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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: ‘Still Hard To Believe That It Really Happened’

When Thoroughbred trainer Michelle Giangiulio took out her license in the fall of 2020, she expected that there would be challenges. Bills, stress, and the general volatility that can come from working with horses are all things that the New Jersey-born horsewoman knows well.

What she didn't expect was just how hard it would be to keep a horse, any horse, in her barn.

“The first starter I sent out in March got claimed immediately,” said Giangilulio. “He was the only horse I had, so it was hard to keep things going. I know it's part of the game, but I didn't know that they would take him out of a one-person stable. But the thing is, you have to have had one starter before you can claim. So, after that, I really started working on claiming. I was just so unlucky.”

Claiming would prove to be another hurdle. Despite her hustle, the fledgling trainer lost shake after shake. Her second horse, sent to her by horseman Marshall Gramm—who had also sent her first starter—was claimed on his first outing. A couple more horses would eventually trickle in, but in the days leading up to her summer move to Saratoga Race Course, Giangiulio's prospects for increasing her stable were still looking slim.

“It was funny how it set up because I was dropping every day on horses, and I was losing every shake every day. I could not get one single horse,” said Giangiulio. “I think I lost 12 shakes in a row before finally, I won two back-to-back.”

One of those horses was Sea Foam, a 6-year-old son of Medaglia d'Oro. With him, Giangiulio's claiming woes would be forgotten. Only the sixth starter of Giangiulio's career, Sea Foam delivered the trainer her first victory in the Aug. 11 Evan Shipman Handicap at Saratoga.
Since then, Giangiulio's phone hasn't stopped ringing.

“It's been surreal,” said Giangiulio. “There have been so many podcasts and reporters and I was in the newspaper. It's been such a fun experience.

“To think about it now, it really set up perfectly because if I had won a few other shakes, I probably wouldn't have been able to get Sea Foam. I'm a small stable and I don't have any employees. It's only me. If I'd got up to five or six horses, I couldn't really get anything else, so I think it was meant to be.”

Giangiulio's path to becoming a newly minted stakes-winning trainer has been a winding one. Growing up on a farm in New Jersey where her father and grandfather bred Thoroughbreds, she always knew she wanted to work with horses, but I what capacity, she wasn't sure.

“I really didn't get involved in horse racing until I was out of my teenage years and into my early twenties,” said Giangiulio. “I was in the show world for a very long time really. I got a job on a farm when I was about 13 years old, and I started showing professionally at that age. The issue was that I really didn't get anywhere and showing is very expensive and political. I knew I wanted to be a horse trainer; I just didn't know exactly what discipline I wanted to do.”

Seeking advice, Giangiulio turned to her uncle, trainer Carlo Guerrero, based at Parx Racing less than an hour from her home. Under his tutelage, Giangiulio said she learned everything it took to train a Thoroughbred and acquired the skills, the confidence, and the contacts she needed to move up in the industry.

“It was a great experience at Parx, but it didn't feel like it was where I wanted to be,” said Giangiulio. “I moved to New York and got a job with Chad Brown through a friend and that was a really cool experience to be able to work with really, really nice horses. I then worked for quite a few trainers. I've been here six or seven years now and I've I worked for Joe Sharp, Tom Morley, Horacio DePaz, Kelly Breen … quite a few.”

At the end of 2020 and with the support of client Marshall Gramm, whom she had worked for under Guerrero at Parx, Giangiulio decided it was time to strike out on her own. From there, Giangiulio would play the numbers game until at last, Sea Foam found his way into her hands.

Claimed for the partnership of Ten Strike Racing and Four Corners Racing Stable, Sea Foam was picked up off a July 30 allowance optional claiming race win at Saratoga from the barn of Christophe Clement. A New York-bred who had already banked just over $500,00 in purses, Sea Foam's previous stakes-wining history and forward training style gave Giangiulio the confidence he could win the 1 1/8-mile Evan Shipman.

“It came up as a five-horse field and I had heard that Steve Asmussen wasn't going in with his three nominees,” said Giangiulio. “Sea Foam came out of the race where I claimed him so well and he was doing so good that when I saw this race came up light, I wanted to take a shot. The only horse I was worried about was Mr. Buff because he's a speed horse and Sea Foam only likes to run on the lead. But Mr. Buff didn't show up that day, so we got the lead and when Sea Foam gets the lead, he is tough to beat. He can run all day. That's what he wants, to be on the lead by himself.

“Watching him run I just thought, 'Is this really happening right now? This is amazing!' It's still hard to believe that it really happened. To win your first career win in a stake, off the claim, off a very well-known trainer … the story can't get any better than that.

“One thing that is funny is that the week before Sea Foam ran, I had a horse (Joey Loose Lips) run in an allowance race. He was bumping up in class and we just got beat at the wire. I thought for sure he would be my first winner but the following week, Sea Foam just jumped up and won the stake, so I know I wasn't supposed to win that allowance. I saved my first win for the stake. It was just really, really special.”

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Now stabled at Belmont Park year-round, Giangiulio has six horses in her stable. Sea Foam will likely target a next start in the Sept. 25 Greenwood Cup (G3) at Parx, where he will try his luck at a mile and a half.

While the size of her stable has increased, Giangiulio remains a one-woman show. But with new clients and a renewed goal to claim new runners this winter, it's a status that Giangiulio hopes to change in the coming months.

“I'm grooming, galloping, and hot walking right now. It's been really hard to find help this year so I knew I would have to do it this way,” said Giangiulio. “I also don't have a lot of money to have a full payroll. It's expensive to do this with supplies and tack and everything else. I'm really looking now to start hiring. I have a lot of owners that want to claim, and I have new owners who want to send me horses so once I get back to Belmont and I'm settled in, I'm going to start building up.”

Despite her spotty luck in claiming at the start of her career, Sea Foam's success has proved to Giangiulio that claiming will remain a central part of her operation. The opportunity to provide hands on attention to young and previously trained horses remains central to Giangiulio's philosophy as a trainer.

“I'm always looking for a nice claimer that I can improve,” said Giangiulio. They're good horses and I got started in the claiming game, so I know that I'm good at it. In the spring, Marshall Gramm usually has a lot of nice 2-year-olds and he said that he would send some to me. He usually sends them to Brad Cox, but Brad is growing so big now, so I should be getting some nice 2-year-olds. But for now, it'll be the claiming game for me.

“There are a lot of challenges in being a trainer, but in less than a year I feel like I've come really far. I only have a few horses, but they're all good horses. I'm just so happy with how things have been going and I feel fortunate. I don't want to grow too big. All the trainers I've worked for over the years have told me to take my time and not grow too fast because the expenses are ridiculous when you start having a payroll and other bills. It's already a bit overwhelming now, so I'm happy where I'm at. I have everything organized so that when I do build, I'll know what to do. I also feel like I have an advantage because no one knows these horses better than I do. There is nothing more rewarding that seeing a horse win that you've been doing all the work on. Knowing nobody else has touched that horse but you—it's pretty special.”

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Steeplechasers Have Started Brion’s Career With A Bang, But She Has Eyes On The Flat Too

A week after her resounding success in the Grade 1 Jonathan Sheppard Handicap at Saratoga, trainer Keri Brion said the result still hadn't fully sunk in. Brion saddled four runners in the race, and trained all of the trifecta, led by The Mean Queen (IRE) and rounded out by Baltimore Bucko (GB) and French Light (FR).

“I didn't really allow myself to even start thinking about it,” said Brion. “A lot of people were saying it to me, but to be honest I just hoped one of them could get it done. I knew the pressure was on – on paper, mine were the ones to beat. It wasn't until the eighth pole I started yelling for French Light, 'Get up there!' to be third.”

The accomplishment was fitting, since Brion served as assistant trainer to Sheppard for 11 years and was part of his team for several of his 15 victories in the race, formerly known as the New York Turf Writers Cup.

For Brion, the past eight months since going out on her own have been a whirlwind. Brion had taken a string of Sheppard's horses over to Ireland in November 2020 and was still there when she got word in January that Sheppard was retiring. Brion had long hoped to open her own racing stable and had developed good relationships with many of Sheppard's owners, so she had expected at some point she may take the mantle from him but said it happened rather suddenly.

“I always planned to go out on my own, but maybe not in this way,” she said. “But everything happens for a reason, and everything's going pretty good now.”

Now, she is the leading trainer in the National Steeplechase Association standings by earnings and is tied with recent Hall of Fame inductee Jack Fisher for NSA wins. She got her first Grade 1 win in late July when Baltimore Bucko took the G1 A.P. Smithwick Memorial. Her jaunt to Ireland also helped her make history, as she became the first American trainer to win a hurdle race in the country (courtesy of The Mean Queen) and the first to win a National Hunt race in Ireland with Scorpion's Revenge. Brion said the level of competition in Ireland and England for steeplechase horses is considerably higher than in the United States, where there are comparatively few steeplechase horses.

The months spent in Ireland exposed Brion to new training styles to build better fitness and stamina, but also gave her the chance to develop an angle she hopes will bring new owners into the steeplechase scene in the States. Prize money has become a major problem in English and Irish racing, and Brion has found that a mid-level runner there can be tremendously successful in America, where steeplechase purses are much better.

“Obviously, over there jump racing is more prestigious, so they've got that going for them but the guys who are putting a lot of money into the sport don't even break even,” she said. “You can at least break even, maybe make some money here when you do it the right way. I have quite a few people intrigued by it.”

American jump racing is a great outlet for a runner who prefers firm ground, which they don't reliably get in Ireland.

Brion leads The Mean Queen back to the barn after a workout with Tom Garner up

Although steeplechase is most popular in East Coast areas known for all types of equestrian sport, like fox hunting and eventing, Brion said she wish more people understood that it really has more in common with flat racing than cross country.

“I wish the sport did a better job of advocating and teaching people about it because there are quite a few misconceptions about the sport, but it's only because you would have no way to know,” she said. “I think people look at us as a different entity. Flat racing, you look at them as athletes doing a sport. Steeplechase racing, I think people look at it like we're almost show horses which we're not. We're just as competitive as the flat, and there's money to be made in it. It could be supported just as well.”

Brion first came to horses not as a reformed show rider, but as a Thoroughbred fan from the age of 10. She started off working at Sylmar Farm in Christiana, Penn., and learned to gallop at the age of 13. Although she's known for her steeplechase success, Brion said she hopes to build a name for herself in the realm of flat racing also, the way Sheppard did with top runners Informed Decision and Forever Together.

Perhaps contrary to popular belief among flat racing fans, Brion said the training process for a steeplechaser really isn't much different from a flat horse. Hurdlers also don't actually travel much slower than flat horses and need just as strong a closing kick, they just settle over a greater distance first.

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Brion also sees potential in a certain type of flat horse to make a transition over hurdles, and is hopeful she can help more owners see the potential in that type of second career.

“You look for horses – whether they're turf or dirt – that are running long, they're coming late, and just missing,” she said. “Horses that look like they want more ground. I don't mind dirt or turf, either way. You want to see horses that are finishing third or fourth and are galloping out strongly. Every horse jumps, it's just a matter of how good. You can teach them to jump. Even a $10,000 claimer who just runs out of room or is just very one-paced and has a high cruising speed, those are the horses that do well [steeplechasing]. And it's always good to remind owners, horses get their maiden conditions back over jumps.”

Brion aboard Grade 1 winner All The Way Jose

The summer season has been a busy one for Brion, who bases out of Fair Hill. The Fair Hill base is perfect for her program, which allows horses regular turnout and the chance to gallop over rolling hills, but it still means a lot of time on the road. Brion is sending horses to Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania at regular intervals, so her days are long ones. Brion spent some time as a jockey (she was champion apprentice jump jockey in 2017), and still gallops as many of her own string of 30 as she can. This fall will bring more commuting, as there are steeplechase meets every weekend through mid-November. Race days like the G1 Jonathan Sheppard make the long days worth it.

“I have quite a few nice 2-year-olds in my barn, so I'm hoping they will fire and I can get my name out there,” she said. “I've got a bunch of new owners from overseas and I'm looking forward to getting new horses in. My success in Saratoga has really helped me, and I have some exciting new clients.”

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Princess Grace Brought Moores ‘Back Into The Fold’

New York native Susan Moore's tenure as a Thoroughbred owner and breeder began with a love of animals and a penchant for handicapping — two passions that, even after 30 years and several road bumps, keep her coming back for more.

After a near seven-year hiatus from the business — during which Moore and her husband John packed up and moved from their prior home base in New Jersey and New York to The Land of Lincoln and Illinois — Moore is back to gracing winner's circles across the continental United States.

And it's all thanks to a flashy dark bay filly named Princess Grace.

Bred by the Moores and trained by Mike Stidham, Princess Grace, a daughter of Karakontie (JPN), sealed her second Grade 2 win Aug. 7 in the Yellow Ribbon Handicap. The trip to the West Coast was the first for the 4-year-old, who has won five of her six lifetime starts, all of which have been run at different tracks.

“I was concerned because you can't ship the grooms with them any longer,” said Moore. “She had never done that. It was a long ship, and it took around 15 hours to get her there. But they kept saying to me, 'Susan just think, Goldikova had a 30-hour trip before the Breeders' Cup. She will be fine.'

“It's nerve-wracking thought because she was also going up against G2 winners. When she went into that race she had won a grade 2 (Mrs. Revere Stakes), but it was on the dirt, and she had only won another G3 (Pin Oak Valley View Stakes) by a neck because she was trapped for a lot of that race. 'You're throwing her to the wolves!' is what I said to Mike when he shipped her to California. But Mike loves her disposition, and he trusts her. He said she deserved the shot. To go out there to Del Mar … she had to run a 100 Beyer to win that race and she did it.”

Princess Grace is just the latest in a long line of stakes winners to be bred, campaigned, and sold by Moore and her husband. It was a business they got in to quite by chance, thanks to Moore's love of the racing for and a weekly, Friday night ritual at the Meadowlands Racetrack.

“I was a workaholic and the only thing that would distract me from work was handicapping and the numbers on the page,” said Moore. “Every Friday on the way home from work we would stop at Meadowlands and one night a couple sat down next to me. They said they had never seen a woman so interested in horses, but they explained they had a breeding farm and invite me to come up and see them.

“I went up and I ended up giving them $100,000 to buy three horses, but they were probably only worth about $10,000. After that, I was determined to figure out how to survive in the business and not get screwed. I've spent many years talking to people and working with people learning how to manage my horses. I've had a long, productive run at it.”

For years, the Moores were disciples of the Thoroughbred industry's tried and true formula to success: they bought nice yearlings, develop them into stakes winners, and later sell them as broodmare prospects. The couple kept about a half dozen horses in training at any given time. Those that couldn't be sold were either folded into the broodmare band or rehomed by Moore personally.

But when the bottom dropped out of the market in the mid-2000s, Moore, who works primarily as the CEO of the e-commerce company Winston Brands, decided to make the move to Illinois and cut back on their stock.

The Midwest proved less lucrative for the couple. As the purses at Arlington Park began to decline, there was a congruous decline in the Moore's willingness to play the game. The Moores sold a good portion of their mares and took a step back. For close to seven years, the couple existed on the periphery of the industry, until Susan — who had never lost her love for horses — decided she couldn't stay away any longer.

“We kept a couple of inexpensive mares and then bred a couple of the offspring, so that's what we have now,” said Moore, whose current broodmare band of three lives at Cobra Farm in Lexington, Ky. Among those is Masquerade, a daughter of Silent Name (JPN) who was purchased by Moore for $15,000 through bloodstock agent Cecil Seaman at the 2010 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Fall Yearling Sale.

Trained by Stidham, Masquerade never achieved stakes-level prowess on the track. But Moore liked her spunk and made her a member of the broodmare band. The mare soon rewarded Moore's confidence by producing Princess Grace.

“Princess Grace is bringing us back into the fold. She's been phenomenal,” said Moore. “She digs in and can do anything you ask of her and is absolutely amazing.

“She's so docile. She's a puppy dog and she's such a sweetheart. She's very nice in the stalls and easy to handle. Mike says nothing but nice things. You wouldn't think she's this determined racehorse, but she is, and she is just brave. Going through all those holes in those last races like she did … I think the Del Mar race was hard on her. She got in trouble, had to go through a hole, and pushed horses aside in doing that. It was tough but she did it and she never balks.”

Princess Grace and jockey Kent Desormeaux win the Grade 2 Yellow Ribbon Handicap at Del Mar Thoroughbred Club.

With Princess Grace's conditioning well in hand, Moore made her first trip back to the sales at the end of 2020. Including Princess Grace, she now has six horses in training, including another potential turf star in the filly's 2-year-old brother by Kitten's Joy.

“I missed the horse business because I love the horse business,” said Moore. “My husband is not very mobile and is now in a wheelchair most of the time, so it's hard to get him to be able to travel and see the horses any longer. But this year I just really missed the races and the animals, so here I am back with six horses in training. Masquerade is also in foal to American Pharoah, so I'm sure I'll be back at the sales grounds.”

In the downtime between races and sales, Moore continues to share her love of animals through The Moore Foundation, a nonprofit founded in 1999 that operates a division known as Caring for Racetrack Cats. The program provides care and feeding to the barns cat who winter at Saratoga when the track is closed for business. Caring for Racetrack Cats also offers veterinary visits and helps with adoptions for cats and kittens born on the property who need good homes.

As for Princess Grace, Moore said there is plenty to look forward to in the coming months.

“What they're thinking of right now is the (Oct. 9) First Lady at Keeneland,” said Moore. “If she does well, I don't think she will go into the Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf because she's really a miler.

“Watching Got Stormy beat the boys this weekend in the Fourstardave Handicap, it's a question of how Princess Grace can run. Got Stormy is very, very talented and so she'll likely go into the (Breeders' Cup FanDuel) Mile (G1T) for sure. Whether we go into the Mile will depend on how we do at Keeneland, but it's a possibility. There is nothing to say we can't continue to improve and obviously the filly loves Del Mar. That last trip was a long trip, but she came out of it great. We just want to give her time since it was such a big, forward move. We will let her tell us what she wants to do.”

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Nothing Foolish About Larry King’s ‘Dream Life’ At Florida Farm

There aren't many cowboys from the Old West still working with racehorses these days, so it's up to their descendants to carry on the traditions of horsemanship from that bygone era.

Larry King's formative years were spent watching and absorbing that myriad of skills from his late father, and the longtime farm manager for Gil and Marilyn Cambell's Stonehedge Farm in Williston, Fla. has been applying them ever since.

The farm has seen multiple graded stakes winners developed under King's tenure, as well as a total of 16 winners in the lucrative Florida Sire Stakes (FSS) series. Last year, Stonehenge homebreds filled out the superfecta in the FSS Affirmed.

This July 31,the 66-year-old King celebrated another milestone success as a pair of Stonehedge homebreds ran one-two in the FSS Dr. Fager at Gulfstream Park.

“I told somebody today, 'When you ride around Ocala and look at all the farms and all the horses, all the people shooting for the bigger races, I'm surprised we can even win a race, because there's so many horses,'” King said. “It's certainly not easy to do.

“Everybody's excited when you win. It was a lot of fun, and in three more weeks we'll try again (in the next leg of the FSS series). They'll have to pop up and be special.”

With a lifetime of horse experience, King knows special when he sees it. It all hearkens back to his youth, a nomad-like experience following his father, Joe, from racetrack to racetrack all around the United States. Some tracks were recognized and official, while others were anything but.

“He was a cowboy from out West, and came from a long line of cowboys,” King said of his father, who served as an Army surgical technician during World War II. “He worked the ranches, then got into running Quarter Horses. He trained performance horses, like cutting and reining and stuff like that. We've always been in horses our whole lives.”

Larry King remembers riding his dad's Quarter Horses at the bush tracks of central Louisiana; his 87-pound weight was the perfect advantage during the back-country match races.

“It didn't matter how old you were, just if you were light enough,” King said. “I was probably between 9 and 11 years old. Nobody abused horses or done nothing like that, it was just a rough life. Those people were tough… it's a different world.

“We went to places in Mexico and stuff where there were knife fights. I remember daddy tellin' me to go get in the truck! There were no rules.”

After the first 13 years of his life had been spent traveling the racetracks from Louisiana to West Virginia, and everywhere in between, King must have been relieved when his father was offered the position of farm manager at Waldemar Farm for Howard Sams. Under the elder King's horsemanship skills, the farm produced many top runners, including the 1975 Kentucky Derby winner, Foolish Pleasure.

Joe King saw the difficult nature of the future classic winner right away, and assigned his son to care for the obstinate colt.

Joe King, with What a Pleasure, sire of 1975 Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure

“He was quite the handful,” Larry King remembered. “You could work with him all day putting his halter on and off, rubbing his head, and you could leave and go to lunch and it was like you never touched him.”

Foolish Pleasure didn't look like much when he arrived at the 1973 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga yearling sale as a part of the Waldemar consignment.

“There's a lot of stuff that throws off the experts,” King said, chuckling. “He was crooked; he turned out horrible, and he was back in the knees. One big buyer came by the consignment, and Daddy led him out and said, 'This is the best colt in the barn.' I'll never forget what the man said: 'If that's the best you've got, don't show me anything else!'”

Foolish Pleasure commanded a final bid of just $20,000, and while he never outgrew his difficult nature, the colt did go on to win seven Grade 1 races, including the Derby, for owner John Greer and trainer LeRoy Jolley, earning $1,216,705.

King recalled watching the Kentucky Derby on television with his father: “What a dream. We really felt like we'd had a part in it, and that was something special.”

After taking over the farm manager position when his father retired, King was unsure what his own future held when Waldemar Farm was sold to Gil and Marilyn Campbell in 1988. The couple renamed the facility Stonehedge Farm South.

“My wife said, 'What do we do?' King recalled. “I said, 'Well, we're gonna go get some boxes.' Then the next thing I know the new owners came up to me and asked me to stay on.”

Working at the same farm for just shy of five decades has allowed King to play a major role in its expansion to over 500 acres, as well as the development of some of Florida's top Thoroughbreds.

“We just have a ⅝-mile track, we breed, we foal; we do it all,” said King. “Me, I mow a lot of grass! Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, they like to do it from the ground up. We've had success with it.

“I just wanted to fish, and they allow me to do that. I will never leave here unless they sell it or run me off. I'm here to finish it off. My nephew, Jamie King, he runs the training operation. I've got good people on the farm.”

Looking at the pedigrees of the farm's FSS winners from the past two years, sire Cajun Breeze has also been a major part of that success: the Stonehedge exacta in last month's Dr. Fager featured two colts both sired by Cajun Breeze.

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The appropriately-named Cajun's Magic is that latest FSS winner, but King revealed that the talented 2-year-old colt's trainer, Michael “Beau” Yates, was the man behind Cajun Breeze making the move to Stonehedge.

“Michael used to ride for me here at the farm,” King explained. “I know his mother, and I still know him well. When his dad passed, he inherited a nice little farm with a training track, and we were diversifying our trainers. He's a good horseman; he's got horseman blood, back from his grandpa. You really can't teach all that to people.”

Yates had bred Cajun Breeze, a speedy, stakes-placed son of Congrats, to a few mares of his own.

“He's not really set up to stand a stud, so I went and looked at his foals that he had,” said King. “Mr. Campbell asked me what I thought. This horse bred good, he could run, all his foals looked great, he's an outcross to everything we had, he nicks to nearly every mare, and they can run. He's had small, small crops; we've kind of been lucky, because we've had the only ones. When we start breeding some outside mares, we might have some more competition!”

Yates also predicted the Dr. Fager exacta a month before the race was run.

“We were very impressed how they broke their maidens, of course,” King said. “But then you hear about this horse and that horse, going back and looking at replays, and I thought, 'Man, these other horses really look good.'”

King needn't have worried. Cajun's Magic and Dean Delivers finished a neck apart, ten lengths better than the closest competition.

Cajun's Magic (outside) wins the Dr. Fager Stakes over stablemate Dean Delivers at Gulfstream Park.

“Somebody once said it was the water, somebody else said it was the limestone in the soil,” King said, asked to explain the farm's success. “I wouldn't dare say we're better than anyone else. It's just excellent land, and we try to breed using common sense… But I'm proud of what we've done because we haven't had half-million-dollar mares or big sires. We just raise them right, and start them right, and we get a little lucky.

“It's also gratifying to see the Campbells have success after all they've put into the game.”

Other major successes for the Campbells include a 2016 Florida leading breeder title; 2011 Kentucky Derby starter and G2 Tampa Bay Derby winner Watch Me Go; 2016 Preakness starter Abiding Star; breeding and racing Ivanavinalot (West Acre), G2 winner and dam of champion Songbird; breeding $2.4 million-earner Marlin; breeding and racing millionaire Blazing Sword, G3 winner Always Sunshine, G3 winner Well Defined, and G3 winner Friel's For Real.

Looking back at his own role in all that success, King deflected the praise.

“I've been very fortunate with my job, and with my wife,” he said. “I've been married 42 years, and had the same job for 48. It's been a dream life; everything fell into place.”

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