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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.”

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