Kathleen O'Connell only learned a few months ago she was approaching a spot in the Thoroughbred record books.
O'Connell, who started her own racing stable in 1981, may soon pass Kim Hammond as the leading female trainer in North America by victories. The conditioner known to employees, friends, rivals and fans as “K.O.” has sent out 2,381 winners, four fewer than Hammond.
Gai Waterhouse of Australia is acknowledged as the planet's No. 1 all-time woman trainer in victories with more than 7,000, according to the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.
O'Connell is 11-for-88 in 2023 while racing between Tampa Bay Downs and Gulfstream. Hammond, based at Turfway Park, has not won from 15 starts this year. Those numbers suggest it is likely just a matter of time before O'Connell takes over the No. 1 spot in the Northern Hemisphere. Which was even further away from her mind than the land down under when she started in the business.
“It will be a celebration whether it's a little time, or a long time,” O'Connell said. “Records are always broken. I just think it's an accomplishment, more than a record. It's an accomplishment.”
It's not a cliché to say O'Connell has poured body and soul into her career.
“I've always been the type of person whether I played basketball or ran track, no matter what I did, it was always overboard, 110 percent. I don't know how to do things any other way,” she said. “That is what, I guess, intensifies my business, because I don't have a family and I don't have a lot of things, so all my energy is channeled this way. And that can be bad and good, but that's just the way it is.”
O'Connell never joined the women's-liberation movement – “I was too busy working!” – but in her chosen field, she made the steps required to advance untold numbers of her sex. After her application to Michigan State University's veterinary school was turned down (she discovered they only admitted two women a year), she attended community college and worked for a photo developing company, but the siren of the racetrack proved too alluring to ignore.
O'Connell's second racetrack license, issued at Detroit Race Course in the early 1970s, listed her occupation as “Pony Boy.” Talk about feeling like an outsider.
“There was no such category as girl, no box to check. There was no 'exercise girl,' no 'pony girls,' ” she said wryly.
But the horses she got on didn't discriminate, and she knew she had found her niche. After spending the 1975 season at Fair Grounds in New Orleans with trainer William R. Harp, she arrived at Tampa Bay Downs in 1976 and has been here every season since.
What a legacy she has established.
She has twice been leading trainer at Tampa (tying Jamie Ness for the 2009-2010 title) and was the first woman to win a training title at Calder in Miami, also in 2009-2010. She finished second here last year with 30 winners to Gerald Bennett.
Her graded-stakes winners include Blazing Sword, who won three graded events from 1997-2000; Ivanavinalot; Fly by Phil; Stormy Embrace, winner of the Grade 2 Princess Rooney Stakes in 2018 and 2019; Well Defined, who won the Grade 3 Sam F. Davis Stakes here in 2019; and, perhaps most memorably, Watch Me Go, a 43-1 upset winner of the Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby in 2011.
Watch Me Go, owned by her long-time clients Gilbert Campbell and his wife Marilyn, took O'Connell to the Kentucky Derby. Mr. Campbell passed away a year-and-a-half ago at 91, but O'Connell still trains for Mrs. Campbell's Stonehedge Farm South, a relationship of more than 30 years duration.
Another outstanding O'Connell-trained horse was the speedy turf filly Lady Shipman, who finished second by a neck in the 2015 Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint at Keeneland as a 3-year-old after winning six stakes that year and setting two course records. There were many others, certainly.
O'Connell still trains about 60 horses between Tampa Bay Downs and Gulfstream, a task that would be impossible without her stable of about three dozen employees split between the tracks.
“It's not just about me, it's about all the people who work for me. It's been a huge team effort,” she said. “And it's about the owners who trust you to run their horses in the correct spots.”
She has always treated each horse as an individual, gotten to know their likes and dislikes and their quirks and styles.
“They are all individuals, and that is how they have to be treated. What works for one is not going to work for another. It takes a lot of reading your horse, seeing how they act. It's just like with kids – sometimes their coaches push them, and sometimes they push themselves. It's knowing how much gate work to do with them, how intense to get with it and when to back off. You watch if they are scared about the gate, if they are in the feed tub, whether they are acting OK on the track.
“You try to get them to want to train, to want to be out of their stall and be able to enjoy it.”
O'Connell has loved it so much for so long that she never really wondered where the hours went on a daily basis, but she is mystified by how the years flew by so quickly. Sometimes, her body reminds her that her career has transpired in real time, and that nothing lasts forever.
For now, though, retirement is not on her radar screen. What she does has value to her owners, breeders, her employees, jockeys and the fans. And to the teenage kid who always did everything to the best of her ability.
“I think I'll know when it's time, because as much as I love the business and love the horses, things are changing a lot, and I'm not so sure for the better,” she said. “When I can't do what I know is best to protect my horses, which also protects my owners and my help, then it is time for me to use the 'R' word (retirement).”
Until then, take comfort in seeing K.O. atop her pony on a misty morning, and striding into the winner's circle several hours later spreading cheer with her smile.
“I don't gallop any more, but I do enjoy the closeness of the training as far as being on the ponies. I do enjoy riding to see the condition of the track myself,” she said.
“You have got to look forward. That is all you can do, just keep looking forward.”
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