Sims, a 53-year-old native of Flemingsburg, Ky., began attending the races at Keeneland in Lexington, 60 miles from his family’s farm, when he was seven years old. His family raised cattle, grew tobacco and dabbled with Thoroughbreds. While he was in high school, Sims claimed fillies from the track, bred them and re-sold the ones that became pregnant. He raced the others. “I started training by default,” he said. Sims saddled his first horse in 1980. He stables his horses year-round at Keeneland and uses his 70-acre farm in Georgetown, 15 miles from Lexington, as a lay-up and training facility. Sims’ first Grade I stakes victory was with his long-time owner Nelson McMakin’s Hot Cha Cha in the 2009 Queen’s Elizabeth II Challenge Cup. Sims spoiled her with sweet potatoes, carrots and peppermints. Jerry Namy, a geologist who bought into Don’t Tell Sophia when she was three, fell in love with racing after his dad showed him the entries for the 1947 Kentucky Derby. Namy survived a 2009 plane crash that took the life of his friend, owner Kendall Hill, and of his business partner, Bob Schumacher. Namy races horses by himself and in partnership with Sims.  

Sharon Alesia, Bran Jam Stable and Ciaglia Racing LLC

Sharon Alesia, who was first married to musician and recording industry executive Herb Alpert, was introduced to horse racing by her late second husband, Frank Alesia, an actor and television director from Chicago whose dad, raced Thoroughbreds with trainer Steve Ippolito. Ippolito’s stepson, Peter Eurton, would become the Alesias’ trainer after Sharon bought a Thoroughbred for Frank to celebrate their first wedding anniversary in June, 1984. That horse never raced, but Sharon and Frank have been in racing ever since.

Frank, who moved to Los Angeles in 1964, appeared in the beach party films “Pajama Party,” “Bikini Beach” and “Beach Blanket Bingo” and in television shows including “The Flying Nun,” “The Odd Couple,” “Gomer Pyle,” “That Girl,” “Room 222” and “Laverne & Shirley.” Turning to directing, he received a daytime Emmy nomination for “Captain Kangaroo.”

After Frank passed away in 2011, Sharon and her partners - Ciaglia Racing (Joe Ciaglia), Bran Jam Stable (Mike Mellen), Rob Dyrdek and Nick Cosato - named the two-year-old filly they purchased for $175,000 at the Ocala Breeders’ Two-Year-Olds in Training Sale Weemissfrankie to honor Sharon’s husband. Weemissfrankie then won the Grade I Del Mar Debutante and the Grade 1 Oak Leaf Stakes before finishing third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Filly. After she suffered a non-displaced condylar fracture while finishing fourth in the Grade I Hollywood Starlet Stakes, she was sold and is now a broodmare in Japan.

Joe Ciaglia Jr., now 50, worked at Ralph’s Grocery in Arcadia, Calif., as a teen-ager and he and a buddy there, Brad Free, went to Santa Anita to catch races after their shifts were done. Free became a columnist for the Daily Racing Form, and Ciaglia became one of the top designers of action sports facilities in the world, several of which have been featured in the X Games, which includes skateboarding, motorcross and snowboarding, and is televised annually by ESPN. Ciaglia has three companies: California Skateparks, California Landscape & Design and California Rampworks, which manages events. California Skateparks has built nearly 200 projects in 40 states, including ones for world champion skateboarder Tony Hawk and two-time snowboarder and skateboarder Olympic gold medalist Shawn White.

Ciaglia’s wife, Stephanie, who was good friends with trainer Peter Eurton’s wife, Julie, introduced Ciaglia to Frank Alasia, and Ciaglia became an owner in 1999 when he claimed Ask Crafty for $25,000. The horse was claimed in his first start for his new owner. Then Ciaglia went into partnership with Frank and Sharon Alasia and Mike Mellen’s Bran Jam Stable and claimed Cee Dreams, who went on to take the $150,000 California Cup Matron Handicap and retired with 11 victories from 40 starts and earnings of $433,318.   

Mike Mellen, the patriarch of Bran Jam Stables, has had an incredible impact in Thoroughbred racing through his daughter Dawn, who founded and is the president of After the Finish Line, a 501 (C3)  charity which has been helping fund Thoroughbred rescue operations around the country for 6 ½ years. She said, “There’s a purpose for every horse out there. The greatest victory for a Thoroughbred is not winning a race, but winning the race to live long past their days on the racetrack.”

Hillsbrook Farms

Skeptics say you have to be nuts to be a Thoroughbred owner. Garland Williamson is a Thoroughbred owner because he sold nuts. Lots of them. The transplanted Canadian, a native of Georgia, moved to Canada in 1967. “I started a nut business, all types of nuts,” he said.

His company, Trophy Foods, became the most successful food producers and distributors in his adopted country, specializing in edible nuts, dried fruits, confectionary and bulk foods. The company’s continuing success allowed him to retire four years ago, well after he re-connected with his Georgia roots and became a Thoroughbred owner and breeder, racing from his Hillsbrook Farm in Erin, Ontario. Hard Not to Like is a home-bred.

“I’ve always liked horses,” Williamson said. “I grew up in Georgia as a kid many years ago and we never had horses, but we always had animals. We had mules to plow the garden with.”

 His gray mare Hard Not to Like, like her dam Like a Gem, whom Williamson also bred and raced, is a lot faster than a mule. Like a Gem won the final three races of her career including the mile-and-a-quarter Maple Leaf Stakes. “Her first win was at five furlongs and she won up to a mile and a quarter,” he said. “We didn’t think there was any limitation on her distance.” She finished her career with more than a half million dollars in earnings.

Hard Not to Like, who was originally trained by Gail Cox and is now handled by Michael Matz, became just the second filly in 74 years to beat males in the Cup and Saucer Stakes for two-year-olds at Woodbine in 2011. She was second by three-quarters of a length in the 2012 Grade 1 Ashland Stakes. In her first start for Matz, she won the 2013 Grade 3 Marshua River Stakes before finishing ninth in last year’s Jenny Wiley Stakes. 

Landaluce Educe Stables

Ray Struder is living proof of the powerful, emotional attachment a fan can have to a Thoroughbred. The 51-year-old native of Tennessee named his all-filly stable Landaluce Educe, which is Latin for Landaluce remembered.

Following a football injury in high school, Struder moved cross country to attend San Diego State University. Every day in the summer he rode the city bus to Del Mar. On Sept. 5, 1982, he saw trainer D. Wayne Lukas’s unbeaten two-year-old filly Landaluce capture the Grade 2 Del Mar Debutante by 6 ½ lengths at odds of 3-10. Struder was so impressed that he traveled to Santa Anita to see her next start in the Grade 3 Anoakia Stakes, a race she captured by 10 lengths at 1-10.

In her following start, Landaluce won the Grade 1 Oak Leaf Stakes at Santa Anita by two lengths at odds of 1-20. But the filly who would be named an Eclipse Award winner contracted a bacterial infection in November. She died in Lukas’s arms a month later.

“Few things get to me emotionally, but I was surprised how heartbroken I was by her death, and especially for a horse I never met,” Struder said. “I would think about her and the two races I saw all the time.”

Struder never forgot the champion filly. “I wanted to be a Thoroughbred owner since I was 19 years old,” he said. “It took me close to 30 years.” He knew what he wanted to name his stable the whole time.

Struder’s business success with his engineering firm in Tennessee freed him to buy his first horse in 2010 with trainer Kenny McPeek. They would team up to buy 10 more. Four of the 11 have raced in graded stakes. Struder entered the game with a plan: buy quality fillies and develop a broodmare band.

Rosalind, whom he purchased for $70,000 as a yearling, may be the leader of the band. She nearly gave Struder a victory in the Breeders’ Cup last year, when she was a fast-finishing third by a half-length in the Grade 1 Juvenile Filly.

Now she’s given Struder his first Grade I, conjuring memories of another Grade I filly Struder fell in love with and still honors so many years later.

Wesley Ward

Success at the top level of racing as a jockey or trainer or owner is difficult enough. Wesley Ward has done all three in his remarkable, on-going career. And he’s only 46 years old.

The son of Washington trainer Dennis Ward and the grandson of New York outrider Jim Daley, Ward won the Eclipse Award for apprentice jockey in 1984 after winning 335 races, more than $5 million in earnings and riding titles at Aqueduct, Belmont Park and The Meadowlands. Weight problems impacted his riding career in North America, so he rode in Italy, Singapore and Malaysia before retiring in 1989 to begin his second career as a trainer.

After working as his dad’s assistant, he went on his own in 1991. His first stakes and graded stakes winner was Unfinished Symph, who captured the 1994 Grade 3 Will Rogers Handicap at Hollywood Park. Unfinished Symph subsequently finished third that year in the Breeders’ Cup Mile. Three other horses Ward trained, Cannonball in both the 2007 Juvenile Turf and 2009 Turf Sprint, Holdin Bullets in the 2011 Juvenile Sprint and Sweet Shirley Mae in the 2012 Juvenile Sprint, also finished third. Judy the Beauty, whom he owns, almost got the job done last year, finishing second by a half-length to Groupie Doll in the Filly & Mare Sprint.

By then, Ward had made history. Twice. In 2009, on his first trip to England, he became the first American trainer to win at Royal Ascot. He did that twice with Strike the Tiger, who won the Windsor Castle Stakes, and with Group 2 Queens Mary Stakes winner Jealous Again. Ward, who bred Strike the Tiger, owned both horses in partnership. Two years later, Ward became the first American trainer to win at Longchamp when Tiz Terrific broke her maiden there. Ward saddled three more winners in France, another one at Longchamp with Italo and two at Chantilly with Judy the Beauty and Everyday Dave.

Still sensitive to the difficulties a young jockey can face, Ward has given mounts to many inexperienced riders including Ariel Smith in 1999 and Christian Santiago Reyes in 2009, helping each win the Eclipse Award for apprentice rider.

Ward, who owns a broodmare farm in Ocala, and his wife Kimberly have three children, Riley, Jack and Denae.

Mark Bacon & Dana Wells

Dana Wells and Mark Bacon, both 46 years old, met at the Sports Spectrum, a simulcast center in Louisville. Wells, who lived in Louisville for four years before returning to his native Phoenix, was named the 37th best player at the University of Arizona by the Tucson Citizen and the Arizona Republic in its joint list of the top fifty players for the Wildcats.

Wells, a 6-foot-1 defensive lineman, played for Arizona for four years and was selected by the Cincinnati Bengals in the 11th round of the 1989 NFL Draft. He played in one game for the Bengals in 1989, spent the next season on the Cardinals’ practice squad.

Wells joined CBS outdoor advertising in 1991 as an account executive in Atlanta. He then served as a general manager in Louisville, Florida and New York before he was promoted to Executive Vice-President of the company’s billboard division in 2007. CBS Outdoor has more than $2 billion in revenue selling billboard and other media display space.

Bacon is the Managing Director of Southern Comfort at Brown-Forman. He’s been with Southern Comfort for 23 years and travels internationally as its brand manager.

Bacon and Wells bought Silver Max for $20,000 in the Fasig-Tipton July 2010 Select Yearling Sale. Bacon’s eight-year-old son Max named the horse.   

Conquest Stables

Conquest Stables consists of 63-year-old Ernie Semersky, a Porsche and Audi dealer in Chicago, and his long-time partner Dory Newell, a former model who named their star filly. Though they are both new in the industry, they have 28 horses, including 15 yearlings.

A friend recommended trainer Mark Casse, and after interviewing several trainers, they hired Casse. “There was something about him that was correct,” Semersky told Beverly Smith in her Sept. 15th, 2013, story in the Paulick Report.

My Conquistadory, who was purchased for $240,000 at the Ocala 2012 Two-Year-Old Sale last June, made an incredible debut last September at Woodbine, defeating colts by 3 ¼ lengths in the Grade II Summer Stakes before adding the Alcibades. But she is just one of Conquest Stables’ success stories. Conquest Titan, a $475,000 purchase at the same two-year-old sale, won the Swynford Stakes by 5 ¼ lengths at Woodbine in a stunning debut. Their filly Conquest Whiplash, a $370,000 purchase, also defeated colts in the Victoria Stakes at Woodbine.

When My Conquistadory went to post in the Summer Stakes, Semersky sported designer sunglasses with one lens glowing orange and the other green to literally reflect their silks. Newell explained to Smith, “Ernie always sees things through rose-colored glasses.”