Kenny McPeek is as close to a Renaissance man as horse racing has to offer.
He has spent more than $6 million of his own money to create a smartphone app that puts the sport of kings at peoples’ fingertips. He has amassed a real estate portfolio that stretches from Kentucky and Florida to this heavenly corner of upstate New York. McPeek’s is a full-service barn. He can tend to thoroughbreds from the time they hit the ground, from their early lessons on running to their time on the racetrack and beyond.
He has an artist’s eye when it comes to discovering talent at yearling auctions in the United States, Europe and South America. McPeek has more than a dozen horses that have made millions of dollars on the racetrack, but his masterpiece is Curlin. He bought Curlin for $57,000, and the horse went on to earn more than $10.5 million on the track and was twice named Horse of the Year.
Now, Curlin is one of the most successful stallions on the planet, commanding more than $250,000 a mating.
On Saturday, in the 155th running of the Travers Stakes, McPeek will try something as daring as it is old school. He will run his 3-year-old Thorpedo Anna in the $1.25 million “Midsummer Derby” in hopes that she will become the first filly to beat the boys in the race since Lady Rotha did so in 1915.
“I am trying to stamp Thorpedo Anna as one of the greats,” McPeek said of the filly, who has won six of her seven races. “But I am also trying to bring new fans into the sport, to create some buzz, to show off how beautiful and thrilling horses are in full flight.”
McPeek is already having a year for the ages.
On the first weekend of May, Thorpedo Anna won the Kentucky Oaks on Friday and McPeek’s Mystik Dan captured the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, a training sweep not completed since Ben Jones did so in 1952. He also has prior success racing fillies: Swiss Skydiver won the 2020 Preakness Stakes on her way to being named 3-year-old filly champion.
McPeek’s quest to make Thorpedo Anna a household name (no matter how quixotic) is far more urgent. He recognizes that horse racing is contracting. Golden Gate Fields in Northern California is the latest track to close and, while the sport remains a multibillion-dollar ecosystem, the declining numbers throughout racing are disturbing.
In 1990, for example, more than 40,000 foals were born in the United States, according to the Jockey Club, which keeps the registry. Last year, the number of would-be thoroughbred racehorses born was 17,200. The amount of money bet on horse racing is also in retreat. In 2002, more than $15 billion was wagered versus $11.6 billion last year, according to the Jockey Club.
“Our sport has been in a negative spiral since I started,” said McPeek, who saddled his first horse in 1985. “We need to figure a way to spiral it up, and fast.”
McPeek says the sport is its own worst enemy. Many of his colleagues were slow to embrace stricter antidoping and medication rules. At the same time, the general public was discovering how often horse fatalities occur on the racetrack, a perception that was exacerbated when a dozen horses died at Churchill Downs in the days surrounding the 2023 Kentucky Derby.
But since May 2023 when a new federal agency called the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority took over testing and enforcement, fatality rates have fallen by nearly half. Racetracks operating under the agency’s rules and running races in the second quarter reported 0.76 racing-related equine fatalities per 1,000 starts, compared with 1.48 per 1,000 starts last year.
But hidebound thinking persists in one of America’s oldest sports.
Among the favorites in the Travers is a colt named Dornoch, who won the Belmont and Haskell Stakes this summer. He has already been sold as a stallion and is unlikely to race next year as a 4-year-old.
“Every race with him is precious,” said Dornoch’s trainer, Danny Gargan. “With his pedigree, no one is ever expected to run at 4. He’s arguably the best-bred horse racing right now.”
McPeek understands that the big money is stashed in stallion barns, where a horse can mate for six figures up to 200 times a year. Still, McPeek says Mystik Dan, who is resting after his Triple Crown campaign, will race next year.
“We need our stars,” he said.
To that end, McPeek has been tireless in attempting to transform Thorpedo Anna into one. He has welcomed visitors to watch her train at 5:30 a.m., filmed her workouts and posted the videos — along with his assessments — to his social media accounts.
McPeek has seen some numbers that give him hope for the sport. His app, Horse Races Now, has more than a million downloads across 217 countries. He believes, with promotion and some positive energy, the sport can find a wider audience.
That’s why he is running, and expects to win, the Travers with Thorpedo Anna.
“If we beat them, she’s one of the great fillies of all time,” he said. “I’m not going to fool myself, though. If we win, everyone will say she beat a bad group of colts. This is horse racing, after all.”
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