Connie and Jerry Baker – Om N Joy

“Connie and I have a problem,” Jerry Baker said. “We fall in love with our horses.”

So when their first horse together, Margie’s Minute, a $20,000 claimer they purchased in 2016, was done racing a year later, they didn’t want to lose her. So they bred her.

Good decision. Her third foal, the five-year-old gelding Vodka Vodka, finished second in the Gr.1 Santa Anita Handicap March 7th and has earned $569,750. Less than three months later, his four-year-old half-sister Om N Joy, racing just seven days after finishing seventh in a California-bred turf stakes, dominated her competition on dirt, taking the Gr.2 Santa Margarita Stakes by 3 ¾ lengths under Kent Desormeaux. She’s now over $600,000 in earnings. Not bad for a filly who lost her first eight starts before winning five straight.

Jerry, a career real estate man, said, “We’re lucky.” Connie said, “Very lucky.”