Scott Mawaka - Mo Speed Racing - West End Kid

Maybe it was chance,  or fate. Call it karma or destiny or happenstance. All Ohio businessman Scott Mawaka knows is that it changed his life: “As a young man, my first customer that I signed for my business, I offered to take him golfing or go out for lunch. He said, "That's not what I like. I like to handicap the ponies.’”

Off they went to Thistledown in Cleveland. Mawaka remembers seeing “a stereotypical bunch of guys with their papers and cigars. Probably 30 years ago.”

Not long after, Mawaka claimed his first horse, Fame and Gold, for $5,000 at Thistledown on October 10th, 2001. Fame and Gold won a $3,500 claimer in his third start for Mawaka and was ultimately claimed. “That got the bug in me,” Mawaka said. “Our first couple of claimers, I bought with my dad.”