#Soundbites - trainers - horses had the fewest number or average starts per year - smallest field size

By Bill Heller

The new Jockey Club Fact Book showed 2019’s average field size dropped again to 7.24, and 2019’s starts per runner dropped again to 5.96. Both numbers are the lowest since at least 1950. Does that concern you?

Todd Pletcher

It does concern me. There’s a concern that today’s horses aren’t as durable as they were in the past. We need increased field size to increase handle. That’s a worry. But we also want to try to lessen breakdowns, and trainers are spacing races out more to make sure their horses are ready to run an optimal performance. We found over the years that horses, especially after hard races, need more time. It’s a complicated issue. It’s a constant learning curve. Each horse is different. Certainly we see that when we approach Triple Crown races for three-year-olds.

Neil Drysdale

Neil Drysdale

It does, obviously. It keeps contracting. We know that from the foal crops. It leads to us to say we should have less racing to get better field size. I think it will happen. When I started, we didn’t have year-round racing. Racing has been proliferating, but the boutique meets have done so well: Keeneland, Del Mar, Saratoga, Hot Springs.

Tom Albertrani

Tom Albertrani

It’s interesting to hear statistics about it. Am I concerned? I don’t think so. I think we’re still a pretty strong industry. I know there’s been a lot of smaller fields the last couple of years.

Ron Moquett

Ron Moquett

Not where I’m at. I go to the track at Remington Park, Oaklawn Park and Keeneland. They offer some of the largest field sizes there are. If you look it up, I think Remington is No.1, and Oaklawn is No. 2. That’s where I race most of my horses. I like bigger fields for handicappers to bet on. It’s easier to win races when they’re less, but I like people to see big fields with good horses. 

Tony Dutrow

Yes. No. 1, I’m not surprised. It’s been alarming me for a number of years. Horses are not as sound. The reasons for the drop in starts, in my opinion, is that racing’s become enormously commercial. When I was so much younger, more breeders bred horses to race them much more than they do today. The people that have the funds fuel this game. The people who fuel the game need good broodmares. Then they breed them to a successful stallion. They spend a lot of money. And then they’re going to sell that horse at a sale. They’re not going to keep that horse running in the field with his buddies. That has a lot to do with why horses have less starts.

John Shirreffs

John Shirreffs

It does not really concern me. When I first was working on the racetrack as a hotwalker/ponyboy, Laffit Pincay was just beginning to ride. The rumor was that if you use him, you wouldn’t be able to run your horse again for 30 days because he got everything out of the horse. Now all the jockeys are like Laffit. Jockeys are now fitter, stronger and ride harder from gate to wire. I think the horses are asked to do more, so recovery takes a little longer. Horses are also carrying a lot more weight than they ever did. There used to be weight allowances. Look at the scale of weights. Much higher.

Wayne Catalano

Of course it concerns me. We’re running out of horses. We’re not breeding as many horses as we used to. I don’t know the numbers, but it’s finally catching up with us. Field size is handle, right? We get paid by the handle.

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Michael Hui

By Bill Heller

Stakes winning owners - spring 2020

By Bill Heller

Michael Hui – Zulu Alpha

When Michael Hui made his first trip to the racetrack (Oaklawn Park), he was 15 years old. He saved his first bet, christening his entrance into horse racing. “It’s the first wager I ever made—a $2 show ticket, an old Amtote ticket,” he said. “I definitely loved watching the horses.”

Forty-one years later, he’s saving much better souvenirs, thanks to his first Gr1 stakes winner, Zulu Alpha, a horse he claimed for $80,000 in September 2018. The seven-year-old gelding has emerged as one of the best turf horses in the country, thanks to consecutive victories in the Gr.1 Pegasus World Cup Turf and the Gr.2 Mac Diarmida Stakes.

“He’s exceeded every expectation,” Hui said. “I’m going to enjoy this ride. It could be a real fun year.”

But Hui not only owns a Gr1 winner, he and his wife have also bred a Gr1 winner, Nickname—the daughter of Nina Fever, a horse they claimed for $40,000. Nina Fever suffered a fractured sesamoid in the race she was claimed, was retired, and then was bred to Scat Daddy, producing Nickname—the winner of the 2015 Grade 1 Frizette.

This is heady stuff for Hui, who has only been in the game since February 25, 2010, when he claimed Diablo’s Holiday for $30,000 when she finished second in a maiden claimer at Oaklawn Park. He’d fallen in love with horse racing much earlier.

Hui’s parents, Albert and Ellen, came to America for an education and wound up educating others as professors: Ellen in chemistry and Albert in math and physics at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, 100 miles southeast of Oaklawn Park. 

When he started going to Oaklawn Park as a teenager with his friends, Hui said, “We had a blast.  We continued going when we could through college.”

Hui graduated from the University of Arkansas with a double major in math and physics and tacked on a master’s degree in industrial engineering. Working in analysis and management, Hui spent nine years at a logistics company in Shreveport, La.

He co-founded Transportation Insight, a logistics cost management consulting firm in Hickory, N.C., in January 2000; and it did well enough for him to relocate to Arkansas, where he reconnected with his teenage passion, in 2004. “It pulled me back in,” he said. “I’d be at Oaklawn Park most weekends.”

He thought about getting in the game. “I thought about it for a half dozen years,” he said. “I decided to take a little shot. It was cool to own a horse.”

His first claim, Diablo’s Holiday, didn’t give him his first winner. Amelia, a $7,500 claimer, got the job done.

“I didn’t really experience my first win until 10 or 11 months after I got in,” Hui said. “It was fun, but we ran second a lot, third a lot. It was all a positive experience.”

Not even close to how he did with two subsequent claims he made after connecting with Mike Maker. Taghleeb, a $62,500 claim at Saratoga in July 2016, won the $100,000 Remington Green Stakes at Remington Park, the H. Allen Jerkens Stakes at Gulfstream Park and the Grade 3 McKnight Handicap at Gulfstream Park in January 2017. He then finished second in the Grade 1 Man o’ War Stakes at Belmont Park.

Another $62,500 claim, Greengrassofyoming at Churchill Downs in 2016, won the Grade 3 Stars and Stripes Stakes at Arlington and finished fourth in the Grade 1 Arlington Million.

An $80,000 claim, Hogy, captured the Grade 3 Kentucky Downs Turf Sprint and finished second in the Grade 2 Woodford Stakes at Keeneland.

But the best claim was yet to come. That was Zulu Alpha, claimed for $80,000 by Hui on September 14, 2018, with another trainer Hui used, John Ortiz. Zulu Alpha won that race by 9 ½ lengths. “When I claimed the horse, I offered John a half-interest,” Hui said. “He said, `No, I have enough horses.’”

Zulu Alpha captured his first start for his new connections in the Grade 3 Sycamore at Keeneland.

Then Hui switched trainers to Maker, and Zulu Alpha won the Grade 3 McKnight, the Grade 2 Mac Diarmida and the Grade 3 Kentucky Turf Cup after finishing second by a neck in the Grade 1 United Nations. Zulu Alpha finished his six-year-old season by rallying from 12th to finish fourth by 1 ¾ lengths in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Turf to Bricks and Mortar, who would be named Horse of the Year.

With Mike Maker, Hui won his first Gr1 stakes with Zulu Alpha in the Pegasus World Cup.

In 2020, Zulu Alpha is two-for-two, and the sky’s the limit. Hui credits Maker: “He doesn’t say a lot, but when he talks about horses, he talks about balance and height. I have faith in Mike.”

“I never thought when I got in this, I would win a Gr1,” Hui said. “For someone who didn’t think he’d win a Gr1, it was like Christmas.” Even if it was a month late.