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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Wente’s Patience, Vision As A Breeder Is Paying Off

Fresh out of high school and with no clear career path in mind, Tommy Wente wasn't exactly sure where his life was headed. But that would change when he paid a visit to his stepdad, Thoroughbred trainer Tom Hickman, and caught a glimpse of what he was keeping in his barn.

“He (Hickman) was a trainer for years and he had a house in Indiana so when my mom moved to Indiana with him, I would go visit,” he said. “He kept all his racehorses in his barn and when I saw the first one, I was hooked. I just knew, 'I have to have one of these.' And the rest is history.”

More than 20 years later and Wente is on the precipice of one of the best seasons of his life as a breeder. His farm, St. Simon Place, recently produced stakes winner Hidden Connection (by Connect), who took the Grade 3 Pocahontas Stakes on Sept. 18 at Churchill Downs. The filly, along with several others already making an impression on the track, could send Wente and his partners to the Breeders' Cup World Championships with a roster that many Thoroughbred breeders never achieve.

But back in 1999 when Wente made his first foray into racing, the idea of the World Championships — or any graded stakes race for that matter — seemed a world away from his reality.

“My stepdad was a trainer and he got me my first horse,” said Wente. “I actually ended up losing that horse in a fire at a Quarter Horse track in Henderson, Ky. So that didn't go very well. But I stayed in the business, and I started off in the Indiana-bred program because that's where I'm from. I started at the bottom with no money, and we were foaling a lot of junk, but I thought it was the best thing in the world.”

Working and breeding in Indiana, Wente spent several years in the Hoosier State building up his program and his contacts. When the day-to-day operations began to stagnate, and with the allure of bigger prizes just over the state line, he decided it was time to make a change and shift the center of his operations south of the Mason-Dixon.

“It got to the point where I wasn't getting anywhere. I felt like I was in a rut,” said Wente. “So, I had a buddy of mine in Kentucky that had a farm, and I had a chance to move in on that deal. I just made the switch and came down. I have two partners now, they're sod famers — Calvin Crain and Shane Crain — So they do sod and I do horses.”

The trio now owns and operates St. Simon Place, a nearly 400-acre farm in Lexington, Ky. While the Crains focus on their sod business, the Kentucky Turf Company, Wente keeps his priority on the horses. In addition to breeding and foaling, the farm also offers yearling prep, lay-up, and boarding.

With the move to Kentucky came the opportunity for more frequent visits to the sales grounds and Wente wasted little time in buying. His strategy from the start was to suss out the diamonds in the rough: mares with minimal price tags that hold the prospect of future returns.

Hidden Connection wins the G3 Pocahontas Stakes at Churchill Downs.

“I bought a few mares and one of those that I bought was C J's Gal, who is the dam of Hidden Connection,” he said. “She was only about $9,500. Then the other mare we bought was Jazz Tune, she was $20,000. Actually, she just had a winner the other day by Connect, a maiden special weight winner.

“Our 2-year-old crop this year is unbelievable. I sold and Indiana-bred for $130,000 in October last year. Donato Lanni bought her for Quarter Pole, and she (Electric Ride) ended up getting a TDN Rising Star mention on his first time out. I also bought a mare out of a sale named Spanish Star for $1,500 and I bred her to Trappe Shot. After that baby was born, Sir Winston won the Belmont Stakes (G1) and he is Spanish Star's half-brother, so I ended up selling her for $150,000 privately. That baby, One Timer, is entered in the Speakeasy Stakes at Santa Anita.

“Then we have the 2-year-old out of Jazz Tune, Rattle N Roll, broke his maiden at Churchill and he's nominated for the Claiborne Breeders' Futurity (G1) at Keeneland. I don't know if it will work out, but it's just so exciting because that's a “Win and You're In” race for the Breeders' Cup. And of course, Hidden Connection looks like the real deal and we're all so excited to see what she does.

“I think I spent like $300,000 at Keeneland last year in November and I got a lot of babies out of those mares. All of those will go straight into the sale this November. I thought last year was a buyer's market so that's why I bought, and it really looks like it'll pay off because I got some fantastic foals.”

Today, Wente's broodmare band is comprised of close to 45 mares, several of which he owns with another partner, Scott Stevens. That being said, he does have plans to pare down in the coming months. Both C J's Gal and Why Oh You — the dam of Electric Ride — are entered in The November Sale, Fasig-Tipton's premier breeding stock sale, with the understanding that if their foals don't jump up to hit the board in their next races, they could remain with Wente on the farm.

“I'm getting to the point though where I don't want to get much bigger,” said Wente. “I'm working on trying to get some numbers down because I get more happiness out of buying cheap mares, watching them hit, and then reselling them for more money. I love that part of the game. We're getting hefty offers on C J's Gal, but I was informed to shut that down. If hers or one of the foals hit, then I'll probably sell. I know those mares are hard to find, but I can't always afford to keep them.”

While he now breeds largely in Kentucky, Wente continues to foal out a handful of mares in Indiana and shares part ownership of the stallion Speightsong, who stands at Swifty Farm in Seymore, Ind. Wente does race some of his stock with trainer Mark Casse, but his priorities lay heavily with breeding and selling. With so much upside in the pipeline — from Hidden Connection to Elective Ride, to One Timer, to Rattle N Roll — Wente finally feels that he, and his horses, have found their stride.

“We had an incredible yearling sale this year,” said Wente. “I think we sold eight horses for $756,000. None were spectacular but they were all good horses, and it was a great sale for everyone. I think I have a pretty good program going and I've gotten to work with some great people like Carrie and Craig Brogden of Machmer Hall, who consign my yearlings. I owe a lot to them, they steered me the right way. I also have friends I count on like Tim and Nancy Hamlin at Wynnstay. They've taught me a lot, too. I'm just blessed that I've met so many people who really help me.

“I'm not afraid to listen and learn things. I don't know it all, I just take it all in. With this game, the highs are the highs, and the lows are the lows. There is not in between. You will have more lows than highs, but you have to keep pushing through. It just seems like everything we did and the money we spent is coming full circle. I don't know the method to my madness, but it seems to work. I'm just very blessed.”

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: ‘This Filly Really Did Save My Little Brother’

When nothing was going according to plan and it seemed like everything around him was falling apart, Austin Thurman bought a racehorse.

“This filly really did save my little brother,” explained his sister, Lizzie. “He'd always seen how the horses brought joy to my mom and dad. To us growing up, that's always what made them happy, and he saw 'Ellie' and just had to have her.

“You know how you have that horse, that one horse? This is his horse.”

When “Ellie,” racing under the registered name English, broke her maiden on Sept. 16 at Arlington Park with Lizzie in the saddle, Austin could barely contain his excitement. He was proud of the filly, of course, but it also felt like everything in his life was finally coming back together.

“I'm super lucky; blessed, I guess you could say,” said Austin, 22. “She's brought our whole family together. Lizzie's boyfriend helped break her, dad (co-owner Kelly) shoes her, mom (trainer Rhonda) rubs her down every day.

“She's given us back that spark, and now I've got 17 horses here (at Fairmount Park). We've got mares in foal at the farm, young horses… Since she won, I've got another guy bringing us two more horses to train.”

Though the Thurman family has been involved in Illinois racing for over 30 years, Austin didn't grow up in the game. Instead, he spent the majority of his free time in high school working toward becoming an all-state wrestler, with dreams of earning a college scholarship.

That all changed when he broke his neck at age 16. Austin shattered his C6 and C7 vertebrae, and underwent surgery to place four screws and a spacer in his neck.

“It's crazy, but I'm able to ride the pony every day,” Austin said. “The doctors didn't even think I would be able to do that, but I only lost about 10 percent of my mobility.”

Nonetheless, his wrestling career was over. Austin made the best of his situation, and after recovering began flipping cars to pay for his first two years of college. He was studying for a finance degree and had gotten an internship working 38 hours a week for One Main Financial.

It was a solid job, a good potential career, but Austin wasn't happy.

“I was just miserable; it wasn't what I wanted to do,” he said. “When I was in class every day, I was thinking about what I could be doing when I got out of class.”

Austin had started helping his parents around the racetrack in his spare time. Since expanded gaming became legal in Illinois in 2019, the racing industry was beginning to show signs of hope and regrowth. His mother, Rhonda, then a full-time manager at WalMart, reinstated her trainer's license that year, and along with her husband began conditioning a couple horses at the family farm in Collinsville, Ill.

Austin got more involved with the horses, and also helped a woman named Dawn Martin a few days each week. When Martin told Austin she wanted to sell a couple horses, everything clicked in his mind. He suddenly knew what he wanted.

“I had this week where everything wasn't going right with the job and school,” Austin said. “I dropped out of school, quit my job, and bought this filly. I just walked out, and didn't go back.

“I called my dad and asked if he wanted to look at some 2-year-olds Dawn had. English looked like Cox's Ferrara, a filly we had a long time ago. I knew that horse was a runner. We decided to sleep on it. At the time, the project vehicle I was working on was an old Chevy pickup. My dad was in on it with me, so the next day we sold the truck and then went and bought the horse. It all happened in the same week.”

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Austin and his father brought “Ellie” home to the farm, and set about starting the English Channel filly under saddle. Lizzie, who'd always wanted to be a jockey and had been working with the family racing stock every day since she was old enough to hold a pitchfork, was the first one on her back.

When Lizzie broke her leg at the track, her boyfriend Javier Diego stepped up to finish getting English ready to race. The filly made her debut at Keeneland in October, but wasn't quite ready mentally and finished at the rear of the field.

Undeterred, Austin and Lizzie worked with her over the winter.

“Austin and I have always said that I'm gonna be the trainer and he's gonna be the owner,” said Lizzie, laughing. “We're best friends, like a year and a half apart. He's my little big brother. Everyone always thought we were twins.”

When they brought English back to the races in March of 2020, she rewarded their efforts with a second-place finish in a maiden special weight at Fairmount Park.

Then COVID-19 hit.

“The only places you could run were Will Rogers Downs or Fonner Park,” Austin recalled. “I hauled her down to Will Rogers a couple of times, and she ran well enough.”

Luck fell the wrong way again in the summer of 2020 when a barn fire at the Thurman farm killed three yearlings and destroyed multiple vehicles and most of their equipment. The racing stock was at Fairmount Park at the time, thankfully, but the fire was still a huge hit, both emotionally and financially.

Through the rest of the year, Austin hauled English around the Midwest to run her about once a month. She kept running well, hitting the board fairly often but never quite getting the job done.

“She's been pretty honest with me,” said Lizzie, who's piloted English for most of her starts. “She's always trying, and right there, but the racing gods were never with us.”

When 2021 rolled around, the Thurman family was fully invested in horse racing once again. They had mares in foal for the first time in years, and once again sent horses to Fairmount Park, now Fanduel Sportsbook and Horse Racing, with Austin at the helm as assistant trainer.

Lizzie, meanwhile, took a job riding for trainer Steve Asmussen in Indiana along with her boyfriend. Still, every time English ran, Lizzie came back to meet her brother in the paddock wearing the family silks.

The Thurman family at Fairmount Park

The Thurmans got their first win since 2017 in August of 2021, when Rejoice an Be Glad hit the winner's circle at Fairmount, but Lizzie wasn't able to ride that day. When English followed suit about a month later at Arlington, getting it done in her 19th career start, Lizzie was in the saddle.

“It was my first win for Mom and Dad, and at Arlington,” Lizzie said. “I've won one other race there, but always wanted to win one for mom and dad there. It hit home a little more.”

Reflecting on that winner's circle moment, Austin could hardly contain his pride in his filly.

“Every time she runs, we thought she was going to win,” he said. “She'd been knocking on the door, but finally got it done. She's like my 1200-lb dog, and she just never quits trying for me.”

Lizzie echoed her brother's sentiments about English.

“She is a very sassy drama queen but we all love her,” she said. “It's funny because she's so full of herself, and it's just Austin's horse.

“She gave us that little bit of hope when we needed it, you know? She's a cool little filly.”

For Austin, English's win represents success beyond just the racetrack. He enjoys getting up in the mornings, spends all his free time at the barn with his horses, and is as hands-on as possible with 17 head under his care. He rides the pony to the track every day to watch his horses train, learning as much as possible from his parents along the way, and he truly can't imagine doing anything else with his life.

The Thurman family has since added another victory to their 2021 tally, building momentum for the future. Austin truly seems to have found his calling, thanks in large part to “Ellie.”

“You just can't make it up,” Austin said, laughing. “We're just the little guy with a few horses in Illinois, but we're in the winner's circle.”

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Against The Odds And Despite Her Doubters, Chichakly Is On Her Way

It's not an easy time to be a trainer of racehorses right now, let alone a new trainer. Amira Chichakly knows that as well as anybody, but she made the leap all the same, in the middle of a global pandemic and mass economic uncertainty.

Chichakly spent several years as an assistant to Gary Contessa, a longtime fixture on the New York circuit. When Contessa announced his retirement from public training in March 2020, he made it clear his departure was not the result of disillusion with the horses, but the headaches of running the business. Recent investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor have put a number of high-profile New York trainers in the crosshairs, adding time-keeping and record-keeping practices on top of the mountain of paperwork it takes to navigate a constricting federal visa program and recruiting skilled help.

“When I had 100 horses, I could absorb this, but when I have 40 horses and 20 of them are so-so, it's not enough to overcome what the Department of Labor is expecting of us,” Contessa said at the time. “There was a time when I was a 'super trainer' and I did very well. When you had the occasional owner who defaulted on you, you had the horses you got stuck with, you had Department of Labor audits, winning would overcome all of that stuff. But when you have a smaller stable — unless you do everything yourself — I don't see how you can do this.”

Into these woes walked Chichakly, who had long pondered putting out her own shingle.

“I pretty much got the choice of, I could take Gary's offer to take things on or be jobless,” she said. “Nobody was hiring anybody at the time. I don't like sitting idle, so I decided I was going full steam into this.”

When Chichakly got the call from Contessa, she had just learned she was pregnant with her daughter, though she wasn't yet sharing that publicly. The timing probably could not have been more challenging, but it also wasn't a good time to suddenly become unemployed. She had decided some time before that she needed at least eight horses to make a profit, and with Contessa's offer to transition previous owners over to her, she had 11.

In her time working for Contessa and Wayne Catalano, she had seen the glories of being a trainer but also the headaches. It seemed there were an awful lot of headaches, but like many people in this business, the lure of the horse made it seem worth it.

“Looking at it I thought, it's not so glorious to be a trainer,” she said. “But I do love figuring out horses, putting the pieces together and figuring out what works for them. I like to be able to find the best parts of the horse and making sure they're happy, too.”

Chichakly multi-tasks in the barn aisle

Chichakly has galloped for many years and still gets on her own string as often as she can, having discovered she can often feel little changes she doesn't always see from the ground. Her dressage training enables her to not only pick up on weaknesses and asymmetry, but also to work in stretching and bending to help correct those issues before they turn into big problems.

In addition to the usual woes of struggling to hire reliable help and get each the day's work done, Chichakly also believes there's a sense of jealousy toward new trainers on the backstretch.

“I think that's true for any young trainer starting out,” she said. “There's always doubters, people who are waiting for someone to fail. I don't think that's specific to me, I see it with other people too. Being a female trainer, too. There are people out there that say we can't do it. Number one word out there is 'crazy.' People love saying that word … I know another female trainer right now who's going through that. She feels like people are actively rooting against her and I don't think she's wrong, because I hear people talking about her or other young trainers. 'Oh they'll never make it,' 'Oh they don't know what they're doing,' or 'They won't last that long.' And it's sad, because we need small trainers for racing to survive. They don't understand their competition is not the person who's got five horses, it's the person who has 500 horses.

“If someone's passionate enough to be here every day, you should be rooting for them. Because there aren't that many left.”

A year and a half later though, things are coming together. Chichakly has saddled 11 winners and is already graded stakes-placed, thanks to Limonite, who picked up third in the Grade 3 Excelsior and second in the Stymie earlier this year. Now, her hopes are high for 2-year-old Our Tiny Dancer, who broke her maiden at Delaware Park Sept. 9 and is entered in the Joseph A. Gimma Stakes at Belmont on Sept. 24. The New York-bred filly was the first winner for sire Union Jackson.

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“Because of COVID-19 and being pregnant, then a new mother and a new business owner with little help, I really couldn't get to the sales early on,” Chichakly recalled. “Something I had been so excited for as a trainer, I had to miss. This year, I was getting really frustrated missing OBS and not having 2-year-olds and I knew I had to go to Maryland myself. I'm sure everyone was laughing at the dog and baby in tow but I brought them both to all the under tack shows.

“Right away the Union Jacksons stood out to me, despite not knowing him as a racehorse.”

Chichakly had her eye on several, but found herself either priced out or outbid. Contessa was also at the sale and tipped her off to the chestnut filly, ultimately acting as agent for the purchase as Chichakly signed her first sales ticket. Owned by a partnership including John Moirano, Pines Stables, John Irwin and Sallie P Thoroughbred Racing, Chichakly took a few starts to figure out exactly what the filly needed – soft turf wasn't her thing, and she missed her break in her first dirt start. She took a small string to Delaware Park for a week – with no staff – expecting there would be a place for the filly that would be a little friendlier.

“She delivered above and beyond my hopes for that start,” said Chichakly. “She's not magically a Breeders' Cup-type horse, but she packs quite a punch and should be quite capable in New York fields moving forward.”

One of Chichakly's watercolors

Never one to sit idly, Chichakly still does much of the hot walking, stall cleaning, and grooming herself in addition to the usual training responsibilities of setting schedules, reading condition books, dealing with the books. When she isn't doing the job of several people, she also dabbles in the visual arts. She sometimes helps photograph major race days for the New York Racing Association if she's not running horses, and paints watercolors – all while juggling care of her young daughter. On Whitney Day, she was marching up and down the track with a 9-month-old baby in a pack on her back.

“Someone got a picture I think, I had her on my back and one camera on one shoulder and the other camera on the other shoulder,” Chichakly said. “I think when you're a horseman you're a multitasker anyway. When I was assistant trainer for Gary, he'd leave me sometimes with 60 horses at Belmont when they were in Saratoga, and I was on the pony too and sometimes riding. To be able to watch everything and get through the day, to have people not show up you get really used to having one thought here and one thought there, and working it as you're moving. You don't think about how much you actually did until you sit down at the end of the day and realize how tired you are.”

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Gufo Brings Doctors Together On Ride Of Lifetime

After nearly three decades in the horse business, Dr. John Little, co-breeder of Grade 1-winning Breeders' Cup Turf candidate Gufo, knows one thing for sure: He's not in it for the money.

An anesthesiologist affiliated with Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati, Little studies pedigrees, conformation, race records, and stallion statistics to decompress from the daily demands of medicine. He has bred two millionaire runners from his Petionville mare Floy: Gufo and his half brother Hogy, a graded stakes-winning turf sprinter.

“That's what I do to get away from medicine,” said Little, a Texas native who as a youngster rode Quarter Horse races at bush tracks and later found success breeding Thoroughbreds on a small scale at his Central Kentucky farm. “This is my thing to distract me. It takes enough thought and I have to totally shift gears away from medicine to do this. People at the hospital ask me if it has been profitable looking back at the last 25 years. Financially, if you look at exactly the numbers…I would say no. I do medicine to make a living, and the only reason I even do horses is so I don't have to think about it.”

Little bred Gufo, most recently winner of the G1 Sword Dancer Invitational Stakes, a Breeders' Cup Win & You're In event, on turf Aug. 28 at Saratoga, in partnership with close friend, Dr. Stephen Cainelli, who is retired from an obstetrics practice in Texas and races the Declaration of War colt as the only runner for his Otter Bend Stable.

Little and Cainelli met years ago when practicing medicine in San Angelo, Texas. Little had a farm in Stephenville, but after many vacation trips to Kentucky with his horses shifted permanently to the Bluegrass in 2004 and established Cave Brook Farm in Keene, near Lexington.

Cainelli's formal introduction to the sport came in 2016 when he and Little decided to breed Floy in a foal-share agreement. For years, however, Cainelli had been a naysayer when Little talked horses, but he later became interested and then a fan eager to participate on the ownership level.

“We practiced medicine together and played softball together; when our third child was born he was a boy and (Cainelli) asked to be his godfather,” Little said. “He told me how stupid the horse business was for the last 30 years and finally he said about four years ago: 'I don't have anything fun to do right now and I need a reason to come visit you. …Surely by now you've got some good horses after all these years.'

“Steve's involved in a bank that currently sells on the Dow (Jones Industrial Average); he started it,” Little continued. “He's involved in the Washington Nationals baseball team. And I knew he wasn't talking about a horse to try to win an allowance race at Mountaineer. He said 'Do you have any good horses?' So, I told him about my best horse on the farm; it was my mare that produced Hogy.”

Little called upon all his instincts and insights developed over many years researching Thoroughbreds to select young War Front stallion Declaration of War, then standing at Coolmore's Ashford Stud, and Cainelli put up the stud fee, the resulting 2017 foal was Gufo, from the stallion's second crop.

Following the Sword Dancer, Clement indicated the colt's next start would be the G1 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic Oct. 9 at Belmont Park, also going about 1 1/2 miles on turf.

Gufo has shown promise form the time he was a youngster. Little sent him yearling to the late Kenny Lejeune at Oak Ridge Training Center in Morriston, Florida. Lejeune developed a number of good runners, including G1 winners Divine Park, Mo Forza, and Peace Rules. He also was the regular rider of Racing Hall of Fame member and champion sprinter Precisionist.

Gufo at ten months old

At one time Lejeune rode Quarter Horses in Texas for Little's brother and father, and Little maintained the relationship when he started breaking horses down in Florida 25 years ago.

“He had been really accurate in assessing the ones that were bad and the good ones,” said Little, who previously had sent Lejeune his homebred Schoolyard Dreams, a graded stakes-placed runner and former 2003 Preakness starter. “[Lejeune] was a big part of my whole deal.”

Lejeune died of cancer at age 60 in December 2020.

“Kenny loved [Gufo] and after about three months he said: 'He's my best horse. I don't know how good, but he's good. So [Gufo] had been there four or five months and I called Christophe Clement. Steve Cainelli is from New Jersey right on the New York City border. He's got family in New Jersey and New York and I knew he would enjoy racing in New York. And Clement likes turf horses.”

Clement consented to train Gufo after sending his son Miguel to Florida to see the colt, then two, and get Lejeune's assessment. He was familiar with Hogy, having previously sent runners to compete against him. After his own judgment when the colt joined his New York stable, Clement wanted to give Gufo time off to grow and mature.

“I didn't realize how patient he was,” Little said of Clement. “I didn't realize how appropriately caretaking of horses he was. He told me the horse was growing really fast and he would do good to have a few months off.”

At that point, Little decided Cainelli could take sole ownership of Gufo, who had yet to start. Little first suspected there could be a problem with colt that might cost him money but Cainelli reminded him of why Clement was chosen to train in the first place.

Cainelli told him, “I don't care about the money part of this. I don't know [much] about the horse business but the money part doesn't matter. If you'll be adviser to me I'll take care of the money part.'”

Co-breeders Dr. John Little, left, with Dr. Stephen Cainelli of Otter Bend Stable

Little then mentored and advised Cainelli through his initial first steps in ownership and then took a back seat before the colt made his debut at two in November 2019. The Sword Dancer was his second top-level win following the 2020 G1 Belmont Derby Invitational Stakes at three. He has never failed to finish in the top three in 12 career starts, winning seven times while bankrolling $1,138,510.

Little bought Gufo's grandam, four-time winner and $114,865-earner Risen Miss, a 6-year-old daughter of Peteski, for just $4,500 after she caught his eye at the 2003 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October mixed sale.

The mare was not pregnant and had been turned out with some cattle in Nebraska. Her first foal was Gufo's dam, Floy, who made one start at Keeneland for Little before a torn suspensory ligament curtailed her racing career.

“She was beautiful; she was big and strong like Gufo,” Little said of Risen Miss. “Floy is a little bit smaller and more feminine.”

Little raised Gufo on his farm, “in my backyard. He was just a big good-looking colt.”

Floy has had some hard luck in her broodmare career, losing several foals after producing Hogy, a son of Offlee Wild sold by Little's Cave Brook Farm for $16,000 at the 2010 Keeneland January Horses Of All Ages sale. His racing career spanned nine seasons, 55 starts, and a 19-13-7 record, including graded stakes wins and $1,339,782 in earnings. A fan favorite, he eventually joined Old Friends Retirement Farm in Georgetown, Ky., when retired in 2019 but a paddock accident led to the gelding's death at age 12 in August.

Other horses Little has been connected with include Willy Beamin, who he bought for $3,000 at the 2010 Keeneland January sale then sold him later that year at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky fall yearling sale for $16,000. He went on to win 2012 G1 King's Bishop Stakes at Saratoga.

Little is currently excited about Floy's homebred 3-year-old Tourist filly Sisi, who is expected to make her second start at the current Belmont Park meet. She breezed a half mile in :47.77 September 12, fifth fastest of 73 at the distance.

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Floy is in foal to Hard Spun for 2022.

Little sells about three foals each year and keeps several mares, including Floy, on his farm, situated along South Elkhorn Creek in Jessamine County. His horses are nourished by well water from Cave Spring. Nearby is the historic Keene Springs Hotel, which housed many Lexingtonians fleeing cholera epidemics in the 1830s and 1840s in the hopes the area's medicinal white sulphur spring water would fortify their health or cure their ills.

Little has been married 31 years to his wife, Laurie, who handles all the farm business. His brother, Bill Little, also assists on the farm. The couple have three adult children: Leanne, who is chief resident of ophthalmology at Cleveland Clinic, Jennifer, who operates Centered Holistic Health studio in Lexington, and Daniel, a talented baseball player who attends Auburn University studying aerospace engineering.

Little credits his horse business for instilling a strong work ethic in his children. He said that's the profit he's gained in it, not financial reward.

“They know that horses don't care if it's Sunday or Christmas; they still have to eat and (their stalls need to be cleaned). I've got some hardworking kids.”

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