John Sondereker

Sixty years ago, John Sondereker got a taste of the tantalizing possibilities racing can offer. He was 18 and in his third year working for trainer Jerry Caruso at Ascot Park, a small track in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Because Caruso knew Ohio-based Jack and Katherine Price—the trainer, owner and breeder of Carry Back—Sondereker was able to tag along with Caruso’s foreman to see the 1961 Kentucky Derby. “I went down in a pick-up truck,” Sondereker said. “That was my first Derby.”

When late-closing Carry Back rallied from far-back to edge Crozier by three-quarters of a length and won the Run for the Roses, Sondereker was moved. “I was 18 years old,” he said. “I was flabbergasted. I’m a small-town kid. We used to call our track a bull ring. $1,500 claimers. Lots of them. Seeing Bill Hartack, catching the whole Derby experience—horse racing was totally different down there. You could get lucky with the right horse and win it all.”

Just two years before Sondereker's first Derby experience, he had gotten a job mucking stalls and walking hots at Ascot Park. “I was a kid, and I needed the money,” he said. “So that was a job that was available. I think they’ll pick anybody.”

He quickly fell in love with horses and horse racing. “I loved the animals,” he said. “It was just a great experience. It was a thrill. Back then, horse racing was king. On Saturdays, at that little track, we had 20,000 fans. It was the only game in town.”

He’s now living in the city that has thousands of games in town—Las Vegas, where he wakes up at 4 or 4:30 a.m. and walks or half-jogs five miles every day. “I jogged for 50 years,” he said. “I live on a golf course, 15 miles west of the Strip. I’m out there walking with a little lamp on my head.”

In the city that never sleeps, Sondereker goes to bed at 9 p.m. “I sleep well,” he said.

Sondereker served in the Air Force, the last year in Iceland. “I was the only person in Iceland getting the Wall Street Journal and the Cleveland edition of the Daily Racing Form,” he said.

When he returned, he had an intriguing career working for Wells Fargo, serving in branches all over the United States and in South America, Latin America and Puerto Rico—working his way up to executive vice-president. “I spent five years in San Juan,” he said. “I went to the track there.”

He’d been introduced to racing in the early 1950s by his father and uncle at Waterford Park, which became Mountaineer Park, in West Virginia. When his family moved to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, he caught on at Ascot Park.

When he retired from Wells Fargo in 2003, he resumed his passion for horse racing. “I always was a big fan of racing,” he said. “I got involved. I decided I wanted to do it on my own. In my working career, I had a lot of authority. I’m the guy who makes decisions. I don’t look back. I want to look forward. I’m still learning. That’s a great thing when you’re 78—to still learn. It’s fantastic. 

“In my opinion, owners don’t get engaged the way I did—to find out how and why decisions are made. It’s a passive thing. Most of them don’t know a fetlock from a knee.”

Sondereker got involved with a small syndicate, Class Racing, meeting trainer Eric Kruljac. Then Sondereker went on his own, keeping Kruljac. “He went to the Keeneland Sales with me,” Kruljac said. “Then he started going in the wintertime. It was seven degrees below zero the day he bought Kiss Today Goodbye as a yearling at Keeneland.”

That was at the Keeneland January 2018 Sale. “The wind chill was brutal,” Sondereker said. “I couldn’t get my pen to write, standing outside.”

He landed Kiss Today Goodbye, a son of Cairo Prince out of Savvy Hester out of Heatseeker for $150,000. “There were a handful of fillies I liked, and they went from $20,000 to $25,000, so you know they weren’t good,” he said. “I started looking at colts.”

He liked what he saw in Kiss Today Goodbye—his name taken from the opening line of the song “What I Did For Love” from the musical Chorus Line. “I said, `Boy, this is a nice-looking colt,’” he said. “Looks so correct. I must have looked at 50, 60 horses. He was a great mover. Very graceful. He seemed like a pretty smart horse. He stood there looking at me. Calm and collected.”

So Sondereker collected Kiss Today Goodbye. The now four-year-old colt took five starts to break his maiden by a neck at Santa Anita last February, then finished 10th by 33 ½ lengths in his first start against winners.

Undeterred, Sondereker and Kruljac entered Kiss Today Goodbye in the $98,000 Shared Belief Stakes at Del Mar, August 1. Sent off at 34-1, Kiss Today Goodbye finished a much-improved third by 4 ¼ lengths. Switched to turf, Kiss Today Goodbye finished fifth and fourth in a pair of Gr2 stakes—the first at Del Mar, the second at Santa Anita. Returned to dirt, Kiss Today Goodbye won an allowance race by 2 ¾ lengths.

Kiss Today Goodbye stepped back up to stakes company December 26 and captured the Gr2 San Antonio Stakes at Santa Anita by a half-length, becoming the first three-year-old to win the stakes dating back to 1925. That performance got Kiss Today Goodbye into the Gr1 Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream Park, January 23. A victory would have given Sondereker his first Gr1 victory, but he finished seventh after racing last early in the field of 12.

Sondereker can only hope for similar success with Ruthless But Kind, a War Front filly he purchased for $625,000 at the 2020 Fasig-Tipton Yearling Sale in September. “I was really looking for a filly who could long on turf,” he said.
“She was the best filly I could find. I figured maybe a half-million.” When he bid $625,000, he didn’t think he was going to get her. “I figured I was going to be the underbidder again,” he said. “That happens a lot to me.” Instead, he got his filly. 

Regardless of how she does, Sondereker is still enjoying racing. “It’s definitely enhanced my life—learning something and being able to apply your knowledge,” he said. “It’s always been a thrilling sport, from the $1,500 claimer going up. The bigger the race, the better.”

Anyone who knows Sondereker knows how much he has given back to racing. “He’s fabulous,” Kruljac said. “He’s just a wonderful man. He’s very, very generous.”

Sondereker supports retired racehorses and the California Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Foundation, which serves over 3,000 backstretch workers and their families throughout California. “You have to give back,” Sondereker said. “I’ve been so fortunate in my life. I’m happily supporting backside employees and retired racehorses, and I’m going to do more of it. It’s a passion for me.”