D Wayne Lukas - Doing It His Way: Passion & Purpose Keep D. Wayne Lukas Coming Back for More

In his signature white Stetson hat and sunglasses, the white-haired gentleman made his way from his grandstand perch through an undulating crowd toward the infield winner’s circle. The veteran horseman moved purposefully through the fray, his cane his only concession to his age. His peers, many of them decades younger, clasped his hand in congratulations as the masses parted for this icon. Under a gray sky, beside a glossy gray horse draped in yellow and black, D. Wayne Lukas reaped the rewards of his passion and perseverance as he collected another record: at 88 years old, the oldest trainer to win a Triple Crown classic. 

As an elder statesman of the sport, Lukas is a man of contrasts. He grew up on a rural Wisconsin farm cultivating an innate love of horses and then pursued that passion while he developed his leadership skills working as a high school teacher and basketball coach. That legacy carried over to training Quarter Horses and then Thoroughbreds, his nickname ‘the Coach’ carried over from the court to the racetrack. As the ultimate visionary in racing, he built a career innovating the sport while staying committed to simplicity, even eschewing the now-ubiquitous smartphone for its understated cousin, the flip phone, and continuing to supervise both the horses and the people in his charge daily. Successes from the grind of earlier decades have afforded him opportunities that few get: the chance to continue doing what he loves on his terms and his timeline, simultaneously unhurried and ambitious. 

At an age when most might have already called it a day, the Wisconsin native continues to find joy in rising before the sun, mounting his pony, and overseeing the collection of current and future stars in his barn, including Preakness winner Seize the Grey. In his decades on the racetrack, Lukas has filled a multitude of roles – from trainer of equine athletes to teacher of generations to ambassador for the sport he loves – and he has done it all his way. 

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To say that Lukas has won only two Triple Crown classics plus a Kentucky Oaks since 2013 is a statement about the impact that he has had on the sport nearly fifty years after switching from Quarter Horses to Thoroughbreds full time. His resume is familiar to the generations that watched him at the track or on television during his most dominant years in the 1980s and 1990s, a tally of achievements that make his enduring drive all the more extraordinary. 

Since 1978, D. Wayne Lukas has won the Kentucky Derby four times, first with Winning Colors, the third and most recent filly to win the Run for the Roses, in 1988; the Preakness Stakes seven times, from Codex’s victory over Genuine Risk in 1980 to Seize the Grey’s gate-to-wire win in 2024; and the Belmont Stakes four times, including dual classic winner Thunder Gulch in 1995. The trainer was on the cusp of the Triple Crown in 1999, the same year he was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, after Bob and Beverly Lewis’s Charismatic won the Derby and the Preakness and then was on the lead in the Belmont stretch before an injury ended both that bid and the horse’s career. 

In addition to his success in the three-year-old classics, Lukas has trained five Hall of Famers (Lady’s Secret, Winning Colors, Azeri, Serena’s Song, and Open Mind); had former assistant Todd Pletcher join him in the Hall of Fame in 2021; and then was inducted into the Quarter-Horse Hall of Fame in 2007. He claims a record 20 Breeders’ Cup victories, four Eclipse Awards for leading trainer, and nearly fifty Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred champions, numerous graded stakes winners, and a multitude of fans from the kids he pulls into the winner’s circle to names like MyRacehorse’s founder and CEO Michael Behrens and journalist Christina Bossinakis, co-author of Lukas’s 2019 book Sermon on the Mount

His latest Preakness win with Seize the Grey is his third graded stakes win of 2024 and his second with the son of Arrogate, who also took the Grade 2 Pat Day Mile on the Kentucky Derby undercard. Lukas also enjoyed success with Secret Oath, a daughter of the late Juddmonte sire with whom the trainer got his fifth Kentucky Oaks in 2022. “I've had such good luck with the Arrogates,” the trainer reflected. “Boy, that's tragic that we lost him because he was destined to really be a good one.”

Seize the Grey is part of Arrogate’s last crop of foals, bred by the late Audrey “Tolie” Otto’s Jamm Ltd., and purchased by MyRacehorse for $300,000 at the 2022 Saratoga Yearling Sale. When it came time to choose a trainer, Michael Behrens, founder and CEO of the microshare syndicate, thought the colt would be a great fit for Lukas’s program. 

“I saw his success with Secret Oath, and that was an Arrogate, and that got him back in my purview and watching and just being a little bit more cognizant of what he was doing down in Oaklawn. Watching the success that he was having at a later stage in his career, I was impressed,” Behrens shared. “This horse was built like a horse that we thought would do well in his program. We know that Wayne is not afraid to run a horse, and that's one thing that we love to do is race. With his strength and physical attributes, he just felt like a horse that we thought would thrive in that type of environment.”

Additionally, Behrens knew that bringing Lukas on was going to create a special connection for each person that paid $127 to buy a share of Seize the Grey. Even before the colt made his first start, having the Hall of Fame trainer attached was an irresistible opportunity for potential owners. “To say, I own a horse with D. Wayne Lukas, [became] the reason they bought the horse,” Behrens shared. “It didn't matter what the horse looked like, the walk, the pedigree. So many people come to me and say, ‘I bought in because of one reason: I just wanted to own a horse with the Coach.’”

Lukas understands the significance of his part in the Preakness win for those owners. After his first reaction to the colt’s victory – “Well, I did it again” – the trainer knew that “I had just made 2,570 people happy. I didn't realize how happy, but they were really happy.” The winner’s circle was filled with just a fraction of the men and women who had treasured the possibility of winning with D. Wayne Lukas enough to invest their money with no promise of a return. When it comes to the Hall of Fame trainer, though, nothing is outside the realm of possibility. 

Seize the Grey is the first horse MyRacehorse has sent to Lukas; Behrens and company has since added two more to his barn. The Hall of Famer has become “an ambassador of MyRacehorse, which has been great. He'll say things like, ‘I got to go check with the 2500 owners first before we make a decision,’” Behrens laughed. “Everybody loves it. It's great for us. It really reinforces all the time that this horse is fundamentally owned by the people. It's given our brand just a lot more awareness. It's given it more clarity, which has been helpful.”

Seize the Grey gave Lukas his 15th Triple Crown classic victory. That number is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what the Wisconsin native has achieved since he started training Quarter Horses full-time in 1968 and then switched to Thoroughbreds a decade later. 

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Lukas’s resume puts him on par with legends like “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons and Ben Jones, both of whom were private trainers for the sport’s largest owners in a time when a singular home base was the norm. In his time as part of a sport deeply rooted in tradition, Lukas turned that on its head and molded racing’s previous business model into one all his own. From the paddock on race day to the backside every day, he has left no aspect of his operation untouched by his vision and influenced the practices of many other trainers in the process. 

“When I first started with the Thoroughbreds, I came to the paddock a couple of times, and I didn't have the right blinkers. I did have some of the things I wanted, the pommel pad and so forth. So, I thought, that's a simple fix,” Lukas remembered. “We got these bags made, big shopping bags, and we put our stuff in there. Do you know that within, I'm going to say two weeks, almost every trainer on the backside had their shopping bags made up?” 

In the early days at Santa Anita, “we'd bed deep on straw. Everybody then was pulling a drag sack, where they threw everything on it and dragged it to the bin. And so, I thought this is not the way to go,” the trainer shared. “I went right down to the maintenance guy, and I said, ‘I want you to make this big wide wheelbarrow. It just barely fits through the doors of the stall [and] go at least three quarters in. Just put a nice big tire on it and everything.’ He made, I think, four or something like that. Guess what? Soon everybody else had one, too. Two months later, Western Saddlery mass-produced them and sold them all over the country.”

His innovations went beyond his California base and spread coast to coast. Building on Jack Van Berg’s multiple divisions, Lukas had four barns coast-to-coast, each staffed by a star-studded list of assistants, and supported multiple racetracks rather than focusing on one or two. “He didn't have 200 horses at one location. We ran at Monmouth, we ran at Belmont, and we ran in Kentucky” former assistant trainer Kiaran McLaughlin recalled. “Today, Todd and Chad would have over 100 horses at Saratoga trying to be the leading trainer, but Wayne never really did that. He kept the horses at different locations and helped each racetrack that we were stabled at.”

The former educator and basketball coach translated his experience managing players and students into mentoring his employees, especially his legion of assistant trainers, as he taught them to do it his way. “As a head coach, you have to delegate responsibility in some of the teaching or training. And that came out real strong with me,” Lukas shared. “Every one of those four divisions that we had were not any different. You could go to any one of them, and you would absolutely know exactly what the policy was.” 

That background extended to the horses in his barns, as the trainer placed his charges where they would perform best, giving each one a shot in the right conditions rather than focusing on a chosen few as other trainers would do. “When we first started out, I said, ‘You know what you need to do here is we need to grade these horses. And then after we grade them, we need to decide where they can compete effectively,” Lukas explained. “Can these four horses or five horses or six horses, can they compete at Turfway? Or are they a better set of horses that we can take maybe to Monmouth.’ And we started grading those. We started grading three levels. Pretty soon we had four because we got so many horses.”

In the late 90s and early 2000s, as clients like William T. Young’s Overbrook Farm and Gene Klein passed away and other owners got out of racing, Lukas had progressively fewer horses to work with. That change meant the Wisconsin native had to adapt. His stable gradually transitioned from four barns to one. The same practices are there, but on a different scale. Lukas maintains that “the only thing I've changed, I think, is that I read into the horse a little bit better.” He still marks his training chart after each day’s session. He talks with assistant trainer Sebastian Nicolls, listens to feedback from his employees, “and then I sleep on it. The next morning, I walk in there and maybe say, ‘You know what? That filly, she's only had seven days’ rest, and she's going to run back in three weeks. I think I'll give her two more days.’” 

At the core of his ability to adapt are the skills that brought him the most success: his innate relationship with the horse. “I think, fundamentally, he was practically born on a horse. He certainly grew up on horses. He wasn't exposed to the greatest of horses when he was a very, very young man. He really learned all the basics of horsemanship from the ground level,” co-author and friend Christina Bossinakis observed. “I think he also been able to create a system and a discipline within his operation that has been proven to be successful.”

In addition to the day-to-day work with his current charges, Lukas finds the possibility of what’s next inherent in yearling sales as thrilling as a Grade 1 win. “At this period of my life, I probably should have somebody look at them and make a short list and give me the short list. But I don't do that. I get right in there and go barn to barn. I'll have a score on each,” the horseman shared. “I look at everyone there and enjoy the whole process.”

His ability to pick out future athletes is one part of the process that has propelled Lukas from high school basketball coach to horse trainer. That fresh blood motivates him to look forward to the next race, the next season, giving the restlessness that comes from his indomitable drive an outlet. Yet if observers imagined that he has another Kentucky Derby win or another Breeders’ Cup victory motivating him, Lukas makes it clear that is not what drives him. Rather than the big picture, this horseman’s focus is simpler: “My goals are daily. My goals, they fall in there. Here's the way I live my life: Every morning when you wake up, you or me, I want you to try this. You have a few seconds of an attitude adjustment. Now, I wake up and I say, ‘look, I'm tired. I know I'm tired.’ But I wake up and I say to myself, ‘I've been blessed by God to have a talent that is unique. I'm not going to waste it today. I'm going to use this talent today to get better than I was yesterday.’ And with that, will come a Derby or a Preakness.” 

“I wake up with the idea that I need to give my clients a fair chance to succeed. And it's not easy with every horse, but I think that it's very important that I go to work trying to give them a chance to succeed,” the Hall of Famer shared. “If any client moves a horse tomorrow, I wouldn't worry because I feel comfortable that I at least gave it every chance to succeed.”

Never one to rest on his laurels, Lukas strives to get the best out of his horses, his employees, and, most of all, himself each day. His passion for what he has done since his youth and the success he has cultivated from his skill set both propel him forward and free him to enjoy the journey there. 

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Seize the Grey’s Grade 1 wins are a reminder not only of what the man conditioning him has accomplished, but also the horsemanship that brought him multiple graded stakes wins nearly every season for the last 46 years. “We're such a result-oriented sport, like most things are,” MyRacehorse’s Behrens observed. “The reality is that it's these big wins that bring everything back to everybody's memory. It’s nice for him to have the acknowledgement again of his success and his expertise.” 

The Preakness shows who the Hall of Famer truly is as his barn and his business has changed. How does he still do it at age 88? “I mean, it's simple. He has a recipe. He has optimism, and he has the work ethic,” fellow trainer Ron Moquett, who has known Lukas since the 1990s, said. “If you believe you can do something, and you're willing to work it doing something, then you can do it. And he's proven it over and over. Age doesn't matter. He believes he can do it. He's willing to put forth the effort to do it, and he shows everybody he still can do it.” 

“He's just always been a very driven human being. Very driven. He likes perfection. He likes success. He likes accomplishment. He likes to get things done,” Bossinakis shared. “When we were working on the book, he would call me early, like super early in the morning. And then maybe I might not answer, and then I'd call him back at 8:00. And he would say to me, ‘What? Why? You're still sleeping? You've missed half the day!’”

Even with fewer horses, both Secret Oath and Seize the Grey show that this coach still knows how to find the best in his charges. As McLaughlin observed, “a good coach needs good players, and he's capable with good stock. And he used to buy the best of horses, and that has slowed down some, obviously, because he doesn't have that many owners to buy for. He went from buying maybe 50 horses to 8 or 10. So that's all just different. But he's still a very capable trainer and a great horseman, and as long as his eyesight is good, he can train.”

The only change evident in Lukas is his age. Everything else about the 88-year-old edition mirrors his earlier iterations, from his rise and shine time to his attitude about his work in his latest decade. He may have one barn and 40 horses rather than four with 150 head, but he remains the same trainer, supervising his equine athletes while advising his staff and mentoring his contemporaries. “With winning comes a certain amount of passion to keep you going,” the trainer reflected. “But also, when you win and you win consistently, those guys that are coming behind mind you, the younger ones, they're watching.” 

That competitive drive makes this Hall of Famer ageless and fuels him to continue moving forward, as wife Laurie noted. “It's just the passion for it. I mean, I have a lot of passion for the horse business and for horses, but I can't match [him]. I don't think anybody can match his passion. I've never seen anything like it.”

“He's very proactive. I think that's part of just his makeup. But I also think it's what keeps him driven to keep accomplishing and doing more,” Bossinakis echoed. 

That passion not only drives Lukas to the barn every morning, his 35-minute commute a chance to reflect on what he can do with his day, but it also moves him to share a lifetime’s experience working with equine athletes with his younger contemporaries. 

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Lukas’s childhood in Wisconsin provided the foundation for two essential aspects of the man: his love for horses and his drive to teach and to develop. First, he spent nearly a decade as a high school teacher and basketball coach, using his summers to train Quarter Horses on the side. His eventual shift to training full-time did not diminish his joy in coaching as he used those skills with his employees as he had done with his students. Early on, when he was building his stable and making a name for himself, he was focusing his mentorship on those working under him, trainers like Kiaran McLaughlin and Dallas Stewart.

“He was a fabulous coach and teacher. Not that many of us spent every day with him, but we spoke to him, and we knew what he wanted every day, and we acted as though he was there with us in our daily work,” McLaughlin remembered. “He was a great example of being at the barn at 4:45 in the morning every day and calling back in the different operations or his assistants. In the morning, he would talk to everybody. He was a very organized person, and he was great to learn from and work with.”

Stewart spent a dozen years working for Lukas during the 1980s and 1990s, when the trainer seemed to be everywhere, winning everything. “It was a different level. People had a lot of nice horses, and we learned how to handle the intensity,” the Louisiana native remembered. “You always followed his lead, but he was there every day. I mean, I wouldn't want it done in any other way. I feel fortunate that I worked for him.”

When Moquett first met Lukas at Del Mar, he noted that the famed trainer was “very sharp, very intense, and I thought he held himself like a businessman and horseman. The reputation, the aura was huge, right? And it was all I could do to muster up the courage to ask if he had any horses for sale. But I figured out after about five seconds of talking to him that he's very much on principle, and based on the way I was raised, I related to that very quickly. We made fast acquaintances, and as intimidated as I was to go see the man, it was that quick that I was just enthralled with just listening to him.” 

While he works with his own horses on the backside at Churchill Downs or Oaklawn Park, the lifelong horseman does not miss a chance to share his experience with those around him. Whether he is watching a gatework or sharing his perspective on a common experience, Lukas is there ready to chime in with advice. “The other day, we were at the gate, and they were trying to load this one horse, and he kept turning his side into the gate. I said, ‘If you were just turning the other way, walk up there and turn him the opposite way, he's going to walk right in,’” Lukas remembered. “Everybody looked at the horse, and said, ‘What do we got to lose?’ Walked right up, turned him the other way, and he walked right in.”

Lukas’s counsel extends beyond working with equine athletes; his reputation as a sharp-dressed professional in high-quality suits demonstrated his understanding of perception and how that can help your business as a trainer. He shares the benefits of that attention to personal details where he can. “He told me that the only thing that separated me from everybody else that's doing this job is the fact that nobody else has the opportunity to wake up and decide what I wear. And I'm there to represent the horse, the owner, and my employees. So, if I'm representing them, then I can't show I'd go up dressed like a mucksack,” Moquett shared. “That lit a fire into me. How can I expect anybody to respect me with their investment in a horse? And how can I expect the people in my barn to respect me if I'm dressed like a groom?”

With all that he has achieved in his career, why then does the lifelong horseman feel this pull to mentor? “You walk around the backside and people say, ‘Horsemanship is gone. It's lost.’ A lot of it is that horsemen are not there and being developed and so forth,” he reflected. “There's a lot of truth to that because the young people that come to the backside to train, you know where they come from? McDonald’s or someplace. They wake up and say, ‘I'd like to be a horse trainer.’ They say, ‘I'll walk hots.’ And then they walk hots. The next thing you know, they're grooming. And then they're an assistant. Next thing you know, they got a trainer's license.” 

“I feel obligated to share, and I can't help myself,” the horseman shared.

“That's just the way he is, and he is one of the best of all times at doing what he's doing,” McLaughlin said. “If anybody ask a question, he's happy to answer it. He's mentored many of us on and off the racetrack. He was very influential to all of us.” 

The trainer’s habit of pulling young people into winner’s circle photos is another way of imparting his enthusiasm for the sport to a new generation and creating new fans in the process. He keeps a folder of letters from those who reach out to him, some of whom report keeping that photo in their office or parlaying that experience into further investment in racing. 

“He is very good with his fans in terms of keeping drawing people in. And I say to this day that the reason I'm in racing today is because of him. And that's true. And not only from that first experience of having met him, but also even later on in the later years,” said Bossinakis. “He started off as my idol, and then became more like a mentor.” 

“I've picked up a lot of things that he is really well known for and incorporated them into my own life. He always speaks in terms of ‘we.’ He doesn't say I; he says ‘we,’” his co-author shared. “Very much team oriented. The people around him, the importance of that, I've picked that up.”

As Moquett observed about his friend and peer, “as good as a horse trainer as Wayne Lukas is, and he's one of the best that's ever done it, he's even more going to be known for a motivator.” 

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When Oxbow went gate-to-wire in the 2013 Preakness, a performance echoed in Seize the Grey’s in 2024, Lukas had not won a classic since Commendable’s Belmont Stakes in 2000. The trainer had not stopped the same grind that had earned him a spot in the Hall of Fame but faced a transition: as the owners he had his biggest successes with passed away or left racing, the horseman had to compete with rising stars like Bob Baffert and Todd Pletcher among others for new clients. That meant fewer horses and fewer opportunities to use the skills he had built over a lifetime. 

He could have stepped away then to parlay his boundless drive into other efforts. “In the last 10 years, I think people feel that maybe I would be thinking that way. And I've had opportunities to take, I'm going to say, an administrative situation, managing something,” Lukas shared. Instead, the Wisconsin native prefers to ply his trade, professing that “I get too much joy and satisfaction out of dealing one-on-one with those good horses. And I don't think I would ever go that way. Selfishly, I don't have any other interests.”

With his 89th birthday coming in early September, any talk about this Hall of Famer hanging it up is quickly quieted. Lukas is not about looking back and exudes optimism about the future in each conversation. “Like he says, I'm not really working on my resume anymore,” wife Laurie Lukas observed. “He's just going on pure love of the horse and the sport.” 

“At 89 years old, I want to keep them all in front of me so I can be hands-on, as they say, train each horse individually and be responsible for each choice. Now, I have an outstanding system that really makes it easy,” he shared. “Obviously, with forty head, I've got less clients, too. But I've got a couple of real strong, powerful clients in John Bellinger and Brian Coehlo of BC Stables.” 

Lukas and assistant trainer Sebastian Nicholl split the year between Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas and Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, both deliberate choices for the trainer who formerly had stables from coast to coast. “Through the '80s and '90s, we were Californians, with Hollywood Park and everything. But during that era, Marge Everett told me that California was going to have trouble holding on to the industry. I thought, ‘Well, if it all goes to hell in a handbag, where will it be the last one to go?’” the trainer recalled. “It's going to be Louisville and Lexington. They'll fight and claw to keep it going. So, I picked up and moved back here.”

Now at home in Arkansas and Kentucky and soon Saratoga, where stars like Winning Colors were launched, D. Wayne Lukas has shown once again his determination to do things his way. His life away from the barn is populated with his family, including wife Laurie, grandson Brady and granddaughter Kelly and their spouses, and his two great-grandchildren. “He loves his family. He's very committed to his grandkids and their spouses, and now his great grandchildren. It is hard, as he talks about it, it's hard to balance that. But I think as he's gotten older, and maybe since I've come in the picture, he also really embraces my family,” Laurie shared. “I just think that's a side the public won't see of him, his sensitivity and the importance of helping people and helping.”

At the barn is Seize the Grey and a few two-year-olds that remind the trainer why he rises before the sun and makes that drive to the backside. As often as his age comes up, the Hall of Fame trainer shows that he is steadfastly himself. 

“He hasn't changed that much over the years. Obviously, he went from managing over 100 horses down to 30 or 40, but he still has a great eye for a horse,” McLaughlin observed. “That was something that was just a given talent to him. He's great at purchasing yearlings and looking at horses, and he still has it in buying horses, and he still gets up at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning, and he works every day, gets on his pony, and so he loves what he's doing.”

“I think the core of him is the same. At the core, that intensity, that drive to win, that positivity, he’s always had that. Wayne is not a looking behind guy. He's very forward-thinking,” Bossinakis shared. “I will say the biggest change that I've seen in him personally, he's become – I don't even like me saying this – a little bit softer around the edges, which I love. I think there is a level of him that's an emotional guy, that's a sentimental person. I think he's always been that. He probably just never really showed it.”

Master horseman, innovator, and mentor, D. Wayne Lukas not only focuses his prodigious energy on those closest to him, enjoying his role as husband and patriarch, but also on the promising young horses now hitting the racetrack, their potential as exciting as that scene in the Preakness winner’s circle. “Our two-year-olds are very, very good. And I can see it coming. I can see what's about to happen. I get up every day and I know. And I think, ‘oh, boy, here we come.’”

Ron Moquett - trainer of Champion Sprinter Whitmore

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By Bill Heller

Upon reaching the winner’s circle after the $2 million Gr1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint on November 7th at Keeneland, Laura Moquett hugged her seven-year-old gelding Whitmore, telling him, “You’re a total badass.”

Talking about that moment a week later, she added, “That applies to my husband, too.”

She says that with justifiable pride in both. She is the co-owner, assistant trainer and galloper of Whitmore, who was seeking his first victory in his fourth start in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

If there was an equine dictionary and you looked up the word “rogue,” Whitmore’s picture would probably be there. He is the poster horse of bad behavior.

ALL ABOUT MOQUETT

Laura’s 48-year-old husband Ron, co-owner and trainer of Whitmore, has survived three years with atypical sarcoidosis, an autoimmune disease affecting the lungs. Think you were scared about COVID? Ron hasn’t missed a step training his stable of 38 horses. “This ain’t nothing,” he said. “A lot of people got through worse than I got. I get to go to the barn. I get to do my job. I was wearing a mask before it became a fad.”

There’s a third member of this Whitmore team—former jockey Greta Kuntzweiler, now Whitmore’s breeze rider and an assistant trainer. Ron calls her a hippy. Greta laughs when asked about it. “He thinks I’m a hippy because I’m a Democrat,” she said.

Together, the Moquetts and Kuntzweiler reached that remarkable Breeders’ Cup moment when Whitmore won the Sprint by 3 ¼ lengths, thanks to a perfect ride by Irad Ortiz, Jr. Whitmore had peaked as a seven-year-old in his 38th career start—a testament to Ron’s conviction that doing right by the horse allows you to maximize success. Ron defers credit to his horse. “He tells me everything,” Ron said. “Every day. He’s honest, very honest. He’s very forthcoming with information on what he needs.”

That only matters if his trainer listens. Ron has been listening to animals his entire life. At a young age, he preferred the company of animals rather than people.

His mother died when he was four-years-old. “We went from place to place for a while,” he said. “We ended up with our grandparents. I gravitated to animals—any kind of animals. I didn’t care—dogs, cats, horses, chickens. An animal will never lead you astray. An animal is very honest. For whatever reason, they respected me, and I respected them. Without cats, dogs, horses and chickens, I would need a lot of therapy. That’s what I used for therapy. It’s where I got comfort. I like people, but I’d rather be with my animals.”

He built his life with horses. “A horse never lies to you,” he said. “If he’s afraid, he shows it. If he’s hungry, he shows it.”

And if that horse is Whitmore, he’ll kick you to hell if you touch him in the wrong place. Or at the wrong time. Or just for kicks. His specialty was a double-barrel kick. Ron can live with that because Whitmore also has an incredible amount of talent.

Ron was born near Blue Ribbons Downs, a Quarter Horse track in Sallisaw, Okla. Ron pursued his interest in horses at bush tracks. “We used to go on Sundays,” he said. “They would have racing on a 400-yard strip. We’d have big-name riders come in.”

Ron couldn’t get enough. “I worked at the gate,” he said. “I would get the horses ready to run. I’d help the trainers pony horses. My friend rode—that was my first introduction. They were gambling and riding. I just wanted to be with the horses. I thought that was cool as hell. I was probably 13.”

Then came a sobering realization. “There was nobody making money doing this,” he said.

So he began supplementing his income with toughman fighting. “It was kind of like a predecessor to Ultimate Fighting,” he said. “There are three one-minute rounds with 16-ounce gloves. The winner moves on. If you win five or six, you’d get up to a money fight. I did all right from 18 to 24. I didn’t do it all the time. It got to the point where other people were getting better. It got to where I was making money with horses; I didn’t have to do it anymore.”

That happened at Oaklawn Park, where he started training. “I was 22,” Ron said. “I lived in a tack room probably the first six months. That’s no different than a lot of people today. I was nobody special.”

Ron caught a huge break, landing a job working for trainer Bernie Flint. “Bernie was the perfect guy for me,” Ron said. “He allowed me to do everything and taught me a lot about handling different situations. He was always kind to the animals. For a claiming trainer, he was very kind. He’s 6-3, 300 pounds, an ex-cop. Bernie was a natural horseman. I was with him less than two years, and he showed me so much more than if I had gone to a big operation.”

Ron was about as far removed from a big operation as possible when he started his own stable, posting only one second and one third in seven starts in 1997. “How bad do you want it?” Ron asked. “Everybody loves it when you’re doing well with a barn full of great horses. Try doing it whenever you got a barn full of other people’s cast-offs. You don’t have a lot of money to fall back on. Mike Tyson said, `Everybody’s got a plan until you get punched in the face.’”

He had been literally punched in the face when he was a toughman fighting for years. He was able to abandon his second career when his numbers improved in his first full year of training in 1998 with five victories from 82 starters and $80,354 in earnings. In 1999, he had 12 wins from 141 starts with $259,385 in money. He was on his way.

“I just wanted it too bad to not keep doing it,” Ron said. “How are you going to make it? First, you have to have a love for the animal. Second, you have to have a hatred of money, because you’re not going to get it for a long time. I’ve been doing this for 20-something years, and I finally wound up winning a couple of them. The third thing is you got to be where you don’t require sleep. If you don’t love money, and you love horses, and you don’t sleep, then you’ve got a shot at becoming a trainer. It’s so hard. The game is frustrating and so hard.”

Having a partner helps navigate the tough times, and Ron has a 24-7 partner in Laura. Raised in Lawton, a small town in Iowa, she discovered her passion for horses as a child “I had my own horses at my house,” she said. “I was 16 when I started galloping. There’s a different way to look at the world through their eyes. I speak horse. It’s like a second language. They communicate with you through their body language.”

Ron was working for Bernie Flint when Laura got a job with him. She saw a kindred spirit. “He cares about horses,” she said. “He’s not in a hurry. He cares to get to the bottom. A team aspect comes into play.”

They married. “Roughly, it was in 2014,” Laura said. “I’m guessing. We’re both terrible about the anniversary.”

Breeze rider and assistant trainer Greta Kuntzweiler with Whitmore.

Breeze rider and assistant trainer Greta Kuntzweiler with Whitmore.

They weren’t too good at weddings either. They both arrived late separately for their ceremony. “We kind of live in the moment, which is great for horses,” Laura said.

Having a talented exercise rider is great for horses, too, and they have one in Greta, who won 555 races and $12,248,599 before stopping in 2015. “My business was slowing down, and Ron asked me if I would break and gallop,” she said. “Then Laura began teaching me assistant trainer stuff. It’s a great job. I love horses. I’m happy.”

She, too, was impressed with Ron’s horsemanship. “He’s a really smart guy with a good memory,” Greta said. “He can remember a horse. When he watches training in the morning, he knows his horses and other people’s horses. It’s a huge advantage. He’s a really good horseman.

“He likes to get horses, walk them around the shed row and take them to graze, and try to get into their heads. He wants to spend time with them. I’ve seen him load difficult horses on a trailer. He knows how to ask them to do something they don’t want to do. His wife is really good at that, too. They’re great horse people that I want to be around.”

But suddenly, in the spring of 2018, there was a question if Ron could ever be around his horses. He was diagnosed with atypical sarcoidosis. “What happens is, it attacks your lungs,” Ron said. “My breathing is compromised by one lung, which is working at 40 percent. But I feel great now, between active spurts. I have to be very careful with the COVID. If somebody with my condition gets it, then it’s a big deal.”

For a while, he worked exclusively from home. Now he trains partially from home, subject to the pandemic numbers. “That takes a lot of up-to-the-minute tedious information,” he said. “I get a text from the night watchman at 4 a.m. on how everyone ate and if they’re doing all right. I get leg charts. My assistants tell me how the horses feel after racing. I get charts rating horses’ works, 1, 2 or 3. If there is a checkmark on the rider, it means there’s something I need to talk to him about.

“I’m able to go to the barn, just not be around people. I check legs. There’s nothing like hands-on. You have to have horsemen at every station with hands-on. I want a groom who knows the difference. And my exercise riders know the difference. We figured out how to get everything done.”

Asked if it gets wearing, Ron said, “It seems like I’ve been doing it forever.”

ALL ABOUT WHITMORE

Whitmore challenged him before he got sick. The son of Pleasantly Perfect out of Melody’s Spirit by Scat Daddy was bred by John Liviakis in Kentucky. Liviakis sold Whitmore to the Moquetts’ Southern Spring Stables.

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Niall Collum - Canadian trainer profile

By Alex Campbell

Trainer Niall Collum brings plenty of experience at the highest level of international racing to his training program. The 46-year-old native of Clonmel, Ireland, now based at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto, Canada, has worked for major European operations Coolmore and Godolphin, and has traveled with their horses to some of the biggest races in the world, including the Breeders’ Cup, the Melbourne Cup, and races in Dubai, Hong Kong, and Japan.

His journey in the sport of horse racing started off when he was a 12-year-old in Ireland, riding horses at a pony camp. At 14, Collum got his first job in racing as a work rider for Irish trainer Pat Flynn. Collum not only rode horses in the mornings during training but also performed work around Flynn’s yard. It was that first job that kicked off Collum’s now more than 30-year racing career.

“I was offered a job for the summer with Pat Flynn, and I ended up staying there,” Collum said. “I didn’t go back to school and stuck with the horses to my parents’ horror. Back then, it was different too because we did everything. We rode out and we mucked out. You didn’t just ride the horses and go home. We’d have to do everything first hand.”

Collum had aspirations to be a flat jockey, but eventually grew to a point where that career wasn’t going to be possible. Although the flats weren’t an option, Collum continued working with Flynn for a little while longer before making a move to England to pursue a career as a steeplechase jockey.

“A guy who I knew said I would do very well to go to England,” Collum said. “I went to Toby Balding in England. He was a big jump trainer at the time. He said if I put my head down and worked hard, I’d get on there, which I did. I rode a nice few winners for him over the jumps. I rode my winners and everything, but things weren’t really taking off for me.”

Collum returned to Ireland and flat racing, joining Aidan O’Brien’s stable as a work rider. Collum knew O’Brien after spending some time working for O’Brien’s father-in-law, Joe Crowley, and worked with O’Brien and horses owned by Coolmore at Ballydoyle.

“I went back to him and spent five years there working with the best horses in the world and got to travel the world to all the big races,” Collum said. “It was a great experience, and I loved every bit of it.”

Collum spent five years working with O’Brien before looking for his next opportunity. This time, it was Godolphin who was expanding its operations, and Collum took the chance to work with them in both the United Kingdom and Dubai.

“After five years, you’re looking for something to freshen up, and the opportunity came up with Godolphin to go to Dubai,” Collum said. “They were getting big at the time. I got offered the job to go with them, and I did. We would spend the winters in Dubai and the summers in England. I think it was the best thing I ever did to be honest with you because it opened up a whole new world for me.”

Collum was once again a work rider with Godolphin, but his connections in Dubai and his prior experiences in Ireland would help him get into training. Collum worked for Godolphin for six years before making the switch to training and caught on with Eddie Kenneally, serving as an assistant trainer at Belmont Park in New York. He worked for Kenneally for a year before deciding it was time to go off on his own. Collum set up a racing syndicate and purchased horses to train, but ran into an immigration issue that would throw his career into turmoil.

Collum had traveled with his then girlfriend and now wife, Andrea Dube-Collum, to Montreal, Canada for a weekend getaway. Following the trip, Collum was denied entry upon his return to the United States, putting his syndicate in jeopardy.

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Trainer Profile - Bill Mott

By Andrew Champagne

Some trainers start their careers with dreams of winning a garland of roses, or a gigantic trophy.

Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott’s first big prizes, though, were substantially smaller.

“When I was 15, I got my first horse to train, which my father purchased for $320,” Mott recalled. “I put the horse in training. We ran her at a small fair meet in South Dakota, and she dead-heated for the win the first time I ever ran her.”

“The purse was $500, and we had to split 60% down the middle. I also won a blanket and a cooler. Because it was a dead heat, we flipped a coin.”

Mott still has the blanket and cooler from that race, and over the past 50 years, he’s added plenty of other pieces of hardware to his ever-growing trophy case. His career is one built on simple values instilled in him by some of the top horsemen in the Midwest during the 1970s, a group that included Keith Asmussen, Bob Irwin, and Hall of Fame conditioner Jack Van Berg.

“The major lesson I learned is, just show up and work,” Mott said. “The Asmussens were a hard-working family, and of course you can see what they’ve produced. Van Berg was the same. You worked hard, and you were a part of everything that went on. If you were interested, you were going to learn something.”

Riley Mott and Elate

After several years of honing his craft as an assistant, Mott went out on his own in 1978. When asked about obstacles he had to overcome as a new head trainer, he was quick to thank Van Berg and an assortment of owners that helped him get off on the right foot.

“Jack had given me a big opportunity, and I had owners that came to me,” Mott explained. “I didn’t go out and hustle any horses or try to recruit anyone. Everything just fell into place. I showed up for work and things kept happening. My phone was ringing, and people were wanting to send me horses.”

Less than 10 years later, a son of Nureyev found his way into Mott’s barn thanks to owner Allen Paulson, and he would help shine a light on his conditioner’s world-class talents. His name was Theatrical, and while he had won several stakes races in Europe, it wasn’t until he came to the United States that he achieved his greatest success.

Theatrical won seven of nine races in 1987, including that year’s Breeders’ Cup Turf at Hollywood Park. In total, his campaign included six Grade 1 victories, and he was crowned as that year’s Champion Grass Horse.

“Theatrical was my first champion, my first Breeders’ Cup winner,” Mott said. “He let everyone know that I could train a good horse, that I could train a Grade 1 winner, that I could train a champion. Theatrical being owned by Allen Paulson is the reason I got Cigar.”

Six and a half years after Theatrical walked off the racetrack for the final time, Cigar was transferred to Mott’s care. He had started his career in California for trainer Alex Hassinger, but was sent east at the recommendation of Dr. Steve Allday following double knee surgery.

“I remember getting on him when we took him to Belmont,” Mott recalled. “One morning, we went to the training track. I galloped him, and I remember going back to the barn and just raving about this horse. The adrenaline had kicked in, and I was spouting off. I said, ‘this horse is like a machine.’

“I’d been on a lot of good horses, and I know what most good horses feel like. There’s a difference. You can sometimes feel that special horse underneath you. He was one of those.”

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