Horseman Mick Ruis, whose stable has raced primarily in Southern California, has purchased the 285-acre Blackwood Stables training center in Versailles, Ky.
Ruis, who owned and trained multiple Grade 1 winner Bolt d'Oro, the leading freshman sire of 2022, bought the property for $7,639,500 through Tom Biederman of Biederman Real Estate. Blackwood Stables, previously operated by Guinness McFadden, was listed with Ken Donworth of Bluegrass Sotheby's.
Biederman said the transaction closed Oct. 2.
“It made super sense to me since most of my horses are Kentucky-breds,” Ruis said. “With Kentucky running year-round and maiden special weight purses up to $120,000 or more, this fits my program. I couldn't get stalls and needed a place for my mares. And now I've got my own training facility.”
Ruis said he currently has 27 mares in Kentucky.
Blackwood Stables has 122 stalls in six barns – three barns for mares, weanlings and yearlings with 52 stalls and three more with 70 additional stalls for training. There is a six-furlong training track, one-mile grass course, and 1 1/8-mile wood-chip “European-style” gallop, Ruis said. Click here for photos and here for information on the farm from its previous owner.
The training facility is accredited with the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission for official workouts and gate cards.
“Jose Delima will be running all the training at Blackwood,” said Ruis, adding that his daughter Shelbe will oversee the California-breds. DeLima formerly trained in Southern California and has assisted Mick Ruis in California and Kentucky.
The purchase came shortly after Ruis sold the former Woodford Thoroughbreds farm, renamed Wen/Mick (for Ruis and his wife, Wendy), to Tom and Debi Stull of California-based Tommy Town Thoroughbreds. That property, also near Versailles, sold for $8 million, and Beiderman said it included 380 acres in total, a “nicely redone house, beautiful barns, and rolling land.”
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The Everest Carnival enters its fourth week, with five stakes races worth AU$4.55 million this Friday night at Sydney's Rosehill Racecourse. A staggering total of AU$87 million will be distributed over the nine weekends of The Everest Carnival. The $20 million showpiece event will take place next week, as elite sprinters contest the world's richest race on turf. The Everest card on October 13 will also feature the inaugural King Charles III Stakes, worth $5 million.
The Everest Carnival continues through the Nov. running of the $10-million Golden Eagle, restricted to 4-year-olds. The first of 10 Rosehill races this Friday is at 9:40 p.m. Eastern / 6:40 p.m. Pacific and will be broadcast live by FanDuel TV and Sky Racing World.
Get the Cash with Nash
One of Sydney's hottest jockeys is Nash Rawiller. The 48-year-old is a three-time winner of Sydney's riding title, but has not worn that crown since 2012. Results during The Everest Carnival suggest that Rawiller is in career-best form: he went within a head of upsetting the G2 Premiere Stakes last week on 8-1 shot Hawaii Five Oh, after having ridden a triple (including a stakes double) on each of the two previous Friday nights. Five of Rawiller's seven mounts this Friday night are either favorite or second choice in early wagering. He is booked for #2 Peace Officer (5-2) in Race 2; #4 Way To The Stars (5-1) in Race 4; #2 Barber (8-1) in Race 5, the Roman Consul Stakes; #11 Montefilia (3-1) in Race 7, the $2 million Hill Stakes; #1 Cepheus (6-1) in Race 8, the Alan Brown Stakes; #5 Magic Time (3-1) in Race 9, the Nivison Stakes; and #4 Diamond Dealer (10-1) in Race 10.
Race Callers Honored
One of Friday night's stakes races holds special significance for me, having been named for retired Sydney race calling legends John Tapp and Ian Craig. “Tappy” was offered the Hollywood Park job in 1990, came for a working vacation with his family, and brought a 24-year-old race caller from Brisbane with him to finish off the meeting and potentially stay on. Thirty-three years later, yours truly has stayed like a mother-in-law. On a visit to Australia earlier this year, I had the enormous pleasure of visiting the Tapps, who invited Ian Craig around for a barbecue.
The second running of the $500,000 Tapp-Craig Stakes (Race 6), for 3-year-olds at seven furlongs, is headed by the rapidly improving Encap (6-5). After breaking his maiden in a Group 3, Encap went within a nose of beating Militarize in the G1 Golden Rose. This led to connections having a brief flirtation with a slot offer for The Everest, before settling on this more realistic spot.
Countdown to The Everest
The world's richest race on turf, staged under a slot-holder format, is now just a week away on Friday night, Oct. 13 (U.S. time).
The Rosehill card will be broadcast live on FanDuel TV this Friday night (First Post: 9:40 p.m. ET / 6:40 p.m. PT) alongside cards from Eagle Farm, Kembla Grange and Kalgoorlie. All races will be live-streamed in HD on the new Sky Racing World App, skyracingworld.com and major ADW platforms such as TVG, TwinSpires, Xpressbet, NYRABets, WatchandWager, HPIbet, FanDuel and AmWager. Wagering is also available via these ADW platforms. Fans can get free access to live-streaming, past performances, and expert picks on all races at skyracingworld.com.
A native of Brisbane, Australia, Michael Wrona has called races in six countries. Michael's vast U.S. experience includes; race calling at Los Alamitos, Hollywood Park, Arlington and Santa Anita, calling the 2000 Preakness on a national radio network and the 2016 Breeders' Cup on the International simulcast network. Michael also performed a race call voiceover for a Seinfeld episode called The Subway.
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For as long and as hard as Mike Campbell fought to keep Arlington Park from being shut down, there must have been a little extra joy when he saddled his first graded stakes winner in nearly two decades on Sept. 23 beneath the Twin Spires at Churchill Downs.
Lady Radler, sent to post at 23-1, put on a show in that day's Grade 3 Dogwood Stakes to win by 2 ¾ lengths. The 3-year-old filly is now based at Keeneland while 72-year-old Campbell prepares her to take the next step up in competition, aiming for the Grade 2 Raven Run on Saturday, Oct. 21.
“I do find it unique that I am in barn 49, which is 10 feet away from Rice Road; I think that there might be a message there!” joked Campbell, the former longtime president of the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association. “Actually, Mike Stidham stopped me the other day when I was wearing a CDI hat. He said I was the last person he'd ever expected to see wearing that, and what I told him is true.
“At the time, and in that place, I was fighting for the horsemen in Illinois. It was my job, and if I had to do it all over again, I would. But we lost that battle, and now it's time to turn the page.”
CDI, short for Churchill Downs Inc., is the company that owned Arlington Park and opted to close the track in 2021, selling it to the NFL's Chicago Bears for a potential football stadium. The grandstand was demolished earlier this year.
Don't misunderstand: Campbell said he has NOT given up on racing in Illinois. He remains part of a consortium that hopes to build a harness track just south of Chicago, and believes that another Thoroughbred track in the city is not outside the realm of possibility.
“All my life, people have told me what I can't do,” he reflected. “But, because of the market we're in, I think it's entirely sustainable. You need good facilities, cooperation from the horsemen's groups, and you gotta believe in the spirit of the horse, the spirit of the people that are involved in this game. Nobody quits after they lose a race, so we shouldn't quit after we lose a racetrack.”
That horseman's spirit is something Campbell has witnessed every day since his youth: both his father and grandfather were what he called “summertime horse trainers.” They'd head out to East St. Louis or Fairmount Park in the late fall, giving $1,000 or so for older, arthritic horses who just needed a break, then bring them home to Wisconsin for the winter.
“Those cold Wisconsin winters would rehabilitate a horse in a very unusual way,” Campbell reflected. “As long as you kept them warm and fed, then you could turn them out in the three feet of snow and man, those arthritic horses would come around and be very useful the next year. It wasn't stakes winners or anything, but it certainly fed families.”
Campbell remembers a time when there were over 140 horses on the farm, between racehorses, jumping horses, and riding horses.
“In our family, we weren't allowed bicycles,” he said, laughing. “My dad thought they were dangerous, but we had our choice of 140 horses.
“I also show jumped at a very small level and had some very good horses. I had an open jumper, a warmblood, that could easily clear eight feet! It was not unusual for us to just give demonstrations at horse shows, because nobody could believe it. Even at that time, though, it was a real money game, and I was small, so between those factors, it just led me to the racetrack.”
Though his career as a jockey was cut short by injury, Campbell remained undeterred. After taking the time to make sure he was healed, Campbell started training full time in 1978 with a few horses at Thistledown in Ohio.
“The first year I trained horses, I was broke, and I had two twin boys,” he reflected. “I told my wife, 'I cannot do this again.' Well, in 1979 I led all trainers at the summit meet at Thistle. I kept getting more horses, doing better year to year, and this year's been my best year yet. But I do think that had I not been able to get my start in a very humble way, I wouldn't have the things I have today.”
Among those successes in racing are a pair of graded stakes winners, both former claimers, in 2006, as well as two of Campbell's sons, Jesse and Joel, both accomplished jockeys. The former won over 2,300 races, including the Queen's Plate in 2013, and Joel rode 718 winners during his career. Though each has now retired from the saddle, Joel remains involved in racing as a trainer, while Jesse is running a successful HVAC company.
Looking back, Campbell is very cognizant that it's the horses themselves who have allowed him and his family to be successful in this business.
“I told someone once that I'd changed my feeding program – I'm feeding better horses!” he quipped. “The thing is, you build on success. You have to be successful. I've always won races, won stakes, won a couple graded stakes with claimed horses. But I think relationships matter, and I also think experience matters. It's relative to your health, too. I've had good health and great relationships with owners, and a wonderful family that enables me to do all of the above. I feel like experiences, going through hundreds of horses, it all adds up and makes you a pretty well-rounded horseman.”
It's fitting, then, that it was a combination of those elements that led Lady Radler to Campbell's barn. Owner George Mellon, for whom Campbell has trained for more than 25 years, pointed out a filly by Kantharos at the OBS March sale of 2-year-olds in training.
Campbell went to check her out, and loved everything he saw. He ended up being able to purchase the filly for a final bid of $37,000.
“I told him, 'I just bought you a stakes horse and I don't know how I did it so cheap,'” Campbell remembered. “There was never a doubt in my mind that she would break through at the graded stakes level. I told George in the Spring, let me do what I have to do, and I will get you a graded stakes winner.”
Thus, Lady Radler entered the Dogwood with two wins from four starts in 2023, but Campbell was surprised that her odds were as high as 23-1. Her two losses were explainable, he said. The first, in April at Gulfstream, was caused by the filly clipping heels and nearly falling. The other loss, her most recent out at Presque Isle Downs, showed a clear distaste for the synthetic track.
Other than those two efforts, Lady Radler had never finished off the board.
Yet, Campbell was quick to admit that in the view of horseplayers, since he's not a mainstream trainer in Kentucky, and rider Jesus Castanon is viewed as a “senior” jockey, it may have been hard to pick Lady Radler as the winner.
“It doesn't offend me in any way, but sometimes I'm surprised about that,” Campbell said. “I wasn't surprised when she won, though!”
Heading into the Raven Run, Campbell is just as confident.
“This filly is doing outstanding right now,” he said. “When the horse is happy, they're sound, and their respiratory system is top notch, they can whip the top guys in the barn.
“It's a Grade 2, so I'm curious to see who enters, but I don't care who they run against her, she'll be 1-2-3. She needs racing luck, sure, but I don't see her going off at 23-1 this time!”
At the same time, while the odds of another Thoroughbred track in Cook County may be quite a bit longer than those his filly faced at Churchill, Campbell remains committed to the cause.
“It was always my distinct honor to try to contribute to racing in Illinois,” he said. “Based on the conversations that I'm having, from the Governor down, they realize that there is a danger here, that the racing industry is on the ropes in Illinois.
“I'm confident to say that there's still interest to build something like Arlington in Cook County, and if the phoenix could rise from the ashes, we'd like to be a part of it. We will never give up.”
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