JONATHAN THOMAS - THE ART OF WINNING SMALL

HOW FEWER HORSES & SHARPER FOCUS PLACE HIM AMONG RACING'S ELITE

WORDS - ALICIA HUGHES 

It is said that numbers tell a story. And when it comes to the yarns weaved in competitive landscapes, the Thoroughbred industry relies as heavily as any sporting realm on metrics and percentages when it comes to anointing their most successful participants.

As with most narratives, though, context is a key part of interpreting raw data. In the case of trainer Jonathan Thomas, the framing of said figures is a necessity to appreciate the full scope of his professional standing.

Technically, the Grade 1 winning conditioner represents one of the smaller barns across North America with his horse population ranging between 15-25 head over the past season. His overall tallies are often dwarfed by many of his brethren as he has had more than 200 starts in a year just once since going out on his own compare that with the fact Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen saddled more than 120 runners in the first few weeks of 2026 alone.

When viewed through a frame of reference, however, Thomas looms pretty large whenever he and his protégés arrive on racing's most prominent stages. From 16 individual starters in stakes races in 2025, 10 individual winners were produced. His six graded stakes victories during that time equaled his career- high mark established one year prior and were more than even some Breeders' Cup winning conditioners were able to boast over that 12-month span.

In terms of delivering when it counts, there aren't many trainers Thomas takes a backseat to as he has won at or above a 20% clip nearly the entirety of his career, including a 28%-win rate in stakes races alone in 2025. As the calendar year came to a close, his barn fittingly uncorked another reminder of that fact when he sent out Augustin Stables' Ambaya to victory in the Gr. 1 American Oaks on the December 28th card at Santa Anita Park.

If Thoroughbred racing had pound for pound rankings, there is little doubt Thomas would be in contention for a top spot - which begs the query as to why, when his numbers clearly tell the story of a high-level skillset, the amount of horses in his care continue to deem him one of Thoroughbred racing's best kept secrets.

"It's a good question," Thomas said during a break in his shopping attempts at the 2026 Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale. "We're always trying to stay a step ahead and add quality to the tilt. I will say I think we're all better off with quality so if it's a difference of having 25 quality animals versus 50 or 75 that are struggling...I'd much prefer the lower numbers.

"I'm happiest when I can be present with the bulk of my animals... so it might be just the way I've constructed it through osmosis. But certainly, our doors are open and we're always welcoming new participants and clients with the hope that we can get our hands on horses that we can play at the high end with."

Working hands on with bloodstock has been a lifelong objective for Thomas, a native of Virginia whose career path has gone from steeplechase jockey to assistant trainer to the helmsman of his own barn that, while compact in numbers, lacks for little in the way of accolades. That he has been able to make the most of the opportunities which have come his way is little shock to those who have spent time in his thoughtful orbit, especially given that he honed his trade working for the likes of such all-times as Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher and the late Christophe Clement along the way.

He didn't necessarily target making his living as a trainer while growing up on the famed Rokeby Farm, but Thomas knew his avocation of being around horses would ultimately turn into his vocation. When his career as a steeplechase rider was cut short in 2000 due to a frightening injury that left him having to relearn how to walk, he pivoted his professional path but not his passion.

"Working with horses, it's all I've ever done. I've never earned a living any other way," Thomas said. "I don't know that I was that specific where I was going to be a trainer, but I really enjoy the horses themselves. I felt like if I could work with the right people, the right caliber of horse, I would be happy in a lot of different facets.

"I think because I've been around racing since I was little, it was the easiest thing for me to kind of do. But I knew I would never do anything that didn't involve horses."

It has been nearly a decade since Thomas formally hung out his own shingle on the nation's backstretches and featured in his more than 300 career victories are 55 stakes triumphs and counting. His career shift came about a bit fortuitously as Thomas joined John and Leslie Malone's Bridlewood Farm 2013 as the trainer for the Ocala, Fla.-based operation after spending several years working for the now eight-time Eclipse Award winning Pletcher.

It was a move prompted in large part because of his ability to bring out the best in the horses he is trusted with caring for.

"It came about organically, and, in retrospect, I probably could have done a better job with it because I wasn't expecting it," Thomas said of the decision to go out on his own. "I was breaking horses I was running against with horses I was training...so it was kind of odd."

► Praise be

Thomas' presence at the 2026 Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale represented an anniversary of sorts as ten years earlier, he altered his career trajectory by purchasing a bay son of More Than Ready for $170,000 on behalf of owner Robert LaPenta. Though he was working for Bridlewood, he was allowed to take on outside clients, and there was something about the ridgling, later named Catholic Boy, that struck him as he was prepping youngsters on the property.

Two years later, the short yearling Thomas had picked out was dragging him to the mountain top under his own banner. After signaling his quality with multiple graded stakes wins during his juvenile season, Catholic Boy anointed himself one of the most versatile runners of his generation when he annexed the 2018 Travers Stakes (Gr.1) on the heels of taking the Belmont Derby Invitational (Gr.1) on turf one race prior.

"This is something they should make a movie about," LaPenta said of Thomas after that Travers triumph. "A trainer who has never won a graded stakes race bought a horse for us. (Catholic Boy) was not considered to be an 'A' horse at Bridlewood and Jonathan kept saying 'There is something about him I like' and I said 'Okay, now you're going to have a chance to prove it'. And he did."

At the time of Catholic Boy's Travers victory, Thomas was still breaking horses like future Grade 1 winner Maxfield and was obligated to about 150 yearlings that were coming into Bridlewood. After bringing his freshly minted dual Grade 1 winner back with him to Florida and honing him for a 4-year- old campaign that would produce the sixth graded stakes of his career, Thomas decided to go all in on his solo training career. "I was actually very happy with what I was doing in Ocala at the time. So, it's kind of (Catholic Boy's) fault, really," Thomas laughed. "I went on a road trip for, it seemed like two years. But even though it was early in my training career I was ready for it, because we handled horses like that all the time with Todd (Pletcher). So, the only difference is it's your name and your colors and your webbing."

Among the many lessons Thomas came to appreciate from his time working with Pletcher was how diligent preparation can help dull the nerves. The unshakable demeanor his former boss is famous for is something Thomas said comes from an inner confidence of knowing the work has been done to the best of its ability and the outcome is out of one's control.

“Todd was the best person for me ever to work for because he could win six grade ones in a weekend, and he was Todd,” Thomas said. “He just went about his business and did the best he could. It's like, 'I've done what I can do, so it's up to the horse now.' I was very lucky to be around that.”

Though he admits to being a bit more “manic” internally than his champion mentor, Thomas too is one who rarely misses a dot on his checklist, as his high percentages testify to. While his equine head count has waned from its peak of more than 50 horses at one point, quality is an intangible that continues to find him. Perhaps no area is that more evident than in his pairing with the inimitable owner George Strawbridge Jr. whose Augustin Stables has become the backbone of Thomas' current reality.

True horsemen tend to find each other no matter their proximity, and such is the case with Thomas landing Strawbridge as his main client. Thomas first came onto Strawbridge's radar back in his steeplechase days when he rode a couple horses for him, and that relationship grew more roots when Thomas started breaking some of Strawbridge's equine talent at Bridlewood.

When Thomas went full time into his training career, Strawbridge continued to showcase his faith in his horsemanship by sending the brunt of his bloodstock Thomas' way. In addition to seeing Ambaya give Thomas his first Grade 1 win since Catholic Boy's Travers, the pairing has also yielded such success stories as graded stakes winners Mrs. Astor, Will Then, and Truly Quality. Those trio of graded performers in particular were responsible for an especially powerful display at Del Mar in November 2024 when each scored graded victories during a seven-day span.

“He gave me a really big push...and we've been very fortunate where every year is getting a little bit better than the next,” Thomas said of Strawbridge. “We've done very well together. He has great pedigrees and he's a horseman, so those horses are bred to race. They are given every opportunity to become the best racehorses. You're leaning on decades of thought and work and families. A lot of thought has gone into it and we're the beneficiaries of that.”

The support of a patient, breed-to-race owner is a unicorn of sorts in today's current racing landscape, a privilege Thomas doesn't take for granted. Testing as the ebbs and flows of the industry's whims can be, he can look back at one of the darkest times of his career to remind himself that he isn't defined by setbacks.

► Rebuilding after a fall

There was a time, Thomas recalls, when if the only thing he did to make money was climb into a saddle each day, he would be content to say he wasn't working a day in his life. After a fall in 2000 during a steeplechase event left him with a severe spinal injury, all of that got taken away, leaving him at age 19 wondering what kind of future he could make for himself.

“It was a scary time mainly because you're losing your identity,” Thomas recalled. “[For] everybody in this business at some level, it's not a job, it's a lifestyle. You're giving yourself a lot of sweat equity and blood equity and emotional equity. I was 19 and doing well and when that got taken away, I was a pretty lost guy for a little while. I didn't know what I was going to do.”

What he did was lean into what he knew, that when given the proper resources and enough opportunity, he could make himself stand out even against the most accomplished of peers. Since shifting his winter base to California a few years ago, he had made a habit of doing just that as 10 of his last 12 graded wins have come on the West Coast.

In an ideal world, he would love to grow his cliental to at least double its current level, a sustainable but manageable amount that would still allow him to be the hands-on force he desires. Such a boost is something that could also allow him to add some diversity to his barn by gaining some classic-type dirt runners in his program.

“Contrary to what my stats read, I love dirt racing,” he said. “We've won a Travers, we've won a Remsen. I would really like to figure out how to ramp up the dirt aspect. I'm not saying I'm trying to make my barn more commercial, but I'd like to make it a little more attractive to the bigger entities to where our name is in the hat for some of the bigger horses.”

Though he jokes he is not great at advertising himself, a commonality throughout Thomas' career is he has been broadcasting the ability of himself and his team for going on a decade.

They may not be as gaudy as some of his comrades, but his numbers do in fact speak for themselves, detailing to all who pay heed that there was a reason he burst onto the scene in such a high-level fashion.

“We love what we do. I'm very picky about my crew but we've got an excellent team,” Thomas said. “I'd love to have 50-60 horses, that would be great. But more important than that, it's about the right client coming in, the right quality coming in so we can continue to try and chip away at the top tier of racing.”

NOEL & WENDY HICKEY A FEW MARTINIS, A FILLY, AND A LIFE IN RACING

WORDS - KEN SNYDER 

“Never leave home without it" from the TV commercial for a credit card is a lesson that was career and life changing for Wendy Hickey, a Welsh emigrant and her husband Noel, also an emigrant but from Ireland. Fortunately, she learned from the mistake made by someone who left home without his checkbook. Worse, he had made the winning bid on a horse at a horse auction in Colorado.

"He had a few martinis," explained Wendy Hickey. No check, no horse. "So I ended up buying the horse that I hadn't even looked at" - a yearling filly.

The purchase of the instead of the checkless and feckless bidder was the entry point for Wendy and Noel to get into racing. Their filly raced in Arizona and Colorado for one year before Wendy gave her to a friend.

The single year of racing awakened the proverbial horse gene in both Wendy and Noel. Wendy began putting together partnerships in horses and racing them in Arizona and Arapahoe Park in Aurora, Colorado. That spanned eight years. Inspiration for partnerships came in part from the movie Dream Horse, the story of a small community, ironically in Wales, that came together to own a horse, appropriately named Dream Alliance. The horse won the 2009 Welsh Grand National.

In the last two years, the Hickeys have begun breeding horses, traveling monthly to a farm in Paris, north of Lexington, to check on progress with weanlings, yearlings and broodmares in foal.

The other part that led the Hickeys into breeding was a budding interest and investigation into Thoroughbred pedigrees while racing in Arizona and Colorado. "I started spotting mares that were up and coming on the racetrack and looking at their bloodlines," said Wendy. I got interested and actually claimed some, brought them to Colorado, and then took them out to Kentucky to breed."

Currently the Hickeys have seven foals due this spring and this is their second crop sired by Kentucky stallions. The Hickeys will face a decision many breeders have the luxury of making. "Until you see a foal, you don't know whether you want to race them or sell them." Mares will come back to Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming to foal and take advantage of breeding incentives. Colts and fillies foaled in Colorado will be raced in that state by the Hickeys.

Horse breeding, essentially, is agriculture subject to weather like any other crop in the field. Last year, during the breeding season, an ice storm hit the Bluegrass, hampering travel and altering the reproductive cycles for many mares. A percentage of mares do not take on the first breeding and have to come back for subsequent matings. Transportation in bad weather was an issue at times last year and had some effect on this year's crop of foals. Primarily the result will be more late foals this year.

"Because everyone wants to foal at the beginning of the year, it's kind of caused a bit of a scramble, because everyone wants to get their mares back and breed again," said Wendy, referring to second and sometimes third matings with a stallion to produce a foal.

"We had a couple of mares that did take straight away, but not all. There's wait time involved in a mare coming back into heat and then scheduling with the desired stallion."

The Hickeys have an advantage over many out-of-state breeders with a location in Paris [KY] which reduces the number of trips back and forth between states. Ironically, Rob Ring, who bred the horse that Wendy Hickey bought at the auction in Colorado, is now their breeder in Kentucky and oversees their operation there. Wendy is the primary decision maker in matings and Ring also has input into stallion choice.

Wendy's pedigree interests took her to a specific bloodline: Sunday Silence and his progeny. This horse won both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness in 1986. When overlooked by breeders here in the U.S. after retirement, he was sent to Japan where he was the leading sire there a record thirteen times. Progeny has won major races all over the world, and descendants in the U.S. have, in part, restored his reputation as a sire. In 2016, he was the leading broodmare sire in North America. (Read North American Trainer - issue 59 / spring 2021)

Tale of Ekati, whose dam Silence Beauty is a daughter of Sunday Silence, was the stallion a Hickey mare was bred to in 2024. The Hickeys brought the foal, a filly, back west to Wyoming. "She's quite small, but it's good to have a 'small' because Wyoming tracks are pretty snug. You need a small horse to get around the bends." said Wendy.

Another foal was sired by Highly Motivated out of an Irish mare, The Ginger Queen, from the Galileo bloodline. The third foal is by Gift Box, sired by Twirling Candy, winner of $1.1 million in purses including two Gr.2 races and a pair of Gr.1's, including the Gold Cup at Santa Anita.

"Right now, we have seven horses, three yearlings and four mares," said Noel Hickey. Among horses expected to foal this year by Mendelssohn, Drain the Clock, Gun Pilot, and Speightstown.

Foaling requirements to qualify as a state-bred in western states vary for the Hickeys. "Wyoming is the trickiest one because the broodmare has to be registered and in the state by the fifteenth of August prior to birth. So if you've had a mare that's had a foal late, you have to move the mare with a foal at her side, but before weaning."

Fortunately, as with their Paris location, there is a broodmare facility in Laramie, Wyoming for mares in foal and new foals. "Wyoming is really starting to advance now," said Wendy.

There are quite a few stallions there-Finnegan's Wake, King Zachary, and Dennis' Moment. "People are starting to catch on with the breeders' funds that you can get. They're trying to encourage people to foal out there and to build the racing program in Wyoming. Nebraska is doing something similar."
This past year Taylor Made Farm in Nicholasville, Kentucky introduced a "State-Bred Initiative Program" offering free seasons to four stallions at their farm to out-of-state mares who will foal in those states. The program hopes to boost regional breeding outside Kentucky and counter, to some degree, the continuing decline in North American foal crops. The Hickeys are prime prospects for the program.

The Hickeys make their home in Denver and own a combination 'Irish-Welsh' pub/off-track betting (OTB) facility - The Celtic on Market.

It was originally called the Celtic Tavern before relocation to 14th and Market Streets in Denver.

The move downtown and opening on St. Patrick's Day in 2017 was memorable for some nail-biting, last-minute wrangling over a liquor license, rivaling a neck-and-neck battle to the wire between two Thoroughbreds.

After numerous construction delays consuming parts of 2015, all of 2016, and the first three months of 2017, the new Celtic on Market was finally ready to open with all permit issues hurdled...except for liquor.

"We were not allowed to bring any liquor or beer into the restaurant until we had a license.

"We had trucks lined up outside, and so we called the liquor board and said, 'Could you send someone down to sign off on our liquor license?'" The reply, on the most important day of the year to the Irish and expecting brisk business, was "not until next Tuesday."

"I said, 'You don't understand, it's Friday and it's St. Patrick's Day and we need to open." The attitude they got in response was one we've probably all had at one time or another dealing with government officials: “’I’m sorry, sir, it will be next Tuesday’ and they hung up on me!” Hickey said, shaking his head at the memory.

A last-minute call to the chief of staff for Denver’s mayor produced a call back five minutes later from the same liquor board official who had hung up on Noel. Good news delivered coldly: “We’ll be down there in ten minutes.”

“That was three-thirty in the afternoon and at five pm we opened with a full house,” Noel Hickey said.

Nine years later The Celtic on Market will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and its nine-year anniversary of that opening in the new location.

Today the venue is a center for emigrants from Europe and elsewhere to gather for Premier League matches and other major sporting events around the world like the Melbourne Cup. At the time of writing, the big promotion of the day was Spain’s major soccer match, El Clásico, pitting Barcelona against Real Madrid.

Horse racing is the daily mainstay for Denver horse racing fans and bettors along with out-of-town visitors coming into Denver for Broncos football games.

Noel greets visitors as the front-of-house guy. “I’m that guy that schmoozes people. Wendy does all of the back of the house for the bar, the OTB, and FanDuel.

Fittingly, the two met in an Irish pub in Düsseldorf, Germany that Noel owned 36 years ago. They’ve been married 34 years.

“We spend twenty-four hours a day with each other. We’re very lucky in the sense that we work well together,” said Noel.

Ah, there it is the luck of the Irish: a horse that fell into their lap to start the Hickeys in racing; the involvement that sustained and made possible horse breeding in Kentucky; and last but not least, owning Denver’s only OTB. What could be next? Given all that has already happened, the two of them in the winner’s circle of a Triple Crown race wouldn’t be a surprise.

HOW LISTENING TO HORSES BUILT A LEGACY OF CHAMPION THOROUGHBREDS

RAUL REYES

WORDS - KEN SNYDER

How does a poor kid raised in dusty, broiling- hot Tijuana, Mexico come to own two million-dollar farms (not at the same time) in Ocala, Florida and be responsible for the development of horses like; Beholder, Tommy Jo, Letruska, Tamara, Silver Train, Miss Temple City, Stanford, Shancelot and the Eclipse Award winning colt - Ted Noffey?

And perhaps the most mysterious question - how does he do it, without the use of charts or normal record-keeping tools? His wife of 37 years, Martha, simply says he pays attention and is like a horse whisperer. There is science and then there is art. Put Reyes in the art camp.

Horses can communicate everything what they listen to, what they look at, what they worry about, according to Reyes. Taken together, Reyes calls it horse talk - a language in which he is apparently fluent.

Seeing and reading what horses communicate with their walk, their gait, their ears, and their own focus is at the heart of developing Thoroughbreds at his farm, King's Equine, in Ocala, Florida. It is, without question, unique to Reyes. He even pays attention to what draws a horse's own attention, adding "I see what they worry about."

His management of the over 140 horses at his farm, not surprisingly, reflects both introspection and intuition with a horse noted and recorded, again not surprisingly, in his head. "The only thing I write down is when one looks bad, very bad."

In short, it's all catalogued in Reyes' memory bank. Traditional methods, according to him, haven't changed much in the last 100 years. "The good things are pretty similar. They change very little. "When I look at horses, I don't look at the good ones. I look for the ones, like in the Bible, the lost sheep. I don't worry about the ones that are eating, the horses training like champions, and looking good. What am I gonna do for the one not doing well?"

There is a natural divide between Reyes at a training center working with raw talent to discover and develop and racetrack trainers essentially receiving a finished product from King's Equine. Reyes is preparing horses for a career and not for a race. That is left up to the racetrack trainers.

Yet, his thinking is beyond teaching a horse how to break from the gate or how to rate to conserve energy. In his approach he assesses where a horse is likely to perform best when it is sent north, helping both trainers and owners in what is best for their horse. "You have to condition a horse depending on the racetrack. You cannot train the same with a horse on a deep track that you do on a fast track."

Decades of being around horses are behind his uncanny ability to spot talent,,to develop hidden potential, or to see potential that might be overlooked.

Reyes grew up in the shadows of Agua Caliente just across the Mexican border from San Diego, and he was mesmerized by the races he could see in a short distance from his home. Proximity may have been a saving grace for Reyes, raised by a struggling divorced mom with five other children.

ABOVE: Martha & Raul Reyes at their King's Equine training facility in Ocala. "Nothing would have been possible without the support of my wife." - Raul Reyes.

Watching horse races gave him a dream. A poor kid, he saw racing as a way to make money. Jockeying was where he knew the big money, especially for a Hispanic, was in jockeying.

As young as eight or nine years old began hot walking horses at Agua Caliente. At the ripe old age of 13 he took on a role that would make him a jockey: exercise riding. He went from Tijuana to training tracks in Escondido, which is in San Diego County.

He achieved the goal of race riding and rode some in Mexico but mostly in New Mexico. When weight issues became too much for him, he moved to Los Alamitos and Quarter Horses as weight limits were higher than for Thoroughbreds.

There was one problem, though. "There's no money."

He hung up his jockey tack at another ripe old age of 20, after retiring, by his recollection "five times."

Exercise riding had been a natural landing spot for him. It was all he knew, and it supported him for the next 12 years. It would also expose him to more than he could ever hope to know. In that time, he worked for and learned from two titans of the sport, trainers Charlie Wittingham and D. Wayne Lukas.

He learned discipline from Wittingham and may have gotten lessons he still uses in patience to hear what a horse was telling him as a trainer.

No two trainers could be more dissimilar despite both experiencing amazing, Hall of Fame-worthy success. "Charlie was more 'long'... take it easy. That's why Lukas could win more two-year-old races than Charlie."

Reyes summed up Lukas's approach in three words: "Let's be ready." He learned from these two men and others, preparing him, as his exercise riding ended, to go forward with a plan that had begun to form in his mind.

"I'll never forget a barbecue at my house. I was having a couple of beers and I was thinking to myself about horses. And then I drank a couple more beers, and I said to myself, 'You're working for others, why don't you grow for yourself?"

A downturn in the California economy took Martha and him into a detour into the car business and away from what he loved. "I got bored. 'No, this is not my thing. I want to go back to horses." After leaving California and the car business behind, he and Martha went to Miami, where he worked briefly as a jockey agent. "It's the worst job in the world. If you really hate somebody, get them a job as a jockey agent."

A drive to Gainesville, Florida to visit a brother there took him in a completely different direction both that day and for good. He never made it to Gainesville. "Somebody had mentioned Ocala. We didn't have any idea where Ocala was. It was a foreign country for us, this side of the country. They said you might like it there in Ocala. There are a lot of farms, you know. It's horse country."

Martha Reyes finishes the story: "He saw signs on I-75 for Ocala." On a whim he took an Ocala exit and discovered farm after farm. One of the first farms he saw staggered him. It was the Tartan Farm stable, which he knew had been the last home for Dr. Fager.

After driving five hours from Miami he found a phone booth to call Martha and tell her, "I'm coming back for you." He didn't mean tomorrow after a night's rest, but right then and another five hours of driving back south.

An experience similar to the one he had at his barbecue happened twice in Ocala.

"When I went there, I asked myself, "Riding? It wasn't enough for me. I can do way more than that, and realized I knew more about horses than I thought I did." At the same time, Reyes was surprised at what some trainers were instructing him. He thought, "Wait a minute-that's not right."

The tipping point was working for two guys who, on paper, were successful. "I was galloping for a guy that had fifty horses, and for another guy that had forty, and I thought both of them were really bad trainers." Reyes was baffled at how these trainers got that many horses. "So I said to myself, 'I should be getting a hundred if these guys are getting forty, fifty horses."

Frank Taylor, who owns Taylor Made Farm with his three brothers, had taken note of Reyes when he worked for him at a horse sale in Lexington at Keeneland. "So he sent me a horse." Others followed on Taylor's recommendation. "People who he knew he sent to me [with their horses]."

He and Martha bought a farm in Ocala with their burgeoning business.

"From there, we started getting more horses and having success from different people-- winning races." That is an understatement. They included King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia including 40 to 50 of his horses. In the wake of the king's death the late B. Wayne Hughes became a client of Reyes.

All was not roses and lollipops, however, for them. A dispute with a financial backer of the Reyes farm led to them reaching an agreement with the backer and moving on.

End of story? Not even close. "We just kept training, making money. We bought a horse for $7,500 and I sold him for $375,000." Beholder netted them a sum that, combined with the pinhook profit, gave the Reyes money for another farm in Ocala.

"We went from sixty-five acres [at the first farm] to one hundred and forty-three."

Reyes is effusive in his gratitude to his adopted country America. "There's nobody that gives you chances to make it like here. If you were born a worker in another country, you would have to die as a worker. And there's a good chance your kids will be workers. You're never going to be an owner. You're not going to be the boss. You're not going to own a plane."

Reyes has a refreshing perspective also on one obstacle put up by some white Americans against Hispanics. "Everybody gets discrimination: fat people, dumb people, ugly people. There's discrimination against a brown guy with an accent. Nothing is easy. The only way it's going to be easy is if your dad is a billionaire, and you're a good-looking human being."

With one hundred forty horses, King's Equine is one of those places that might dazzle a young man who has never seen Ocala. Reyes will never stop appreciating and loving his home. If anything, the joy of being around horses has increased over the years. Retirement is not in his thoughts or vocabulary. "If I quit, I die."

The operation gets its name from the English translation of Reyes. It is "King" and it is fitting.

Raul Reyes would tell you, borrowing from Mel Brooks's 1981 film, History of the World, Part 1, "It's good to be the king."

Rusty Arnold’s second wind

Article by Alicia Hughes

It had been a good run, Rusty Arnold told himself. More than good, actually. 

Since the time he took out his trainer’s license in 1975, the Kentucky native had plied his trade with as much integrity as any conditioner in the Thoroughbred industry. There were the typical hardships that are part and parcel when one’s vocation hinges on the health of 1,000-pound equine athletes. But there were plenty of successes as well for the third-generation horseman, including his distinction of being your favorite trainer’s favorite trainer, a status earned through years of having his insight sought by both inquisitive up-and-comers and stalwarts like the late Christophe Clement. 

He had won Grade 1 races. He had established himself as a consistent force in Kentucky and New York - two circuits that run constant litmus tests on one’s aptitude. So, when he saw his numbers dwindling about 10 years ago in terms of the horses coming into his care and results produced on the track, Arnold told his wife, Sarah, the time had come for them to start thinking about what the winding down process would look like for the barn. 

Because when you’re five decades into your career, and you’re a not a trainer with 100-plus head backed by one-percenter clientele providing a steady pipeline of blue-blooded stock, it would be foolish to think the best years of your professional life were about to manifest on the heels of one of your most disheartening seasons. That’s the sort of comeback that only exists on the pages of sentimental scripts, not in the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately reality of competitive landscapes

Right?

“Around 2015…we didn’t have a good year. We had probably gone down to less than 30 horses, the lowest number we’d had in about 30 years, and I told Sarah, ‘I’ve had a wonderful run, but the good ones have stopped coming and we better be prepared to downsize and ride off into the sunset’,” Arnold recalled. “We weren’t thinking of giving it up, but we were thinking, okay we’ll have this one barn right here (at Keeneland) and know we won’t be in the highlight anymore. We’ll have to cut back a little bit.

“And then, all at once….”

Horsemen often joke about how fate responds when they attempt to plan long-term. From the moment Arnold started entertaining the notion of paring down his presence in the sport that has been his lifeblood, the universe began laughing in his face - and hasn’t stopped since.

Longevity in and of itself is not an unusual career trait for Thoroughbred trainers, especially in an industry where success is more the slow burn variety rather than overnight. What is uncommon, particularly for modest-sized barns trying to maintain numbers in the era of the super trainer, is the kind of resurgence Arnold is experiencing at a time when many horsemen of similar ilk are battling to keep from being squeezed out. 

In 2025, his 50th year of conditioning horses under his name, George R. “Rusty” Arnold II has defied the metrics that say he is in the twilight of his profession. Heading into October, he had already established a career high for single-season earnings at $4.7 million and counting, topping the mark of more than $4.3 million he set for himself just one year ago. In the wake of that soul-searching 2015 season that saw him win just 20 races – his fewest total in more than 30 years – Arnold’s barn has generated at least $2.2 million in earnings in nine of the last ten years with 34 of his 108 career graded stakes victories coming in the past decade.

To put the remarkable nature of the trajectory Arnold is on into perspective, consider he was saddling starters even before the legend that was D. Wayne Lukas changed the game forever by switching his focus strictly to Thoroughbreds in the late 1970s. While he hasn’t had the elite-level resources boasted by such veteran Hall of Famers as Bill Mott, Bob Baffert, Steve Asmussen, and Todd Pletcher, what Arnold does have is a loyal base of owners like G. Watts Humphrey and the Bromagen family who know they are putting their faith in a trainer that unfailingly walks the walk when it comes to hands-on horsemanship.

His program isn’t built around chasing Triple Crown races and he has yet to hold Breeders’ Cup hardware above his head. When it comes to achievements that demand a rarified skillset, however, Arnold’s enduring ability to keep cranking his bar of success into a higher stratosphere is among the most extraordinary. 

“I feel like I’m what they call in golf a journeyman. I’ve never won a major, but always played well,” said Arnold, who headed into the 2025 Keeneland Fall meet tied with Mott as the track’s all-time winningest trainer with 307 victories. “After 50 years, I think one of the things I’m proudest of is the people I’ve worked for a long time. I’ve had a lot of people who have stuck with me a long time. 

“I’m not a Hall of Fame trainer. I don’t have a Hall of Fame career. But they’ve entrusted us to do what is best for their horse, and we’ve tried really hard to do that. We’ve always tried to err on the side of the horse. And what’s the old saying…nobody commits suicide with a 2-year-old who can run in the barn. So, then all at once we had a bunch of good horses. And it’s just been fabulous.”

Among the proteges this season who have testified to Arnold’s reputation as one of the best pure horsemen in the game is BBN Racing’s Kilwin, winner of the Grade 1 Test Stakes, multiple graded stakes winner Echo Sound, and Grade 3 victress Daisy Flyer – all of whom prevailed at the ultimate proving ground that is Saratoga Race Course. 

With nearly 2,000 career victories to his credit and a shedrow that has produced more than $91 million in earnings, the 70-year-old Arnold has long stopped having to prove anything to anyone. That hasn’t stopped him from repeatedly reminding his brethren of what he and his team are capable of when given a modicum of talent to work with and the freedom to lean into his tried-and-true philosophies. 

When Lyndsay Delello joined Arnold as an assistant nearly six years ago, she quickly discovered why job openings with the Paris, Ky born trainer were few and far between.

Whether one is visiting his flagship barn on Rice Road at Keeneland or walking down the shedrow his charges occupy on the Churchill Downs backstretch, the faces helping Arnold steer the ship rarely change – including his famed barn cat population headed by the venerable orange tabby, Chester. Shifts in the staff payroll are an outlier rather than a regular occurrence, due in no small part to that fact Arnold makes sure the dynamic in his barn is such that trust and recognition goes both ways for everyone.

“Before I started working here, everyone was like ‘The best job in Kentucky is with Rusty Arnold. You’ll never get it, but it’s the best job in Kentucky,’” Delello said. “That’s been his reputation. There are a bunch of guys who have been with Rusty for years. Riders, everyone, it’s the same. We really don’t have much of an employee turnover. He listens to our opinions and what I love too is he’s here every morning. He’s putting his hands on every horse.”

“There are some trainers where it’s like ‘I’m the boss, you do this,’” added Sarah Arnold, also known as the heartbeat of the operation. “Even with our riders, they’ll be getting on the horses, and they’ll say, ‘Do you think Rusty will let me try this?’. Most of the time, he’ll listen to people and their opinions on the horses. He takes it all in…and he’s not afraid of strong women.”

The standard of care in his barn and the dedication from those delivering it are not the only things that haven’t wavered throughout Arnold’s career. 

The “old school” label is one the former University of Kentucky pre-vet student wears like a badge of honor. While he is savvy enough to evolve with the changing dynamics of the sport, the level of attention Arnold dispatches to each of his horses and the way he determines the most auspicious path for each is, at its core, the same now as it was when he notched his first stakes win in the 1976 Neptune Handicap at River Downs with Fleeting North.

“Some of the therapies and technologies that people use on the horses he’s open to but it’s mostly just basic horsemanship,” Sarah Arnold said of her husband’s training techniques. 

The number of horses in his career currently sits around 50, a figure Arnold says is the sweet spot that allows him to lay eyes on every runner he is tasked with honing. Patience is the barn’s North Star as well as tailoring training to the individual, not the other way around. And while he doesn’t shirk the technical and veterinary advancements that have made some aspects of training easier, Arnold is still one to lean first and foremost on giving a horse time – a seemingly simple conviction, but one that can get lost in the modern-day focus of getting black-type on the resumes of well-pedigreed babies to set them up for careers in the breeding shed. 

Exhibit A to the above came in 2019 when Calumet Farm sent Arnold a homebred son of Twirling Candy named Gear Jockey, a talented individual but one who needed a deft hand to get him placed in the right spots competitively and held together physically. After breaking through to earn his first graded score in the 2021 $1 million Turf Sprint Stakes (G3) at Kentucky Downs, the bay horse went through an eight-race losing skid and setbacks, including being sidelined for nearly eight months at one point. 

Not only was Arnold able to get Gear Jockey back to the races, but he received the ultimate validation for giving his charge every chance when he captured the Turf Sprint at Kentucky Downs for a second time in 2023, besting a field that included eventual Grade 1 winner Cogburn. 

“I feel like Gear Jockey was the best training job I ever did,” Arnold said. “He had his issues, but he won two $1 million races which was hard to do with a horse like him. He had a lot of issues, but when we’d get him over there when he was right, he was a really good horse.

“I’m not saying you don’t make some changes along the way because you do. But I sat around guys like Allen Jerkens and Shug McGaughey and Bill Mott, and you watch what everyone else does,” Arnold continued. “I never worked under a big trainer, I worked under my father for a while…but the rest of the time I picked it up from people. The one philosophy is just, take care of your horse, get him sound and happy. Don’t try and overdo it or overthink it. If you’ve done something that has worked for 25 years and you hit a bad time, you just stick to your guns. Get them healthy and they’ll run for you.”

That level of integrity Arnold has maintained paid off most right when things appeared to be taking a turn for the dire. 

Over the last 15 years, clients like Calumet Farm and Boston Red Sox third-baseman Alex Bregman – who could have their pick of trainers – made a deliberate choice to come on board with his program. In the same time span, Ashbrook and BBN Racing have stepped up their participation, collectively resulting in such notable runners as Ashbrook’s 2016 Ashland Stakes (G1) winner Weep No More, fellow Grade 1 winner Concrete Rose, who was campaigned in partnership by Ashbrook and BBN, and Bregman’s stakes winner and Breeders’ Cup starter, Totally Justified.

The lofty purse structure offered by the Kentucky circuit is one factor Arnold points to for helping lure owners like BBN Racing his way as they know they can have their stock there year-round with an established barn and reap the financial benefits. Perhaps the biggest intangible behind Arnold’s ability to maintain his longtime owners like Humphrey while attracting newer clients, however, is the fact that he doesn’t let extreme circumstances impact either his perspective or his faith in his ability.

“Rusty doesn’t get too high or too low, he doesn’t overreact or under react,” said Bo Bromagen, bloodstock consultant for BBN Racing and racing manager for Ashbrook Farm, whose family have been clients of Arnold for decades. “I tend to get swept up in the positives and negatives and if I didn’t have Rusty Arnold, I don’t know how I would maintain a level of sanity.  It’s more than just the big wins, it’s the fact you can always count on him. The way he’s been completely honest with us and told us the truth, whether we wanted to hear it or not, is something that over 40 years has really resonated for us.

“I'm probably going to ruffle some feathers but…the super trainers sometimes become a manager of trainers,” Bromagen continued. “And Rusty has stayed at a certain size where he gets eyes on his horses every day. He sees everything that's going on in his barn. And I think a lot of people see what we see in him, which is a talented horseman who is going to do right by the horse more than anything else.”

Like most of his comrades, Arnold is too focused on tending to his equine proteges to indulge in much self-reflection about his feats. What he is intentional about is expressing his gratitude to those who have seen him play the long game his way over the years and signed up to be part of the team. 

“I’m humbled by how lucky I’ve been, and I know how lucky I’ve been,” said Arnold, who moved his base back to Kentucky full time in 2006 after more than 20 years in New York. “I’ve met a lot of really, really good people and I’ve got some young people I work for now that I’m crazy about - Alex Bregman, Bo, Brian Klatsky with BBN. Bregman had a lot of choices when he came into this business, buying horses for the money he’s buying them for and making a splash. He can have (five-time Eclipse Award winner) Chad (Brown), he can have Todd (Pletcher). He felt comfortable and gave us the opportunities.

“Usually, it doesn’t happen that way. Usually when you get up in your 60s, everyone wants a younger guy. And again, all these horses started coming in and nothing gets you more enthused than horses who can run. When you play this on a big level, you want to be able to play it on the big level. And fortunately, right now we can.”

When he first went out on his own five decades ago, the goal for the son of the late George R. Arnold Sr., co-owner of Fair Acres Farm, was simply to make a living doing what he always loved. That part of the equation has long taken care of itself, and over the years, the younger Arnold’s success has been measured as much by the folks who seek him out on the rail as any of his top-level triumphs.

“One of the things he’s always told me is he loves the fact that some of the younger generation like Riley Mott and other trainers who are up and coming, they love to talk to Rusty,” Sarah Arnold said. “And he loves that, to let his age and experience trickle down. Even up until 4-5 years ago, Christophe Clement would still call him sometimes and ask him ‘What do you think about this horse?’. People like to pick his brain because they know he is just super honest and has the ethics and morals in this business.”

Among the pieces of wisdom Arnold imparts to the next generation is his appreciation for the nature of the landscape they must operate in. Given that most trainers back in the day were capping their numbers below 50, he feels anyone who can hold their own against the top percentile conditioners like Brown, Pletcher, and Brad Cox is well positioned to follow in his indefatigable footsteps.

“I think it’s so much harder for the younger kids to get going now than when I got going because there were no such thing as super trainers then,” Arnold said. “Those guys would get their 40 horses and they wouldn’t take any more. That’s how I got going. I got recommended to owners. That doesn’t happen anymore. Now, if a guy has 200, 10 more doesn’t bother him. It’s a whole different game. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different.”

There isn’t much Arnold would change about his own career path, but there are certain new experiences he very much would like to explore: namely, getting one of his sport’s “majors”. His best efforts from 18 starts in the Breeders’ Cup are a pair of third place finishes. And while he is hopeful to have contenders for this year’s two-day World Championships at Del Mar Oct. 31-Nov. 1, he would love to make a fairytale type result happen when the Breeders’ Cup is literally in his backyard at Keeneland in 2026.

“I’d like to win one. I don’t know what I can say it would mean to me because I haven’t won one,” Arnold said of the Breeders’ Cup. “We’ve won well over 100 graded stakes, and I think 20 something different horses have won Grade 1s for us. But I haven’t won a Triple Crown race or a Breeders’ Cup. I’d like to win one…then I’d know how it feels.”

Time claims that Arnold is nearing the end of a thoroughly admirable career, that the days of adding grandiose milestones to the pile and churning out the best version of his skillset should be in the rearview. In addition to being one of the respected conditioners in the game, he also among the most grounded.

And the reality is, the current incarnation of Rusty Arnold may still be reaching its peak.

“I’ve got all the confidence in the world in him and frankly he’s got confidence in himself that he knows what he’s doing,” Bromagen said. “What can I say about him? The only thing the guy has ever done for me is everything I needed.”

Chris Hartman in profile - still learning and still winning

Article by Ken Snyder

Chris Hartman took a pass on high school. Got promoted to groom before he knew how to muck a stall. Blew right past the assistant trainer’s position to trainer. And then, he leapfrogged $3 million in earnings, going from $2.9 million in 2021 to $4.2 million in 2022. Earnings in both 2023 and 2024 exceeded $5 million.

His story is at least as remarkable as his ascent through Thoroughbred racing and really, through life. 

He went to work on the racetrack at the ripe old age of 11, drawing his first paychecks not from his trainer-father Stan, but Molly Pearson at Prescott Downs. 

”Molly’s mother had actually made her hire me. She said, ‘You need to hire this boy, he needs a job.” It was an idea Pearson wasn’t keen on. She didn't like the way he mucked stalls. When Molly told her mom of Hartman’s weakness with a muck fork and straw, her mother replied, “Well, that's good. Then he shouldn't be cleaning stalls anyway.’”

It was the beginning of his education in ground work. 

Hartman and Molly Pearson would groom horses together and give him valuable experience. She was, in Hartman’s words, “quite a caretaker of her horses. She'd have me rubbing their legs, putting jell on their legs and putting wraps on them.” 

Hartman, 52, doesn’t remember life without horses.  “I grew up with Thoroughbreds in the backyard.” His boyhood was spent with his dad at Turf Paradise, the Arizona county fair circuit, or Prescott Downs (now Arizona Downs). 

The road called to Hartman at age 15 when an exercise rider going to Minnesota from Arizona asked him if he wanted to go along with him. His response? “Hell, it sounds like fun.” It was the beginning of a jaunt that took him from Minnesota to Tampa Bay Downs and back up to Kentucky.  ‘Fun,’  though, was secondary for Hartman.

“I wanted to learn everything I could about a horse. So I sort of moved a little bit,” understating it considerably. He built his future watching those around him, studying individual horses carefully, and putting into practice something his grandfather, also a trainer, said to him: “You should always be able to learn. You can’t know everything about a horse.

“To this day, I try to learn all I can.”

Learning from his own horses began for Hartman at age 14 when trainer Michael Freeman at Turf Paradise agreed to sell him a horse named Jat Alane for $300. When Hartman showed up at Freeman’s barn - lead shank, halter, and money in hand - the trainer told him he had changed mind on the deal. It was a ruse that got Hartman fuming. He was mad enough to tell Freeman his dad had warned him about “people like you.” The trainer relented with the put-on and the nixed deal; he gave the “youngster,” as he called Hartman, the horse. The transaction probably was part of Hartman later running the shedrow for Freeman when he was 16.  

Hartman’s next purchase came when he noticed a horse cooling out on the backside after a race. “He’d just ran and he was running off with the hotwalker, so I knew the horse didn't give all he had in the race.” He approached the horse’s disgruntled trainer, Sheridan Majors, at probably just the right time. When Hartman asked about the horse, Fine Hostage, the trainer said, “’Give me five-hundred dollars and you can have this s.o.b.’ So I said, ‘I'll be right back.’ I went to my room and got the money and came back with it. That's how I got him.”

Hartman trained the horse off the poor performance list and won the second time out on December 28, 1990 when he was 17. “He paid one-hundred eighty-nine dollars. I was training horses but I wasn’t old enough to have a license, so the horses were in my dad's name.”

“When I was training that horse, I really wanted to figure it out for myself;  was it really about the horse, or do you just need good horses, or do you have to go underneath somebody and be an assistant?”

Fine Hostage, indeed, helped Hartman ‘figure it out’ with another win in his fourth start for him on February 2, 1990.  

At the time Hartman was working for another trainer, Dale Hunt, who bridled at an employee with his own horse.

“I had told him, ‘I'm gonna’ get a horse.’” 

Hunt apparently thought Hartman wasn’t serious. After the acquisition, the inevitable happened with Hunt. “He told me, ‘I don't want you spending all your time with that horse,’ and I said, ‘Okay, that's fine. I'll give you my notice now. I'm going to be spending a lot of time with him. I guess you're gonna need somebody else.’ 

“He's like, ‘Whoa, whoa, you ain't got to be doing it like that.’”

The exchange, at least for Hartman, was strictly business without emotion. “I wasn’t upset with the guy. I had a game plan.”

The plan included leaving the Southwest for a stop at Churchill Downs where Hartman worked for trainer Johnny Tammaro as night watchman. That job took him from Louisville to Saratoga. A thousand dollars was stolen from his wallet - this soured Hartman. From Saratoga he returned to Arizona.  It was the jumping off point for him as a trainer. 

“I had the mindset, I was going to learn either how to train a horse or go back and just get a job when I was really of age to do it. The whole goal was just to see if I can make a horse as good as they can be, if they are good enough to win, regardless of what the form looks like.” 

The training regimen, the feed, the close watch on health and injury are, of course, the primary tasks of a trainer. But Hartman applied an intangible that is easily discounted or dismissed that made him successful, first in the Southwest and now at Churchill Downs. And it might also take him into the national spotlight in the future. 

“I've got a love for horses. There's no doubt about it. They're magnificent to me. I love to see them in flight, just running. When you know that a horse just gives you everything they've got when they run, it does something for me. I was very blessed in the fact that I was born into something that I really enjoy doing,” he said. 

The desk in his office at Barn 48 at Churchill Downs is strategically placed for him to look down the shedrow at every stall on one side of his barn.

“I spend a lot of time here at the barn just looking down the shedrow. At eleven o'clock here, we feed them, and all their heads start to pop out from the stall door. They know, eleven is ‘din-din’ time. They'll start nickering when the feed starts coming. It's a good time.”

If there is a favorite aspect of training for Hartman it is learning the personality of each of his horses.

He talked about a filly in his barn he described first as “very difficult” before amending it quickly to “super difficult.” How “super”? She had ripped off her hind shoes loading in the horse trailer on the way to Hartman’s barn at Churchill Downs.

A cold water spa just across from Hartman’s barn presented another difficulty for the filly. Hartman smiles recounting a recent incident. 

“She goes in that thing all the time. About every third day, though, she decides she wants ‘more attention,’” as he termed it. “The other day she was kicking, using her hind legs. I thought, ‘somebody's going to get hurt.’ I came over and stood behind her and just started nudging her. She stopped and turned her head to look at me, turned some more to look at me , and then she walked right in.

“That’s just her. That’s what she does.”

Difficult or easy, all of Hartman’s horses run and run often, a reputation which he earned early in his career and still earns.

“Your magazine says ‘Trainer,’ right? It doesn’t say ‘Stall.’ I think you gotta’ run them.” At the time of writing, the 30 horses he has currently at Churchill Downs have made 56 starts in 38 days of racing—not that far from two starters per day. 

His absence of shyness around the entry box has paid dividends. His career win percentage is the same as racing luminary, trainer Steve Asmussen.

Despite that better-than-average win percentage, he dismisses statistics. “There are some real good trainers that are ten percent, twelve percent, and fifteen percent. I think people get a little too focused on the percent, not on the horse.” He goes so far as to say that a focus on statistics by trainers accounts for the increasing number of scratches and small fields. “They’re scared to run them because they want to keep their numbers up.”

The task, according to Hartman, is spending a lot of time determining where they run. Like any trainer, he likes to run his horses where they have a shot at winning but that doesn’t mean shipping a horse to a small track from Churchill Downs to improve chances of a win. “If I've got a horse that needs to be at Belterra (in Cincinnati) then they’ll be at Belterra,” making an oblique reference to trainers who shop for easy spots. He thinks it is one cause of smaller fields and more scratches at major tracks.  

The path to the success Hartman has achieved to date began with his first venture to Lone Star Park outside Dallas. That’s where he introduced a newcomer, Joe Davis, to horse racing.

“He called me up and wanted to talk about getting in the game. He had never owned a horse.  

“He was the first guy that really invested in a lot of horses with us, and that probably changed the direction for me.” Three straight wins for horses with Davis’s first three starters for Hartman didn’t hurt in cementing the relationship. 

“Before, I was just plugging along, trying to get us in the Midwest.” Hartman has had as many as 45 horses owned by Davis in his barn through the years.

The other major boost to Hartman was giving Oaklawn Park a shot in 2013. In 77 starts in Hot Springs, Hartman horses won 16 races for an impressive 21% win rate and 12th place in trainer standings for the meeting. 

The move was the beginning of “getting better horses and new owners.”

Of course, that doesn’t just happen. “If you’re winning races, owners will come.”

One new owner Hartman met at Oaklawn, James Driver, brought him 15 horses that the trainer knew were well-bought, solid horses.

“He had replaced his previous trainer and called me and said he wanted to make a switch,” recalled Hartman. “I was a little bit surprised. I thought they had a good thing going myself. I said to him, ‘Well, maybe you'll work it out with him.’

“I try to quiz someone a little bit, you know, to see what’s going on. Are they firing their previous trainer because, ‘I don't like the way he picks his races,’ or whatever. I’ll ask, ‘Well, where do you think they should run?’ And then you might find out the reason why they're firing the trainer is because they want to run them in allowance races. Well hell, it ain't gonna be much different with me. I want to find out what the guy's doing. What's the thinking? Is he firing the trainer just to make a change or is there a legit reason.”

This may go a long way in explaining the long relationships he has had with key clients and the success he has brought them. “Joe Davis told me, ‘Chris, we've been together longer than two of my marriages.’”

From Oaklawn, Hartman, a noted storyteller on the backside at Churchill Downs, employed ‘a little bit of convincing’ with some of his clients to give Kentucky and Churchill Downs a try in 2015. 

“We had twelve horses for Driver and I thought they’d fit here,” said Hartman. He is still traveling the Churchill Downs-Oaklawn Park circuit each year. He also still has horses from both Davis and Driver.

What is next for Hartman? The last two $5 million-dollar years bode well for the future. 

“You always have to go forward. I'm just trying to get better horses.”

The challenge he embraces to get the most from horses is something that has never left him. “I'll be honest, if I had fifty-two stake horses in the barn right now, and there's fifty-four stalls, I’d still have a couple claimers. I love trying to figure them out. Some people like to mess around with old cars, and I like to mess around with horses.” 

And making them, of course, as good as they can be. 

Stay tuned.

From the discipline of the battlefield to the demands of the backstretch - Mark Simms Jr. in profile

Article by Alicia Hughes 

There is a level of ease that radiates off individuals fortunate enough to exist entirely within their element, an enviable calm that never waivers even when honing their craft in an industry designed to be a 365/24/7 grind. 

Theirs is the kind of vibe that hangs like pollen in thick summer air and drapes itself all over those who enter their orbit, which explains why the far end of Barn E at Churchill Downs’ Trackside Training Center in Louisville is as much a sanctuary for its occupants as it is a hub for aspirations. Through every pass down the shedrow, every forelock that gets rubbed, every conversation had with a visitor, friend, or colleague, it becomes as obvious as the black and red sign with the white diamond out front.

Mark Simms, Jr. is exactly where he should be – the byproduct of having spent the brunt of his adult life forging a path toward what he believed was his inherent destination.

“For sure, this is definitely my passion,” the 36-year-old trainer said through a widening grin. “I was telling my wife the other day how relaxing it is to come to the barn. No matter what’s going on elsewhere, coming to the barn and being around the horses, it’s just super tranquil.”

Technically, there is little in the way of tranquility in the life of a Thoroughbred racehorse trainer. There is no off season, or real days off for that matter, and one’s entire livelihood hinges on the ability of 1,000-pound athletes supported by sinewy limbs as fragile as they are powerful. 

Yet, from the time he took his first steps while trying to follow his grandfather to the barn to serving his country in the Army during tours of duty in Korea and Afghanistan, the demands of a life that revolves around equine athletes is what Simms sought the most. It was an ambition he chased even when the world presented him with chance after chance to settle into an illustrious career path he had already proven he could excel at. 

Hence, as he goes about his morning routine in the barn with his name on it filled with horses owned by some of the most storied clients in the sport, the appreciation for his most challenging and rewarding journey to date is almost tangible. 

There is a plethora of metrics used to measure success amongst trainers - win percentages, stakes victories, purse money, graded triumphs. While attaining lofty marks in those categories is as much as goal for Simms as it is for any of his comrades, the fact he found a pathway into an industry that doesn’t easily open doors for those who don’t descend from a certain ilk is as much an achievement as any piece of hardware from a Grade 1 test. 

While he comes from a long line of horsemen, including his grandfather who was a trainer himself, Simms’ arrival at his current reality is one even Hollywood’s most creative screenwriters would be hard pressed to conjure. Born in Texas, he grew up on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indian Reservation in North Dakota near Chippewa Downs racetrack, the product of a military family. Even as he followed in his parent’s footsteps - being in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) while enrolled in Virginia State University, becoming an Intelligence Officer and eventually rising to the rank of captain in the Army - fate always kept him close enough to horses to where he could never quell the zeal that had manifested since he took those first wobbly strides toward his grandfather’s stable. 

To sign up for such a vocation requires an uncommon passion, discipline, faith, and work ethic lest one get devoured by the unyielding highs and lows that are the sport’s hallmarks. To keep chasing a dream that promised to do nothing but test those intangibles at every point of call demanded something as unique from Simms as his backstory itself.

“I always wanted to train horses; I knew that. Training horses, being around horses is really all I ever wanted to do…but I really didn’t think it was feasible there for a while,” Simms said. “Even throughout my time in the Army, I was always trying to get close to the horses, but I just didn’t have a path to get in. Horse racing, especially in Kentucky, it’s super inbred to where people’s dads were trainers, their moms were trainers, or they were tied to a farm. Really, my way in was being in the military.”

During his freshman year at Virginia State University, as he began studying toward the degree in Criminal Justice and minor in Animal Science he would ultimately graduate with, Simms worked at a nearby horse farm in his free time to try and satiate his lifelong calling, a move most of his acquaintances dismissed as a pipedream. 

He did have a certain individual in his corner, however, encouraging him not to let his passion project become just that.

“I met my wife in college our freshman year and I was working at a farm just to be close to the horses,” Simms said of his wife, Shayla who works as a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit nurse. “I would tell people ‘I want to train horses’ and everyone was like ‘You’re crazy’. But she was really the first person to really be like ‘You can do this’. That’s how I knew she was the one.

“She would buy me books about horse racing and just horses in general just to show her support. That’s when the gears started turning a bit. But I did ROTC, so I knew after college I was going to be an officer in the Army.”

As a result of being in the top 2% of cadets in the nation, Simms got to choose which branch of the Army he wanted to go into. He settled on Korea first in 2011 and while there, would find his way to the racetracks on the weekends all while keeping tabs on the major goings on with the sport back home. When the time came for him to pick a new duty station, he chose an infantry brigade in Fort Knox, Kentucky that was getting set to deploy to Afghanistan. 

Once the papers came through saying he was officially being assigned to the Bluegrass State, putting him less than an hour’s drive from Churchill Downs, Simms leaned into the opportunity and began reaching out to trainers about the possibility of gaining the experience necessary to advance his dream while simultaneously advancing his career.

“I tell people all the time, the Army made the mistake of sending me to Fort Knox,” Simms laughed. “I got close to racehorses again.”

While Thoroughbred racing is littered with those who think they want to delve into the industry only to get a rude awakening when ensconced in the unyielding nature of the business, the discipline embedded in Simms as a result of his background caught the attention of one of the sport’s more heralded barns. Louisville native Dale Romans, who earned the Eclipse Award in 2012 as the nation’s outstanding trainer, had a member of his staff at the time in Tari Hendrickson who herself had family in the military. 

She responded to Simms’ email by telling him he was free to report to Romans' training center in Goshen once he reported for duty. 

“On the weekends and even sometimes during the week, because I didn’t have to be in the office until like 9 a.m., I would get up at 4 a.m. drive up there to Goshen, train horses in the morning, take a shower, throw on my uniform, and go to work,” Simms recalled. “And when I got back from Afghanistan (in 2014), I started thinking ‘I can do this.’”

Over the course of the next four years, Simms would establish himself as an assistant to Romans while also holding down a job at GE (General Electric), heading to the barn before work and helping to hone the likes of such proteges as Travers Stakes winner Keen Ice, fellow Grade 1 winners Brody’s Cause and Free Drop Billy, and future top sire Not This Time. Though horsemanship had long been a part of his DNA, getting to be around top-level runners and learning how to develop them into such was an invaluable piece of the puzzle Simms couldn’t get enough of. 

“He’s got the work ethic of a military man. He got to see a lot of things, a lot of good horses and figure out what he needed to do,” Romans said of Simms. “The horse stuff isn’t brain surgery and a smart guy like Mark can learn all of that pretty quick. It’s all the stuff around it that can be difficult, but he seems to have a good knack for that. A lot of people show up thinking they love horses when what they really like is horse racing, and those can be two different things. And Mark obviously has a love for the horse. It really seems like it has enriched his life.”

Days before the 2017 Preakness Stakes, Simms’s grandfather Michael Nelson – the one who told him he needed to walk on his own if he wanted to join him in the barn - passed away. Soon after, Simms decided the time had come for him to take his most definitive solo steps yet.

“When he passed, I was like, man I have to at least give it a shot,” Simms said. 

Despite the fact the foundations of the sport were built on the backs of the African-American community, many of the racist ideologies that drove Black horsemen out during the Jim Crow era still resonate to this day. Where Black jockeys and trainers once reigned over the sport’s greatest prizes – with Black reinsmen winning 15 of the Kentucky Derby's first 28 runnings and Hall of Famers like Ed Brown among the most accomplished horsemen of his time – the opportunity to have an opportunity is something that remains scarce for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color individuals in Thoroughbred racing.

It is something Simms doesn’t like to dwell on but also can’t help but be aware of ever since he took the leap and began training on his own in 2017, becoming one of few Black trainers currently in the sport. About three years ago, he gained the support of historic Calumet Farm as his main client, a relationship that has been fruitful ever since Simms claimed a son of Candy Ride (ARG) by the name of Kaziranga off them in 2019 and went on to earn his first Churchill Downs win with the gelding two starts later. 

Surreal as it is that he is on the same Calumet email list as the Todd Pletchers and Chad Browns of the world, Simms knows he shoulders a different kind of burden every time he walks into a paddock to saddle one of his own.

“Whenever I have someone new or a buddy come to town, I always show them the (Kentucky Derby) mural at Churchill Downs and how it started as all Black trainers and all Black jockeys and how we transitioned away from it,” Simms said. “It does weigh on me. I’m always thinking about maybe I can open a door for someone else and show people that we can still do it.

“I’m a firm believer that I’m an opportunity or a horse away from things taking off. But with young people in the sport in general, unless someone knows your name or you’re intertwined, you don’t get as many opportunities as some of the other folks,” Simms continued. “Another thing is a lot of people are comfortable with folks who look like them and unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of Black owners. It’s hard, it’s a challenge. But I do see a glimmer in some of these older Black grooms. They see me and say, ‘Oh you’re a trainer?’ I can see a light in their eyes. I can see the hope.”

They also see genuine potential. In 2023, Simms saddled 78 starters who earned more than $400,000, both career highs. His current equine roster numbers at a dozen and, if he could get the stars to align just so, he would like to pick up a couple more claiming outfits, get his number of trainees up to the 30-40 range, and start making some real noise with the 2-year-olds in his care. 

“I don’t think I would want to be like those guys who have 200-300 horses,” he said. “Those guys do a phenomenal job, but I would prefer quality over quantity just because I want to be hands on.”

“His history with horses is equal to his passion for them. We are certain he will be a major player in American horse racing going forward,” Calumet Farm added in a statement. 

With added time and chances will come more positive numbers. Regardless of the statistics, however, it is evident Simms is flourishing.

When his wife went into labor with their second child, the timing was such that they both agreed to swing by his barn on the way to the hospital to make sure the other youngsters dependent on him were well situated. 

“And then on the way home, we stopped at the barn and brought the baby into the barn and made sure everything was good,” Simms said.

For the better part of the last decade, things couldn’t be much better for Simms. He has manifested the position in life he always dreamt for himself.

And he couldn’t be more at ease.

“I've had several opportunities to do other things, but the horses have been my passion, and I wake up every day and thank the good Lord that I get to pursue my passion,” he said. “I think there are a lot of really good horse trainers out here that just don't have the athletes. I’m just hoping some of us can get some more opportunities.”

From the backstretch to the big stage - Louisiana native Lonnie Briley with Triple Crown hopeful Coal Battle in profile

Each year, the Triple Crown season features at least one underdog story, a horse that seems to come out of nowhere to make a splash in the run-up to these three classic races. This little guy may be new to the broader public, but for those who live and breathe racing, theirs is a familiar name, someone known for their passion for the horses and for the sport. Their star horse may bring new attention to this familiar face, but really, the success of that Triple Crown horse is the by-product of decades of the trainer’s devotion to their craft. 

For Lonnie Briley, the success of Coal Battle, his Triple Crown hopeful owned by Robbie Norman of Norman Stables, is the culmination of his years as the commiserate horseman. From roping horses to farm trainer to his new role as the man behind one of this year’s leading three-year-olds, Coal Battle is the result of a lifetime working with equine athletes and the end result of his training program, his emphasis on finding standout athletes at certain price points and then cultivating the individual to maximize their talents.

For this Louisiana native, being on the Triple Crown trail is definitely a new sensation. Derby dreaming has not really been on his radar during his nearly forty-year career. “I never thought I'd have one,” Briley shared. “I mean, that was out of the picture, to have that quality of a horse.”

This storybook season has focused more attention than ever on this easygoing conditioner who has mostly flown under the radar throughout his time on the racetrack. Though he has made horses and racing his life, Briley’s background did not make pursuing the sport an inevitability. Born in Opelousas, Louisiana, home of Evangeline Downs racetrack, his father Lionel worked in the oil fields and his mother Robbie was a nurse. Even though his uncle Ronald Bradley was a quarter-horse trainer, Briley got his exposure to horses in a different forum. 

“I was into rodeoing when I was younger, and I liked to rope. So that’s, I guess, where the horses started,” he recalled. “My interest was always in horses. I liked to know what made them tick and how they thought and stuff like that. It’s been a self-taught experience throughout my life.” 

Decades later, roping is still a part of Briley’s life. His son Lance and grandson Noah were competitive ropers, and Noah went to the National High School finals. His family has even participated in the World Series of Team Roping. “Yeah, it’s just something we like to do,” Briley laughed. 

Like his father, he went to work in Louisiana’s oil fields after high school, working as a tool pusher while also breaking and training Thoroughbreds on the side. Briley’s reputation as a horseman caught the attention of John Franks, owner of Franks Petroleum in Shreveport, Louisiana. When the oil field he was working at shut down, the Louisiana native got a surprising offer. “Mr. Franks called me one night and asked me if I'd go [to work for him]. He asked me about the oil field, what I did. I said I was a tool pusher. He said, ‘Do you want to come work for me?’ I said, ‘Yes.’” Briley recalled. “Mr. Franks, he was a geologist by trade. And so, he was very familiar with the oil field. But he had, heck, 700 something mares at that time. Stallions and racehorses. He was the biggest owner in the country. So, I went. It was a good experience. It was fun.”

The oilman had entered racing in the late 1970s, buying Alta’s Lady, an unraced Louisiana-bred broodmare who went on to produce several stakes-winning foals. Franks then went all in on breeding and racing Thoroughbreds; when he passed away in 2003, he had more than 500 horses, including 120 horses with various trainers around the country. Four times he won the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Owner and led North America in wins six times and in earnings five times. In addition, Franks was a nine-time leading breeder by wins in the 1980s and 1990s. He owned farms in Ocala, Florida, and in Shreveport, where Briley went to work as farm trainer in 1991.

There, he did a little bit of everything, handling stallions, breeding and foaling out mares, breaking young horses, and more. Working day in and day out with Thoroughbreds prompted Briley to add a unique feature to his office: “I had actually put a skeleton together and glued it and wired it together from a horse. Mr. Frank said, ‘What's you doing with that?’ I said, ‘Well, if the horse got a problem, I can show you where it's at.’ He said, ‘Well, you got it in the office.’ I said, ‘Well, it don't eat anything.’” Briley laughed. That skeleton is indicative of the trainer’s philosophy on horses, his goal to learn everything about horses to catch issues before they become problems and to assess each horse as an individual, watching how they move and think so he can place them in the best spot possible.

It was Briley’s eye for talent that led Franks to one of his most successful horses, Answer Lively. A colt by graded stakes winner Lively One, his dam Twosies Answer was also a stakes winner, but had not been a good producer to that point. 

“They actually had that colt scheduled to go to the Arkansas sale. I don't want to say a cold sale, but not really a strong sale. But I looked at this little colt in the past, and I foaled him out and everything,” Briley recalled. “He was really a nice colt. He was a little high tail set horse and big blaze face, but he was really athletic and everything. I called Mr. Franks' office, and I said, ‘This horse, we're going to scratch him, and he don't need to go to that sale.’ He said, ‘Well, Lonnie, his mama hadn't produced anything.’ I said, ‘Well, she did this year,’ I said, ‘This is a nice colt.’”

Briley’s instincts were right. Answer Lively won the 1998 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and then the Eclipse for Champion Two-Year-Old Colt. At three, he was second in the Grade 2 Louisiana Derby and then became Franks’s third and final Kentucky Derby starter, finishing 10th behind Charismatic in 1999. 

With his long-time boss gone, Briley focused on training full-time, staying in Louisiana since he primarily had Louisiana breds and running in the state was more lucrative than going elsewhere. He had taken out his trainer’s license in his 20s, but did not focus on training full time until Franks’s death in 2003. In the two decades since, this former tool pusher has built a reputation on his eye for horses as well as his honesty, both of which have led him to newfound heights in the sport. Add in his loyal team of employees and a steadfast owner in his corner, and it becomes this newfound attention on this stalwart horseman is long overdue. 

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Since going out on his own, Briley has focused on racing in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas with occasional incursions to Keeneland and Kentucky Downs. When he struck out on his own, “I had five, six, seven horses, and I get there early in the morning and walk my walkers, clean my stalls, fix my feet buckets, and sign up my horses, and wait on the exercise rider. And I was by myself. And then I think when I got up to 11, I said, ‘Man, I got to get some help.’ But I remember them days. That was tough.”

Currently, Briley has about 30 horses divided between his barns in Louisiana and at Oaklawn Park, where Coal Battle has spent the winter preparing for the Triple Crown season. In his home state, his horses stay at Copper Crowne in Opelousas, an equestrian center that offers lay-up and rehab facilities as well as a 6 ½-furlong training track and on-site veterinary clinic. There, his team breaks young horses and prepares them for the racetrack while also caring for any horses that need a break or are recovering from an injury. 

The Briley barn has ten employees, including his assistant trainer and primary exercise rider, former jockey Bethany Taylor, daughter of the late Remi Gunn, who also rode competitively; his assistant at Evangeline Downs, Raymundo Marin; and his assistant at Copper Crowne, Daisy Cox. Each of his grooms works with about six horses, including Reyes Perez, the man in charge of stable star Coal Battle. At the heart of Briley’s program is the idea that horses are individuals; rather than using the same approach to feeding or training for each athlete, the trainer prefers to tailor routines to the specific horse. 

As Taylor observes about her boss, “he's pretty good about treating each horse as an individual. There's some trainers that have success with putting all their horses on the same routine, like a cookie-cutter operation. And that works for people. But also, he takes into consideration each horse's needs and personalities and stuff like that.”

Each will get “a little breakfast in the morning, maybe half a scoop of feed, just put something in their stomach in case a horse has a little ulcerated stomach or something,” Briley shared. “Then after that, before 10:00, I like for them to eat. Because the morning of the race, you're trying to feed them early, and then you're changing their routine. So as soon as I can feed their groceries, I'm going to feed them. And they like that because they're going to eat their belly full, and they might have one or two bites left, and they're going to go in the corner, and we leave them alone.”

When it comes to their exercise routine, Briley assesses each horse’s temperament and then goes from there. “He watches them. And so, if a horse is lazy and not really getting on the muscle or anything, he might back off of them a little bit, jog them, and let them freshen up,” Taylor observed. “He does try to keep everybody pretty much on a work schedule in that sense. But as far as everyday training and stuff or prepping them for a race, it'll 100% depend on that horse at that time and where they're at.” 

His preferred time between starts also takes the individual into account. “I think four weeks, five weeks is plenty of time, almost on the crunch of being too much, really,” Briley shared. “So around four weeks, I think, because when they're fresh and they try hard and the horses that want to win, they'll give you everything they got. If you start crushing on them too much, running them too close too many times, well, sooner or later, they're going to take a race for themselves and say, ‘Hey, this is too much.’ Because I think horses got minds and feelings, and they think, too.”

Coal Battle, for example, has had four to five weeks between starts since his debut at Evangeline in late July. To prepare the colt for each start, he will go for “those little short works, [which] you can do them closer and more often. You're opening the lungs, and that's what you want. A lot of circulation in the lungs, a lot of blood flow, a lot of air. You want room. And I usually will work mine a half mile, five-eighths. Very seldom, I'll work a horse three-quarters. Before their races, four or five days, I'll blow them three-eighths.” 

Briley’s focus for Coal Battle, as for all of his horses, is to “keep them happy, keep them fit. And he works regular, believe me. I mean, he works on a regular schedule, and all my horses do. And I tell the riders, ‘Don't be scared to use them.’ They’re fit. But that's the thing, watching your horses, because they'll more or less tell you everything if you are paying attention.”

His program has room for all horses, whether they run short or long, though he does tend to lean more toward routers. "To each his own, but I like route horses, but they have to have speed,” Briley observed. “A route horse, just a plodder, they'll just gallop all day long and don't go nowhere. I think fast horses can go far. I love to give a horse a chance to run on a turf. I love to give a horse a chance to run far. Now, if he's bred to run four and a half, five furlongs, and after that, he spits a bit, well, he ain't going nowhere. But if a horse, he works :35, going three-eighths, and gallops out in :47, a lot of them will just keep going.”

He also does not discriminate when it comes to the surface. The veteran trainer likes to put his horses “wherever they fit. I love to run turf horses, but I love the dirt, too. And I mean, I got horses like Coal Battle and Go Captain and a few others. They'll run on the gravel road. But it doesn't matter to me. It's where they're comfortable and where they like to run.”

Then, when problems arise, Briley will “address the problem pretty aggressively, whatever it is, if it's bowed tendons or ankles or knees. And then time. Horses need time to recuperate and stuff. There's different methods we use for each individual problem.” Since he is on the road quite a bit, the horses will then go to Daisy Cox at Copper Crowne to recuperate. 

Mark Norman, one of the two brothers that make up Norman Stables, Briley’s sole owner shared that the veteran trainer is “very cautious on injuries and always wants to do right by the horse by giving them the time off they need or backing off on their training. He's never going to rush one through an injury or anything. He wants to be extra cautious and make sure they heal and everything's right on the horse.”

Assistant trainer Bethany Taylor echoes that, adding “it's always disappointing when you have something go wrong in the barn. But he really does try to handle everything with patience, and he knows so much. He just knows so much. And if we ever have one that's just maybe not necessarily injured, but just done racing, they just have lost their desire to be racehorses anymore, he's got a couple of people that he'll give them to so that they can be rode and rehomed as jumpers or barrel racers or just anything to give them another home.”

Not only is he patient with his horses, but also with his employees, preferring to teach when the opportunity arises. “He is particular about how he wants things done. But, if you mess up and you don't quite understand what he's wanting from you, he'll explain it to you. He's not a very aggressive type of person. He'll sit you down and explain it to you. So, you can learn a lot from him,” Taylor shared. 

His patience also extends to preparing young horses for their jobs as racehorses, especially the yearlings they pick up at sales. “He'll bring them home and give them 30, 45 days if they need it. And then they'll start back easy jogging and stuff, and we won't even get them at the track. We won't get them in from the training center until they're ready to really start back training again. They'll get legged up at the training center before we even get them.”

Then, as Briley shared, “in September, we'll break them and start jogging them and stuff. And I'll usually jog them the first 30 days. We'll go through the gates with them as soon as we can, just walk them in and then out, so it's just another thing for them. Then we'll start galloping and usually, depending on the horse, after close to 90 days and so we'll start giving them little clips, and I'll clip them probably twice a week, like a sixteenth, and then I'll build it up to an eighth and then a quarter. And then after that, I'll go once a week and then just build them up to three eighths and a half.” 

Generally, the veteran trainer will start his two-year-olds around September. He will try them on the turf as he did with Coal Battle. After breaking his maiden on dirt, Briley sent the colt to Kentucky Downs, where he made a strong showing in the Kentucky Juvenile Mile Stakes. “He was way out of it. He'd come flying. And he run forth. When he crossed the line, two jumps, he was in front, and galloped out five, six lengths in front of the winners,” Briley remembered. “Right there, I knew there was more to the horse than what I expected from day one.”

Coal Battle is a long way from the horses that the veteran started his career with, a sign that the integrity and devotion he has been known for in his native Louisiana have brought him to a new level in the sport he loves.

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After his tenure with John Franks ended, Briley got his start with “cheaper claiming horses, $5,000 claimers, and things like that, $10,000 claimers. Then some of the breeders, they'd raise babies, and then they'd hope they'd be for charity babies to run in a little five furlong [race] for charities and things like that.”

Not quite a decade later, the veteran horseman met brothers Mark and Robbie Norman of Norman Stables. The pair were new to racing and looking for a trainer. They chose Copper Crowne for its proximity to their homes in southern Alabama and went through the center’s seven barns talking to different trainers, their goal to find the right person to start their fledgling stable with. Briley, in his characteristic joking manner, said, “They made a mistake and came back to my barn.”

“They asked me if I would buy them a few horses, and I said, ‘Yeah.’ And we started from there. Started with two or three horses and ended up with 30.”

Their entry into racing came during a tough time for Robbie. “I [had] recently went through a divorce. I will say me and my ex-wife, we get along wonderfully now. She's the biggest fan of Coal Battle, so all that works out good in the end also. But you're searching for something because you really didn't want the divorce, and you're asking yourself, ‘How did I end up in this spot?’” Norman remembered. “I was actually at an apartment in downtown Thomasville trying to figure out where I was going to move next and looking for a new home. I was just flipping through the channels one night, and I think the race is wrong, so I watched a race or two. Then that documentary [on 2012 Belmont Stakes winner Union Rags] come up, and so I watched the full documentary, and it hit me right there that I'm going to buy me a racehorse. I'm going to go and do something fun and, like I say, do a little traveling and do something that you can win a victory in.” 

The brothers own a series of grocery stores in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Georgia, fulfilling a dream that their father, a Southern Baptist minister, had as a young man. Major brain surgery in his 20s left the patriarch disabled, but Robbie followed in his footsteps after graduating with an accounting degree from Troy University. His first job in a grocery warehouse gave Norman the experience and connections that allowed the pair to start their company. Their success has enabled Robbie to pursue owning a stable with Mark, who has had an interest in horses since childhood and currently works with barrel racers. Both of his daughters are competitive barrel riders themselves while Robbie’s two sons, Drew and Nathan, root for their dad’s horses. Drew also accompanies his dad and Briley when they travel to sales around the region. 

Sales are Norman Stables’ preferred method of acquiring horses, though Robbie has bred a couple of his former mares to sires like Dr. Schivel and star Coal Battle’s sire Coal Front. “I prefer to buy. The breeding is a long-term process, and then they can have conformation issues. I truly will never be a major breeder. I really like to go and buy an athlete.”

Briley and Norman both go for sales over breeding. The experience the veteran horseman gained working for John Franks allowed him to develop an eye for the right physique. Finding that horse, though, is where the work comes in. “I love going to a sale, but I'm glad to leave. Because if you work a sale, it's a lot of work. You might look at 200 horses and then try to cut it down at three or four. It's a lot,” Briley shared. 

“I look in a book, and I love new sires, and I love first foals,” he continued. “A mare, if she ran fine, and if she didn't run, she has to have pedigree. But I love the first or second foal. First foal is my favorite. But the first five foals in a mare, if she hadn't produced a runner, her chances are slim and none. She can throw a minor stakes horse in the first five foals, and she can be 20 years old and throw a millionaire. It's just statistics. I look for genetic crosses, and then a stallion that went the route of ground but had a ton of speed. I love Grade 1 horses and stuff, but they don't have to be.” 

Whether he is at the sales with his trainer or watching from home, Robbie Norman goes for the physique over pedigree. “I'm more physical at times, and I like to see how they move, their smoothness and their moving,” he shared. “Now, Lonnie, he adds he knows more about the pedigree, and he sees things in the pedigree, and he's just got a ton of knowledge. I allow him to really take the lead. Deal with the pedigree part. I'm more of just looking for the athlete and everything.”

Additionally, Norman focuses on acquiring regional-bred horses over Kentucky breds. The reason is simple: money. “Any time we go to a sale, I'm looking for the Arkansas bred, the Oklahoma bred, that's the first thing in the book that I'm looking at, because I really want to identify and try to get the best regional bread horse that I can. Financially, that is where you can make the most money on a budget like we have,” he observed.”

“If you're in Louisiana, you can race just against Louisiana breds. In Texas, you can race just against Texas breds. And that way, it really gives you a better shot at winning a stakes race,” the owner shared. When Briley went to the Texas Thoroughbred Association Yearling Sale in 2023, he and Norman’s other trainer Jayde Gelner went looking for regional breds. Gelner came away with Secret Faith, a stakes-winning Louisiana-bred filly by Aurelius Maximus; Briley went against type and came away with a Kentucky-bred by Coal Front. 

The trainer liked the colt right away and kept coming back to him throughout the lead-up to the sale. “I liked his confirmation. He had a good walk, good shoulder, good hip, long neck on him, and really a good head on him. He was the first foal out of a mare, a Midshipman mare, which I like a lot,” Briley remembered. “I like the bloodline. And then, genetically, if you look close, in the fifth, sixth generation, he goes back to Seattle Slew six times.” Though he had three horses on his short list, the trainer shared his interest in the Coal Front colt, hip 263. 

Unable to travel with Briley, Norman bid online, knowing that “there's no other horse that Lonnie likes. I'm just clicking away thinking, $35,000, I'm going to get him. And then at 40, around $40,000, it came down, you could tell, to the Internet, which was me, and somebody else. They were pointing just at one person. And so, I just kept bidding. I said, ‘Eventually, I'm going to get Lonnie this horse.” He likes him.’”

“Next thing you know, I done bid up to $70,000, which was way over our budget, and he was not a Louisiana-bred. But at the end of the day, I guess sometimes, it's not what you plan to happen at that sale, but it's all turned out wonderful.” 

Wonderful is an understatement. Coal Battle has taken the Normans and Briley’s team to places they never expected. 

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Now on the precipice of a Triple Crown campaign for the first time, Briley and Norman find themselves in an unexpected place. After decades of racing under the radar, they are preparing Coal Battle for a stage that neither has experienced before. With the first Saturday in May right around the corner, the pair have been thinking about their approach to the five-week gauntlet that is the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.

After breaking his maiden in his debut at Evangeline Downs in late July, Coal Battle has since racked up four more victories in seven starts, including a win in the Springboard Mile at Remington Park, the Jean Laffite at Delta Downs, and the Smarty Jones and the Grade 2 Rebel at Oaklawn Park. His Rebel victory also gave Briley his first graded stakes victory – which felt “good, like going to a good rope” according to the 72-year-old trainer – and put the colt square in the conversation for the Kentucky Derby. Not only has Norman fielded offers for the colt, which he has turned down, preferring to keep things simple and leaving their current team intact, but also Briley, assistant Bethany Taylor, and the Norman brothers have had racing media knocking on their doors, a new sensation for team Coal Battle. 

“I have people come up to me and say, ‘Hey, Lonnie, congratulations on all this.’ And I just shake hands and say, ‘Thank you.’ But I couldn't name them,” Briley laughed. “It's so many people more or less rooting for the little man, and you hate to let them down. It feels good.”

Taylor, who is not only Coal Battle’s primary exercise rider but also one of the people who knows the colt best, echoed her boss’s sentiments: “We appreciate everybody's support. Everybody's excited for them, and they're rooting so much for us. And we love it, and we're just like, ‘Man, we hope he lives up to everybody's expectations.’”

As they count down to the Run for the Roses, Briley’s plan for the three classics is simple. “I'd like to go early enough where I could get a couple of works of Churchill on that track before the Derby,” the trainer shared. “If he runs good, even if he doesn't win it, he runs, let's say, in the top three or something like that, he will probably still go to the Preakness and see what happens there. It's a little short, and it's usually a smaller field, about half. And then we'll see.” 

Norman, for his part, trusts his trainer’s judgement for Coal Battle’s path through the Triple Crown. “I'm never going to push for it. If Lonnie says he went through a long campaign and he gets third in the Derby and Lonnie makes that decision that he needs rest, he will rest,” Norman said. “If Lonnie makes that decision that he thinks that he can move forward from, say, a good placing in the Derby, and do good in the Preakness, we will go. And that's a relief on me, going back to Lonnie. All those decisions are one hundred percent his, and we're going to back him all the way.” 

That trust that Robbie Norman has in his trainer, one built out of a dozen years of working together as well as the friendship that Briley has built with the brothers as well as their families, comes not only from the expertise of a man who has spent his life with horses but also from the honesty that underpins every move that the trainer makes. It is his honesty and enthusiasm for the equine athletes that make Lonnie Briley easy to root for as he faces his biggest challenge yet.

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Throughout this storybook season with Coal Battle, Lonnie Briley, Robbie Norman, and the teams behind them have been thrust into the spotlight, a new sensation for all involved. Any discussion about the veteran trainer comes back to his deep knowledge of the equine athlete and his honesty as well as his good-natured approach to life. 

“Lonnie is very thorough, old-school. He doesn't let much get past him, and he'll always comment on how many bones are in the body of a horse. He knows a horse very, very well,” Mark Norman shared. “He shares a lot of information and goes over everything really good with you. Just very honest and upfront.”

After working with him for 15 years, Bethany Taylor knows her boss pretty well and will sing his praises when given the opportunity. “He's probably forgotten more stuff than most people know as far as when it comes to just knowing a horse. And you can always count on him being completely honest with you,” she observed. “If the horse isn't what you thought it was or something happens with the horse because they're just so delicate, he's not ever going to not tell you something because you might not like what's happened.” 

At the same time, while he does run a tight ship, “the energy is really light and happy, and we joke a lot,” the long-time assistant shared. “I gallop in jock boots, but I wear Western boots to the barn in the morning to work in in the shed row, and I'll go to put my jock boots on to gallop in the morning, and there'll be candy wrappers in them. He's super playful, just the same that you guys get when you're interviewing him.”

For Robbie Norman, who had enough faith and trust in Lonnie Briley to exceed his usual budget to buy what has become a springtime sensation, the trainer is more than someone he works with: he is a friend. “Number one, Lonnie's just a good person. Everybody in my family likes Lonnie. He's so nice to us. I'm his only owner at the present time. I think he likes that. That forms a good relationship,” Norman shared. “We talk every day, whether it's about $5,000 claimers or whether it's about going to the Kentucky Derby, he does let me be involved. We discuss it. Usually, we come up with the best plan possible. Ultimately, he's the decision maker.” 

Briley’s devotion to his equine athletes shows in how he conducts himself day in and day out, his focus always on the individuals in his stalls. “He's just 100% dedicated. And when Lonnie makes the comment that it's an eight-day-a-week job, 60 hours or 40 hours a day, he's not joking,” Norman shared. “At 72 years old, he's there at 4:00 in the morning, he's there at 8:00 at night. The dedication of what he's put into his craft is something very few people ever achieve in their life.”

The white-haired, soft-spoken Briley remains the same ardent horseman he was as a young man breaking babies and as a farm trainer building a horse skeleton and memorizing the 216 bones that form the foundation of these athletes. The Louisiana native almost seems ageless, his good nature and ability to crack a result of the eternal hope at the heart of horse racing. “Sometimes I say, ‘One of these days, you're going to have to retire,’” the trainer laughed. “Retire and do what? I've been on the road so long and so much, and I don't know if I can. But I guess I could rustle up a rope horse. He'd probably turn and look at me and say, ‘You're not serious.’”

In Lonnie Briley’s case, a horse like Coal Battle is all the fuel he needs to stick at it even in his eighth decade: “A good horse keeps you going. You know what I mean?”

All in the Family: Larry Rivelli Finds Another Level Thanks to Trust, Relationships

Article by Jennifer Kelly

In an era of super trainers with even larger owners behind them, the sport of horse racing still has at its foundation a legion of owners and trainers who operate on a smaller scale but nonetheless make big news on the racetrack. These are the men and women who have built their lives around the equine athletes in their care, their knowledge passed down through generations, supporting racetracks at all levels. These are breeders, owners, trainers, and many more who think of themselves as a family, one bonded by the love of horses. 

For Larry Rivelli, a third-generation horseman, family is at the heart of his barn. Lessons learned by his grandfather’s and uncle’s sides have informed his approach to his work and his relationships with owners as he takes his career to a new level. 

Windy City Boy

A Chicago native, Rivelli comes by his horsemanship honestly: his late grandfather Pete and uncle Jimmy DiVito both made their livelihoods in the sport. Pete made his life with horses, preferring his education on the track rather than in a schoolroom as early as 5th grade. He galloped horses for Bing Crosby, worked with horses during his stint in the Army, and then returned to racing in Chicago and California afterward. He trained for Louis B. Mayer, Harry James and Betty Grable, and Lindsay Howard, son of Charles Howard, owner of the famed Seabiscuit. He returned to Chicago for good in the 1960s and spent the rest of his career there. 

Son Jimmy followed him into the business as well, his home base also in Chicago. Alongside both worked Larry Rivelli, son of Pete’s daughter Julie and Jimmy’s nephew. While his mother worked, “I stayed with my grandparents a lot. And it was just racing forms and programs on the kitchen table every day. I would read them. My grandfather would read them. We would just go back to the track. The track was eight minutes from the house.” 

DiVito put his grandson to work cleaning stalls when he was nine or ten years old; later, he worked with his uncle Jimmy during school breaks, both giving Rivelli opportunities to learn the skills that would serve him when he went out on his own. The young Rivelli always had athletic ambitions at heart – “I either wanted to be a professional football player or a horse trainer,” – leading the state in rushing in his junior and senior years of high school before going on to St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. There, he played wide receiver and kick returner for the Huskies, and after graduation, found his opportunities at the next level were limited. Instead, he turned to the family business. 

“[Training] was always just something that I really was enamored with as a little kid. That's what I really wanted to do, train racehorses, and I think that's why I've been so successful,” Rivelli shared. “It's just not even a job to me. Being a horse trainer, it's just a way of life. You either got to love it or you're not going to be able to do it. You have to have a passion for it.”

With his mother Julie and stepdad Victor in his corner, Rivelli went out on his own as a public trainer, taking out his license in 1999, the year after his grandfather died. He made Chicago his base, staying close to home while building his business and his family. On the home front, Rivelli has daughter Brittany, a competitive synchronized skater, and son Dominic, a collegiate hockey player, continuing the family’s athletic tradition. 

His foundation made the transition from football to training an easy one, a natural progression for a young man who grew up idolizing his famed grandfather and uncle. 

Training Methodologies

Rivelli’s background as a football player and his emphasis on family has inspired his approach to training since he hung out his shingle as a public trainer 25 years ago. His experience as an athlete has cultivated an awareness of the relationship between how a horse feels physically and how they will perform on the racetrack. While such a correlation might seem obvious, first-hand understanding of that dynamic helped Rivelli manage his equine athletes in a manner that emphasizes both fitness and work ethic in his starters. 

“If you've been an athlete, you’ve dealt with injuries and setbacks and therapy differently than people that, let's just say, never played a sport,” Rivelli shared. “It's a sport, and horses get hurt. They want to try to work through these injuries where horses are so much bigger and heavier than humans. And they're putting all that pressure on about the size of our legs. So, if something goes wrong, I take steps back and time heals everything most of the time.”

Dr. Jean White, an Ocala, Florida veterinarian and part of the Rivelli team, describes the trainer’s approach as one where “he would rather do less and have the horse want to do more. If he doesn't think the horse can win, he doesn't want to run it. If it needs rest, let it rest. If it needs its feet fixed, fix them. If it needs us to evaluate it and figure out why, then do that.” 

“It's just like a human being. People go to the gym and absolutely kill themselves every day, and then they don't feel so great,” she observed. “It's a different style. It's a different thought process, a different mentality.”

That emphasis on fitness means the trainer is “a four to six weeks [between races] guy. Occasionally or situationally, you'll have something come up sooner.” 

“Back in the day [2002-2006], I had a turf sprinter, Nicole's Dream, and she was really, really good,” Rivelli remembered. “They had a boys race and a girls race in Chicago, and they were separated by a week. There was no other races on the planet for her for three and a half months, so I ran her back. And she won. She was an extremely sound horse, too, so it made that decision easier.”

The native Chicagoan prefers to run his horses in winnable spots so that they are not asked to give too much over and over again: “I take pride in running most of my horses. I'm a bad loser, so I won't run one if I don't think they can win, really. I'll take as much time as we need to get them to that point. We'll even stop on them and back off and send them home and turn them out and bring them back. If something's not going right during the process instead of getting ready, we're just going to stop. Horses, they only got so many races in them.”

Instead, the trainer prefers to give a horse time off and only bring them back “when they’re 100% and ready to go. And that's why he has horses that run ‘til they're eight,” White shared. “They're wanting to train, wanting to run.”

Vincent Foglia of Patricia’s Hope, one of Rivelli’s biggest owners, points out what he sees is behind the trainer’s success: “He does the same thing every day, seven days a week. He's got that set list. He's always looking at that big sheet. He's always writing down who's going to be walking, who's going to be galloping, who's breezing. It's like clockwork. His consistency, the amount of time he puts into it, is very regimented. Very consistent and meticulous. That's his approach. That's great. And he always does what's right by the horse every time. That's first and foremost.”

That emphasis on consistency and care has helped the third-generation trainer build a solid career in his native racing scene. In 2000, his first full season, Rivelli’s barn had 57 starts and an 8-7-9 record, for 14% win and 42% win-place-show percentages; in 2024, his 25th season, he had 279 starts and a record of 89-45-26, for 25% win and 50% WPS percentages. Nationally, Rivelli has been in the Top 50 by wins in 12 out of the last 15 years. His career win percentage of 26% and WPS of 56% reflects his ability to put his horses in the right spots for success. To this point in his career, much of that has been in the Chicago area.

He won his first training title at Arlington Park in 2011, and then was the track’s leading trainer from 2014 to its final season in 2021. Rivelli then shifted his stable to Hawthorne, the lone racetrack remaining in the Chicago area, and won leading trainer titles there for their 2021-2023 spring meets. This native son emphasizes his roots, saying “I'll still consider myself a Chicago trainer [even] if there are no tracks in Illinois.” 

For his winter racing, Rivelli has horses stabled in a private barn at Fair Grounds in New Orleans, one he purchased from former owner Louis Roussel, an acquisition that signaled his intent to make a long-term investment in Louisiana. “The state is thriving as far as races. They got four tracks in the state, and they're all doing their thing,” Rivelli shared. In addition, he has horses at Turfway Park near Cincinnati and then shifts back to his home base at Hawthorne the rest of the year. In addition to being on home turf there, the track’s proximity works in his favor as “it's easier on the help and on yourself,” plus “I [can] ship to Churchill, which is four hours. To ship to Keeneland is three and a half hours, three hours to Indiana. So, all these tracks around us, it's not a big deal to ship. You ship over a couple of days before or a week before. I like the fact that the horses are all under one roof.”

Staying in this area also helps Rivelli maintain the relationships that he has built with owners like Patricia’s Hope and Richard Ravin, both of whom found ample success at the Windy City’s racetracks. The bonds the trainer has formed with those two owners exemplify his approach to doing business: keeping it all in the family. 

Bonded with Success

Two ownership mainstays in the Rivelli barn include Richard Ravin and the Foglia family, the Chicago-area entrepreneurs-turned-philanthropists behind the Patricia’s Hope stable. Ravin’s investment in the sport includes both his current racing-age horses in Rivelli’s barn and the broodmares that Dr. White keeps on one of her Ocala-area properties. Both owners have been with Rivelli for more than a decade and count the trainer as more than just a partner in the sport. They are a team, and as the trainer puts it, “these are my guys, and they know that. It’s very rare that you have people like that that are in the game with you, and they are happier for you when we win than they are for themselves.”

An Ohio native who settled in the Chicago area in the 1960s, Ravin retired from the insurance business and got into horse ownership after a chance encounter with a friend who had bought into Nicole’s Dream, one of Rivelli’s earliest successes. Ravin partnered with Dare to Dream Stable in the sprinter and then expanded into breeding as well. He met Rivelli through “the four or five guys that we got together as a horse ownership group, and they're the ones that picked him. I didn't know him. I got to know Larry since we had the Nicole's Dream and a couple others when we made a couple of purchases early on, back in 2000, 2001. And I've been together with Larry ever since.” 

The Foglia family got into the ownership game after years of trips to Arlington that became bonding moments for mother Patricia and son Vincent, Jr. Father Vincent founded Sage Products, Inc., a medical supply company in Cary, Illinois. The company’s prosperity allowed the family to start the Foglia Family Foundation, which supports health care and education in the Chicago area. The younger Foglia wanted to expand their love of the sport into ownership in 2010. They met Rivelli when they wanted to claim a horse and immediately hit it off: “I knew he was winning most of the races at Arlington. That was it. I knew nothing. I got a quick introduction to him on the phone because we were going to claim a horse at Gulfstream. We just hit it off. We have similar backgrounds and are real close in age and became friends really quickly,” Foglia remembered. 

“He is like my brother that I never had. We are like two very similar people as far as just the way we are and ended up just being a great partnership and an even better friendship,” the trainer shared. That friendship led to a partnership that dominated at Arlington Park. While Rivelli was leading trainer for much of the track’s final decade, Patricia’s Hope was the leading owner. Rivelli also introduced the Foglias to Ravin, which led to the trainer and owners forging a solid partnership behind horses like Grade 3 stakes winner Jean Elizabeth and Grade 2 turf sprinter One Timer. 

Patricia’s Hope also has brought Rivelli Breeders’ Cup success. Their Cocked and Loaded was the trainer’s first Breeders’ Cup starter at Keeneland in 2015, and turf sprinter Nobals gave both their first Breeders’ Cup winner with his neck victory over Big Invasion in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint at Santa Anita in 2023. The Foglias were also partners in Two Phil’s, second in the 2023 Kentucky Derby behind Mage. They bought into the colt, who became both the trainer’s and the owners’ first Derby starter, on Rivelli’s recommendation. 

“I'm tight with Larry. I'm his biggest investor. I'm his biggest owner. And we're very good friends,” Foglia shared. “The Sagans, who owned [Two Phil’s], they were trying to sell that horse from the sale on out. They wanted the money. I'm like, should I go in? He [Rivelli] goes, ‘Absolutely.’ I said, I'll take as much as I could get. I ended up getting 80%.” 

That trust is at the heart of Rivelli’s relationship with his owners. As Ravin puts it, “First of all, he's a very loyal guy and he just totally exemplifies honesty, integrity, and character. Those are the type of people I really want to be associated with. When you got a person like Larry, it then becomes a friendship, even more so than the partnership.” The Foglias echo that sentiment, the younger Vincent sharing that the trainer “always tells the truth. He's always working hard, and he does right by the horse, and he's honest about everything.”

That honesty translates into a trust that makes the relationship between Rivelli, Ravin, the Foglias, and Dr. White a collaborative effort where “there is plenty of room between the owners and the two of us for somebody to raise their hand and go, ‘Wait. What are we doing? Wait a second.’” White observed. “That is allowed. Every once in a while, somebody goes, ‘yeah, we need to look at the situation differently.’”

In the end, what each appreciates about working with team Rivelli is “the friendship, the team working together, being honest and direct, being upfront, it's just a tremendous experience,” Ravin shared. “My wife threw a very special 80th birthday party for me down here last year. And there was Larry flying from Chicago, coming down and being there as a surprise. So that's the person, that's the relationship, and that's as good as I can give an example of what a quality person he is.”

Rivelli echoes those sentiments whenever he talks about owners like Ravin and the Foglias. “I'm so fortunate right now that the people that I have, my main owners, I can literally say, I love these people,” the trainer shared. “These are my people. If they said tomorrow we quit, I'd say, ‘All right, where are we going for breakfast?’ These are my guys. And they know that, and I know that. And it's very rare that you have people like that that are in the game with you, and they are happier for you when we win than they are for themselves. Like me, I'm so happy for my guys, like for Vinnie and his mom and Richard Ravin and when they win, than I am for myself.”

So much of the success a trainer builds over the course of their career depends on the relationships they cultivate with racetrack officials, jockeys, veterinarians, and most of all, owners. As Dr. White shared, the dynamic between Rivelli and his owners can best be summed up with “Vinnie would just [say], ‘okay, whatever you want to do, whatever you think is best, Riv. That's what we're going to do.’”

That kind of trust, especially when Arlington closed leaving them without the site of much of their early success, led to a rethinking of their business model and one of Rivelli’s highest profile horses to date. 

A Change in Perspective 

Rivelli and team may have dominated Arlington’s last decade, but the track’s closure meant Patricia’s Hope, Richard Ravin, and their trainer needed to rethink their approaches to racing going forward. While they have found success after shifting to Hawthorne, they have changed the type of horses they want in their barn. “The game plan for the owners and myself has changed. Whether we're at Hawthorne or Turfway or Fair Grounds, that's really not important. It's all just a matter of what's running,” the trainer observed. “Focusing our efforts on buying more expensive horses, so to say, or better horses instead of filling the barn with the 20s, 30s, 8s, 12s, because you wanted to have one for each spot. Now we're looking for the best horses we can get all the time.”

That shift to quality over quantity means a multi-layered approach to acquiring horses, mostly through either private purchases or through sales like the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Two-Year-Olds-in-Training Sale. “Our thing is we really do a little bit of everything,” Rivell shared. “There's no method to this. There's no foolproof approach. If we just go to the sale every year, the two-year-old sales, we're going to get couple, of course. I bought One Timer, who has made over a million dollars, as a yearling for $21,000 on the way out of a sale just walking out. I thought I had a big budget that year. I spent a lot of money. That was the cheapest horse I bought. He was little. He's put together good, and I liked him. He looked like he would be fast. He grew up into this beauty, and he's woin over a million dollars. He's just a real nice racehorse.”

Nobals, on the other hand, “we bought him after he ran, so he was a proven horse.” Rivelli purchased the gelding by Noble Mission out of the Empire Maker mare Pearly Blue for $150,000 from owner/trainer Leland Hayes. “And then at the [2022 OBS] two-year-olds in training sale we saw Two Phil’s. The breeder gave him to me, said he wants to sell the horse. Patricia's Hope [the Foglia family] bought the piece that the guy wanted to sell.” Add in Richard Ravin’s broodmares as well as Two Phil’s now standing at stud, Rivelli and company also “breed a few. [Vinnie] will be breeding a couple because he stayed in for a percentage on Two Phil’s. So, we're going to have a lot of action. And you never know where it's going to come from.”

This new focus brought Rivelli his three most successful seasons to date, including 2023, with $4.9 million in earnings and a win percentage of 31%. “It's just a coincidence, but it's funny. The first year we decided to change the motto was the year we won the Breeders’ Cup [with Nobals] and almost won the Derby [with Two Phil’s],” he shared. “We couldn't make a wrong move that year at all. It was great.”

As his highest profile horses to date, One Timer, Two Phil’s, and Nobals are the best illustrations of the trainer’s approach to buying, preparing, and racing his horses. All three were acquired in different ways, each catching Rivelli’s attention based on their physical appearance or performance; Nobals’s lone start at Presque Isle at age two prompted Rivelli to pursue buying the gelding. After acquiring the talent comes planning a campaign. Even if the trainer envisions a specific goal for a horse, like the Kentucky Derby or the Breeders’ Cup, he still approaches the season start by start. 

Nobals was already a stakes winner prior to his 2023 Breeders’ Cup win, taking the listed Arlington-Washington Futurity at age two and following that with two black-type stakes wins at Turfway at age three, all on synthetic. Rivelli also tested him on turf: his first win at age four came in the Grade 2 Twin Spires Turf Sprint on the Kentucky Derby undercard at Churchill Downs, a three-quarter-length victory that had Rivelli circling the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita on his calendar. To get there, the gelding went to Horseshoe Indianapolis and won the William Garrett Handicap; to Saratoga, where he was second to Cogburn in the Grade 3 Troy; and then to Colonial Downs for the Da Hoss, which he won by a head, before his trip out west to Santa Anita. Each start was about four weeks apart with eight weeks between the Da Hoss and his win in the Turf Sprint. With Nobals returning for his six-year-old season, Rivelli knows his sprinting star has fewer options if he wants to build toward a second try at the Breeders’ Cup: “For Nobals, for those type of individuals, there are less select races for a five-eighths turf specialist and sprinter. Wherever they're at, you got to go to.”

When Two Phil’s (Hard Spun – Mia Torri, by General Quarters) landed in his barn in 2022, Rivelli was not thinking about the Kentucky Derby trail until his Grade 3 Street Sense win over a sloppy Churchill Downs surface, his third win in five starts at age two. That 5¼-length win came around two turns, the colt’s second try at 1 1/16 miles after finishing out of the money in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland. After that, “we took a little closer order on what races we were going to run him in and stuff like that,” the trainer remembered. “Now, if he had run a third in that race, maybe I wouldn't have gone the route I went, but he won pretty convincingly.” 

Trying for the first Saturday in May “always is in the back of your mind, but when you don't have the opportunity or you don't have those type of horses all the time, it's hard,” Rivelli observed. “I’ve had one or maybe two. It's because I know what it takes to have those horses. I could have taken several horses that I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars with by running them in other races besides those races and try to qualify for the Derby, but I knew they weren't good enough, even though other people or other trainers might have gone down that road just for the fact to go down it.”

The Street Sense win showed Rivelli and the partnership, including Patricia’s Hope, that the colt had the potential for a try at the Run for the Roses. To get there, the trainer sent his colt to Fair Grounds, where he was third behind Angel of Empire in the Grade 3 Lecomte that January and then second behind Instant Coffee in the Grade 2 Risen Star four weeks later. Rivelli then sent his colt to Turfway for the Grade 3 Jeff Ruby Steaks, which Two Phil’s won by 5¼ lengths. Six weeks later, Rivelli was on the backside of Churchill Downs with a serious Derby contender and a barrage of media seeking out the chestnut colt and his Windy City connections. 

Two Phil’s and regular rider Jareth Loveberry, another Arlington refugee, entered the gate on the first Saturday of May as one of the four horses with single digit odds, fourth choice behind Angel of Empire, Tapit Trice, and Japanese hopeful Derma Sotogake. Loveberry stalked the pace set by Verifying and Kingsbarns through the first mile and then edged clear by 1½ lengths with three furlongs to go. Mage mounted his bid on their outside, building enough momentum to pass Two Phil’s in the final furlong. Though they were not victorious, “the overall day, with the Derby and with Nobals winning the half million-dollar race, that was probably the best day,” Rivelli shared. 

The trainer then broke with tradition and opted not to send Two Phil’s to Pimlico for the Grade 1 Preakness Stakes two weeks later. “We ran in the Derby, ran in the biggest, the baddest race in the planet, and we almost won,” Rivelli reflected. “What do you do now? Okay, that's done. Horse is doing great. Let's find spots where we can't lose. Not what we can maybe win, where we can't lose.”

That choice to skip the Preakness reflects this veteran trainer’s philosophy about both spotting his horses and timing their starts. The two-week turnaround makes the two races “too close, especially that caliber of race. I know they've been talking about backing it up, which I think would be a good thing.” 

Instead, Rivelli chose to follow up Two Phil’s second-place turn at Churchill Downs with a jaunt to Thistledown for the Grade 3 Ohio Derby six weeks later. “There's only so many times he's going to ask a horse to give a hundred percent of its effort,” Dr. White shared. “He's much more likely to ship to some other racetracks away from the crowd and ask them to run to 70% or 80% of their potential and leave that 100% for a spot here or there.” The nine-furlong stakes was another tour-de-force performance from the son of Hard Spun. Once again, he laid just off the pace, took over in the stretch, and finished strong, beating second-choice Bishops Bay by 5¾ lengths. 

“He was spectacular that day. We were so glad to see that he was back, and we was really looking forward to what he was going to do next,” Rivelli remembered. “We were all high fiving on the plane, drinking, partying on the way back. And then the next day, it's like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ Hit right in the gut.”

After his Ohio Derby win, the colt started showing lameness in his left front ankle. Radiographs showed that the issue was a fractured sesamoid. The injury was not life-threatening, but it was career-ending. Two Phil’s was retired with a 10-5-2-1 record and $1,583,450 in earnings. He now stands stud at WinStar Farm, with both Rivelli and the Foglias retaining shares. 

The veteran trainer was realistic about Two Phil’s injury and retirement. “The prognosis is generally not very good. His was not that bad, but it wasn't insignificant. If you gave him a year off, he probably could be fine, or you could go back to training him,” Rivelli observed. “Me, like I said, being an athlete, knowing this stuff, you could be fine, but you're going to lose a step or two or three. What will be the point? What does he need to prove? He doesn't owe us anything. You always want to do right by the horse.”

With 65 to 70 horses and 30 employees in his barns, with a close-knit group of owners and team that have helped take him to a new level, Larry Rivelli is ready for 2025 and beyond. 

The Next Thing 

For this Chicago native, the name of the game is adapting. “Life throws stuff at you. You got to adapt anyway. And that's the key to it is, if you can keep adapting, you're on good footing,” Rivelli shared. “It's like coaching a football team. You got to keep the players healthy as you can for as long as you can. Meanwhile, trying to win races and be in the right spots where you're not going to run fifth, sixth, eighth, and put miles on your horse and not make your owner money.” 

With racing in his hometown down to one racetrack, this native son hopes that Hawthorne will add a casino to its facility, which will help keep the sport afloat in Illinois as such additions have elsewhere. In the meantime, his fellow Chicagoans Richard Ravin and the Foglia family will be along for the ride with complete trust in the man caring for their horses. 

“I have never thought about calling, watching, doing, or anything else with anybody except Larry,” Ravin shared. The retired insurance executive cites his trainer’s best advice about racing – having patience – as the foundation behind his confidence: “If we're patient and care about our horses, I think we'll be rewarded both for doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do, and we'll be rewarded by getting the wins that we need to get to make it a viable operation.”  

Vincent Foglia, Jr. received similar advice from Rivelli: “Don't get too excited about one start. Don't try to rush anything. Do what you think the horse can do. Stay within your limitations of the horse you have and its ability. Relax.” That perspective got the Foglias within a length of a Kentucky Derby. It is an experience that the family behind Patricia’s Hope would be willing to repeat, and they “would only do it with Rivelli. I've had people who want me to go in with them on other horses, and I will say, ‘Sure, but who do you want to train?’ Anyone that says different from Riv, I say, ‘I'm out.’”

The trainer’s 2025 does include another possible Derby contender, Murdock (Vekoma-Saucy At Midnight, by Midnight Lute), owned by Carolyn Wilson. “He won first time out by 10. He ran in one of the first two-year-old races of the year in Chicago. And he won like I thought he would,” Rivelli shared. “And then he had a couple of setbacks, and then he had a testicle up in his stomach, and we had to operate. Then he had something wrong with his foot. But he's a serious horse.” 

The year also includes another potential Breeders’ Cup campaign for Nobals, who is set to make his first start soon; and for One Timer, the new year brings a possible return to Kentucky Downs, the site of his Grade 2 Franklin-Simpson victory and a track that the gelding has run well over. 

“He [Nobals] can run in the race because he's won the Breeders’ Cup, and he's a Grade 1 winner, so he probably will get in as long as I spot his races. I probably would either turn him out for a little bit, but he was lightly raced last year, and he's doing really good. I don't think I want to campaign him from now all the way to the Breeders’ Cup. That would be one whole year of training,” Rivelli shared. 

“One Timer, I'll probably keep him on the Polytrack and then run him in a Churchill or Ellis race, places like that,” the trainer said. “He's a little different horse to train, a little different horse to keep going. So, when he's going good, we're going to keep him in action.” 

As for goals in this new year, short and long, Larry Rivelli is a realist. “Short-term goals is to wake up tomorrow,” the native Chicagoan laughed. “If you start making too many long-term plans in this game, I think it ends up biting you in the ass because you push yourself. It's like, okay, I got the next three races for this horse, and then tomorrow something happens.”

“The owners I have are great. They're not sweating, saying ‘we got to run.’ They let me do my thing, which is great. And I think that's why we've been so successful,” he shared. “It's just a pretty good team. And my help, the people that work for me. Obviously, none of this would happen if I didn't have them.” 

On race days big and small, his grandfather is never far from his thoughts, especially when Rivelli is getting his picture taken in the winner’s circle. “When I point, is actually I'm pointing to my grandfather,” this third-generation horseman shared. “I used to point up in the sky to him. That's back at him.”

For Larry Rivelli, racing is all about family, both blood and chosen, and the trust in each other that brings the successes they have all enjoyed. And he would not have it any other way.

Staying Close to Home: Cynthia McKee Continues a Legacy of Success in West Virginia

Article by Jennifer Kelly

Of the twenty-seven states that are currently home to Thoroughbred racetracks, twenty also feature state breeding programs, incentives meant to reward breeders for keeping their bloodstock close to home and owners for racing their horses in their birth state. The money generated supplements purses and enables both groups to invest more in the places they call home. 

For Cynthia McKee and Beau Ridge Farm, benefits like the West Virginia Thoroughbred Development Fund have allowed her and her late husband John not only to put down roots in their childhood home but also to flourish, building a program that has brought them success in the breeding shed and on the state’s racetracks.

Mountain Mama

Cynthia McKee’s roots in West Virginia racing date back to the opening of Charles Town in 1933, long before the breeder/owner/trainer herself was born. Her father Charles O’Bannon was a 14-year-old boy watering the horses that pulled the starting gate when the racetrack opened and worked his way up to track superintendent, a position he held for more than 40 years. For the O’Bannon family, the sport and the equine athletes were a way of life, making McKee’s lifelong devotion to both a natural progression. 

“My dad was the track superintendent, and my mom, she worked part-time in the admissions. I just grew up around horses and I liked them,” she recalled. “I guess I was five or six, and I got my first pony. My dad did a lot of stuff with the 4-H Pony Club around here.”

From there, McKee graduated to show jumping, “but I couldn't make a living with show horses. I wanted to stay with the animals and the racing was the only way to do it.” First, she galloped horses and then went to work for Vincent Moscarelli, who along with his wife Suzanne bred and raced horses in the state, their Country Roads Farm producing Grade 1 winners Soul of the Matter and Afternoon Deelites for Burt Bacharach. It was Moscarelli who gave McKee a chance to take charge of his barn when he went away for a few days. “He came back, and he said he really thought he'd leave again because I'd won quite a few races,” she recalled. “He did it again the following year. But by then, I had started dating John [McKee].” 

Raised in Kearneysville, John McKee graduated from Charles Town High School, served in the Navy, and then returned to the area to raise and breed Black Angus and Pinzgauer cattle. He started training racehorses in 1969 and bought the original Beau Ridge Farm near Bunker Hill in the early 1970s. By the latter part of the decade, he was racing in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and his home state. He met the former Cynthia O’Bannon through the racetrack when her hunters happened to be stabled in his barn: 

“He said to me one day, he said, ‘Wouldn’t you rather have your two horses on a farm somewhere and you could move your jumps out there? I'd really like to have some more stalls. They just don't have any more stalls. You could just move your horses up there and set your show jumps up in that field,’” she recalled. “I moved my show horses up to his farm and he raced horses in my stalls. And I guess that's how it started because I was up there every day taking care of my horses and riding.”

From there, John McKee and Cynthia O’Bannon were partners in breeding, owning, and training horses, making their home at Beau Ridge and taking turns traveling to tracks like Atlantic City to race their horses. They later moved to Kearneysville, where the couple built a three-furlong training track and a breeding program that has become quite the juggernaut for the Mountain State. In addition to their 170 acres, the McKee’s greatest investment to this point has been the stallion Fiber Sonde. 

A Foundation Named Fiber Sonde

Bred by Aaron and Marie Jones, Fiber Sonde is a 2005 foal by Unbridled’s Song, sire of Arrogate and Liam’s Map, out of the Storm Cat mare Silken Cat. An incident with a fence left the colt with a broken shoulder, keeping him off the racetrack; John McKee then bought the two-year-old prospect at the Keeneland November Sale in 2007 for $8,000. The couple opted not to race him and instead sent him to stud at Beau Ridge. The gray stallion went on to become a superstar, topping the state’s sire list from 2018 to 2023 and finishing second to Juba in 2024 despite the 20-year-old’s fertility issues. 

“We can only breed him once a day, and I try to be very selective with him,” McKee shared. “I don't breed too many outside mares, but the people that supported us from day one with him, I still let them breed some. Indian Charlie is a really good cross with him, so we've bought a few Indian Charlie mares over the years. Distorted Humor also is a good cross with him. Those mares are going to come first.”

The most notable successes for the Fiber Sonde pairing with an Indian Charlie mare include four of his foals with the mare Holy Pow Wow: Late Night Pow Wow, Muad’dib, Duncan Idaho, and Overnight Pow Wow. Racing for Javier Contreras and Breeze Easy, Late Night Pow Wow became the son of Unbridled’s Song’s only graded stakes winner when she took the Grade 3 Charles Town Oaks in 2018 and the Grade 3 Barbara Fritchie at Laurel the following year. The mare also had five black-type stakes wins, including the Cavada, one of the nine stakes on the West Virginia Breeders’ Classic card. 

Local trainer Jeff Runco purchased both Muad’dib and Duncan Idaho for owner David Raim. The former was second in the 2022 edition of the Grade 2 Charles Town Classic and won the Sam Huff West Virginia Breeders’ Classic Stakes the same year in addition to two other black-type stakes victories. Duncan Idaho captured the WVBC Dash for Cash Stakes this past October. 

The McKees also bred Overnight Pow Wow, a 2021 foal that Cynthia convinced her husband to keep rather than sell as they had done with other Fiber Sonde-Holy Pow Wow foals. “He was more for selling than me,” Cynthia reflected. “I don't like selling them.” Her instinct to keep the filly has reaped rewards, though John McKee, who passed away in early February 2023, missed out on Overnight Pow Wow’s thrilling start to her career. The now four-year-old amassed eight wins in 11 starts in 2024, including a win in the WVBC Cavada against older fillies and mares in addition to her two black-type wins at their home track. The success of the Fiber Sonde-Holy Pow Wow’s pairing made the mare’s untimely death in late December a bitter pill for McKee. 

“The only thing I could tell you is, when that mare died, it like to kill me,” she shared. “I cried for a week. I was going to sell everything and move to Charleston, South Carolina, and retire on Folly Beach. Then I got to thinking about Fiber Sonde and our many other mares. This is home.” 

Beau Ridge is also home to five other stallions, including Redirect, another unraced prospect that could pick up where Fiber Sonde leaves off. McKee’s Direct the Cat, who has two WVBC stakes victories already, is a daughter of Redirect out of the Fiber Sonde mare Cat Thats Grey, another WVBC winner who has also become a producer for Beau Ridge: her 2022 colt Im the Director won last year’s West Virginia Futurity, and her 2017 gelding Command the Cat was black-type stakes placed. A son of Grade 1 winner Speightstown out of the Seattle Slew mare alternate, Redirect stands for the same stud fee as Fiber Sonde, $1,000. That fee remains unchanged for 2025, allowing both to stay competitive in a state where the breeding reward program is such a draw. 

“To me, the money is in the development fund awards,” McKee said. “So, the more [mares] I can get to them, the better.” 

Mountain State Racing 

The state currently boasts two Thoroughbred racetracks, Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races, located near Charles Town in the state’s eastern tip, and Mountaineer Casino Racetrack and Resort, in Chester, near New Cumberland in the Northern Panhandle. These two racetracks hosted 285 race days in 2023, with 2,300 races total and an average field size of 7.4 horses. 

Both tracks currently have casinos in addition to their racing facilities, their revenues providing more than $1 billion in funds for purses since the state legalized video lottery machines in 1994 and then added table games in 2007. The state also sets aside $800,000 in purse money for more than a dozen state-bred stakes, including the West Virginia Futurity for two-year-olds at Mountaineer, the Sadie Hawkins Stakes for fillies and mares three years old and up at Charles Town, and the Robert G. Leavitt Memorial Stakes for three-year-olds, also at Charles Town. Both racetracks write one to three races per day for accredited state-breds as well.

Additionally, the West Virginia Thoroughbred Development Fund, established in 1983, incentivizes breeders and owners to not only breed in the state, but also to race there, paying a percentage of the accredited horse’s earnings at the state’s racetracks. Each year, breeders get 60%, owners 25%, and then 15% goes to the owners of the winning horse’s sire. To qualify, the horse’s breeder must be a resident or keep their breeding stock in the state, or the sire must be a resident of the Mountain State. 

The Supplemental Purse Awards program, also known as the 10-10-10 Fund, distributes up to 10% of the winner’s share of the purse to the owner, breeder, and/or sire owner of an accredited state bred and/or sired winner. In all, the WVTDF awards up to $5 million to breeders, owners, and sire owners of state-bred or -sired horses that earn money at the state’s two racetracks. For Beau Ridge and McKee, this kind of money not only rewards their bloodstock investment in the state but also allows them to concentrate their racing there. 

“We get around a large check in February every year. If that horse makes a penny and it's by my stallion, then I make a penny. It's based on your horse versus what other horses earn,” McKee shared. “The purses come here and there, and then the development fund, you get this big chunk of change all at one time. I tried to put enough away that I could operate for five weeks without having to touch any savings. Because you know in this business, you can be on top of the world one minute and you're bottom of the heap the next time.”

In a state with a population of 1.77 million, one that has sustained racing for more than 90 years, the Thoroughbred Development Program shows that “at even one of the smaller racetracks, that you can be successful,” McKee observed. “You don't have to be on the center stage to be successful. Do we make the money they make in New York and California? No. But even the little man that's only got one horse, he's going to get that check in February, too.”

No matter the size of the operation, whether it’s Beau Ridge with their six stallions, 30 mares, and racing stable of about 35, or a smaller operation, the state wants them to breed and race there and programs like the WVTDP enable that grassroots investment that keeps these circuits going. “Most are investing it all back in the industry, and they're excited to be a part of it,” McKee said. “A lot of them pay all their bills off then. It wipes the slate clean, and we can play again.”

Between Mountaineer and Charles Town, the Mountain State will see upwards of 280 days of racing in 2025, with at least one race written for state-breds each day. In addition to the plethora of racing days and the WVTDF, the West Virginia Breeders’ Classic card provides stakes opportunities for state-breds each autumn; modeled on the Maryland Million, this special night of racing was the brainchild of the late Sam Huff, former NFL player and breeder. All of these encourage stables like McKee’s close to home rather than traveling to Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and beyond: “I haven't [raced elsewhere] much lately because of the breeding program. I mean, I almost lose money going out of state,” the trainer shared. 

John’s death in 2023 has kept the former Cynthia O’Bannon at Beau Ridge more than ever. This native daughter remains focused on the sport in her home state, putting her time and energy not only into promoting the breeding program that sustains her but also continuing the program that she and her late husband spent years developing. 

Balancing Act

When Cynthia O’Bannon met John McKee in the late 1970s, they developed a partnership that lasted nearly 50 years. By the time the couple decided to build a life together, he had purchased Beau Ridge and started investing in bloodstock, determined to breed good horses and then race them. From there, the couple would take turns traveling around the Mid-Atlantic, starting horses at racetracks in Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia. 

In later years, they consolidated their racing to their home state and brought on stallions like Fiber Sonde, building their broodmare band to capitalize on their pedigrees. The couple became involved with the West Virginia Thoroughbred Breeding Association, John serving as a past president and Cynthia now occupying the same position. John’s passing at age 83 left both his wife and his farm bereft of the guiding hand that had been at the helm for so long. 

“When he first passed away, I wanted to go to bed and pull the covers over my head. I couldn't do it,” McKee shared. “But I had all these horses. I had employees. I had to go. And thank God that I did. Because if I would have sold everything, probably two or three months later, I'd be so damn bored, I wouldn't know what to do.”

Crediting her late husband as her training mentor, Cynthia McKee continues running Beau Ridge and their racing stable, wearing the mantle of owner-operator, saying that “I just found that it’s easier if I do it myself.” She oversees 12 full-time employees between both facets of her business, which includes not only boarding many of the mares that her stallions cover but foaling them as well. She has also focused on cutting down the farm’s broodmare band: “There were 60 some mares here when he passed. I do have it down to 30. I'd like to cut it down to about 20 mares and maybe 20, 25 in training.”

Though she downplays her training skills – “I always tell everybody [John]'s a better trainer. I'm a better caretaker” – McKee had her best years as a conditioner yet in 2023 and 2024, earning $829,141 and $972,117 and finishing with a win percentage of 22% and 20%, respectively. This comes on the heels of her husband’s best years in 2020-2022, three seasons where they earned more than $1 million each year. She won two West Virginia Breeders’ Classics in 2023, with No Change taking the Onion Juice and Direct the Cat winning the Triple Crown Nutrition Stakes, and then four in 2024, with Catch the Humor, Direct the Cat, No Change, and Overnight Pow Wow. As the 2025 racing season begins, she looks forward to more from Overnight Pow Wow and Direct the Cat plus several two-year-olds, all aiming to make this year’s Breeders’ Classic night another banner night for Beau Ridge. 

“With these two-year-olds, getting them ready, you got to let them tell you, you can't rush them too much. You got to let them tell you when they're ready to move on. You might think they're ready to work, and they might not even know what that means. So, you got to work with the horse a little bit and let them know what's going on,” she shared. She aims to give each horse three weeks between starts, though “sometimes you have to do it in two, depending on how the condition books fit you.” 

With six stallions, including a life changer in Fiber Sonde and a promising successor in Redirect, standing at Beau Ridge, a band of broodmares that continue to produce runners, and a stable full of established winners like Overnight Pow Wow and up-and-coming two-year-olds, Cynthia McKee is “not ready to hang it up quite yet.” She carries on, running the show while giving her late husband his due credit for what they built together. This horsewoman, though, “just [does] it. I get up in the morning and I just go, and I do as much as I can that day. There are times that I'm glad I'm busy because there are things that happen that you just feel like going to bed, pulling the covers over your head, and crying. But I can't stop long enough to do that.” 

“The main thing that kept me going is the horses, like Fiber Sonde. I couldn't put him somewhere. I couldn't do that. He built this farm. This is his home. He built this and [Holy] Pow Wow, and Ghost Canyon. They've given us everything, and now they got some age on them. What am I supposed to do? Boot them somewhere? I just kept thinking about that,” McKee reflected. 

Instead, she keeps going, planning, and racing, proof that staying close to home, thanks to the support of programs like the West Virginia Thoroughbred Development Fund, can sustain the sport as much as deeper pockets and larger stables have. Beau Ridge and Cynthia McKee show that long-term sustainable success in the sport of horse racing takes many forms and benefits from investment at all levels, a reminder of the many ways that men and women across the country and around the world make their living caring for and competing with these equine athletes. 

For the love of the game

Words - Bill Heller

Justin Evans, Jeff Radosevich and Tim Hamm are three of a kind, three terrific trainers rarely in a national spotlight because they work at tracks in Ohio, Arizona and Washington, not New York, Kentucky, California and Florida. “The way this business is, if you don’t have the stock, you stay where you belong,” Radosevich said. “I’d rather win a race at a smaller track than be second or third at a bigger track. No matter what, wins are wins.”

          They’ve had boatloads. Collectively, more than 7,400. Their horses have earned more than $115 million. They’ve won numerous training titles.

“We don’t get much publicity,” Evans said. “Not even when I was third in the county in wins (in 2014) and when I won my 2,500th race this year. It bugs me a little bit. That was a big accomplishment to me.”

It was and still is. More are likely to follow for all three. No matter who’s paying attention.

Justin Evans, now 43, has been a horse owner since he was two. That’s right. Two.

His father Robert, a trainer, explained: “We bought a Quarter Horse at a sale, and he was eligible for one of the futurities. I put Justin’s name on him as the owner. They said, 'Who's that?’ I said, "He's my son.’ ‘Well, he has to be licensed.’ There wasn’t anything in the rulebook about age. He had a big, black cowboy hat on and they took his picture. He’s had a license ever since.”

Evans recalled, “There were newspaper stories. It was really cool. Growing up around the racetrack, I was never one of the shy kids. They coached me really good. I remember doing one interview on TV,  I knew all the right answers. I did a lot of those when I was a little kid. I liked talking to older people, I think it really helped me along the way.”

When Justin Evans was just a couple months old, his family moved from California to Chino Valley, Arizona, 100 miles north of Phoenix and eight miles from Prescott Downs. From Kindergarten until the fourth grade, Justin was excused from school to help his family’s horse operation. “I would miss about the first eight weeks,” Justin said. “After Prescott Downs got done running, we went to all these little towns in Arizona, Holbrook, St. John’s and then to Yuma. After Yuma, we’d go home and start with the young horses, breaking babies and starting with some of the older horses that we had turned out. Prescott would run from Memorial Day to Labor Day, so I spent every day at the racetrack. As a kid growing up, I’d just dread going back to school and couldn’t wait to get out. Sometimes, my parents would let me out a week early to go to Prescott Downs. I couldn’t wait to get out of school to go to the racetrack. I spent every waking minute there, going with my parents at five in the morning and staying all day long.”

His father said, “He was around horses day and night. Feeding. Doing leg wraps. I showed him how to do bandages. He was learning everything.”

Growing up, he idolized Bob Baffert, long before he became a Hall of Fame trainer: “He was an Arizona guy for a long time. I used to read the Form and watch his work patterns, and try to pattern my horses like that. We remain good friends to this day. He’s great to me and my family.”

On the first possible day he could get a trainer’s license, his 18th birthday, he did at Prescott Downs. “He had four or five horses,” his father said. “He’s never looked back. He’s a talented trainer and he knows how to pick out horses. He’s good at claiming.”

But it took time. “I struggled a little bit,” recalled Justin. “I had cheap horses at Prescott Downs. I called my mom two weeks in and said if things don’t work out I’m coming home. Three days later, a guy from Turf Paradise, Arnie Fullerton, the stall man, called me and said, `I’m going to do you a favor. In barn K4, there’s seven stalls you can have. There’s only one tack room, so you’re going to have to make do with it.’”

“I thought it was like early Christmas. I said, `Oh, man, thank you. I’ll never forget it. Back then, K4 was the high-rent district. I mean you had Jeff Mullins, and R. Kory Owens. You had some good trainers down there. I was like the Jeffersons. I was moving up, man.”

  He made the most of this opportunity. “I was like the 10th leading trainer in the standings my first year at Turf Paradise - I was 18 years old, it was really huge.”

When he shipped to Lone Star Park, he did some work for Steve Asmussen. “I helped Steve a lot and we got to be good friends, I mean I’ve always been one of those guys not afraid to ask a guy like Steve or Bob, `Hey, what do you think about this.’ Because why wouldn’t you? They’re the greatest in the game, so you know if you can get an answer from those guys, then you’re way ahead of the ballgame for sure.”

He'd like, eventually, to be in the same game as Baffert and Asmussen. “To be at that level one day, absolutely, it’s my main goal to try to achieve.” 

In 2014, he was as good as any trainer, finishing third in victories (272) while posting career highs in earnings ($3,607,260) and starts (1,022), one of five years he finished 11th or better nationally in victories. He completely dominated in New Mexico in 2014, becoming the first trainer to win every meet at New Mexico’s five tracks, Sunland Park, Zia Park, The Downs at Albuquerque, Ruidoso Downs and Sunray Park. “They couldn’t beat me, I claimed a lot of horses.”

Evans won six titles in seven years at Sunland from 2013 through 2020, then shifted his focus to Turf Paradise, where he won his fourth consecutive title with 43 victories, 17 more than anyone else. His victory margins the previous three years were 30, 23 and 28. 

 In 2023, Evans raced in Emerald Downs in Auburn, Washington, near Seattle. He led all trainers in victories and in earnings in 2023 and 2024 by wide margins. Midway through this year, he’s tied for first in wins and second in earnings.

His top earner was African Rose, a multiple stakes winner for two-thirds of her career from 2011 to 2017. She finished with 18 victories, seven seconds and six thirds in 46 starts with $586,757.

Evans’ son, Austin, may be following his father’s career path. His proud grandfather, Robert, shares the story: “My grandson is 12, and he went to the sales in Kentucky. Justin had the catalog and they went by one of the stalls. Austin had a cap on, and the horse took his cap off. Austin said, `I want that horse.’ They bid on him, got him and named him Austin’s Ace. They put him in training, he ran second, then first at Sunland Park. The track announcer knew Austin real well and he was going nuts. He said, `Austin’s Ace won the race and Austin is going to the winner’s circle.’ There were a zillion people in the winner’s circle.

“He’s at the barn all the time. It won’t be long. He’ll be doing the same thing. He’s a little horseman. He loves horses.”

That sounds about right.

*******************************************

The breadth of Jeff Radosevich’s horsemanship is vast, and nobody knows more about it than Thoroughbred owner William Spitler. On November 23rd 1990, Radosevich rode Spitler’s (and his long-time best friend Rick Spicer’s)  King of the Nile to a three-length stakes victory at Beulah Park. Nearly 29 years later, August 11th 2019, Radosevich trained their horse Verissimo, who won the $75,000 Horizon Stakes on grass by a neck at Belterra Park.

“I don’t think too many people have done that,” Radosevich said.

Spitler, a retired director of tourism and trade for the United States Department of Commerce, is deeply appreciative: “We can’t say enough good things about Jeff and his family. He and his family are great friends of ours and have been forever. He works really, really hard and he gets on virtually every horse that he trains. He maximizes the potential of every horse he trains.”

And his family’s been with him every step of the way. The J line: his grandfather Jake, father Joe (a Quarter Horse trainer who passed away three years ago), mother Jackie, brothers Joey and Jake, sister Jill and late nephew Joshua, Jake’s son, a promising jockey who suffered a fatal accident on the track at the age of 16 in November, 2005 at Beulah Park. “He was really a special son to them,” Spitler said. Joshua’s younger brother, Jacob, became a jockey, winning his first race at Beulah Park in January 2011. Jeff and his wife Yvonne’s three adult children together are named Justin, Josie and Joshua.

The Radosevich family had more in common than the first letter of their first names. All are horsemen. “I didn’t really plan on all J’s,” Jeff’s mother, Jackie, recalled. “I named the first child (Joey) after my husband and Jeff for Jeffrey Hunter (a movie star). I thought I would pick short names because people couldn’t say the last name.”

She talked about the beginning of the family’s involvement with horses: “We started out horse showing. My husband started that. We had a barrel horse. We were greener than green. He ended up winning. So then we started racing Quarter Horses, then Thoroughbreds. With Quarter Horses, the big purses were for two and three-year-olds. There were no claiming races. The kids always had ponies, horses. The kids would help in the barn.”

Jeff’s father, though, became a steel mill worker in Joliet, Ill., while he was training. Those memories helped determine Jeff’s future. “He was getting horses, then more horses. Me and my older brother Joey, we were five and six, and he sat us all down in the living room, all the kids and Mom. He asked us, `Do you want me to work with horses or stay in the steel mill?’”

The kids didn’t wait long to answer their father. “We all, of course, were kids and we wanted to be with the horses. That’s how he ended up quitting the steel mill.”

They dabbled with barrel racing, and pole bending. “There wasn’t much money in that. “Then we raced Quarter Horses. We went to Oklahoma, Denver, Nebraska. We all started working with him when we were 10 and 11. We were galloping and exercising horses for them. It was fun. It was all fun.”

He said his father “got a little bored with Quarter Horses. There was a lot of traveling. Then he started buying Thoroughbreds in 1980.”

Jeff wanted to ride them, but his father mandated he graduate high school first. “I graduated early when I was 16 ½ because I wanted to ride, to be a jockey,” Jeff said. “I graduated from Joliet East and started riding Quarter Horses.”

He did well. “They’re like speed cars. Get out of the gate and go as fast as you can.”

Her mother wasn’t surprised that he did well: “Jeff has always been known as a hard worker. He would ride a bike through the barns and get on trainers’ horses. He was up early and he was reliable and honest. I’m very proud. I told him, `Just because you’re at the racetrack, you don’t lose your manners or your morals.’”

Jeff rode his first Thoroughbred when he was 19 at Commodore Downs, and won his first Thoroughbred race at Thistledown on November 9th, 1980. “When we went from Quarter Horses to Thoroughbreds, you had to be a good gate person,” his mother said. “He knew how to get his horse away from the gate, get in position.” 

In 1990, he got into a good position with Spitler and Spicer, starting a relationship that’s still going strong 34 years later. He rode their King of the Nile and won a maiden race at Thistledown by 12 lengths in his third career start, November 4th. Nineteen days later, he won the $25,000 Beulah Park Sales Futurity on him by three lengths.

While Jeff made it initially as a rider, his brothers wound up turning to training. “All the boys wanted to ride,” Joey said. “My dad told me and Jake that we need to be trainers. He was right. Jeff could make weight.”

Joey trained horses in Florida, New York and Ohio. “Jeff rode races for me and won races for me. I've got a lot of win photos with him. I wanted to ride, but I was always too heavy.”

Jeff trained in Florida before turning to pinhooking and breaking horses. He and his wife bought a farm in Oklahoma: “I like doing the farm life better. I like baling hay, putting in a garden. I have cattle, I do the weanlings.”

Jill rode a saddle pony and became a clocker.

Jake trains horses in Kentucky. Through mid-June, 2024, he’s won 1,259 races and $8,773,787. His daughter Jamie is married to jockey Brian Hernandez, who won the Kentucky Oaks and Acorn Stakes with Thorpedo Anna and the Kentucky Derby with Mystik Dan.

Jake’s son, Joshua, seemed headed to a glorious career when he began riding at the age of 16. In a little more than a month, he won five races at Mountaineer Park and 14 races at Beulah Park. In November, 2005, his mount in a $3,500 claimer snapped his leg and Joshua died of a broken neck. “It was hard on all of us, but it was hardest for his dad,” Jeff said.

Eleven years later, on December 17th, 2016, Mobil Sky captured the $75,000 Joshua Radosevich Memorial Stakes at Mahoning Valley Race Course. The horse was trained by Jeff and ridden by Joshua’s younger brother Jacob. Jacob rode through 2020, winning 319 races and earning $4,494,006.

Jeff Radosevich was the leading jockey at Thistledown in 1988. He stopped riding after breaking his leg in 1993. “I was fighting weight a little bit. I rode for 14 years. Broken arms, broken back, broken leg”.

He won his first race as a trainer on December 10th, 1993, at Thistledown.

“I struggled a little bit the first five, six years, from 1994 to about 2000,” Radosevich said. “Then things started turning around. I started picking up some clients. I got more horses.”

His win total jumped from 11 in 1999 to 34 the following year. His horses topped $1 million in earnings for the first time in 2004 and his number of victories and earnings kept on rising. He has finished in the top 14 nationally in wins nine times, including eighth-place finishes in 2016 and 2019. 

In 2008, he had 45 horses at Thistledown, 20 at Presque Isle and 20 at Mountaineer Park. On one crazy day, he won races at all three tracks thanks to their staggered starting times. “That’s a pretty busy day. I called it the Bermuda Triangle.” He had five horses at Thistledown for afternoon racing and won two. He drove an hour and 20 minutes to Presque Isle for twilight racing and won one there. “Then I got in my truck and drove an hour and a half to Mountaineer. I won one there. I got home at 1:30 or 2 in the morning. Couple hours sleep and back to work. I was at Thistledown the next morning at 5.”

Why? “Because I like watching them run,” Radosevich said. “I had clients there, and the clients like to see the trainer there. I just made all three places.”

By then, he had married his former fiancé, Yvonne, who works at FedEx. “We ran back into each other 15 years later,” Radosevich, now 54, said. “We got married in 2007.”

Radosevich has dominated in Ohio. He’s currently battling Hamm – they’re one victory apart through early September - for what would be Radosevich’s ninth title at Thistledown in the last 13 years. He’s been second three times and third once.

Radosevich has dominated in Ohio. He’s on target this year for what would be his ninth title at Thistledown in the last 13 years. He’s been second three times and third once.

At Mahoning Valley, he’s won five titles with a second and a third in the last seven years.

In 2016, he was inducted into the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame which celebrated him as “the first and only horseman” to prevail as a champion as both a jockey and as a trainer.

He has ventured into Florida twice: “I was at Gulfstream Park for half a season, but I didn’t have the stock. I did have some horses at Tampa for a short bit. You’ve got to have stock.”

So he does the best where he’s at, piling up victories, titles and the respect of his rivals for the unique course of his life, a two-way champion who is one of the very few jockeys who transformed into successful trainers.

**************************************

Like his father, Ed, before him, 54-year-old Tim Hamm trained horses as a second, simultaneous career. “I learned a lot about Thoroughbreds from him,” Hamm said. “Actually, the only teacher I really had was him.”

Eventually, Hamm convinced his father to leave General Motors, where he was in lower management, to work full-time with him on horses.

“My dad said, `I want to retire one of these days and I said, 'why don’t you retire and we’ll work together on our horses?’ So he did it and he just loved it.”

Hamm’s childhood was filled with other-breed horses. “We raised Arabians when I was a young kid. Then I worked at a farm that had Saddlebreds when I was 11 or 12. I worked under a guy I credit with a lot of my horsemanship to Grey Barrun. He was nearly 90 at the time. He was one of the gurus in Saddlebreds. I did hay, put oats in feed bags and cleaned stalls. He taught me how to ride Saddlebreds.”

Hamm decided to get more hands-on: “I bought a parade pony that no one could ride. They said he was too mean to ride. He’d throw me about 20 times a day, but I finally got to where I could ride him. Then I started breaking Saddlebreds for Grey, and he saw I was capable. Once I got into high school, I was doing sports and I got a car, and I stopped doing that.”

He was good enough at football to play in college at Youngstown State, where he graduated in 1989 with a business degree. And he was mighty busy. “My schedule was 6-8 a.m. football, classes until noon, football in the afternoon, night classes and working at Wendy’s from 9 until 3:30 in the morning and start over the next day. It was insane. I looked at my buddy and said, `I will never flip another burger. I need to get into the construction business.”

He started his own construction company, Hamm Company, in Warren, near Youngstown, immediately after college.

Meanwhile, his father raced eight to 10 Thoroughbreds at Mountaineer Park in West Virginia, 40 miles from their home in Lordstown, Ohio. He would win nearly 100 races while still working at General Motors. “I learned a little bit about Thoroughbreds there. I lived there. I ate there. I did the stalls and helped them jog the horses.”

   With Hamm Company doing well, Hamm bought his first horse, Willowy Proof, for $13,000 at the 1994 Ocala Breeders’ Spring Sale of Two-Year-Olds in Training. “My business plan was I want to train horses. I said I have to go out on my own. Then if it grows enough, you can bring in partners. The plan kind of worked. But when I bought her, I tell you I was just so green. Somebody said you bought a Penn-bred, and I said, `What is that?’’

After hearing that meant his new filly was bred in Pennsylvania, Hamm said, “It sounds like I’m going to Philadelphia Park.”

And that’s exactly where Hamm and Willowy Proof went. In Hamm’s first start as a trainer, Willowy Proof won a filly Pennsylvania-bred maiden special weight by 9 ¼ lengths, July 25th, 1994. “It seemed easy, but I didn’t know anything,” Hamm said.

He knew enough to keep his filly. “The breeder, Daniel Ljoka, comes up to me after her first race and wants to buy this horse,” Hamm said. “He said, 'I'll give you $75,000.’ I said, 'She's really not for sale.’ He said, "I'll give you $100,000.’ I said, `It doesn’t matter what you offer, I’m keeping her.’”

After her debut score, Willowy Proof finished last in a $46,000 stakes race. Her next victory was in a $10,000 claimer. She finished seven-for-46 with seven seconds, six thirds and earnings of $64,007.

Hamm returned to the Ocala 1996 Two-Year-Old Sales and purchased two more fillies and two colts. Every one won a stakes. He was aided by his brother Tom, who became Hamm’s assistant trainer.

With an ever-growing number of horses, Hamm decided to buy property in Ohio and began Blazing Meadows Farm in 1995. A year later, Hamm opened a second Blazing Meadows Farm in Florida.
He said he considered leaving his construction company in 1999, but didn’t pull the trigger until 2003. But it took time to walk away. “It took me a year and a half to get everything closed down.”. 

Good timing. At the 2004 Keeneland September Yearling Sale, he purchased Wait a While, a daughter of Rubiano out of Rose Colored Lady, one of the four two-year-olds he’d bought in Ocala in 1996, for $50,000. He then offered Wait a While at the 2005 OBS Select Sale of Two-Year-Olds in Training, and got $260,000 for her. She was worth the money. Trained by Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher, Wait a While would be named the 2006 Champion Three-Year-Old Filly.

In 2005, Hamm debuted the gray colt Too Much Bling in the $40,000 Hoover Ohio-Bred Stakes. He finished second. Dropped to maiden company at Thistledown, Too Much Bling won by 19 ½ lengths. Stonerside Stable then bought a three-quarter interest for $450,000, and Too Much Bling won three graded stakes for Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert.

“You hope everything you’re doing can be validated,” Hamm said. “It at least lets you know if a good horse comes into your hands, you can get that horse to the pinnacle of the game.”

Leona’s Reward, a home-bred, didn’t seem like she’d reach any pinnacle, beginning her career zero-for-11. Hamm never gave up on her, and she rewarded his patience, becoming Hamm’s first millionaire with 10 victories, 10 seconds and six thirds in 55 starts, earning $1,000,556.

At the other end of the spectrum, Dayoutoftheoffice, a filly Hamm owned in partnership with her breeder, Siena Farms, was spectacular as a two-year-old, following a debut maiden victory by taking the 2020 Grade 3 Schuylerville at Saratoga by six lengths; winning the Grade 1 Frizette at Belmont Park by two lengths, and finishing second by two lengths to Vequist in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Keeneland. As a three-year-old, she was second by a length in the Grade 2 Eight Belles at Churchill Downs and a close fourth in the Grade 1 Acorn at Belmont.

A knee injury derailed her career. “There was so much scar tissue,” Hamm said. “We sold her for $2,850,000 and she went to Japan (Shadai Farm).”

Hamm has remained stabled in Ohio, even as his stable has grown to 130 horses. 

He had to struggle to get past his father’s death in November, 2022: “It was a shock to us. It happened all of a sudden, and a big part of what we do was all of a sudden missing.”

            Despite regularly taking on Jeff Radosevich, Hamm has won the 2021, 2023 and 2024 training titles at Belterra Park, and the 2023 title at Thistledown. He and Radosevich are 1-2 so far in 2024. Hamm has also won the 2013 and 2022 training titles at Presque Isle. He has 1,820 career victories and more than $44 million in purses.

He’s had seven Ohio-bred Horses of the Year and 70 divisional championships, and he’s as much in love with horses and horse racing as ever. “I love the challenges. What I love about the horses the most – obviously, the animals are beautiful – you meet every person from every walk of life, from hot walkers all the way up to billionaires. Literally, I’ve got friends on all aspects and I can relate with every one of them very well. And I love that. I was heavy into sports, and it’s competitive. Horses fill my competitive nature. I love being outdoors.”

And he hasn’t stopped learning: “You never conquer it. Financially, it’s a challenge. There are always new things to learn. It’s competitive. To win races is not an easy thing. You’re always trying to breed a better horse, put a better partnership together. It keeps your mind fresh. You’ve always got to think - to stay ahead of what’s going on in the game.”

No matter how many are watching. 

Eric Kruljac eyeing up the cup

Words - ED GOLDEN

Joseph Eric Kruljac might have been a contemporary of Dick Butkus save for a twist of both fate and knee, so instead of perhaps joining the Hall of Fame linebacker in the National Football League circa 1970, Kruljac became a thoroughbred horse trainer.

It was an appropriate transition in waiting.

At 71, Kruljac (call him Eric) has enjoyed virtually every moment under the shed row, currently guiding the bountiful fortunes of a six-year-old gelding named The Chosen Vron, a California-bred son of Vronsky that has won 19 of 25 starts including streaks of eight and six in a row, highlighted by back-to-back Grade I wins against open company in the 2023 Bing Crosby Stakes and again last July 27 at Del Mar.

Only two of his 25 races were less than incipient, finishing fifth each time while uncharacteristically failing to make or challenge for the lead.

The current ultimate goal is the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Del Mar on Nov. 2. The speedy chestnut was fifth in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Santa Anita last year but has an affinity for Del Mar, with six wins from eight starts at the seaside oval. His career earnings stand at $1,571,678.

Favored at 1-2, The Chosen Vron lost by a neck to Doug O’Neill trainee Raging Torrent in the Grade II Pat O’Brien Stakes at Del Mar on Aug. 10, taking the lead by a head entering the stretch of the seven-furlong race but failing to overtake his stubborn rival who was on the rail and in receipt of seven pounds,125 to 118.

After the Pat O’Brien, Kruljac had considered running in the Grade II Santa Anita Sprint Championship at six furlongs on Sept. 29 before the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, but put the kibosh on that. Odds-on favorite Straight No Chaser won the Santa Anita Sprint by 6 ¼ lengths in impressive front-running fashion.

“We ran in two tough races (winning the Bing Crosby July 27 before his second in the Pat O’Brien) close together,” Kruljac said, “so he’s been just jogging and galloping since. We’ll go in fresh.

“You have to listen to your horse, especially early on in their career. We had to stop on him after we had run a couple times, then we gave him extended time off, and now we’re being paid for it in bushels, because we gave the horse a chance to get over his problems and mature.

“We didn’t ask him for a whole lot after we gave him a break and it worked out well because he just turned into a machine. A trainer has to stay at the ready when it comes to a horse’s health.

“You have to check them every day, because they’re like strawberries: they can spoil overnight.”

Fortunately for Team Kruljac, it is enjoying the fruits of The Chosen Vron’s labor, and how sweet it is.

“Every horse is different even in some minor ways,” Kruljac said. “Depending on how the horse is handling training, you might back off if he isn’t cleaning up his feed after a workout. Others might be very resilient and eat a hole in their feed tub after a stiff work or a tough race, whereas lesser doers, as we call them, might need more time and have to be treated differently.

“You can tell when a horse likes his feed and it agrees with him if they bury their head in the feed tub after a workout or a race. You’ve got to read the horse.

“The Vron likes what he’s doing. He eats a hole in the bottom of his feed tub every morning. It’s horses like this that make people want to be owners and trainers to come to the barn in the morning. A horse like the Vron is all I need. I just have to keep him together.”

The solicitous Kruljac owns 20 percent of The Chosen Vron along with Sondereker Racing, LLC (40 percent), Robert Fetkin and Richard Thornburgh (each also 20 percent).

“John (Sondereker) is a prince of a man and was at the (Keeneland) auction in Kentucky with me when we bought The Chosen One’s dam (Tiz Molly) as a yearling,” Kruljac said. “He worked the sale with one of my sons (Mack) and I, and that was the beginning of The Chosen Vron.

“Tiz Molly showed a lot of run at the sale, won her first couple outs, then hurt herself, so we formed a partnership, started breeding her and we hit gold. Her second foal wound up being The Chosen Vron.”

Sondereker, 81, principal owner of The Chosen Vron, has enjoyed his days in racing since he started innocuously at the age of 15, mucking stalls and walking hots at tracks near his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. “Nothing serious,” he said with a chuckle. “Just a dollar-an-hour job. I doubled that now at two bucks an hour collecting social security, so I’m doing a lot better.”

He's doing a lot better in no small part thanks to The Chosen Vron, an unanticipated success story that prospective young owners might enjoy should good fortune smile on them. 

John’s tip to them for full gratification: get in on the ground floor

“Mine is a familiar story,” said Sondereker, who grew up around horse racing. “My dad took me to the track when I was young, so I got the bug. I loved the horses, went to school, went into the Service and worked for Wells Fargo for 40 years. I was in finance, traveled for them extensively with operations all over the country and spent five years in Latin America. 

“I had a couple of cheap horses when we opened Prairie Meadows back in the late 80’s but I always liked to live on the West Coast and wanted to see what I could do in racing and have fun with it when I retired, because it was my passion. Now I live on the West Coast, have a home in (Las) Vegas and one in Del Mar where I spend the racing season.

“I’m a realist and I never expected to have a Grade I winner, since I never had one during my first two or three decades. I never expected one this late, and when I saw Vron right after he was born at Harris Ranch, I had no clue this cute, crooked-legged little horse would develop into what he has. He was still around his mom when he was a few weeks old and wouldn’t let me get near him.

“I couldn’t get close to him until he was taken to Arizona where they broke him, then he came back and it looked like he had some potential against California-breds. That was all good, and the next thing you know, we couldn’t stop him from being successful.

“Everything kind of gelled together and I’m blessed because we have an outstanding groom who works with him—he has a three-part Mexican name but I just call him Herlindo. He’s been with Vron since he was a baby and is a major part of the horse’s success.

“Vron’s regular rider, Hector Berrios, stops at the barn almost every morning to see him, so it’s a caring team, but there’s a lot of luck involved, too. Everything came together and I’m just happy to sit on the sidelines.”

Sondereker offers this advice for rookie horse owners: “What makes it fun for me is for the most part I have learned to buy my own horses at the sales, although I haven’t bought any in the last year as I’m getting older and cutting back. I’ve got ‘Vron’ and that’s enough for me now, but the sales aspect of it means so much.

“When you’re confident enough to buy your own horses at a grassroots level, even though there’s more disappointment than there is success, you’re into the whole process. 

“Otherwise, you’re outside of that experience, pay bills and don’t know what’s going on. It’s fun to go to the races when one of your horses is running, but it’s a lot more fun if you bought it and are in it from the start, although it takes some capital to do that, obviously.

“That’s what has kept me in the game, going to the sales and learning my way around. Eric taught me a lot about buying horses. I didn’t understand it well until I started going to Keeneland with Eric.

“Early on I thought I knew it all, and you can make a lot of mistakes, but it’s really a treat to go to a place like Keeneland or Saratoga for their sales. You don’t have to buy anything, because mostly when I go, we’re the underbidder.

“That’s my nickname. I answer to The Underbidder,” Sondereker said, laughing. “But seriously, you get involved in the sport, meet wonderful people, most very cordial. They don’t care if you have a budget of $60,000 or five million, they treat you right. It becomes a passion for you.”

That’s what The Chosen Vron has become for his entire team.

“The horse is just all class, at the barn and on the race track,” Kruljac said. “He’s a gelding, so that reduced some of his heat. He’s quiet until you put a saddle and a bridle on him. He thoroughly relishes training and running in races. Around the barn we just call him Vron, because he’s Vron of a kind.”

The Chosen Vron’s partner in his last 17 races has been Berrios, a 37-year-old native of Chile who began riding at 17 and became a star in his native country, coming to California for the first time in 2011. He has ridden the gallant gelding in his last 17 races, winning 14.

“He breezes him, too, whenever we breeze,” Kruljac said. “Hector’s like a lot of the South American riders. They’re all true horsemen. They’re not just jockeys. They were born to sit on the backs of horses.”

Kruljac had a football scholarship at Arizona State when he suffered a knee injury, dashing hopes of blitzing the likes of the late, great Walter Payton. “I was basically just a target after I got hurt,” said Kruljac, who was 6’1 and 237 pounds in his sophomore year. He’s a svelte 210 today.

“I still walk with a limp to this day,” he said. “As time goes on, old injuries come back and haunt you.

“I had a massive tear in my meniscus. It was bad, but I was still practicing,” continued Kruljac, who left college a semester early and started a private investigators agency in Phoenix, expanding it to 10 before entering racing as an owner, with his brother, Edward, training. Eric sold his business and started his own stable in the early 1990s.

Before attending Arizona State, he spent winters in Phoenix and summers in California as a youngster. His grandfather, Walter Markham, a cattle rancher and a horse owner, employed eventual Hall of Fame member Buster Millerick as his trainer. Kruljac caught the bug and never lost it.

Millerick began training in his twenties, and shortly after Santa Anita opened in 1934, was hired to condition horses for Charles Howard and would work under head trainer Tom Smith when the stable in 1936 acquired Seabiscuit, who would become a global phenomenon.

“Millerick was a very good young trainer,” Laura Hillenbrand wrote in her 2001 multiple award-winning book ‘Seabiscuit, An American Legend’, “but for his new yearlings and the hundred-grander-caliber horses he planned to have soon, Howard wanted the best. In 1935, he went looking for him.”

That man would be Seabiscuit’s taciturn trainer, Tom Smith.

Millerick, reticent bordering on being irascible in public, trained Hall of Fame gelding Native Diver, winner of 34 stakes from two through eight, including three straight editions of the Hollywood Gold Cup. He was the first California-bred to earn $1 million, but the recalcitrant Millerick avoided the limelight like a plague. Louis K. Shapiro, a Millerick client, is quoted as saying, “You never saw him in a winner’s circle photograph.”

“My grandfather used him as a trainer and they were really good friends,” Eric said. “Buster didn’t like owners but he loved my grandfather because he was a cattleman and also a produce broker. He was very outgoing to me and would always give us his box for the races, but he was very tough around the barn.

“An owner would come in without making an appointment and he’d tell him to get the hell out. He’d send his dog, Buttermilk, after him.”

Meanwhile, Joseph Eric Kruljac, one of racing’s good guys, soldiers on, remaining a sedulous stone in racing’s floundering foundation.

One might say The Chosen Vron is Kruljac’s Seabiscuit.

“I’m on the last leg now,” he said philosophically. “The Chosen Vron has just kept me going. It’s so unusual to have a horse like this allowing me to experience all these great things in the twilight of my career. It’s just a blessing. It defies description. I think he’s going to have a good shot in the Breeders’ Cup

“With the exception of this horse, I probably would have bowed out a year or two ago. You take the worst of the game and hopefully live with what’s left of it.

“I’m basically down to one horse, The Chosen Vron, with seven horses total at Los Alamitos which I’m using as a starting point for them, but only three or four are racing right now. 

“I’m way down on stock. This might be my last hurrah, but I’m thoroughly enjoying having a horse like this in the barn.

“For me, I just try to make the horses as comfortable and sharp as we can,” Kruljac said when asked about his training philosophy. “When you see they don’t clean up (their feed) or drink their water, little things that are just different, it’s a signal.

“Once you’ve had a horse for a period of time, you can read them when they might be off their feed a bit or have sore muscles. For great, big, powerful things they sure change at a moment’s notice.”

Eric has four children, one of whom, Ian, 36, is also a trainer currently supervising 12 horses in Southern California. Eric also has two other children, Chance and Meghan, in addition to Mack and Ian.

“Ian’s career started with a bang,” Eric recalled. “The first horse he  ever trained won the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint at Santa Anita in 2016 when he was just 28.”

That was Finest City, a four-year-old daughter of City Zip sent off at 8-1. It was one of only two wins for Ian that year.

Obviously, Ian was delighted with the victory, but was mature enough not to fully bask in its glory.

“I realize it takes a small army to succeed; it wasn’t just about me,” Ian said. “To win, everything has to go right, including the timing. But the hardest part is finding the horse. Then when you do, your entire staff has to be moving in the right direction.” 

Both father and son adhere to the adage ‘patience Is a virtue’ in developing successful thoroughbreds.

“One of the most important things my dad taught me was give a horse time when needed,” Ian said. “That’s what I did with Finest City. She didn’t make the races as a two-year-old but it certainly paid off when she won the Breeders’ Cup.

“We just have to do what’s right by the horse and hopefully racing will benefit in the future. These horses were bred to run and if they’re treated right, they will, and that’s what racing needs.

“My Dad’s my best friend,” Ian continued, speaking on behalf of the entire brood. “He’s a great father to all his kids. I learned a lot from him on how to take care of horses and about life.

“He’s a great man.”

D Wayne Lukas - Doing It His Way: Passion & Purpose Keep D. Wayne Lukas Coming Back for More

In his signature white Stetson hat and sunglasses, the white-haired gentleman made his way from his grandstand perch through an undulating crowd toward the infield winner’s circle. The veteran horseman moved purposefully through the fray, his cane his only concession to his age. His peers, many of them decades younger, clasped his hand in congratulations as the masses parted for this icon. Under a gray sky, beside a glossy gray horse draped in yellow and black, D. Wayne Lukas reaped the rewards of his passion and perseverance as he collected another record: at 88 years old, the oldest trainer to win a Triple Crown classic. 

As an elder statesman of the sport, Lukas is a man of contrasts. He grew up on a rural Wisconsin farm cultivating an innate love of horses and then pursued that passion while he developed his leadership skills working as a high school teacher and basketball coach. That legacy carried over to training Quarter Horses and then Thoroughbreds, his nickname ‘the Coach’ carried over from the court to the racetrack. As the ultimate visionary in racing, he built a career innovating the sport while staying committed to simplicity, even eschewing the now-ubiquitous smartphone for its understated cousin, the flip phone, and continuing to supervise both the horses and the people in his charge daily. Successes from the grind of earlier decades have afforded him opportunities that few get: the chance to continue doing what he loves on his terms and his timeline, simultaneously unhurried and ambitious. 

At an age when most might have already called it a day, the Wisconsin native continues to find joy in rising before the sun, mounting his pony, and overseeing the collection of current and future stars in his barn, including Preakness winner Seize the Grey. In his decades on the racetrack, Lukas has filled a multitude of roles – from trainer of equine athletes to teacher of generations to ambassador for the sport he loves – and he has done it all his way. 

* * * * * * * *

To say that Lukas has won only two Triple Crown classics plus a Kentucky Oaks since 2013 is a statement about the impact that he has had on the sport nearly fifty years after switching from Quarter Horses to Thoroughbreds full time. His resume is familiar to the generations that watched him at the track or on television during his most dominant years in the 1980s and 1990s, a tally of achievements that make his enduring drive all the more extraordinary. 

Since 1978, D. Wayne Lukas has won the Kentucky Derby four times, first with Winning Colors, the third and most recent filly to win the Run for the Roses, in 1988; the Preakness Stakes seven times, from Codex’s victory over Genuine Risk in 1980 to Seize the Grey’s gate-to-wire win in 2024; and the Belmont Stakes four times, including dual classic winner Thunder Gulch in 1995. The trainer was on the cusp of the Triple Crown in 1999, the same year he was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, after Bob and Beverly Lewis’s Charismatic won the Derby and the Preakness and then was on the lead in the Belmont stretch before an injury ended both that bid and the horse’s career. 

In addition to his success in the three-year-old classics, Lukas has trained five Hall of Famers (Lady’s Secret, Winning Colors, Azeri, Serena’s Song, and Open Mind); had former assistant Todd Pletcher join him in the Hall of Fame in 2021; and then was inducted into the Quarter-Horse Hall of Fame in 2007. He claims a record 20 Breeders’ Cup victories, four Eclipse Awards for leading trainer, and nearly fifty Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred champions, numerous graded stakes winners, and a multitude of fans from the kids he pulls into the winner’s circle to names like MyRacehorse’s founder and CEO Michael Behrens and journalist Christina Bossinakis, co-author of Lukas’s 2019 book Sermon on the Mount. 

His latest Preakness win with Seize the Grey is his third graded stakes win of 2024 and his second with the son of Arrogate, who also took the Grade 2 Pat Day Mile on the Kentucky Derby undercard. Lukas also enjoyed success with Secret Oath, a daughter of the late Juddmonte sire with whom the trainer got his fifth Kentucky Oaks in 2022. “I've had such good luck with the Arrogates,” the trainer reflected. “Boy, that's tragic that we lost him because he was destined to really be a good one.”

Seize the Grey is part of Arrogate’s last crop of foals, bred by the late Audrey “Tolie” Otto’s Jamm Ltd., and purchased by MyRacehorse for $300,000 at the 2022 Saratoga Yearling Sale. When it came time to choose a trainer, Michael Behrens, founder and CEO of the microshare syndicate, thought the colt would be a great fit for Lukas’s program. 

“I saw his success with Secret Oath, and that was an Arrogate, and that got him back in my purview and watching and just being a little bit more cognizant of what he was doing down in Oaklawn. Watching the success that he was having at a later stage in his career, I was impressed,” Behrens shared. “This horse was built like a horse that we thought would do well in his program. We know that Wayne is not afraid to run a horse, and that's one thing that we love to do is race. With his strength and physical attributes, he just felt like a horse that we thought would thrive in that type of environment.”

Additionally, Behrens knew that bringing Lukas on was going to create a special connection for each person that paid $127 to buy a share of Seize the Grey. Even before the colt made his first start, having the Hall of Fame trainer attached was an irresistible opportunity for potential owners. “To say, I own a horse with D. Wayne Lukas, [became] the reason they bought the horse,” Behrens shared. “It didn't matter what the horse looked like, the walk, the pedigree. So many people come to me and say, ‘I bought in because of one reason: I just wanted to own a horse with the Coach.’”

Lukas understands the significance of his part in the Preakness win for those owners. After his first reaction to the colt’s victory – “Well, I did it again” – the trainer knew that “I had just made 2,570 people happy. I didn't realize how happy, but they were really happy.” The winner’s circle was filled with just a fraction of the men and women who had treasured the possibility of winning with D. Wayne Lukas enough to invest their money with no promise of a return. When it comes to the Hall of Fame trainer, though, nothing is outside the realm of possibility. 

Seize the Grey is the first horse MyRacehorse has sent to Lukas; Behrens and company has since added two more to his barn. The Hall of Famer has become “an ambassador of MyRacehorse, which has been great. He'll say things like, ‘I got to go check with the 2500 owners first before we make a decision,’” Behrens laughed. “Everybody loves it. It's great for us. It really reinforces all the time that this horse is fundamentally owned by the people. It's given our brand just a lot more awareness. It's given it more clarity, which has been helpful.”

Seize the Grey gave Lukas his 15th Triple Crown classic victory. That number is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what the Wisconsin native has achieved since he started training Quarter Horses full-time in 1968 and then switched to Thoroughbreds a decade later. 

* * * * * * * * *

Lukas’s resume puts him on par with legends like “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons and Ben Jones, both of whom were private trainers for the sport’s largest owners in a time when a singular home base was the norm. In his time as part of a sport deeply rooted in tradition, Lukas turned that on its head and molded racing’s previous business model into one all his own. From the paddock on race day to the backside every day, he has left no aspect of his operation untouched by his vision and influenced the practices of many other trainers in the process. 

“When I first started with the Thoroughbreds, I came to the paddock a couple of times, and I didn't have the right blinkers. I did have some of the things I wanted, the pommel pad and so forth. So, I thought, that's a simple fix,” Lukas remembered. “We got these bags made, big shopping bags, and we put our stuff in there. Do you know that within, I'm going to say two weeks, almost every trainer on the backside had their shopping bags made up?” 

In the early days at Santa Anita, “we'd bed deep on straw. Everybody then was pulling a drag sack, where they threw everything on it and dragged it to the bin. And so, I thought this is not the way to go,” the trainer shared. “I went right down to the maintenance guy, and I said, ‘I want you to make this big wide wheelbarrow. It just barely fits through the doors of the stall [and] go at least three quarters in. Just put a nice big tire on it and everything.’ He made, I think, four or something like that. Guess what? Soon everybody else had one, too. Two months later, Western Saddlery mass-produced them and sold them all over the country.”

His innovations went beyond his California base and spread coast to coast. Building on Jack Van Berg’s multiple divisions, Lukas had four barns coast-to-coast, each staffed by a star-studded list of assistants, and supported multiple racetracks rather than focusing on one or two. “He didn't have 200 horses at one location. We ran at Monmouth, we ran at Belmont, and we ran in Kentucky” former assistant trainer Kiaran McLaughlin recalled. “Today, Todd and Chad would have over 100 horses at Saratoga trying to be the leading trainer, but Wayne never really did that. He kept the horses at different locations and helped each racetrack that we were stabled at.”

The former educator and basketball coach translated his experience managing players and students into mentoring his employees, especially his legion of assistant trainers, as he taught them to do it his way. “As a head coach, you have to delegate responsibility in some of the teaching or training. And that came out real strong with me,” Lukas shared. “Every one of those four divisions that we had were not any different. You could go to any one of them, and you would absolutely know exactly what the policy was.” 

That background extended to the horses in his barns, as the trainer placed his charges where they would perform best, giving each one a shot in the right conditions rather than focusing on a chosen few as other trainers would do. “When we first started out, I said, ‘You know what you need to do here is we need to grade these horses. And then after we grade them, we need to decide where they can compete effectively,” Lukas explained. “Can these four horses or five horses or six horses, can they compete at Turfway? Or are they a better set of horses that we can take maybe to Monmouth.’ And we started grading those. We started grading three levels. Pretty soon we had four because we got so many horses.”

In the late 90s and early 2000s, as clients like William T. Young’s Overbrook Farm and Gene Klein passed away and other owners got out of racing, Lukas had progressively fewer horses to work with. That change meant the Wisconsin native had to adapt. His stable gradually transitioned from four barns to one. The same practices are there, but on a different scale. Lukas maintains that “the only thing I've changed, I think, is that I read into the horse a little bit better.” He still marks his training chart after each day’s session. He talks with assistant trainer Sebastian Nicolls, listens to feedback from his employees, “and then I sleep on it. The next morning, I walk in there and maybe say, ‘You know what? That filly, she's only had seven days’ rest, and she's going to run back in three weeks. I think I'll give her two more days.’” 

At the core of his ability to adapt are the skills that brought him the most success: his innate relationship with the horse. “I think, fundamentally, he was practically born on a horse. He certainly grew up on horses. He wasn't exposed to the greatest of horses when he was a very, very young man. He really learned all the basics of horsemanship from the ground level,” co-author and friend Christina Bossinakis observed. “I think he also been able to create a system and a discipline within his operation that has been proven to be successful.”

In addition to the day-to-day work with his current charges, Lukas finds the possibility of what’s next inherent in yearling sales as thrilling as a Grade 1 win. “At this period of my life, I probably should have somebody look at them and make a short list and give me the short list. But I don't do that. I get right in there and go barn to barn. I'll have a score on each,” the horseman shared. “I look at everyone there and enjoy the whole process.”

His ability to pick out future athletes is one part of the process that has propelled Lukas from high school basketball coach to horse trainer. That fresh blood motivates him to look forward to the next race, the next season, giving the restlessness that comes from his indomitable drive an outlet. Yet if observers imagined that he has another Kentucky Derby win or another Breeders’ Cup victory motivating him, Lukas makes it clear that is not what drives him. Rather than the big picture, this horseman’s focus is simpler: “My goals are daily. My goals, they fall in there. Here's the way I live my life: Every morning when you wake up, you or me, I want you to try this. You have a few seconds of an attitude adjustment. Now, I wake up and I say, ‘look, I'm tired. I know I'm tired.’ But I wake up and I say to myself, ‘I've been blessed by God to have a talent that is unique. I'm not going to waste it today. I'm going to use this talent today to get better than I was yesterday.’ And with that, will come a Derby or a Preakness.” 

“I wake up with the idea that I need to give my clients a fair chance to succeed. And it's not easy with every horse, but I think that it's very important that I go to work trying to give them a chance to succeed,” the Hall of Famer shared. “If any client moves a horse tomorrow, I wouldn't worry because I feel comfortable that I at least gave it every chance to succeed.”

Never one to rest on his laurels, Lukas strives to get the best out of his horses, his employees, and, most of all, himself each day. His passion for what he has done since his youth and the success he has cultivated from his skill set both propel him forward and free him to enjoy the journey there. 

* * * * * * * * *

Seize the Grey’s Grade 1 wins are a reminder not only of what the man conditioning him has accomplished, but also the horsemanship that brought him multiple graded stakes wins nearly every season for the last 46 years. “We're such a result-oriented sport, like most things are,” MyRacehorse’s Behrens observed. “The reality is that it's these big wins that bring everything back to everybody's memory. It’s nice for him to have the acknowledgement again of his success and his expertise.” 

The Preakness shows who the Hall of Famer truly is as his barn and his business has changed. How does he still do it at age 88? “I mean, it's simple. He has a recipe. He has optimism, and he has the work ethic,” fellow trainer Ron Moquett, who has known Lukas since the 1990s, said. “If you believe you can do something, and you're willing to work it doing something, then you can do it. And he's proven it over and over. Age doesn't matter. He believes he can do it. He's willing to put forth the effort to do it, and he shows everybody he still can do it.” 

“He's just always been a very driven human being. Very driven. He likes perfection. He likes success. He likes accomplishment. He likes to get things done,” Bossinakis shared. “When we were working on the book, he would call me early, like super early in the morning. And then maybe I might not answer, and then I'd call him back at 8:00. And he would say to me, ‘What? Why? You're still sleeping? You've missed half the day!’”

Even with fewer horses, both Secret Oath and Seize the Grey show that this coach still knows how to find the best in his charges. As McLaughlin observed, “a good coach needs good players, and he's capable with good stock. And he used to buy the best of horses, and that has slowed down some, obviously, because he doesn't have that many owners to buy for. He went from buying maybe 50 horses to 8 or 10. So that's all just different. But he's still a very capable trainer and a great horseman, and as long as his eyesight is good, he can train.”

The only change evident in Lukas is his age. Everything else about the 88-year-old edition mirrors his earlier iterations, from his rise and shine time to his attitude about his work in his latest decade. He may have one barn and 40 horses rather than four with 150 head, but he remains the same trainer, supervising his equine athletes while advising his staff and mentoring his contemporaries. “With winning comes a certain amount of passion to keep you going,” the trainer reflected. “But also, when you win and you win consistently, those guys that are coming behind mind you, the younger ones, they're watching.” 

That competitive drive makes this Hall of Famer ageless and fuels him to continue moving forward, as wife Laurie noted. “It's just the passion for it. I mean, I have a lot of passion for the horse business and for horses, but I can't match [him]. I don't think anybody can match his passion. I've never seen anything like it.”

“He's very proactive. I think that's part of just his makeup. But I also think it's what keeps him driven to keep accomplishing and doing more,” Bossinakis echoed. 

That passion not only drives Lukas to the barn every morning, his 35-minute commute a chance to reflect on what he can do with his day, but it also moves him to share a lifetime’s experience working with equine athletes with his younger contemporaries. 

* * * * * * * * *

Lukas’s childhood in Wisconsin provided the foundation for two essential aspects of the man: his love for horses and his drive to teach and to develop. First, he spent nearly a decade as a high school teacher and basketball coach, using his summers to train Quarter Horses on the side. His eventual shift to training full-time did not diminish his joy in coaching as he used those skills with his employees as he had done with his students. Early on, when he was building his stable and making a name for himself, he was focusing his mentorship on those working under him, trainers like Kiaran McLaughlin and Dallas Stewart.

“He was a fabulous coach and teacher. Not that many of us spent every day with him, but we spoke to him, and we knew what he wanted every day, and we acted as though he was there with us in our daily work,” McLaughlin remembered. “He was a great example of being at the barn at 4:45 in the morning every day and calling back in the different operations or his assistants. In the morning, he would talk to everybody. He was a very organized person, and he was great to learn from and work with.”

Stewart spent a dozen years working for Lukas during the 1980s and 1990s, when the trainer seemed to be everywhere, winning everything. “It was a different level. People had a lot of nice horses, and we learned how to handle the intensity,” the Louisiana native remembered. “You always followed his lead, but he was there every day. I mean, I wouldn't want it done in any other way. I feel fortunate that I worked for him.”

When Moquett first met Lukas at Del Mar, he noted that the famed trainer was “very sharp, very intense, and I thought he held himself like a businessman and horseman. The reputation, the aura was huge, right? And it was all I could do to muster up the courage to ask if he had any horses for sale. But I figured out after about five seconds of talking to him that he's very much on principle, and based on the way I was raised, I related to that very quickly. We made fast acquaintances, and as intimidated as I was to go see the man, it was that quick that I was just enthralled with just listening to him.” 

While he works with his own horses on the backside at Churchill Downs or Oaklawn Park, the lifelong horseman does not miss a chance to share his experience with those around him. Whether he is watching a gatework or sharing his perspective on a common experience, Lukas is there ready to chime in with advice. “The other day, we were at the gate, and they were trying to load this one horse, and he kept turning his side into the gate. I said, ‘If you were just turning the other way, walk up there and turn him the opposite way, he's going to walk right in,’” Lukas remembered. “Everybody looked at the horse, and said, ‘What do we got to lose?’ Walked right up, turned him the other way, and he walked right in.”

Lukas’s counsel extends beyond working with equine athletes; his reputation as a sharp-dressed professional in high-quality suits demonstrated his understanding of perception and how that can help your business as a trainer. He shares the benefits of that attention to personal details where he can. “He told me that the only thing that separated me from everybody else that's doing this job is the fact that nobody else has the opportunity to wake up and decide what I wear. And I'm there to represent the horse, the owner, and my employees. So, if I'm representing them, then I can't show I'd go up dressed like a mucksack,” Moquett shared. “That lit a fire into me. How can I expect anybody to respect me with their investment in a horse? And how can I expect the people in my barn to respect me if I'm dressed like a groom?”

With all that he has achieved in his career, why then does the lifelong horseman feel this pull to mentor? “You walk around the backside and people say, ‘Horsemanship is gone. It's lost.’ A lot of it is that horsemen are not there and being developed and so forth,” he reflected. “There's a lot of truth to that because the young people that come to the backside to train, you know where they come from? McDonald’s or someplace. They wake up and say, ‘I'd like to be a horse trainer.’ They say, ‘I'll walk hots.’ And then they walk hots. The next thing you know, they're grooming. And then they're an assistant. Next thing you know, they got a trainer's license.” 

“I feel obligated to share, and I can't help myself,” the horseman shared.

“That's just the way he is, and he is one of the best of all times at doing what he's doing,” McLaughlin said. “If anybody ask a question, he's happy to answer it. He's mentored many of us on and off the racetrack. He was very influential to all of us.” 

The trainer’s habit of pulling young people into winner’s circle photos is another way of imparting his enthusiasm for the sport to a new generation and creating new fans in the process. He keeps a folder of letters from those who reach out to him, some of whom report keeping that photo in their office or parlaying that experience into further investment in racing. 

“He is very good with his fans in terms of keeping drawing people in. And I say to this day that the reason I'm in racing today is because of him. And that's true. And not only from that first experience of having met him, but also even later on in the later years,” said Bossinakis. “He started off as my idol, and then became more like a mentor.” 

“I've picked up a lot of things that he is really well known for and incorporated them into my own life. He always speaks in terms of ‘we.’ He doesn't say I; he says ‘we,’” his co-author shared. “Very much team oriented. The people around him, the importance of that, I've picked that up.”

As Moquett observed about his friend and peer, “as good as a horse trainer as Wayne Lukas is, and he's one of the best that's ever done it, he's even more going to be known for a motivator.” 

* * * * * * * * *

When Oxbow went gate-to-wire in the 2013 Preakness, a performance echoed in Seize the Grey’s in 2024, Lukas had not won a classic since Commendable’s Belmont Stakes in 2000. The trainer had not stopped the same grind that had earned him a spot in the Hall of Fame but faced a transition: as the owners he had his biggest successes with passed away or left racing, the horseman had to compete with rising stars like Bob Baffert and Todd Pletcher among others for new clients. That meant fewer horses and fewer opportunities to use the skills he had built over a lifetime. 

He could have stepped away then to parlay his boundless drive into other efforts. “In the last 10 years, I think people feel that maybe I would be thinking that way. And I've had opportunities to take, I'm going to say, an administrative situation, managing something,” Lukas shared. Instead, the Wisconsin native prefers to ply his trade, professing that “I get too much joy and satisfaction out of dealing one-on-one with those good horses. And I don't think I would ever go that way. Selfishly, I don't have any other interests.”

With his 89th birthday coming in early September, any talk about this Hall of Famer hanging it up is quickly quieted. Lukas is not about looking back and exudes optimism about the future in each conversation. “Like he says, I'm not really working on my resume anymore,” wife Laurie Lukas observed. “He's just going on pure love of the horse and the sport.” 

“At 89 years old, I want to keep them all in front of me so I can be hands-on, as they say, train each horse individually and be responsible for each choice. Now, I have an outstanding system that really makes it easy,” he shared. “Obviously, with forty head, I've got less clients, too. But I've got a couple of real strong, powerful clients in John Bellinger and Brian Coehlo of BC Stables.” 

Lukas and assistant trainer Sebastian Nicholl split the year between Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas and Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, both deliberate choices for the trainer who formerly had stables from coast to coast. “Through the '80s and '90s, we were Californians, with Hollywood Park and everything. But during that era, Marge Everett told me that California was going to have trouble holding on to the industry. I thought, ‘Well, if it all goes to hell in a handbag, where will it be the last one to go?’” the trainer recalled. “It's going to be Louisville and Lexington. They'll fight and claw to keep it going. So, I picked up and moved back here.”

Now at home in Arkansas and Kentucky and soon Saratoga, where stars like Winning Colors were launched, D. Wayne Lukas has shown once again his determination to do things his way. His life away from the barn is populated with his family, including wife Laurie, grandson Brady and granddaughter Kelly and their spouses, and his two great-grandchildren. “He loves his family. He's very committed to his grandkids and their spouses, and now his great grandchildren. It is hard, as he talks about it, it's hard to balance that. But I think as he's gotten older, and maybe since I've come in the picture, he also really embraces my family,” Laurie shared. “I just think that's a side the public won't see of him, his sensitivity and the importance of helping people and helping.”

At the barn is Seize the Grey and a few two-year-olds that remind the trainer why he rises before the sun and makes that drive to the backside. As often as his age comes up, the Hall of Fame trainer shows that he is steadfastly himself. 

“He hasn't changed that much over the years. Obviously, he went from managing over 100 horses down to 30 or 40, but he still has a great eye for a horse,” McLaughlin observed. “That was something that was just a given talent to him. He's great at purchasing yearlings and looking at horses, and he still has it in buying horses, and he still gets up at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning, and he works every day, gets on his pony, and so he loves what he's doing.”

“I think the core of him is the same. At the core, that intensity, that drive to win, that positivity, he’s always had that. Wayne is not a looking behind guy. He's very forward-thinking,” Bossinakis shared. “I will say the biggest change that I've seen in him personally, he's become – I don't even like me saying this – a little bit softer around the edges, which I love. I think there is a level of him that's an emotional guy, that's a sentimental person. I think he's always been that. He probably just never really showed it.”

Master horseman, innovator, and mentor, D. Wayne Lukas not only focuses his prodigious energy on those closest to him, enjoying his role as husband and patriarch, but also on the promising young horses now hitting the racetrack, their potential as exciting as that scene in the Preakness winner’s circle. “Our two-year-olds are very, very good. And I can see it coming. I can see what's about to happen. I get up every day and I know. And I think, ‘oh, boy, here we come.’”

Danny Gargan - the trainer of 2024 Belmont Stakes winner - Dornoch

Article by Bill Heller

Hall of Fame trainer Nick Zito didn’t have a horse in either the Grade 1 Ashland Stakes at Keeneland April 5th nor the Grade 1 Blue Grass Stakes the following day. But he hoped for a personal daily double of those races with two of his protégés, Jorge Abreu and Danny Gargan, saddling a top contender in each race - Abreu with Jody’s Pride in the Ashland and Danny Gargan with Dornoch in the Blue Grass. 

Zito didn’t get what he wanted. Jody’s Pride ran out of gas in the Ashland and is getting a freshening before resuming her three-year-old campaign later this summer. Dornoch finished fourth in the Blue Grass and is now all systems go for a run in the Kentucky Derby.

Come the first Saturday in May, Danny Gargan will remember his first Kentucky Derby runner, Tax, who he claimed for $50,000 in his second career start in a maiden claimer at Keeneland on October 21st , 2018. Tax took Gargan to the 2019 Kentucky Derby, when he finished 15th, beaten 15 lengths at odds of 35-1.

Tax went on to win the Grade 2 Jim Dandy Stakes at Saratoga and the Grade 3 Harlan's Holiday Stakes at Gulfstream Park and in the process became Gargan’s highest-earning horse with $1,102,160. “He’s my favorite,” Gargan said.

Gargan did his homework to nab Tax, a son of Arch out of the Giant’s Causeway mare Toll. “I watched his video in his first race,” Gargan said. “He’s a really well-bred horse. He looked beautiful in the video. He sprinted that day. I was in New York, looking around for horses. He popped up in the entry box at Keeneland. I flew from New York to Kentucky to claim him.”

When he did, he called two of his owners, Randy Hill of R.A. Hill Stable and Dean Reeves of Reeves Thoroughbreds. “He called me up and asked me if I wanted in on Tax,” Hill said. “I said yes. Obviously, that worked out well. Danny’s one of my favorite guys, Danny’s a very good trainer. He’s finally gotten a chance to work with some good horses. He’s a terrific guy, he deserves this.”

Reeves said, “We had a lot of fun with that horse. It was a great run. Winning at Saratoga especially a big race up there.”

Gargan loved Tax: “He was a wonderful horse to be around, big and beautiful, just a kind soul in the barn. You loved seeing him there every day. He had a long career. He stepped into a grate and got his ankle caught. He missed more than a year.”

Tax came back off a 16 ½ month layoff to win a $100,000 stakes at Delaware on July 9th 2022, an outstanding feat by Gargan. “He was a pretty cool horse,” Gargan said.

Gargan has now trained three sons of Good Magic and all are now stakes horses. First up was Dubyuhnell who in 2022 Gargan thought might take him back to the 2023 Kentucky Derby after he captured the Grade 2 Remsen Stakes in his final start as a two-year-old. Instead, he finished 8th in the Grade 3 Sam F. Davis and 11th in the Grade 1 Florida Derby.

Now in 2024, Gargan has two sons of Good Magic in the Kentucky Derby. Dornoch, who finished fourth in the Grade 1 Blue Grass and Society Man, who finished second in the Grade 2 Wood Memorial at odds of 106-1.

Dornoch looks as talented as his full brother, Mage, who won the 2023 Run for the Roses. “They look opposite,” Gargan said.

“My horse is a real big bay. Mage is a medium chestnut. They don’t look the same, but they both have big hearts. You can’t breed that.”

Dornoch, was bred by Grandview Equine and sold for $325,000, $90,000 more than his full brother Mage, at the 2022 Keeneland September Yearling Sale. 

Last November Mage and Dornoch’s dam, Puca, went through the ring at Keeneland and was sold privately for $2.9m. This year, on April 4th, Puca produced her third colt by Good Magic who like his esteemed brothers all share an April birth date.

Dornoch’s name is intriguing, referring to the Royal Dornoch Golf Club in the Scottish Highlands where golf has been played for more than four centuries.

Born one year and four days after Mage was foaled, Dornoch spent his early days at historic Runnymede Farm in Paris, Kentucky.

For his early education, Dornoch was sent to Raul Reyes at King Equine in Ocala, Florida. Reyes detected that Dornoch wasn’t moving comfortably in his behind and discovered that one of Dornoch’s testicles hadn’t descended. The testacle was removed, and Dornoch showed vast improvement immediately.

Reyes called it a 360-degree turnaround in a story in Blood-Horse. Gargan thinks Dornoch will offer him a different experience if he makes it into the Derby starting gate. 

“Tax got us there. We were lucky enough to do the walk-over. This is different. This horse can win it. I’m happy to be a part of it. He reminds me of Louis Quatorze (the 1996 Preakness Stakes winner trained by Gargan’s former boss, Hall of Fame trainer Nick Zito). I’m hoping Dornoch can win a Triple Crown race. I’m preparing him the same way Nick did with Louis. Just keep moving forward. In horse racing, you have to hope you have a great day. In the past, we were just happy to be there. Now we have a horse that could win it.”

Zito, has been a fan of his protégé for a long time: “Danny was probably the best one I ever got along with. He read my mind. The guy actually read my mind, which I loved. He wants to win so bad. He communicates with horses so well. He said Dornoch resembles Louis. It shows his remembrance of great horses. That’s what I admire about Danny Gargan. Danny’s not taking a back seat to anybody at the Derby. He’ll have his horse ready to run.”

If Dornoch or Society Man win the Kentucky Derby, it will come 51 years after Gargan’s father, also named Danny, rode Bag of Tunes to win the 1973 Kentucky Oaks.

Unfortunately, Gargan, a native of Louisville, was just four when his father died. “I was so young, I don’t remember that,” Gargan said. “I grew up on the backside of Churchill Downs. I loved it from the start. It’s just something in your DNA.”

Asked how he got onto the Churchill Downs backstretch, Gargan said, “It was 30 years ago. Back then, they let everybody in.”

He worked for Nick Zito off-and-on for several years, eventually becoming his assistant. “Me and Nick are real good friends to this day,” Gargan said.

Gargan, though, came to a conclusion: “It takes a lot of money to be a horse trainer.”

So he switched careers, becoming a jockey agent. “I did it for a few years,” he said. His clients included Pat Valenzuela, Brian Hernandez Jr. and Jesús Castañón.

He called his jockey agent days “a lot of fun,” but he eventually became bored with it. He hooked up with owner Merrill Scherer on a few horses and, after two real good meets at Saratoga in 2011 and 2012, Gargan, decided to begin training on his own. He credits P.J. Campo, the racing secretary and then vice- president for racing of the New York Racing Association, for pushing him in that direction.

Gargan began a modest-sized stable in 2013, broke the $1 million mark in earnings in 2015 and has had at least $1.8 million in earnings every year since. “I race at Gulfstream Park and New York,” he said. “I don’t train a ton of horses, eight in New York and 22 in Florida. When you get so few young horses, it’s a blessing to have one,” he said. “It’s not every year. I’ve been lucky to have some nice horses in the past, and you have to be just thankful.”

Tax was not his only great claim.

On May 15th , 2017, Gargan claimed Divine Miss Grey for $16,000 for R.A. Hill and Corms Racing Stable off a three-quarter length victory as the 1-2 favorite.

Divine Miss Grey turned into a star for her new connections, finishing second in the 2018 Grade 1 Beldame at Belmont Park and capturing the Grade 2 Chilukki Stakes at Churchill Downs. She finished her career 12-for-26 with six seconds, one third and earnings of $934,172. “You get lucky sometimes,” Gargan said. “The good thing about what she did for me, was she brought me Dean Reeves and Randy Hill. They are the ones who probably brought me to train Dornoch. They wanted me to train younger horses. Without those two supporting me, I might have never made it to this point.”

Hill is one of many partners on Dornoch. Reeves is not.

When asked about his success, Gargan said, “I’m pretty lucky in that I trained for some good people, like Dean Reeves and Randy Hill. They want the horse put first. Always put the horse first. I’m blessed for having them. I don’t have to work the horse or race the horse. When you have owners that understand that stopping and doing the right thing for the horse is the most important thing, that’s great. That’s what’s changed for me the last four, five years is to be able to always put the horse first.”

He knows what he’s up against: “This game can be tough. You try to keep them happy, keep them healthy and keep them racing. It’s something we’ve always believed. With the young horse, it’s a tremendous factor. You watch other trainers and learn. Nick was a big fan of giving a horse his first race. Bill Mott does that, too. They don’t have to win first time out. They’re going to get better with racing. That’s our philosophy. Who knows if I’m right or wrong. That’s what we believe.”

Dornoch lost his maiden debut at Saratoga, too, finishing second. He finished second again, in the Sapling Stakes at Monmouth, before breaking his maiden at Keeneland and, just like Dubyuhnell, took the Remsen by a nose, defeating a potential Kentucky Derby rival, Sierra Leone. 

Racing on the lead on the rail, Dornoch set a pressured pace, opened a two-length lead in the stretch and then was confronted and passed by a fast-flying Sierra Leone. But Dornoch wasn’t done. He gamely fought back and re-took the lead just before the finish line. Like Gargan said, you can’t breed heart.

Winning his three-year-old debut in the Fountain of Youth pushed Dornoch to the front of many Derby contender lists. He was fourth to Sierra Leone in the Grade 1 Blue Grass, but he didn’t get his preferred trip pressing or making the pace. 

“We wanted to train him to sit behind horses,” Gargan said. “Sometimes, they have to experience things to get educated before they can improve. That was the first time he had dirt in his face and he fought it the first three-quarters of a mile.”

Dornoch is owned by West Paces Racing, Belmar Racing and Breeding, Two Eight Racing, Pine Racing Stables and R.A. Hill Stable. Gargan offered a piece to Reeves Thoroughbreds, but Reeves declined. “He asked me to buy into the horse,” Reeves said. “At the time, it just didn’t work. I passed. Too bad. I’m happy for those guys. I’m pulling for those guys. I hope he can get it done. He’s a great horse.”

Larry Connolly, who began West Paces Racing, mostly with his golf buddies in Atlanta in 2019, grew up in Rye, New York, and frequented Saratoga and Belmont Park. In 2012, Connolly sold his company, Connolly LLC, the largest global-recovery auditing firm, freeing up capital to buy Thoroughbreds. “It was a good time to jump in the deep part of the pool,” he said.

The final push into ownership came after five years of visiting Cheltenham races in England with his friend Lawrence Kenny, a retired steeplechase jockey. “After five years at Cheltenham, the racing was so good and the people were so nice,” Connolly said.

“We used to go to the pubs and see a lot of horsemen. I said, `Wouldn’t it be great if we could pool our resources together and get into a big race?’”

Connolly got involved with two partnerships, Donegal in 2014 and then Starlight. Connolly was able to enjoy the winner’s circle after Donegal’s Keen Ice upset Triple Crown Champion in the 2015 Travers Stakes at Saratoga.

Connolly said Royal Dornoch is his favorite golf course in Scotland. One of his partners on the horse is retired baseball star Jayson Wirth, an outfielder who played 15 seasons with the Blue Jays, Dodgers, Phillies, and Nationals.

Asked about Dornoch’s Derby pursuit, Connolly said, “It’s just super exciting. Every day is like Christmas Eve. What gets me excited about Dornoch is, he looks the part: size, grit, determination.”

West Paces Racing, Gargan and GMP Stables LLC are the owners of Society Man, who was stepping up to graded stakes company in the Wood off an impressive maiden victory. Three starts back, Society Man was eighth in the Grade 3 Withers. “He had a rough trip in the Withers,” Gargan said. “We’ve always liked him. He’s a nice horse.”

Gargan said Dornoch is bigger than Society Man, another son of Good Magic out of You Cheated by Colonel John. ‘They breeze together a lot,” Gargan said. “He worked with Dornoch for the Remsen.”

Asked about Society Man’s jump up in class in the Wood, Gargan said, “Sometimes you roll the dice and it works out. He’s improving at the right time and he can get the distance.”

Dornoch’s work tab was modest as he prepared for the Blue Grass Stakes on April 6th. “We just wanted to keep him healthy and sound,” Gargan said. “He’s a big colt. He can be playful. A little rambunctious. He’s not mean. He’s a big strong horse, just under 17 hands. He’s just under it.”

After his Fountain of Youth victory, Gargan told a TV interviewer that he guessed he had Dornoch at 85 percent for his three-year-old debut. The obvious goal is 100 percent on the first Saturday of May. “I don’t think we’ve seen the best from him,” Gargan said. “He’s going to be fun for a long time.”

Todd Fincher - From Sunland Park to Saudi Arabia

Article by Ken Snyder

Ask Todd Fincher how he got Senor Buscador from Remington Park to Riyadh and the $10 million dollar Saudi Cup winner’s purse, and you won’t get an answer; you’ll get a bunch of answers.

“There’s honesty. There’s hard work. Being able to evaluate horses and place them in the right spot. The feeding program. Your help. Not cutting corners. All that stuff.”

Got it, Todd. Now, what’s the formula for blending all of that? If it could be quantified and applied, we’d all be Thoroughbred trainers. Todd Fincher can’t tell you exactly how he arrived in the winner’s circle after the Saudi Cup. But there may be a reason why. 

“You celebrate in the winner’s circle and then you walk out of there. You have your mind on other things, other responsibilities.”

At the post-race press conference, it was obvious he really had left any whooping, hollering, and hugging back in the winner’s circle. Maybe he smiled once as jockey Junior Alvarado and owner Jerry Peacock fielded questions. There’s pre-occupation and then there’s Todd Fincher pre-occupation. His mind was already on “other things,” specifically Sunland Park in New Mexico and his string of 90 horses.

He “came back immediately” from Saudi Arabia, which might have meant a red-eye flight that night. He came to Saudi Arabia as he departed, with no days or hours wasted with idle time.  

“I didn’t go over until a couple of days before the race,” said Fincher. Instead, he sent assistant Oscar Rojero with Senor Buscador on the 13th of February for a race run on the 24th. Want to know about Saudi Arabia? Rojero, not Fincher, is your man. 

An assessment of Fincher as a classic “big fish in a small pond” is subject to re-examination only partially because of the Saudi Cup win. Last year he shipped Senor Buscador to Del Mar to win the Grade 2 San Diego Handicap and finished second with two other horses--Flying Connection and Bye Bye Bobby in graded stakes at Del Mar. All total, his horses hit the board in graded stakes in four out of six races in San Diego. It’s not hard to imagine Fincher duplicating the success he has achieved in New Mexico in racing’s big ponds—Keeneland, Santa Anita, Saratoga, Belmont. Add to that an eye-popping 24% career win rate.

Looking back at Del Mar he understates his success considerably. “That’s starting to compete at the top level. Not Bob Baffert yet, but, you know, with the few numbers we have of those type of horses, I think we’ve done pretty well.”

Take note of that word “yet.” Fincher has thoughts of setting up a division at Del Mar in the future and is venturing into Oaklawn this year with “a few. But not a full string,” he added. Yet...

“Big farms aren’t going to look my way because I’m in New Mexico and I understand that, but I will eventually, maybe this year, start running two separate barns,” He added that he will "keep New Mexico going.”

Fincher is a defender of New Mexico racing and pointed out the state has produced both a Kentucky Derby winner in 2009 (Mine that Bird) and a Kentucky Oaks winner in 2011 (Plum Pretty).

“We got a lot of people in New Mexico who are great horsemen. You can develop a horse through our stakes schedule with good purses.” 

If it’s a long way to Saudi Arabia from New Mexico, getting to Kentucky may be more manageable with more promising two-year-olds than ever in his barn.

“Last year when I broke babies, I had two Kentucky-breds. Two fillies and one colt.

“This year I had some people step up and fill my barn a little more. We broke fifteen yearlings this year that are Kentucky-breds or Louisiana-breds.

“It’s just very rare for me to get that many,” he added.

Roots in New Mexico run deep for the 52-year-old Fincher. His grandfather, Albert, was a trainer stabling at the old La Mesa Park in Raton, New Mexico as well as at Sunland. Albert’s son, Leroy—Todd’s father—also trained Quarterhorses and Thoroughbreds after a jockey career. As if that isn’t enough pedigree, Todd’s mom Leslie trained Quarterhorses and Thoroughbreds.

It is said that half of life is just showing up. Fincher has had only the other half to figure out. The major lesson he got from family was “Show up every day to work. That’s  basically what I derived from my family.

“I worked in the barn. We had jobs at the barn. I would do the water buckets and he would do the hay bags. We were in charge of holding horses for the baths and raking the shedrow. I’m talking from an early age—probably nine, ten years old.”

New Mexico racetracks were also a playground for the Fincher boys. “Your parents would be working, and you’d be running around the grandstands walking back to the barn screwing around and just running loose basically.”

“Play” also included putting down a bet or two at the betting windows with mutuel clerks who knew the Fincher boys. “I could barely reach up to the window. I‘d put my two dollars up there and bet at an early age. That was illegal, but back then everything was a little quieter. “

Fincher’s dream was to follow in the family bootsteps and become a jockey. The lanky, six-feet tall averaged a respectable 14% win rate before waving the white flag to weight after ten years of riding in 1997 and immediately hung up his own shingle the next year. Fincher never worked as an assistant but started with eight horses, the most expensive of which was $5,000.

Transitioning from jockeying to training might have been the equivalent of a family doctor performing brain surgery. “The one thing that really shocked me about training is how much I didn’t know.

“You’ve heard jockeys don’t make good trainers. That’s basically because they’re two completely different jobs.

“There’s a lot of jockeys that don’t know horses. They just learned how to ride a horse and that’s all,” he added.

He believes his time on the ground grooming as an adolescent and teenager for his dad taught him the importance of understanding a horse. When it came time to sit astride one and break from the gate, that experience was invaluable…to a point.

“I could get on a horse and tell you everything about it…evaluate the horse. 

“As a trainer watching, it was a brand new thing. It took a long time to be able to watch a horse and differentiate certain things about a horse—how good they looked when they were running, if they’re just average. Watching the horse move was the biggest challenge, I think.

“You learn from there, then the next year you get some more horses, and every year from then on. It’s grown, and we’re pointing for the quality and not the quantity. We kind of have both now.”

Fincher says 90% of his horses come to him as yearlings. “If I have somebody bugging me to claim horses, we will, but I really have no interest.

“You claim a horse, odds are you pay twenty-thousand dollars, and you got a twenty-thousand dollar horse.

“We’re looking for the home runs to develop a horse into a classic-type horse or stakes winner—the top level.”

Mission accomplished. They don’t get any more top level than Senor Buscador and the Saudi Cup and Fincher knew it.

He was confident the horse could beat the best in the world if he got an honest pace.

“As far back as he gets, he can get himself in a lot of trouble,” said Fincher. True to form, Buscador was far behind the field by as many as six lengths, loping along next to Japanese starter Ushba Tesoro. Entering the stretch, Senor Buscador fell in behind the Japanese entry then popped out from behind him to the outside. Again, true to form, he spotted Ushba Tesoro as much as three lengths in the stretch before cruising by ten horses, including his Japanese runner by a nose at the wire.  

“I think he just lets them get after it first and enjoys running by horses. That’s exactly what it is. He’s got enough speed. He can go to the front if he wanted but he refuses.”

For Fincher, with his total focus, it’s not hard to believe that “validation and vindication” for Senor Buscador meant more than the purse. “Everybody talks about the purse, which is outstanding. For him to beat the best horses in the world was much, much greater for me than the value of the race.

“I’ve been making excuses for this guy for a long time knowing how good he is.”

Adapting to the horse rather than the other way around might have been still another  additional factor in the win. “If I really tried, I guess I could probably change his running style, but I think it would be detrimental to him.

“The ability is there, and I think he’s the best horse. I don’t question that.”

Fincher’s abilities as a trainer sort of mirror Senor Buscador’s performance in the Saudi Cup. All the horse needed was a clean trip. All that Fincher needs is the opportunities. Racing has probably not seen the last of him at center stage like the winner’s circle at King Abdulaziz Racecourse, but you’ll have to hurry to catch him before he’s gone. 

Other things. Other responsibilities.

Todd Fincher would amend lyrics to an old song from the 1950’s movie Cinderella "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes" to “A Dream is a Wish your Hands and Feet Make.”

The dots don’t connect between Sunland Park and Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico and King Abdulaziz Racecourse in Saudi Arabia and Meydan Racecourse in Dubai…unless you’re Todd Fincher. 

A win in the $20 million Saudi Cup with Senor Buscador and a third place showing in the Dubai World Cup (earning a mere $1.2 million) are dreams most trainers wouldn’t ever entertain. 

For those who know him any length of time, it is no surprise to hear him say on reaching the highest of heights in racing, “I’ve always been planning on it and hoped to get there. Those are goals that I set. I hope we can reach some more goals pretty soon.”

Gulp.

At first you might not take him seriously until you consider that, well, he did it once, and yes, he did it based in Sunland Park, New Mexico.

Asked what he did after Saudi Arabia and Dubai, the laconic cowboy simply said, “Came home and went back to work. That’s what we do. Go to work every day.”

And make dreams come true.

Whit Beckman trainer of Belmont Stakes contender - Honor Marie

Article by Bill Heller

Trainer D. Whitworth Beckman grew up around horses but had never made the connection his parents did. His father, David, is a vet. His mother, Diane, rides and shows horses.  “I was around them, but I wasn’t really interested, horses weren’t even on my radar.”

He spent two semesters at the College of Charleston. “I partied a lot,” he said. “I didn’t have any purpose. I was aimlessly floating around on alcohol. After two semesters, I figured I was wasting my time and wasting my parents’ money.”

His life got worse after dropping out from college. “I got pretty heavily involved with drinking. I hung out with a crew. A little wild. There was nothing that gave me purpose. I was a selfish kid.”

Eventually, he began helping his mom take care of polo horses and old show horses. And then he met his mom’s most difficult horse, a cantankerous Thoroughbred named Black Pearl. “I still have him,” his mother said. “We call him Blackie. He was a kook. He couldn’t be trained. He took off with his rider every morning, constantly switching leads. Whit taught himself how to ride on that horse.”

She still can’t believe it.

Beckman had found his purpose. “What I found with this horse was a new connection,“ he said. “He taught me a lot. You can lie and cheat with people. With a horse, it’s 100 percent honest. They do all the crap we ask them to do. They don’t lie or cheat. I think that’s refreshing. We should learn from them.”

He still is, and he doesn’t preclude learning from people, too. He worked for Todd Pletcher, Eion Harty and Chad Brown. Sandwiched in between, he trained in Saudi Arabia.

In 2023, only Beckman’s second full year on his own in the United States, he posted 13 victories, 13 seconds and four thirds in 102 starts with $1,468,695 in earnings, more than double what he earned the previous year. He recorded his first stakes victory and, soon afterwards, his first graded stakes. His stable grew from one horse to 26.

He had help, especially from his best friend Kristian Villante, a bloodstock agent who trades under the name of Legion Bloodstock. They became friends when they both worked for Todd Pletcher. “We have very similar personalities,” Villante said. “We became friends and it kind of grew.”

Villante helped Beckman grow his stable. “We said we’d give him the push,” Villante said. “You can open the door for someone, but then, it’s up to him what to do with it. You can provide the opportunity. A lot of credit to Whit.”

It’s been a journey. His mother said, “He doesn’t give up and he always shows up.”

“He didn’t get lucky,” Harty said. “He conducts himself in an exemplary fashion. He’s a good communicator. He’s a very good person. He inherited it from his family. I got to meet them a couple times. You can tell where he got it from.”

But his family didn’t see it coming.

“If you would have told me when he was in high school that he’d get up at 4:30 in the morning to take care of horses, I’d say you’re crazy,” recounted his father, David. “He’d go to a variety of farms with me and he didn’t seem to like it at all.”

His parents sure did. David and Diane Beckman met in a barn. “I was just out of college and I ran a barn in Goshen,” Diane said. “David came to the barn one day. He’s like Whit, very quiet. I thought he was very good-looking.”

David, who had just graduated from veterinary school in 1979, asked her to a University of Kentucky football game. They both went there.

Diane was smitten: “After a couple of months I said, `I want to marry him.’ His character … we’ve been married 42 years and I’ve never known anyone I respect more. He’s been a great father. He works every day. He’s kind. He was on call 24/7.”

The Beckman’s have four children. Whit is the oldest. “When the two boys would get in trouble and David wasn’t there, I’d say, `You’re going to go with your dad and work on weekends.’ I think that’s what turned Whit off on horses – for a while.”

Beckman explained, “She’d say you’re going to work with him. I associated being bad with horses.”

Whit seemed isolated growing up. “He struggled,” his mother said. “He was so shy. He was a kid who lived in his imagination. We sent him to college when he wasn’t ready for it. The College of Charleston put him in a hotel because the dorms were full. It wasn’t a good fit. He came home, and at that point he was really lost. He didn’t have the straight path in life. He met his struggles and has worked through them. Whit was a late bloomer.

“I have always been proud of the person Whit is. He’s trustworthy, and he’s always going to do the right thing, like his father. He’s never going to say anything unless he means it. He’s going to be honest. I’ve always been proud of him because he had the roughest road. He willed himself to where he is today.”

It took a decade and a half and many, many miles. After working with his mother’s horses, Beckman began working with Walter Binder at Churchill Downs and Louisiana Downs. Beckman returned to Kentucky in March, 2006, and his father helped him get a job with Alex Rankin at Up and Down Farm. “It was a great place to learn,” Beckman said. “It gave me a lot of experience. I developed horsemanship.”

He continued to develop that working with Dave Scanlon and Danny Montada getting Darley two-year-olds ready for sale at Keeneland.

Beckman was fortunate to meet trainer Eoin Harty, who reached out to Todd Pletcher for him. Later, Harty would hire Beckman to be his assistant.

Beckman began working for Pletcher at the 2007 Saratoga meeting. “Towards the end of the meet,” Beckman said. “You go to Kentucky. You see the routine. At that time, I could just wake up every morning and say, `How cool is this? I’m working for the top trainer in the country.’”

Pletcher was glad to have him: “He was always a very top-level assistant. Good horseman. Good demeanor around the barn. I’m not surprised to see him doing well.”

After working for Pletcher, Beckman journeyed to Saudi Arabia, an experience with mixed blessings. “At that point, I had just turned 30,” Beckman said. “It was an opportunity to go on my own. I thought it would be a cool thing to go to the Middle East. A rich tradition of horses. We won some races, but it was an extremely different environment. They bring you over, but they don’t listen. They say, `God’s will.’ Religion and their faith take precedence. It was sticky.”

In 2014, Beckman learned his girlfriend was pregnant. He returned to the U.S. and took a job with Harty. “He was already a qualified trainer by the time he got to me,” Harty said. “He was looking for a job and I was looking for an assistant. It worked out immediately. I showed him the way I like things to be done. He was a huge asset. He deserves nothing but the best.”

With a daughter on the way, Beckman returned to Saudi Arabia. He then returned to America to be there for her daughter Violette’s birth on December 23rd, 2015, three days after his 34th birthday. “When she was born, it was the best thing in my life,” he said.

Yet he was ready to return to Saudi Arabia a few days later. “I got to the jetway,” Beckman said. “I was standing there. I couldn’t do it. I was thinking of myself. I wanted to be home with my daughter. I turned around. I felt great about it.”

He felt even better when Charlie Boden, then with Darley, told him Chad Brown was looking for an assistant, as if Beckman was being rewarded for staying with his daughter.

Beckman began working with Brown on April 4th, 2016, and stayed until the summer of 2021 when he ventured on his own with the full support of his sister, Lindley Turner, who had been doing their fathers’ bookkeeping since 2008. Now she does both. “When Whit decided to train on his own, I offered to handle all the financial and the bookwork,” she said. “Not fun stuff, but necessary to keep the business going. Whit was away for 20 years. I wanted to see what he spent 20 years doing. It’s really cool to watch.”

She really liked what she saw from her brother: “He did all aspects of the job. He put a lot of time in everywhere. He had a very clear vision of what he wanted his stable to look like. As a money person, I said, `I believe in your vision.’ We put in basically everything a top barn would. He knew how he wanted to take care of his horses. How his shed row would look. He did the digging. He raked it out himself. From the very start, he put in the system he knew. He told me if you do this now, it will pay off. He was exactly right. It’s come to life, even though we started with one horse.”

She vividly remembers when that first horse, Truly Mischief, an unraced two-year-old owned and bred by Newtown Anner Stud, arrived, September 11th, 2021: “I remember the horse coming to me, and feeling bad for him because he was the only horse in the barn. I said, `We’re going to get you some buddies.’ It was really exciting, just watching Whit train his own horse. He’s very hands-on. It’s not a number thing with him. It’s about the individual.”

It always will be. “There are 20,000 Thoroughbreds bred every year,” Beckman said. “We have to do everything we can to make them reach their potential, no matter what level they’re at. Keep them happy; keep them healthy, get them fit to run. It’s funny, you constantly learn things. You show up every day. Get there early. Make the adjustments that have to happen for the individual. You’ve got to be passionate about it.”

His buddy Kristian Villante knew that he was: “I think he genuinely has a passion for it. It’s more than just a job. It’s a craft. There’s an art form that goes into racing. It’s not just the x’s and the o’s. There’s not really a playbook. What makes great trainers great trainers is they can make adjustments.”

Truly Mischief needed them. He was sixth in his debut, December 1st, 2021, then raced five more times before finally breaking his maiden at Horseshoe Indianapolis on September 28th, 2022, a year and 17 days after he arrived at Beckman’s barn. On February 26th, 2023, at Tampa Bay Downs, Truly Mischief finished fourth and was claimed for $25,000.

Beckman’s neighbor and friend at St. Xavier High School in Louisville, Chip Montgomery, sent Beckman his second horse, a two-year-old filly named Think Twice. She didn’t do much, finishing fifth in her debut, then seventh when claimed for $30,000.

Legion Racing’s four-year-old filly Sabalenka, Graham Grace Stable’s five-year-old gelding Harlan Estate and Ribble Farms’ three-year-old colt Honor Marie have been Beckman’s first three stars.

Sabalenka has two wins, two seconds and two thirds from nine starts with earnings of $427,498. She finished third in the 2023 Christiana Stakes at Delaware Park, July 15th, and second in the Dueling Grounds Oaks at Kentucky Downs, September 3rd. She is the most talented horse Valante helped him land. “They always had my back,” Beckman said. “She was the first one, as far as a nice horse, that gave me a little exposure. She was just a nice filly.”

  In between those stakes placings, Harlan Estate, sent off at 37-1 in the $500,000 Tapit Stakes at Kentucky Downs, delivered Beckman’s first stakes victory – after surviving an inquiry. Far back in the field of 11 early, Harlan Estate won by a length and three-quarters under Declan Cannon. “The horse came from Canada, Beckman said. “We were looking for a turf horse who could compete in open company. She filled all the criteria. Everything blossomed. I knew we were on the right track. It was an awesome day.”

Also rallying from last in the field of eight, Honor Marie captured the $400,000 Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes by two lengths under Rafael Bejarano, earning 10 qualifying points for the 2024 Kentucky Derby. Honor Marie, a $40,000 purchase at the 2022 Keeneland September Yearling Sale, has two wins and a second in three career starts. “From the time he came in, he was a quality horse,” Beckman said. “He needed to mature on a physical level, but I knew I had a good horse in my hands. We knew two turns would help him. I wasn’t surprised, but it was awesome. We got to see what he did in the morning, materialize in the afternoon.”

Of course, he’s on the Kentucky Derby trail. His next start will be in the Grade 2 Risen Star Stakes at The Fair Grounds. 

Beckman’s stable has grown to 26. His momentum is considerable. “I’m really proud of him,” Beckman’s father said. “He is my oldest child of four. He got a little lost. He’s overcome a lot. Horses saved his life.”

Villante’s father, Joe, who sells trainer products, is a big fan of Whit: “Whit is fantastic. He’s really good at communication and he doesn’t think he’s splitting the atom or inventing the game. I really appreciate that.”

He shared this: “About a year ago, we were at Tampa Bay and training horses were coming off the track. Whit had a low-level horse. He asked the rider what he saw the whole way back to the barn. He wrote all these notes. That’s attention to detail. It’s a moment that stuck in my head. I have friends for 20, 25 years. They don’t ask questions. They think they know everything. I was very impressed. This kid is going places.”

He already has. And he’s only just begun.

Jena Antonucci - trainer of the star 3yo of 2023 - Arcangelo

Words - Ken Snyder

In the media avalanche surrounding Jena Antonucci, after her summer to remember, there is both rich irony and something very telling in one of the three “things you didn’t know” about her that escaped attention: she competed in shotgun shooting events. Those close to her who didn’t know this might say, “That figures,” or “I’m not surprised.” Shooting takes focus and concentration, both of which are in Antonucci’s DNA.

The next thing they would say is probably “I bet she kicked ass.”

Her parting words in an interview on YouTube the morning of this year’s Belmont? “Let’s go kick some ass.”

She does not fit the mold of a Thoroughbred trainer. If “focus” and “concentration” could be scored and put into some kind of competition, she’d likely kick ass in that too. 

The two other “things you didn’t know”: she is in her own words a “very good golfer, but without much time to play.” The third thing? She is hesitant to admit that “she doesn’t drink coffee.”

Mold breaker might be an apt description of Antonucci in her handling of success. The example is her response as a small- to medium-size trainer.

“Our number one goal is always wanting to be in the thirty- to thirty-five range, and that’s where we’re focused on staying,” she said. In a purely commercial sense, that’s saying no' to a flood of potential new business in the wake of Arcangelo’s success. 

Were there calls from prospective owners after the Belmont and Travers? 

“There have been conversations, but it’s been a ‘onesie, twosie,’ here and there, kind of thing.

“We’re not looking to be a stable of 150 horses. It’s not who we are. It’s not who I am.”

Antonucci is a horsewoman who rode show horses from age three into young adulthood and then gained not just experience but the right experience with Thoroughbreds. Her first foray was breaking and galloping them at Padua Stables in Ocala, Florida, where she now lives. She was then a veterinary assistant for four-and-a-half years, which gave her valuable horse knowledge on the ground. Exercise riding after vet work gave her knowledge up top astride a horse. All-important management experience, a necessary skill in any racing stable, came through her Bella Inizio Farm she opened in Ocala. (“Bella Inizio,” incidentally, translates as “nice start” in English.) 

As if that’s not enough, she operates HorseOlogy with co-owner Katie Miranda, a Thoroughbred training and ownership organization that spans raising, training and racing while also offering bloodstock advising, pinhooking, micro-investing and more. 

Her start in training was at Tampa Bay Downs in 2010, a year that maybe wasn’t the “nicest.” She won two of eight races and had two second-place finishes. Things began to take off in 2013 with 288 starters and earnings of $1,067,303. This year, of course, Arcangelo has vaulted her into the stratosphere with his $1.7 million in earnings.

“We’ve kind of been the ‘little stable that could’ for a long time,” looking back at her previous ten years of training.

“One thing I’ve always been very proud of is horses who have been claimed off of us or who went to a different barn [and] haven’t gone on to become big flourishing horses. I think a lot of mid-size trainers deserve to be evaluated in that manner, and it’s something I think we fail in the industry to do.”

She has, perhaps, a more realistic take on win percentages for trainers and how she believes they are misinterpreted by not factoring in stable size. Her website even has a section entitled Statistics Aren’t the Only Indicator of Success. “I think you can have somebody at 20 percent if they have 200 horses and can put a million-dollar horse in to get the win.” 

Arcangelo broke his maiden third time out at Gulfstream Park and has been undefeated since then. “I think we get stuck in the headlines of ‘Oh, won first out!’ It’s atypical. It is likely that less than a single-digit percentage of the horse population annually wins the first time out. We set owners up for failure.

“I think we do a consistent job across the board. I’ve had to make a lot of chicken soup out of chicken poo; and with that, I think I have the reputation for being a good horsewoman who is thorough and is trying to find the missing piece or what we can to find a horse’s success level.”

The missing piece for Arcangelo was careful parceling of his potential Horse of the Year talent. Antonucci’s racing campaign gave the horse more time between starts than other trainers might have given the son of the late Arrogate.

“I give a lot of credit to John [Ebbert], his owner, for allowing this horse to have space. I would say most, if not all owners, who saw this talent coming would want a pretty aggressive schedule. I give John a lot of credit for allowing this horse to have the breathing room that he needed and not pressuring me and the horse to pick up races on a tighter schedule.”

Antonucci uses an open-door policy to both involve her team of workers and parcel her own insight and skill as a trainer throughout her string. “It’s impossible for me to be able to put a hand on every leg, every day,” she said. The solution is a barn where everyone—whether foreman, groom or exercise rider--is encouraged to speak up if they feel anything has changed with a horse. 

“So many exercise riders that come to work for us—it’s such a relief for them to be able to come and be able to tell what they’re feeling. So many trainers and assistant trainers don’t want to hear it. A rider may not know exactly what it is, but if they’re communicating that something feels different, that’s all we need to know. 

“I think having a riding background and coming from that avenue into this and not racing per se—and riding for so long—I can see what they’re feeling.

“We don’t ever tell anyone that we don’t want to hear what they have to say.” 

There are nuances also in Antonucci’s relationships with owners. “I don’t think we want our clients to go, ‘Whatever you say,’ but I think there’s a balance with the people that believe in us. They know Fiona [Goodwin, assistant trainer]. They know it’s ‘horse first.’ And we’re going to make the best possible results with who we have in our hands.

“I don’t have a problem with owners being tough, but you learn to find a balance with people believing in the program and what we do.” 

The intensity she shows to the public in interviews surprisingly isn’t carried into the barn and her help. 

“I know she’s focused, and I know that she’s passionate,” said Goodwin, “but she really isn’t intense.” Goodwin has worked for Antonucci from the start of her training career. “You’re running a business, and you’ve got a job to do, so it’s not all fun and games, but we’re light-hearted in the barn.”

Input and an open-door policy might be only one factor in the success of the stable. “Balance” is a word used often by Antonucci to describe her management of people. She uses Goodwin as an example.

“I want my assistant to be able to have balance in her life. It’s what provides us with our life and lifestyle, but I don’t want her here till eight o'clock at night, seven days a week. 

“I don’t want the crew run ragged either. When we get to lean in and do what we do in a responsible manner and enjoy the experience and relationships and the personality of the horses, I think we do our best work.”

Goodwin confirms Antonucci’s approach. “She doesn’t want the work to consume us to where we get sour and resentful of the job and industry.”

Arcangelo, personality-wise, is a piece of work himself, Goodwin said with a laugh. “He likes to be ‘cheeky,’” an expression from her native Ireland. It means “playful.” “He’s fun to be around. He’ll take a chunk out of you every now and then if you’re careless around him. He thinks that’s fun—a love bite.”

In one aspect, his personality also parallels that of his trainer, “But when it’s time for him to go to work, he’s very focused and serious about his job,” Goodwin added.

Her advice for other trainers who burst onto the radar with a “big horse,” is to “turn off the white noise, keep doing what you’ve been doing and stay focused on that. Make sure you’re surrounding yourself with the right people and not a lot of people.”

While quantity intentionally will be maintained in her barn, quality is another matter. “Having some opportunity with a higher pedigreed horse or horse that comes in with a little bit more of an ability, our job will be to nurture that and grow that. Hopefully, we will have more talent to hit the track from those opportunities.”

The task will be the same with any future high-priced, impressively pedigreed Thoroughbred—the same as it is for the least expensive horse in her barn; and it is what drives Antonucci: find the answer.

 “I don’t believe people will view me as a ‘one-hit wonder.’”

For those like Goodwin, who has been with her the longest of anyone in the barn, it won’t be a surprise to see her back in the spotlight at some point in time, probably sooner than later.

“If she were in any other business, she would be a success and probably at the top,” said Goodwin. “She knows what she wants, and she goes after it. She does the job right. It’s always her goal to do better, be better, and win races. If you’ve got the horses, you can do it.”

The horses would be the question, as it is for any trainer, large or small. Arcangelo sold for $35,000 at the 2021 Keeneland September yearling sale—a small fraction of the price for top sellers annually at this premier sales event.

She got a fair amount of attention from those at this year’s sale and recognizes she is a banner carrier for many women in general, but especially in racing. “I’m very grateful for what it means to them and their journey. From an old hard boot to a young female, it’s pretty remarkable.”

For Antonucci, it’s competition with no thought about gender. “Who can train a horse better than the next person?” said Goodwin. “I think Jena thinks of it that way. We’re not intimidated by any other trainer, male or female. We’re here to win, and that’s it.”

Goals? Antonucci may have something to offer the entire world with this: “I think goal setting should be on how you want to live your life and the accomplishments that come with that.”

Opportunities afforded by Arcangelo come second to his life. “Whatever opportunities it provides me will be secondary to stewarding him through his career.

“My goals are to continue to work with great people, foster relationships that are around me, have a healthy growing business in HorseOlogy, have a healthy business at the racetrack, and make sure that the relationships with the people around me are thriving. Everything else becomes secondary.”

And oh yes, another thing: kick ass.

Fiona Goodwin - Jena Antonucci’s assistant trainer

Much of Fiona Goodwin’s Irish accent has been worn away by 27 years in the U.S. Laughter, however, is without accent and nationality; and you hear it often with Goodwin.

It’s probably more often than usual in the wake of Arcangelo’s success. 

She has been the assistant trainer to Jena Antonucci for 15 years from Antonucci’s first day as a trainer.

There was poignancy in Antonucci’s attention to Goodwin’s place in win photos after the Belmont and the Travers. It appeared important to Antonucci that her assistant was in a prominent place in the photo and indicative of a close relationship beyond boss-employee.

“We were first friends in the beginning, and we have remained friends,” said Goodwin. “I would say I’m as close as anybody to her.”

The “business relationship” in the barn is also a close one. “We’ve been doing this together so long, I know exactly how she trains, what she expects and what she expects of me.”

Goodwin and Antonucci first met at Saratoga when Goodwin was in James Bond’s barn where she had worked for 10 years as a forewoman. Before Bond, she worked in the barns of Nick Zito, Mark Henning, Eddie Kenneally and Linda Rice. And those are only the ones she can recall, she added with a laugh.

“On the racetrack, you work for everybody.” 

Goodwin comes from a horse family in County Kerry and is one of sixteen children—ten brothers and five sisters. (She is fourth in the birth order.) Her father was a showjumper, and the family always had horses for that event. A brother is also a showjumper, and two others are jockeys—one in Ireland and the other in England as well as Sweden, Italy and Norway.

Surprisingly, Goodwin had no interest in Irish racing growing up. “I was more into show horses.”

That changed when she visited a brother working at a horse farm in Franklin, Kentucky, near Kentucky Downs. The visit became permanent when she started riding at the farm. When her brother left to go to the Fair Grounds in New Orleans and a job with trainer Eddie Kenneally, she went with him. 

“You can’t go anywhere alone when you’ve got ten brothers,” she said with a laugh.

“I’d never been on the racetrack. He was going there, and I thought, just let me go along. I actually started grooming, which I wasn’t a huge fan of.” Shortly after, she exchanged her rub rag for reins and exercise riding. “Been on the racetrack ever since.”

Today, she shuttles back and forth between Antonucci’s stable at Saratoga, Gulfstream and Antonucci’s Ocala, Florida operation. Currently, there are twelve horses at Saratoga and “sixteen, maybe seventeen,” she said, at Gulfstream. Arcangelo is already at Santa Anita, the site of this year’s Breeders’ Cup where he will run in the Classic.

The Antonucci stable is a family affair, of sorts, for Goodwin. Her husband, Robert Mallari, is an exercise rider and is Arcangelo’s regular workout rider and has worked for Antonucci almost as long as his wife.

More articles from this issue include:

Barry Schwartz

Article by Bill Heller

What is more exciting for an owner and breeder than a two-year-old colt with talent? Former New York Racing Association Chairman of the Board and CEO Barry Schwartz’s New York-bred colt El Grande O certainly gives him reasons to dream. Off a head loss in the Funny Cide Stakes at Saratoga on August 27th, El Grande O dominated five rivals on a sloppy track at Aqueduct September 24, scoring by 8 ¼ lengths as the 3–5 favorite in the $125,000 Bertram F. Bongard Stakes under José Ortiz. Linda Rice trains the son of Take Charge Indy out of Rainbow’s Song by Unbridled’s Song who has two victories, three seconds and one third from his first six starts with earnings of $204,000.

El Grande O is Schwartz’s 26th Thoroughbred to win more than $200,000—a list that includes his top earners Boom Towner, Voodoo Song, The Lumber Guy, Kid Cruz, Princess Violet, Three Ring and Fire King. All of them earned between $700,000 and $1 million.

Now 81, Schwartz and his wife Sheryl still reside at their farm, Stonewall Farm, in northern Westchester County, with a second home on the ocean in California. Schwartz keeps busy playing the markets and running his horse stable.

The Calvin Klein years

It seems like forever since he and his childhood pal Calvin Klein, took Calvin Klein Inc. from a $10,000 initial investment to a global operation, which they sold for $430 million smack in the middle of Schwartz’s four-year reign at NYRA.

Schwartz and Klein, who both lived in the Bronx and had fathers who owned grocery markets in Harlem, went into their first partnership when they were nine, reselling newspapers and collecting bottles. “We’d go to the newsstand when the papers came in early evening,” Schwartz said. “We bought them for a nickel and sold them for a dime. We’d go to all the hotels, especially in the summer. On a good night, we’d make $3 apiece. That was a big deal then.”

When they began Calvin Klein Inc., they rented room 613 in the New York Hotel in Manhattan. The front door was open and faced the elevator. Calvin had the six women’s coats he had manufactured with Barry’s investment. 

One morning the elevator stopped on the sixth floor. One passenger walked out while another noticed the coats and got off. That passenger was Don O’Brien, the general manager of Bonwit Teller, one of New York’s most fashionable stores. 

Schwartz was home when Klein called him with great news: “You’ll never believe this. I got a $50,000 order from Bonwit Teller!” Schwartz replied, “Who’s Bonwit Teller?”  

He figured it out, and Calvin Klein, Inc. went onto incredible success.

The NYRA Years

In the four years Schwartz served as Chairman of the Board and CEO of NYRA from October 2000, to October 2004, racing in New York reached a pinnacle, a shining example of how racing should be operated—when fans and bettors mattered; when the right people in the right positions made the right decisions. 

It didn’t last. When Schwartz departed out of utter frustration from battling politicians and their inept decisions, racing in New York was never the same. It was almost like it was a mirage—a wonderful mirage.

But it was real. It was Camelot at Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga.

That he did this while he continued to operate Calvin Klein, Inc. is remarkable. To do it, he had to commute 30 to 45 minutes through New York traffic every morning. And he did NYRA pro bono.

Why? Because he cared deeply about racing, specifically New York racing. Schwartz’s goal at NYRA was straightforward: “to make New York racing No. 1 in the world.”

Schwartz, who had been a member of the NYRA Board since 1994, was approached by acting CEO and Chairman of the Board Kenny Noe, who had decided to retire in the fall of 2000. “I was excited to be asked,” Schwartz said. “I was flattered. My two biggest supporters were Kenny Noe and Dinny Phipps (head of the Jockey Club). Dinny pushed for it. I was kind of flabbergasted, but I was thrilled. I got really energized. It gave me purpose, something to sink my teeth into. I went gangbusters, all in.”

Klein backed Schwartz’s decision. “The best thing that happened was that there was a long time before I took over,” Schwartz said. “I could work out the schedule I’d have to use. I spoke with Calvin about it. He thought it was a good idea. He always said, `If you’re near a phone, what’s the big deal?’”

So he did both. “At NYRA, my first two years were wonderful,” Schwartz said. “My first two years were a honeymoon. The next two years were just horrible.”

On the first day Schwartz took over NYRA and the three racetracks it operates—Belmont Park, Saratoga and Aqueduct—Schwartz went on NYRA’s new website, which had been designed by his son-in-law Michael, and asked fans and bettors what changes they wanted NYRA to make.

Then he made the changes, empowering fans, bettors and handicappers because he has always been a fan, a bettor and a handicapper.

This was a seismic shift in racetrack management, giving the people who support racing with their hard-earned cash every day a chance to impact the process. 

“On the website, we asked fans what they wanted,” Schwartz said. “We did that several times. Everybody loved that. The bettors could participate in the process.”

Bettors had never been asked that.

“It was genuine,” Bill Nader, former NYRA senior vice president, said. “He cared. He knew they cared. They shared the passion. It was a mind-blowing experience. It was exceptional, and I thought it was great that he heard their voice, that he gave them a seat at the table. He listened to what they said. He wanted to grow the business. He wanted to improve the business. Without consulting the customer, how do you do this?”

That initial fan survey on NYRA’s website received more than 4,000 responses. Schwartz responded by immediately making changes. Uniform saddle cloth pads—the 1 horse is red, the 2 horse is blue, etc.— made it easier to follow horses during a race. Claims, when someone purchases a horse that had just raced, were announced to the public. Barry also instituted a shoe board displaying each horse’s shoe type before every race.

A couple months after those changes, Schwartz said, “It really is true: talking to the fans is important. I’m going to continue involving the fans as long as I’m here. Without them, there’s no sport.”

On his first day, he promoted Bill Nader from Simulcast Director to Senior Vice President of Racing and watched Nader become one of the most respected racing officials in the world, serving as director of racing in Hong Kong for 15 years before becoming the president and CEO of the Thoroughbred Owners of California, June 21, 2022.

Schwartz said, “Bill was grossly underpaid. I didn’t want to lose him. When I reviewed the personnel and salaries, this guy was so underpaid; and I wound up signing him to a three-year contract. I wanted to make sure that he stayed. He was really close to me. When I got my people together, Bill was clearly the smartest guy in the room. He was the best guy I had.” 

Nader told Schwartz, “Wow, I’m thrilled, but I’m surprised.” Schwartz responded, “No, I’ve been watching.”

Nader’s appreciation of Schwartz’s support and impact hasn’t subsided more than 20 years later. “From day one, he just got behind me. That’s a huge amount of trust. He made me. He was the one person that changed the course of my life, providing me with the opportunity at NYRA. Six years later, the door he opened for me at NYRA led me to Hong Kong. He changed the path of my life, and I will be forever grateful.”

Schwartz didn’t take long to help all his employees in the first year. “NYRA got $13 million from Nassau County because NYRA had been overbilled for taxes,” Schwartz said. “I gave everybody a five-percent raise and a five-percent Christmas bonus. It was a big deal for the employees. They had never gotten a Christmas bonus.”

There was a new vibe at NYRA, and you could feel it. “What differentiated Barry was Barry was a New York guy,” top jockey-turned TV commentator Richie Migliore said. “He created his success through hard work. He was as comfortable shooting pool in the jockey room as he was in the boardroom. I remember him beating Jorge Chavez, who thought he was a really good pool player. Barry smoked him.”

Breeders’ Cup 2001

There were many shining moments during Schwartz’s four years, perhaps none more important than supervising the 2001 Breeders’ Cup at Belmont Park just weeks after the tragedy of 9-11 had left a city and a nation broken.

Like every other person in America, Schwartz remembers vividly the horror of 9-11 unfolding: “I was home in New Rochelle, getting dressed and ready to go to the farm. We were building our house there. It was in the very beginning. I saw the first plane hit. I told Sheryl, some idiot just flew his plane into the Trade Center. A few minutes later, I’m driving to the farm, and we hear about the second plane hitting. We spent the whole day at the farm. It was a safe haven at a very scary time. Sheryl’s brother got my kids out of the city.”

Belmont Park, in Elmont, Long Island—just 12 miles from “ground zero”—had already been selected to host the 2001 Breeders’ Cup on October 27, less than two months later; and no one was quite certain if that was still going to happen. “We had conversations with everybody,” Schwartz said. “I was in the same camp as Dinny. I thought it was very important to show New York was alive and well.”

Breeders’ Cup President D.G. Van Clief Jr. issued a statement saying, “Obviously, on the morning of Sept. 11, the world changed, and it certainly changed our outlook on the 2001 World Thoroughbred Championships. But it is very important for us to stay with our plan. We’d like it to be a celebration and salute to the people of New York.” 

Schwartz leaned heavily on Nader to get it done. “It was challenging,” Nader said. “We literally worked 18 hours a day. There was the normal preparation. Then the security side. Nobody minded the extra hours. We wanted to be sure we didn’t miss a thing. It was the most rewarding race day of my career because of what it meant. We were beat up. We were sad. We were down. There was a clumsy period of what to do. What is appropriate? The uncertainty of running the Breeders' Cup at Belmont? For horse racing fans, it meant a lot that they could return to the track and feel good, feel alive. I believe it was the first international event held in New York after 9-11. For me, I’m not sure there has been a better day of racing than that.”

On October 11, Sheikh Mohammed al Maktoum’s private 747 arrived at JFK International Airport from England. On board, were three of Godolphin Stable’s best horses including Arc de Triomphe, Juddmonte International winner Sakhee and major stakes winner Fantastic Light. They were accompanied by two FBI agents, four customs agents and three carloads of Port Authority police. There were no incidents, and the European horses settled in at Belmont Park. 

The day broke sunny. There were shooters on the roofs of many Belmont Park buildings carrying AKA assault rifles. “They were very visible,” Schwartz said. “We had sharpshooters on the roof. I went up to the roof, and the guys were just laying down with rifles. It was scary.”

Nader said, “Seeing the snipers on the roof, I thought, how are people going to handle this? Once the races began to flow, it became one of the greatest events I’ve ever been involved in.”

At the opening ceremonies, dozens of jockeys accompanied by members of the New York State Police and Fire Departments lined up on the turf course, each jockey holding the flag of his country. Following a bagpipe rendition of “Amazing Grace,” Carl Dixon of the New York State Police Department sang the national anthem.

Hopes for an all-positive afternoon disappeared before the first Breeders’ Cup race, the Distaff, when Exogenous, who had won the Beldame and Gazelle Stakes, reared and flipped while leaving the tunnel, slamming her head on the ground. The filly was brought back to Hall of Fame trainer Scotty Schulhofer’s barn but died several days later. Her death was only two years after Schwartz lost his brilliant filly Three Ring when she fell and hit her head in the paddock and died in front of Schwartz and Sheryl before her race.

The climax of the day was the $4 million Breeders’ Cup Classic matching the defending champion, Tiznow, against Sakhee, European star Galileo and Albert the Great. In the final sixteenth of a mile, Sakhee took a narrow lead on the outside of Tiznow, who responded by battling back to win the race by a nose. Announcer Tom Durkin captured the moment beautifully, shouting, “Tiznow wins it for America!”

America had won just by running the Breeders’ Cup as planned. That made NYRA, Schwartz Nader, and the rest of their team, winners, too.

Breeders Cup 2022 – the pick-six scandal

A year later, a day after the 2002 Breeders’ Cup Classic at Arlington Park in Chicago, Nader’s quick actions saved racing from further embarrassment when three fraternity brothers from Drexel University were not paid on their identical six winning $2 Pick Six tickets worth a total of more than $3 million.

Nader hadn’t even attended the Breeders’ Cup that Saturday, but he was at Belmont Park the following morning when he noticed something strange about the Pick Six, which had just six winning tickets from a single place, Catskill (New York) Off-Track Betting. “I asked Jim Gallagher to get the configuration of the tickets,” Nader said. “I looked at it, and I said, `Oh, man, this is a real problem. This is a scam.’ Catskill had made up just one-tenth percent of the Pick Six pool. The tickets were the same ticket six times. And the singles were in the first four races with all the horses in the last two.

“Back then, you didn’t get paid until the weekend ended. I called Arlington Park. I begged them not to pay it. The guy said, `Okay, Bill. I won’t pay them until you tell me.’ Then I called the TRPB (Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau).”

The tickets had been altered after the fourth race to list only the winning horse. Subsequently, investigators found that the fixers had tested their scam twice before the Breeders’ Cup. Additionally, they also had been successfully cashing counterfeit tickets of uncashed tickets all over the East Coast. The scam had been exposed before the cheaters got paid.

Racing’s image took a big hit from this, but it would have been much worse if Nader hadn’t acted. “It meant a lot,” Schwartz said. “If it came out after it was paid, it would have been disastrous.” 

Backing José Santos

Seven months later, Hall of Fame jockey José Santos, who had won the 2002 Breeders’ Cup Classic on 43–1 Volponi for Hall of Fame trainer Phil Johnson, also won the 2003 Kentucky Derby on Funny Cide. A week later, the Miami Herald broke just about every journalism standard there is, alleging that Santos had used a buzzer to win the race from a single phone interview with Santos, whose English was pretty good but not 100 percent; and a single photo the Herald deemed suspicious. This created national and international headlines that Saturday morning, and Santos learned the bad news that morning at Belmont Park, when he was having breakfast with his son, José Jr., at the backside kitchen.

Schwartz responded immediately for NYRA. He got the “suspicious” photo blown up, and it showed conclusively that what looked like an object in Santos’ hand was just the view of the silks of Jerry Bailey riding Empire Maker behind Funny Cide. Besides that, Santos would have needed three hands to carry his whip, the reins and a buzzer.

“NYRA defended me 100 percent as soon as it came out,” Santos said 20 years later. “They did everything to clear my name.”

A hearing in Kentucky two days later confirmed how ludicrous the allegations had been—mistakes the Herald paid for in Santos’ successful lawsuit against the paper.

Schwatz’s legacy

Schwartz’s biggest contribution at NYRA was lowering takeout—the amount of money taken from people’s bets—which, in turn, increases handle, allowing corresponding increases in purse money. Schwartz’s simple logic, which he had used his whole life at Calvin Klein, Inc., dictated that if products aren’t selling, you lower the price. That couldn’t penetrate many of the blockheads in the racing industry who still have failed to grasp this simple concept. When Schwartz left, the takeout was increased and handle declined.

“He came in with a different lens than anyone before him,” Nader said. “He looked at it as a retail business. How do I grow the business? That was retail sales. In our business, it was betting. I think that’s why he really connected. He came in as an owner, breeder and fan. That was the added dimension he brought. That was something we had never seen before. Suddenly, the business was growing.”

The numbers showed that. When bettors get more money returned in payoffs, they bet more—a simple process called churn.

Through intense lobbying, Schwartz got the legislature to reduce the takeout on win bets from 15 percent to 14—one of the lowest in the nation; from 20 to 17.5 percent on two-horse wagers, and the takeout on non-carryover Pick Sixes from 25 percent to 20 and then to 15. “It took a long time to get the bill passed,” Schwartz said. “It passed 211–0. I personally lobbied in Albany to explain how lowering the takeout was good for everybody. Once I convinced them, they endorsed it. It passed both houses, and Governor Pataki signed it. I had a good rapport with him. He’d come to my house at Saratoga every summer. I got along very well with him.” 

The impact of lower takeout was immediate. It began at the 2001 Saratoga meet, and handle rose 4.9 percent to a record of $553 million. Attendance at the 36-day meet broke one million for the first time. At the ensuing Belmont Park Fall Meet, handle rose 28 percent. In its first full year with lower takeout in 2002, handle increased at NYRA by $150 million when compared to 2000—the last full year with higher takeout. Schwartz felt it was just a start. 

“My goal is for this to be so successful I can keep lowering it,” Schwartz said in a 2001 article by Michael Kaplan in Cigar Aficionado. “With a 10 percent takeout, the size of our handle will become enormous.”

Such thinking was revolutionary to how business had been done at America’s racetracks. “Business got tough, so racetrack operators all over the country raised their takeouts,” Schwartz said in Kaplan’s article. “You don’t do that. Where I come from, you lower your price when business is bad.”

In 2023, Schwartz was asked why racetracks around the country haven’t lowered takeout: “The people who run racetracks just don’t understand the sport.”

Schwartz certainly does.

George Weaver - Champagne still flowing!

Article by Bill Heller

Eight years removed from his first unsuccessful starter at Royal Ascot, trainer George Weaver was already a winner when his two-year-old filly Crimson Advocate stepped onto the track to contest the Gp. 2 Queen Mary Stakes June 21. That’s because his love, his partner and his best friend, his wife Cindy Hutter, was able to accompany him and their 20-year-old son Ben to England nearly one year after her gruesome injury on the Oklahoma Training Track at Saratoga Race Course. A horse she was galloping suffered an apparent heart attack and collapsed on her, causing severe brain damage and multiple injuries—changing their lives forever.

Imagine their joy when a photo finish showed that Crimson Advocate and Hall of Fame jockey John Velazquez, had won the Queen Mary Stakes by a fraction of a nose, making Weaver just the third American trainer to capture a race at England’s most prestigious course, in a field of 26. “It was very, very emotional for us,” Weaver said. “ It was kind of miraculous—a beautiful experience much more than winning a race at Ascot. It was kind of spiritual.”

Cindy said after the race, “It was kind of like a dream come true.”

It happened 12 days short of one year after the nightmare at Saratoga.

Weaver was walking back to the barn with another horse when Cindy went down. “By the time I got there, the ambulance was there,” he said. “She was unconscious. She was bleeding. It was a bizarre day. It was a very scary day. It was a very stressful time. We didn’t know if she was going to regain consciousness. We didn’t know what the future would hold.”

Cindy had suffered broken ribs, a broken collarbone and a lung injury besides bleeding on the brain. Though seemingly unconscious, she was able to give a thumbs-up sign after hearing a voice command from a doctor. There was reason for hope.

Hope can go a long way. No one envisioned Weaver and Cindy standing in the winner’s circle at Royal Ascot less than a year later. “We’ve been doing this our whole lives,” Weaver said. “It was an exciting day for us.”

Weaver, 53, was born and raised in Louisville and knew at a very young age that his life would involve Thoroughbreds. He thanks his father, Bill, for that. “My dad took me to the track and told me how to read the Form since I was very little—less than a year old. It was exposed to me early on, and it stuck with me.”

His brother, Scott, went to the track with him, but after working briefly with horses, he turned to business and works for a computer company. 

Weaver has never left the business. “I was never really in doubt about what I wanted to do,” he said.

He worked on a farm briefly for Kenny Burkhart but didn’t take long to know he wanted to work at the track. While still in high school, he began walking hots for trainer John Hennig in the summer. “I was 17,” Weaver said. “I told him I didn’t want to be a hotwalker. I wanted to learn. He took me to Philadelphia Park. He taught me how to be a better hotwalker, how to groom and horsemanship.”

When Hennig left to work for Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas at a training center in California, Weaver was given a choice in 1991: go to California and work for Hennig or travel to New York to work for Lukas’ New York operation under Jeff Lukas and Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher. 

“Working for Wayne, he had some very, very nice horses,” Weaver said. “It was a source of pride to come out of that program, learning to train horses. It’s a lot of trial and error. That was my schooling as opposed to college. I went to the University of Wayne Lukas.”

Lukas remembers both Weaver and Cindy fondly: “The two of them were both working for me at the same time. It was a treat to have them in the shed row. Both excellent horse people. I never doubted for a second they’d be successful. He’s an articulate, good horseman. I’m very proud of him. I saw him on TV at Ascot. It was a treat to see him over there. If George doesn’t do anything else, he married smart.” 

  Cindy, a native of Romansville, Pennsylvania, began riding at an early age and began working for Bruce Miller when she was 16. She galloped horses at Delaware Park and, in her early twenties, began working for Lukas in New York.

It was not love at first sight. They knew each other for years before they began dating. They’ve been together ever since. His respect for her horsemanship is considerable: “She could be on her own… attention to detail…perfectionist. Over the years, she could help a horse who was nervous or a head case. She was always our go-to girl. She’d fix them. I can’t tell you how. She has a great instinct for a horse. She’s a great rider. She’s one of a kind. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone like her.”

When they learned Cindy was pregnant, they decided to go on their own in 2002. “It was time to make a go for it,” Weaver said. “It was time for me to give it a go: come together as a family and see how it went. Luckily, we’ve had a lot of success over the years. She managed the barn so I could focus on our clients. We’ve always worked well together and done well.”

Always? A husband and wife together 24/7? “I won’t lie to you; she has strong opinions,” Weaver said. “Obviously, you have clashes. But we have a mutual respect. It starts with that. We both have the same philosophy: keeping the horses happy.”

Cindy agreed: “We keep horses happy. We do little things like take them to the round pen, let them graze, let them walk and do things before they even go to the track. I think little things make a difference. And we do well together. He gets to do more with the owners and the PR part. I’m more the worker with the horses. We both have our say, and it seems to work that way.”

They didn’t take long to find success. After winning one of eight starts in 2002, they topped the million-dollar mark in earnings in 2003 and have been over a million every year, including this year, already, thanks to a solid career win percentage of 15.

His top earner and best horse was Vekoma, whose six-for-eight record included victories in the 2020 Gr. 1 Metropolitan and Gr. 1 Carter Handicap. He earned $1,245,525 and is now standing at Spendthrift Farm.

In 2015, Weaver took a shot at Royal Ascot, sending over Cyclogenesis to contest the Gp. 1 Commonwealth. “He was three-for-three at the time,” Weaver said. “A big heavy horse. He was a nice horse. It just wasn’t his day over there.”

Cyclogenesis finished 14th.

His performance did nothing to diminish Weaver’s appreciation of the experience: “When you get there, it’s clear how special the racing is at Royal Ascot. I was amazed at the place. It’s a hard place to win. I thought when I left in 2015, how cool it would be to win a race there. It’s like a bucket list.”

Crimson Advocate ridden by John Velazquez claimed the narrowest of victories in a thrilling climax to the 2023 Queen Mary Stakes at Royal Ascot.

The filly who would bring him back was Crimson Advocate, a daughter of Nyquist out of Citizens Advocate by Proud Citizen. Crimzon Advocate was purchased for $100,000 at the Ocala Breeders October Yearling Sale by a large ownership group led by Randy Hill, who owned Vekoma and has been sending Weaver horses for 20 years. Other owners are St. John’s University’s new basketball coach Rick Pitino, New York Giants senior personnel consultant and New York Racing Association Board of Directors Chris Mara, Reagan Swinbank, Bill Daugherty of Black Ridge Stables and Jake Ballis of Black Type Thoroughbreds.

Crimson Advocate would make her debut at Keeneland on dirt April 26, well after Cindy had made major strides in her recovery—something she continued after four months in a hospital. 

An unending outpour of support and prayers, especially from horsemen, certainly helped. “It’s a tight-knit group,” Weaver said. “We’re motivated by our love of horses. You can’t do this without loving horses. When she got hurt, it’s a hard thing to go through. It was scary for quite a few months. So many people reached out. It felt good to have the racing community reach out and pull for us and let us know how much support we had out there. It’s been a tough road. We couldn’t have done it without help. There’s a lot of love on the racetrack, and we really appreciate it. This happened a year ago. We’re fortunate that Cindy made a good recovery. She’s still Cindy. We take things one day at a time.”

Crimson Advocate finished an okay third in her 4 ½ furlong maiden debut on dirt at Keeneland. Her next start, her turf debut at Gulfstream Park, was in the Royal Palm Juvenile Filly Stakes. Through a unique partnership between Gulfstream Park and Ascot, the winner of that stakes and the Royal Palm Juvenile Stakes became automatic qualifiers for the Royal Ascot two-year-old stakes race and $25,000 in traveling expenses.

Weaver won both stakes. Crimson Advocate won the filly stakes wire-to-wire by 3 ½ lengths. No Nay Mets, whose ownership includes Houston Astros star Alex Bregman, captured the colt stakes. He raced at Ascot the day after Crimson Advocate and finished 9th  in the Gp. 2 Norfolk Stakes. 

With two starters at Ascot, Cindy had added incentive to make the trip, if she was up to it. “We went to Aspen before Ascot,” Weaver said. She handled that and headed to England with her family.

Crimson Advocate’s new rider would be Velazquez. In a field of 26, his expertise and experience were paramount.

Watching a field of 26 two-year-old fillies racing five-furlongs on a straight course is an interesting experience. There were two distinct groups during the race far away from each other on the course. How a jockey can make judgment calls with that challenging perspective is a skill itself. Fortunately for Velazquez, he was in a sprint with two-year-olds. She would go as fast as she could.

She broke from the rail nearest the grandstand, and Velazquez hustled her to the lead. She seemed in good shape as her group seemed ahead of the other group. But then Relief Rally came flying at her late. They crossed the wire together. 

“I didn’t know if I got it or not,” Velazquez said afterwards.

Weaver, as his custom, assumed the worst: “Usually, when it’s that tight, I assume we got beat, just to prepare myself. After that, I watched a slo-mo replay. While watching that, I thought she might have gotten the bob.”

She had. Her number was posted first on the toteboard. “We were just out of our minds, hugging, kissing, on cloud nine,” Weaver said. 

Hill told Bob Ehalt of Blood-Horse, “It was great. It was so emotional. Cindy was there, and she was crying. I couldn’t get over it. I am so glad for George. We’ve been together for so long and have won some big races together. I know how much this meant to him.”

Just getting to Ascot meant a lot to Weaver and Cindy. “She saw a lot of people she hadn’t seen in a while,” Weaver said.

Cindy said, “I had to really try hard and be strong to try to make this trip,” she said. “I was just hoping that she wound show up and run a good race.”

While waiting out the results of the photo finish, she said, “If she was second, it was okay. I knew she gave her best.”

So did Cindy.

Walter Rodriguez

Article by Ken Snyder

We see them every day in the news—men, women and children trudging north across Mexico, searching for a brighter future in the best bet on the globe: the United States. For most Americans, we don’t foresee them winning that bet like our ancestors did generations ago. The odds against them are huge. 

But long shots do come in. 

Walter Rodriguez was 17 years old when he pushed off into the Rio Grande River in the dark from the Mexican bank, his arms wrapped around an inner tube to cross into the U.S. The year was 2015, which differs from 2023 only in scale in terms of illegal immigration. He crossed with two things: the clothes on his back and a desire to make money he could send home. How he ended up making money and yes, quite a bit of it at this point, meant overcoming the longest odds imaginable and, perhaps, a lot of divine intervention. 

Getting here began with a long six-week journey to the border from Usulutan, El Salvador, conducted surreptitiously and not without risk and a sense of danger. 

His family paid $5,000 to a “coyote” (the term we’ve all come to know for those who lead people to the border). 

“They would use cars with six or eight people packed in, and we would drive 10 hours. We’d stay in a house. Next morning, they would drive again in different cars, like a van; and there would be more people in it.”

Three hours into a trek through South Texas brush after his river crossing, the border patrol intercepted him. He first went to jail for several days. After that, he was flown to a detention center for illegally migrating teenagers in Florida with one thread tying him to the U.S. and preventing deportation: an uncle in Baltimore. After a month there and verification that his uncle would take him in, Walter flew to Baltimore and his uncle’s home in Elk Ridge, Maryland. From El Salvador, the trip covered about 3,200 miles. 

He worked in his uncle’s business, pushing, lifting and installing appliances, doing the work of much larger men despite his diminutive size. More than a few people marveled at his strength. Ironically, and what he believes divinely, more than a few people unknowingly prophesied what was to come next for Rodriguez. Particularly striking and memorable for Walter was an old man at a gas station who looked at him and said twice. “You should be a jockey.”

For Walter, the counsel was more than just a chance encounter with a stranger. It is a memory he will carry his whole life: “This means something. I think God was calling me.” 

Laurel Park just happened to be 15 minutes from where Rodriguez lived in Elk Ridge.  

Whether by chance or divine intervention, the first person Rodriguez encountered at Laurel was jockey J.D. Acosta. Walter asked in Spanish, his only language at the time, “Where can I go to learn how to ride? I would like to ride horses.”

He couldn’t have gotten better direction. “I’ve got the perfect guy for you,” said Acosta. That was Jose Corrales, who is known for tutoring and mentoring young jockeys—three of whom have won Eclipse Awards as Apprentice of the Year and a fourth with the same title in England. That was Irish jockey David Egan who spent a winter with Corrales in 2016 before returning to England. He piloted Mishriff to a win in the 2021 Saudi Cup. 

 “This kid—he came over out of the blue to my stable,” recalled Corrales. “He said, ‘I’m so sorry. Somebody told me to come and see you and see if maybe I could become a jockey.’”  

Corrales sized up Rodriguez as others had, echoing what others had told him: “You look like you could be a jockey.”

The journey from looking like a jockey to a license, however, was a long one; he knew nothing about horses or horse racing.

Perhaps surprisingly for someone from Central America, where horses are a routine part of the rural landscape, Rodriguez was scared of Thoroughbreds.

He began, like most people new to the racetrack, hot walking horses after workouts. Corrales also took on the completion of immigration paperwork that had begun with Rodriguez’s uncle.

His first steps toward becoming a rider began with learning how to properly hold reins. After that came time on an Equicizer to familiarize him with the feel of riding. The next step was jogging horses—the real thing.

“He started looking good,” said Corrales.

“I see a lot of things. I told him, ‘You’re going to do something.’”

Maybe the first major step toward becoming a jockey began with the orneriest horse in Corrales’ barn, King Pacay.

“I was scared to put him on,” said Corrales. In fact, the former jockey dreaded exercising the horse, having been “dropped” more than a few times by the horse.

Walter volunteered for the task. “Let me ride him,” Corrales remembered him saying before he asked him, “Are you sure?”

Maybe before the young would-be jockey could change his mind, Corrales quickly gave him a leg up.

“In the beginning, he almost dropped him,” said Corrales, “but he stayed on and he didn’t want to get off.  He said, ‘No, I want to ride him.’”

“It was like a challenge I had to go through,” said Rodriguez, representing a life-changer for him—a career as a jockey or a return to his uncle’s business and heavy appliances. 

The horse not only helped him overcome fear but gave him the confidence to do more than just survive a mean horse.

“I started to learn more of the control of the horses from there.”

Using the word “control” is ironic. In Rodriguez’s third start as a licensed jockey, he won his first race on a horse he didn’t control.

“To be honest, I didn’t know what I was doing. I just let the horse [a Maryland-bred filly, Rationalmillennial] do his thing. I tried to keep her straight, but I didn’t know enough—no tactics, none of that. We broke from the gate, and I just let the horse go.”

Walter Rodriguez receives the traditional dousing from fellow jockey Jorge Ruiz after winning his first career race at Laurel Park, 2022.

It was the first of 11 victories in 2022 in six-and-a-half months on Maryland tracks and then Turfway Park in Kentucky. Earnings were $860,888 in 2022; and to date, at the time of writing not quite halfway through the year, his mounts have earned a whopping $2,558,075. Most amazing, he led Turfway in wins during that track's January through March meet with 48. He rode at a 19% win rate.

Next was a giant step for Rodriguez: the April Spring meet at Keeneland, which annually draws the nation’s best riders.

He won four races from 39 starts. More significant than the wins, perhaps, is the trainer in the winner’s circle with Rodriguez on three of those wins: Wesley Ward.

How Ward came to give Rodriguez an opportunity goes back to 1984, the year of Ward’s Eclipse Award for Outstanding Apprentice. One day on the track at Belmont, he met Jose Corrales. On discovering Corrales was a jockey coming off an injury and battling weight, Ward encouraged him to take his tack to Longacres in Seattle. The move was profitable, leading to a career of over $4.4 million in earnings for Corrales and riding stints in Macau and Hong Kong.

The brief exchange on the racetrack during workouts began a friendship between Corrales and Ward that continued and is one more of those things that lead to where Rodriguez is today as a jockey. 

Corrales touted Rodriguez to Ward, who might be the perfect trainer to promote an apprentice rider. Ward’s success as a “bug boy” eliminates the hesitation many of his owners might have against riding apprentices. 

He might be the young Salvadoran’s biggest fan.

“I can’t say enough good things about that boy.  He’s a wonderful, wonderful human being and is going to be a great rider.”

He added something that is any trainer’s sky-high praise for a jockey: “He’s got that ‘x-factor.’ Horses just run for him.”

Corrales, too, recognizes in Rodriguez a work ethic in short supply on the race track. “A lot of kids, they want to come to the racetrack, and in six months they want to be a jockey. They don’t learn horsemanship,” said Corrales. “You tell Walter to do a stall, he does a stall. You tell him to saddle a horse, he saddles the horse. He learns to do what needs to be done with the horses.

“He’s got the weight. He’s got the size. He’s got a great attitude. He works hard.”

Ward was astonished at something the young man did when one of his exercise riders didn’t show up at Turfway one morning: “He was leading rider at the time but got on 15 horses that morning and that’s just one time.“ Ward estimated Rodriguez did the same thing another 25 times.

“He’ll do anything you ask; he’s just the greatest kid.” 

Ward recounted Rodriguez twice went to an airport in Cincinnati to pick up barn workers flying back to the U.S. from Mexico to satisfy visa requirements. “He’d pick them up at the airport from the red-eye flight at 4:30 in the morning and then drive them down to work at Keeneland.”

Walter on Wesley Ward’s Eye Witness at Keeneland.

With Rodriguez’s success, talent is indisputable, but Corrales also credits a strong desire to reach his goal combined with an outstanding attitude. Spirituality, too, is a key attribute developing in extraordinary circumstances in his home country. 

When Rodriguez was three years old, his father abandoned him and his mother. As for her, all he will say is, “She couldn’t raise me.” His grandmother, Catalina Rodriguez, was the sole parent to Rodriguez from age three.

He calls his grandmother “three or four times a week,” and she knows about his career, thanks to cousins that show her replays of his races.

Watching him leave El Salvador was difficult for her, but she saw it as necessary to the alternative. He credits her for giving him “an opportunity in life. Otherwise, I would be somebody else, doing bad things back at home.”

Surprisingly, her concerns for her grandson in the U.S. were more with handling appliances than 1,110-pound Thoroughbreds.

“When I was working with my uncle, she wasn’t really happy; she wasn’t sure about what I was doing.

“But I kept saying to her, let’s have faith. Hopefully, this is going to be okay. Now she realizes what I was saying.”

His faith extends to the latest in his career: riding at Churchill Downs this summer. “One day I got on my knees and I said to God, ‘Please give me the talent to ride where the big guys are.’“

Gratitude is another quality that seems to come naturally for Rodriguez. After the Turfway Park meet at the beginning of April, he flew back to Maryland to provide a cookout for everybody in Jose Corrales’s barn. 

He also sends money to El Salvador, not only to his grandmother but to help elderly persons he knows back home. During the interview, he showed pictures of food being served to people in his village at his former church. At least a significant portion of that is financed by Rodriguez’s generosity.

“I love to help people. It will come back to you in so many ways. I’ve seen how it came back to me.”

According to Corrales, there have been discussions about a possible movie on Rodriguez, who just received his green card in June of this year.

“These days with immigration, crossing the border and all the trouble we’re having—to have somebody cross the border and have success, it’s a blessing,” Corrales said.

A blessing, for sure, but one that was meant to be. Walter encapsulated his journey and what happened after he went to Laurel Park with a passage from a psalm in the Bible: “The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord.” 

Brittany Russell - the trainer of Met Mile contender - Doppelganger

Article by Ken Snyder

“I hear people say win percentage doesn’t matter. That’s almost like saying batting average doesn’t matter.” So said trainer Brad Cox, assessing the performance of trainer Brittany Russell, a former assistant. 

Russell, training on the mid-Atlantic circuit, is, at the time of writing, winning at a 27% rate. Just as impressive for Russell if not more so, is consistency in her horses hitting the wire first. 

Starting in 2020, her first year of saddling more than 100+ starters, her average for the three years is a sky-high 25%. If you translated that to a batting average, I’m not so sure she might be equaling Ted Williams’ .406 record.

Amazingly, 25% would constitute a “down year” for Russell. In 2020, her horses won at an astonishing 29% rate with purse earnings of over $1.6 million—her first year surpassing the seven-figure mark. 

Has any other trainer begun their career with this kind of success? A look at last year’s top 10 in earnings will surprise you. In their first three years of 100+ starters, the entire list, with the exception of Brad Cox, ironically, doesn’t top Russell’s career start. 

When asked if she tracks things like win percentages, the affable Russell responded quickly with “No. I just try and do the barn and then go home and take care of my kids,” she said with a laugh.

Juggling a 40-horse barn at Laurel Race Course currently with another 30 horses stabled at Delaware Park plus raising a three-year-old and a seventeen-month-old, might be the most extraordinary accomplishment, however.

It is family that brought her to the mid-Atlantic circuit and her husband Sheldon Russell, a jockey on the circuit, who has kept her there. 

“I made a decision to come back home to be close to my family [in Pennsylvania],” she said. “Sheldon and I were always good friends through the years, and we started seeing each other again. We knew pretty far into it that I was staying in Maryland, and we were going to get married.”

Family, both literal and figurative, has been part of both her profession and her personal life as a mom. 

“The track opens here at 5:30, so I try not to be any later than the second set, which goes at 5:50. 

“Sheldon and I get up, we get the bags packed, and get everything ready for the kids.” The Russells then head to the home of her assistant Luis Barajas’ mother, who lives only five minutes from Laurel Park. Barajas was Russell’s first hire and is considered a part of her family. 

“Every day is a different schedule,” said Russell, adding that pickup time for the kids can be as early as 10 a.m. or as late as noon.

On Thursdays and Fridays, which are race days currently at Laurel along with weekends, the children stay at home with Sheldon’s mother, who lives with the Russells.

On race days on weekends, the Russells sometimes bring their children to the races.

Already, the oldest child, Edie, wants to be a jockey like her dad.

“He’s ‘super dad.’ Our daughter thinks he’s the best thing ever,” said Russell.

Brittany Russell’s introduction to horses and racing was much later than Edie’s. At age 12, she was on a field trip with a school class to a Thoroughbred horse farm near her hometown of Peach Bottom Pennsylvania. It was life-changing. “I saw it one time, and I wanted to work there,” she recalled.

Russell contacted the owner who put her to work where she learned the “hard work,” mucking stalls and cleaning buckets and other tack. The groundwork for her career was when she learned how to ride on the farm. “I learned horses through the racing side right away. I was cheap labor,” she added with a laugh.

Riding connected her too, perhaps, the biggest luminary in Russell’s career—Jonathan Sheppard, who trained near her home. “I galloped for him. I actually went to Keeneland for a short time for him between my farm days and college.

“He had a really unique style of training; he’d change it up.

“Some of these horses he’d send out over hurdles. One day, randomly, you had to be ready to pivot. If he sent you down to ride the hurdles, you did it.”

A key lesson learned from Sheppard that has impacted her training career was that good horses don’t all want to do the same thing every day. 

Exercise riding was her entré into racing but not, however, the “safe route,” as she termed it, to be around horses. She pursued an associate’s degree in a veterinary technology program. “I thought maybe I’d work in a clinic or something and just be around horses.”

She was close to earning her associate’s degree when the lure of the racetrack was too much for her. Trainer Tim Ritchey at Delaware Park offered her an opportunity to come and gallop his horses. Not long after, she was traveling to Oaklawn Park where she met Brad Cox and Ron Moquett—trainers who would figure prominently in her career.

It didn’t take long for exposure to training Thoroughbreds to replace any thoughts of becoming a jockey. “I loved riding, but it was never the lifestyle I wanted. I saw how hard it was to be a jockey and the battles with weight and all that.

“I definitely took to the training side of it,” she said. “Tim handed me responsibility pretty quickly because he probably realized I could do more than just gallop horses. 

“He threw me into an assistant’s role, and it was sort of what I thrived on.”

Stints with Cox and Moquett followed. With each, as with Sheppard, she learned valuable lessons.

“There is a lot I picked up from Brad. He knows where to place horses. His care of horses is great.

The most critical quality she saw in Cox, which is far more difficult than it sounds, was assessing his stock. “He just knew what he had,” said Russell of what she said is Cox’s uncanny ability to figure out the possibilities and limitations of each horse.   

“I think that’s such a key to success. You can’t just learn that. You have to probably just have it.

“If I hadn’t gone out on my own, I hope I’d still be there. He did a good job. He was so good to work for.”

Moquett, like Cox, imparted attention to detail and a goal of perfection. “They just take fantastic care of the horses,” she said. “The very best feed. The best vet care. The shedrow is immaculate.”

Moquett was instrumental in helping Russell hang her own shingle. “He decided to send a small string to Maryland, and I oversaw that.

“I wound up owning a few of my own that trickled in.”

Leaving Moquett and going out on her own, Russell almost immediately had a sizable stable with 23 horses—20 of which were from one owner. Unfortunately, that owner lived up to a reputation as someone who switched trainers often.

“He pulled them all. Boom.”

“We were in tears, watching these horses leave. I’m going, ‘Oh my God, I’ve put all eggs in one basket.’  I’m thinking, ‘I’ll never build this back up.’”  

“We just kept our heads down and kept working.”

“I was fortunate I still had some good connections. [Bloodstock agent] Liz Crow was awesome, sending me horses. I had 10 Strike Stables sending me some. Mike Ryan [an owner], literally kept my head above water for those first few months before I had more horses come in.”

Hello Beautiful

One of them was a filly named Hello Beautiful. “I think I had five horses, and Hello Beautiful just launched me,” Russell said. “We actually owned half of her.”

The horse had an impressive win percentage of her own comparable, relatively, to her trainer. She won half of 20 starts, stringing together three straight wins twice in stakes races, and earning 100+ Equibase speed figures in eight of her 10 wins. She earned $587,820 in her career. 

As important as the purse earnings was the attention she gained for Russell with other owners.

The obvious and, to a large degree, unanswerable question is what Russell does to produce amazing results. “We go day to day. You can make a hundred wrong decisions, but tomorrow’s a new day. 

“I think you have to make some mistakes to learn the right thing as well—maybe not where we place them, but in the general standpoint of training. We have to try different things to see what works. You’re probably going to make a lot more mistakes before anyone notices that you made the right decision.”

Another obvious question is if a bigger stage than the mid-Atlantic circuit is somewhere in her future. She just recently won her first Gr.1 race—the Carter Handicap at Aqueduct with Doppelganger—the longest shot in the race at 18-1.

“I’m not looking past Maryland. Most of my business is built around Maryland. I have a full barn because we’re winning here and doing well here. People are sending me horses that fit here. 

“You want to be bigger and better, go to bigger racetracks and win bigger races. Obviously, those are goals. But for the time being, I’m just trying to stay very grounded. I’m trying to do well where I am right now.”

“Well” as in win percentage. Wow.

BRITTANY’S BIGGEST FAN!

Brad Cox might be Russell’s biggest fan outside her family.

“Focus, attention to detail—basically the stuff it takes to be a good trainer; she’s on top of it. I could see it in the barn the first day she started working for us. 

“We just were always kind of on the same page. If she was riding a horse, I always felt like maybe I was seeing what she was feeling in regard to the particular horse she was on.”

Cox credits Russell for a major move in his career: New York. “Having her gave me the confidence, I would say, to go there. She played a big role with us getting our foot in the door in New York and obviously, staying there. She was the one that really kind of got things going for me in New York.”

“I’m very proud of what she’s accomplished,” he added.

He also doesn’t think her success is attributable to being in Maryland. “I don’t think it really has anything to do with being in the mid-Atlantic. I think she’d be successful if her main base was New York or Kentucky. She gets it. That’s the bottom line.

The “it” he refers to is the intangible that a trainer either has or hasn’t.

Cox was emphatic in providing an anecdote of what he means: “Print this: I woke up this morning, and I had two horses I had marked to enter at Keeneland. I marked these races for these horses weeks ago. Today is the day of entry, and guess what? I’m not feeling it. We’re not running.

“I can totally understand where owners could be, ‘Well, what happened?’ Listen, they just don’t have it today. I’ve done this enough to know.”

Russell has stayed on the “same page” Cox talked about with her approach. “I think you have to trust your gut,” she said. “If I start second-guessing things, and I don’t know what to do about a certain scenario, you just have to trust your instincts. 

“You get these feelings about horses, and you just have to go with them. It’s hard to explain.”

Hard to explain, but easy to see. Just look at the win percentage.