Summer 2026 - issue 81
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Riley Mott decided to enter Incredibolt, whom he saddled to a sixth-place finish in the 152nd Kentucky Derby, in this year’s Preakness while eating an Uncrustable at his kitchen table. His first call was to the racing office to see if entries for the second Triple Crown classic were still being accepted. Then he rang the man who had provided this young trainer with an enviable foundation in horsemanship, his father, Bill Mott.
Twenty years ago trainer Kenny McPeek had a ho-hum year, relatively speaking. His horses earned $1.3 million and he earned for himself a cover photo and story in a brand new horse racing magazine, Trainer. That year, 2006, might have been a turning point for him; it was the last year his earnings would be below $2 million. It also marked the beginning of a trajectory leading to $16.2 million in 2024 when Thorpedo Anna won the Kentucky Oaks and Mystik Dan, the next day, won the Kentucky Derby, a feat only two other trainers had accomplished. Over the next 20 years after 2006, his earnings have averaged $5.7 million and he has never been out of the top 100 in annual purses.
Future success was still a question mark for McPeek back in 2006. In that first issue of Trainer was this quote from McPeek. Referring to his 14 years of training prior to 2006 he said, “I’ve tried just about everything over the years to win races.” He went on to say he was “trying something entirely new…and in the process of reinventing his training methods.” Changes apparently not only helped him win races but also go from a middling trainer to a contender and winner in Triple Crown races.
Pierre de Coubertin established the motto of the “modern” Olympic Games in 1894. And in 2021, “communiter” was added (together) to the original: swifter, higher, stronger.
We Americans of a certain age grew up with the ABC television version of the Olympics, presented by the inimitable Jim McKay. ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” also showcased his talent, covering everything from Acapulco Cliff Diving to skiing wrecks in the Giant Slalom to horse shows and racing. It didn’t hurt a bit that he loved horses, and was the founder of the Maryland Million. The Olympic ideals of perfected human nature inspired us all.
Moreover, it’s not a stretch to say that without the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, Santa Anita might never have been successful; in fact, it might never have been. Period.
In 1923, the International Olympic Committee sought to find the host city for those ’32 Games. There was only one applicant: remote Los Angeles. It wasn’t much different in the 1970s. After the calamities of Munich terrorism and Montreal’s financial disaster, only two nations were interested in the 1984 Games: Iran and the United States.
There are many factors that influence athletic performance including joint and muscular function. Training naturally places stress on both joints and muscles and this is where nutrition plays a key role. Nutrition is a powerful tool for managing inflammation, facilitating recovery and supporting repair and regeneration at a cellular level.
Oral nutritional supplements when used in a targeted manner can help horses adapt to training, recover better and support continued performance for the long term.
Part one of this two-part series focuses on joint health and the role of nutrition. In the next issue the role of oral nutritional supplements for soft tissue recovery will be discussed.
Their careers commenced within months of each other in the second half of 2021. And from the moment the two sons of Curlin began flaunting the ability honed by their shared Hall of Fame trainer, Godolphin’s homebred Adonis named Cody’s Wish and Juddmonte’s purple-bred yearling purchase aptly deemed Elite Power would share nearly everything in a competitive setting other than a starting gate.
This article is written from the perspective of an independent veterinarian, equine nutritionist, pharmacologist, former Thoroughbred trainer and owner, and lifelong horsewoman. It is not written on behalf of a feed company, supplement manufacturer, pharmaceutical company, racing organization, or political interest. Its purpose is to encourage constructive dialogue among trainers, veterinarians, nutritionists, owners, HISA, and HIWU in pursuit of a common goal: the welfare and integrity of the Thoroughbred racehorse.
Out of necessity, cowboys became their own farriers in the American West, and they passed down their knowledge to the younger hands on the ranch. A dayworker could increase his pay substantially if he could shoe a few horses for the boss before the day was over. These days U.S. farrier schools are training farriers and social media has generated interest in a trade that goes along with a seemingly western way of life. The American horse culture is seen online in posts and streamed to every household by networks like EQUUSTV, and equine-loving YouTubers from seemingly every state, while reaching audiences of every age. Feed, supplements, grooming products, tack, equine sportswear, trucks, beer, and real estate promote with horses and sometimes farriers too. How often do you see a horseshoe in a logo or company/product branding campaign?
In racing, trainers choose their farrier in most cases. However, a skilled farrier may not be available or hard to find at some racetracks. If HISA requires that a specifically credentialed farrier must be hired for Thoroughbred racehorses, will this make hiring a farrier more difficult? Unintended consequences as they are, making it harder to find this HISA farrier is a very real possibility. Currently, there are fewer new farriers entering apprenticeships with racetrack farriers or coming out of farrier schools and looking to work at the racetrack.
Exercise‑induced pulmonary hemorrhage, EIPH or “bleeding”, has been recognized for centuries. The true cause of this disease was misunderstood until modern diagnostic tools revealed that bleeding actually comes from the lungs, not the nose. For much of its history, the condition was understood as the rare and dramatic episodes of nosebleeds (epistaxis) after intense work, and bleeding was seen as a one-off, colorful event in an otherwise healthy horse.
With the advent of the tools of endoscopy and bronchoalveolar lavage (“lung wash”), it became clear that bleeding from the nose represents a relatively rare occurrence of a much more common lung condition. Today, EIPH is recognized as a widespread, seemingly silent feature of equine athletes, with studies finding it in up to 95% of Thoroughbred racehorses.
Maybe it was chance, or fate. Call it karma or destiny or happenstance. All Ohio businessman Scott Mawaka knows is that it changed his life: “As a young man, my first customer that I signed for my business, I offered to take him golfing or go out for lunch. He said, "That's not what I like. I like to handicap the ponies.’”
Off they went to Thistledown in Cleveland. Mawaka remembers seeing “a stereotypical bunch of guys with their papers and cigars. Probably 30 years ago.”
Not long after, Mawaka claimed his first horse, Fame and Gold, for $5,000 at Thistledown on October 10th, 2001. Fame and Gold won a $3,500 claimer in his third start for Mawaka and was ultimately claimed. “That got the bug in me,” Mawaka said. “Our first couple of claimers, I bought with my dad.”
Wise enough to learn from great trainers; humble enough to take a job as a hotwalker at the age of 35 to learn more and smart enough to take his Peachtree Stable to the highest level of competition is how 83-year-old John P. Fort continues to make his mark in Thoroughbred racing.
Along the way he became a talented polo player and finally got Allen Jerkens to train his horses more than 20 years after a rocky first encounter. His latest stakes winner, Tawny Port, ended a two-year losing streak, taking the two-mile Gr.2 Belmont Park Gold Cup at Saratoga June 4th in track-record time, earning a free ‘Golden Ticket’ to the Melbourne Cup, the race that stops a nation, in Australia. Miguel Clement trains Tawny Port. Fort met him when he was five-years-old at the Saratoga Dog Show. Fort and his dog Flexi were dressed up like a lion tamer and his lion: “Thirty years later, we’re winning stakes races. The river runs deep.”
“Connie and I have a problem,” Jerry Baker said. “We fall in love with our horses.”
So when their first horse together, Margie’s Minute, a $20,000 claimer they purchased in 2016, was done racing a year later, they didn’t want to lose her. So they bred her.
Good decision. Her third foal, the five-year-old gelding Vodka Vodka, finished second in the Gr.1 Santa Anita Handicap March 7th and has earned $569,750. Less than three months later, his four-year-old half-sister Om N Joy, racing just seven days after finishing seventh in a California-bred turf stakes, dominated her competition on dirt, taking the Gr.2 Santa Margarita Stakes by 3 ¾ lengths under Kent Desormeaux. She’s now over $600,000 in earnings. Not bad for a filly who lost her first eight starts before winning five straight.
Jerry, a career real estate man, said, “We’re lucky.” Connie said, “Very lucky.”
Racing to return to Kansas and a new track coming to Wyoming this year - what's behind the renewed enthusiasm for thoroughbred racing in both states?
Mike Weiss, general manager at the latest iteration of Eureka Downs in the Kansas town of the same name, may have the same response.
The first Eureka Downs was built in 1872 before moving to its present address in 1902. To put that in perspective, baseball’s Wrigley Field didn’t open until 1914.
Re-openings are not new for Weiss, who managed reopenings at Prescott Downs and Rillito in Arizona along with the North Dakota Horse Park. Weiss is equally experienced in racing and racetrack management either. He was racing manager and then general manager of Buelah Park in Ohio for 22 years.
