#Soundbites - if you ran racing, what would you do?

Article by Bill Heller

Kenny McPeek

Kenny McPeek

I’d make it easier for fans to watch. I just think it’s very difficult. You have to open an account or have a credit card or get a satellite dish. The restrictions are constricting our ability to grow the sport. If you don’t live in one of 38 racing starts, [you] can’t open an ADW account. We make it too difficult for the fans.

Tom Amoss

Wow. I would make mandatory, random blood testing for all stables and barns; and I would do that immediately. What I’m saying is that the problem with racing today is we only test on race day. We’re not catching people who break the rules. We have to test the barns other days.

Kathleen O’Connell

Kathleen O’Connell

Stop the overkill with rules and regulations. Some of them don’t even make sense. The federal government stepped in. It’s too much. It needs to be more organized and organized by horse people. Say a horse ships in to me from another state. The racetrack wants the serial number for the vaccine from the other state. Some of these things are impossible. It’s just going to cause more trauma. The other thing is that licensing has become so difficult for owners. Fingerprints from every state. It puts a damper on things. My owners are not happy with the bookkeeping system. They’re chasing people from the business by putting a bad taste in their mouths. I would definitely change that.

Jamie Ness

That’s a tough one. Obviously, the horses come first. To me, the bettors and the owners are the people who put this sport on. These are the people we have to take care of. I think we’re regulating ourselves out of business—more rules, more rules, more hoops. And the people holding the bag are the owners and the trainers. I have a couple new owners. The license process is difficult. They can’t claim a horse if they haven’t run one. How do they get into the business?

John Servis

John Servis

Wow. I think I’d have to hit the lottery to afford doing everything I wanted to do. Random testing across the board. I think I would try to make it a little bit more friendly for the fans: less takeout, maybe some more gimmicks. They seem to be doing very well.

Al Stall

I would make adjustments according to the declining foal crop. It seems like horse populations are getting cannibalized by overlapping races and overlapping dates. It’s simple math. Twenty-five years ago, we had close to 30,000 foals; and now we’re below 20,000 roughly. That would help the horses, which is the most important thing; then the horsemen and owners.

Mitch Friedman

It’s a good question. I would listen to the horse people—ask trainers for their opinions more. Ask the trainers what you think of the track every day. I would give more input to people who are on the backside every day with the horses. More input for exercise riders, grooms, clockers and vets, every day. Then meet every week with management and have them discuss that.

Patrick O’Keefe - Kentucky West Racing

Article by Bill Heller

Growing up in Ogden, Utah, Patrick O’Keefe never saw a racetrack. But it didn’t prevent him from falling in love with a horse. 

Patrick did bond with his father through railroads. “I’m a two-generation railroad worker,” he said. “My dad worked for the Union Pacific Railroad. I worked there while I was going to college at the University of Utah. Just before I graduated, he had a heart attack and died. My railroad career ended at that point. So I hooked up with a good friend, Dennis Bullock. I loved golf. We went looking for a property to build a golf course. We looked all over the country. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we had a lot of energy.”

Their search took them to Bear Lake, Idaho, near the southeast border of Idaho and Utah, and Patrick liked what he saw. They found the property owner and made a deal. “I gave him $10 down,” Patrick said. “I had to come up with $2,000.”

He did. They built a golf and country club, and then sold some 1,000 lots on the property. “I was pretty good at sales,” Patrick said.

On a fateful day, one of Patrick’s buddies from home, Wayne Call, paid a visit. He’d moved to the east and was back visiting family. “He lived right next to me in Ogden,” Patrick said. “His dad worked for Union Pacific.” Wayne, who had worked in bloodstock and trained a few horses, told Patrick he thought Bear Lake would be a great place to raise Thoroughbreds. Patrick told Wayne he thought it was too cold to raise horses but Wayne told him the cold kills parasites and limits disease. In Ray Paulick’s February 2022, story in the Paulick Report, Patrick said, “We have good water and several hundred acres, so I said I’d give it a try. I was dumb as a post. I had no background in racing whatever.”

So he leaned on Wayne and they took off for a nearby off-track betting facility in Evanston, Wyoming. “Wayne told me to look for a mare that’s won a lot of races that had good breeding,” Patrick said. He settled on Rita Rucker, a granddaughter of Danzig who’d won 21 races, including four stakes and earned $249,767. Her last start was in a $16,500 claimer, and Patrick got her for $7,500.

Patrick chose Kentucky West Racing—a courtesy to Wayne who once owned a hotel named Frontier West—as a stable name and bred Rita Rucker to Thunder Gulch. Patrick decided to raise the foal on his farm in Bear Lake. “My ranch is 200 acres,” he said. “We fenced a paddock. We had a little manger—a lean-to. When they unloaded Rita Rucker, she was absolutely gorgeous. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

Rita Rucker foaled a filly. Patrick named her Private World, fitting his farm’s secluded area. “I’d drive up to the ranch two or three times a day,” Patrick said. “She’d see me coming and start to run along the fence line. That was her. She just loved to run.”

One snowy evening, she ran away. “Lots of snow, and I came to watch her one night,” Patrick said. “The fence was broken, and she was gone. My ranch adjoins the National Forest. What happened was an elk got through the fence to go after my feed. I saddled another horse and got a lariat. She was at the top of the mountain. I worked my way up to the top of the mountain. It was snowing. It was amazing. It took me hours to get her.”

But he did. “She was just a yearling,” Patrick said. “I built a barn for her.”

When it was time to find a trainer, a friend recommended Bob Hess, Jr. Hess and Patrick quickly discovered they had a talented two-year-old filly. Private World won her first three starts, a maiden race at Del Mar, an ungraded stakes at Santa Anita and the $100,000 Moccasin Stakes at Hollywood Park.

“I’m offered a million and a half after the race,” Patrick said. He didn’t take long to say ‘no.’ “Let me tell you something, I was in love with that horse,” Patrick said. “I was in love with her from the day she was born. I just figured that this horse was going to be the start of something fantastic.”

Her next race was anything but. In the Gr. 1 Hollywood Starlet, Private World tired to finish last—11th by 20 ¼ lengths. She then finished second in a $96,000 stakes and fourth in an $83,000 stakes. She had posted three victories and one second in six starts and earned $166,058.

She never raced again. “She ran through an iron fence and broke her leg,” Patrick said. “I didn’t have any insurance. I lost her for racing, and I thought we would have to put her down.”

Patrick brought her back to Bear Lake, and she slowly recovered. “I spent months with her,” he said. “I hauled in bale after bale of straw. I slept in the barn with her. I bawled my eyes out for a month. I told her as long as she’s alive, I would stay in the business.”

He meant it, and now, at the age of 80, his business is thriving with a partner, Clarke Cooper. After Private World recovered, Patrick bred her to Giant’s Causeway and was rewarded with the three-year-old speedy colt Classic Causeway, who took Patrick and Clarke on a heck of a Triple Crown ride, capturing the Gr. 3 Sam F. Davis and the Gr. 2 Tampa Bay Derby for trainer Brian Lynch.

After Classic Causeway finished 11th in both the Gr.1 Florida Derby and the Gr. 1 Kentucky Derby, Patrick and Clarke switched trainers to Kenny McPeek. In his first start for his new trainer, the Gr. 3 Ohio Derby, Classic Causeway fought on the front end before weakening to third.

McPeek thought Classic Causeway would handle turf, and he gave his new horse quite the challenge: the mile-and-a-quarter Gr. 1 Belmont Derby at Belmont Park July 9. Sent off at 26-1 under Julien Leparoux, Classic Causeway went wire-to-wire, winning by three-quarters of a length. Subsequent good races, thirds in the Gr. 1 Saratoga Derby Invitational and the Gr. 3 Jockey Club Derby Invitational, leaves his connections plenty of options in a promising future.

Private World has since foaled a colt and a filly weanling by Justify, and she’s in foal to Maximum Security. “We’re loaded; we’re loaded with potential,” Patrick said. “I didn’t take the money when I needed it. I just wanted to go on this journey and see where it takes us.”

On August 31, the journey took him to a destination he’d never envisioned growing up in Ogden, Utah. He was named the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association September Member of the Month. And he knows who to thank.

Asked what he thinks of when someone says “Private World,” he said, “I think of love.”