The Week in Review: Back-of-Van Ride to Victory for Trainer Kirby in Claiming Crown

When trainer Tom Van Berg won two Claiming Crown races Saturday with his first horses in that series, most racing regulars made the connection to his father, the late Hall-of-Fame conditioner Jack Van Berg. But a link to another family legacy in that series might not have been as apparent: John Timothy Kirby, 25, who also saddled his first Claiming Crown starter to a victory in his first-ever race at Churchill Downs, is a third-generation horseman with strong roots that run deep in New England.

In fact, after more than a half-century of raising and racing Massachusetts-breds, the Kirby clan managed to outlast all Thoroughbred racing in their home region. That meant that even before Suffolk Downs ceased racing for good in 2019, the youngest trainer in the family had already been forced to hit the road and relocate to Parx in Pennsylvania to ply his trade.

The Claiming Crown likes to bill itself as the “blue-collar Breeders' Cup,” and that's a pretty fair analogy. But how many trainers at the national level are willing to make a 675-mile van ride in the trailer with their lone entrant for that event, like Kirby did with Hero Tiger (Hero of Order), the 4-1 winner of the $100,000 Ready's Rocket Express?

“I rode in the back. Just wanted to make sure he shipped good and everything,” Kirby told Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association (PTHA) video correspondent Dani Gibson post-win.

“Bobby Mosco's horse was on there, too,” Kirby added, referring to Out of Sorts (Dramedy), the 10-length victress of the $150,000 Tiara who completed a Parx-based double in a Claiming Crown otherwise swept by home-track Kentuckians.

“Everything went so smooth and the stars aligned. We just got so lucky,” Kirby said.

Perseverance and a horse-first work ethic honed by three generations didn't hurt either.

John T.'s grandfather, John F. Kirby, had always worked around horses growing up, and he began training Thoroughbreds in 1953, when racing in New England consisted of a robust circuit in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Maine, plus a summer and fall slate of regional county fairs.

Kirby started breeding Thoroughbreds at his Smokey Valley Farm in Dover in 1967, about a half-hour southwest of Suffolk Downs, and he had already built up a small band of broodmares by the time Massachusetts started earmarking money for state-bred purse incentives in 1972.

After training for outside clients for two-plus decades, the elder Kirby cut back to focus on his homegrown racing stock in 1975. When the Massachusetts-bred program expanded to include state-bred stakes in 1981, at least one Kirby-raised horse would win at least one of those stakes each year for a streak that lasted three decades.

The horses that carried the family's green-and-white shamrock silks were known for durability and soundness. One foal from Kirby's 1968 crop named Brik (“Kirb” backwards) won 23 races from 184 starts.

The family was hardy, too, and although not standings-toppers at Suffolk, they were widely respected for their horsemanship. In 1985, John F. Kirby said in a Boston Globe profile that between the farm and the track, the work schedule was “seven days a week, from dawn until exhaustion.”

Timothy Kirby, John T.'s father, began training in 1991 and still has a small stable at Parx. Patriarch John F. Kirby stopped training in 1999 and died in 2011. The once 40-acre family farm got downsized in pieces as the horses left the property and the bloodstock business in New England dried up and vanished.

The youngest Kirby recalled in a 2019 interview with the PTHA's Dick Jerardi how as a high schooler, he was often reprimanded for reading a Racing Form hidden inside his binder.

“If we had a horse racing, odds were that I would be at the track and not in the classroom,” John T. Kirby said.

But Kirby got schooled in other, more meaningful ways. Just as important as race results, he learned from his father and grandfather, was what happened after the finish.

“We always had Mass.-breds,” Kirby said in that PTHA write-up. “They treated us well. We mostly kept them when they were done and let them live out to their old age on the farm.”

On a raw, unseasonably snowy Saturday at Churchill that surely must have given Kirby flashbacks of the bygone, brutal days of winter racing at Suffolk, there was a moment at the head of the homestretch when it looked like Hero Tiger, despite being full of run, was going to get squeezed out of contention because a narrow gap that jockey Luis Saez had been aiming for turned into a wall of horseflesh before the 6-year-old gelding could punch through.

“Honestly, when that hole shut on him, I thought he lost his momentum. But Luis really rode him hard and got his momentum going again, and this horse just has the biggest heart–the biggest heart,” Kirby said, his voice momentarily cracking with emotion after the highest-profile win of his career.

With limited stock, Kirby has won 14 races from 98 starts this year, hitting the board at a 45% clip while competing primarily at Parx, Delaware and Penn National. But he's no stranger to New York, where he's won one race each at Saratoga and Belmont in 2021 and '22, the most recent victory being a 21-1 upset in June with a $45,000 claiming turfer who blitzed six furlongs in a swift 1:07.34.

Back on Sept. 4, Kirby dropped a $40,000 claim slip for Hero Tiger at the Spa on behalf of owner Gregg O'Donnell, and Saturday's claiming Crown win returned $56,000 on that investment.

Instead of taking credit, Kirby complimented his jockey in a post-race interview while brimming with enthusiasm about bigger and better things to come.

“The first horse we ever put [Saez] on, he won at Saratoga. And then earlier this year they [nearly] broke the track record at Belmont,” Kirby said. “So we're 3-for-5 with Luis, and this is just the beginning. We'll get him a lot more mounts.”

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Maker, Van Berg Win Two Each on Snow-Tinged Claiming Crown

Trainer Mike Maker racked up his 20th and 21st Claiming Crown victories on Saturday, extending his lifetime lead among conditioners in that annual series by saddling Keystone Field (Candy Ride {Arg}) to a determined half-length win in the featured $175,000 Jewel.

But while Maker's familiar presence in the winner's circle underscored his resilience in the event often described as the “blue-collar Breeders' Cup,” a trainer taking his first crack at the Claiming Crown, Tom Van Berg, also registered two series victories and added a third on the undercard for a three-win afternoon.

The Claiming Crown, which began in 1999 as a way to showcase and reward horses who compete in the types of races that form the backbone of day-to-day American racing, is a partnership between the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association and the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association. After initially rotating among smaller tracks in its formative years, Gulfstream Park had evolved into the host track over the past decade.

But for 2022, the Claiming Crown switched sites to Churchill Downs, and the series was moved up from early December to the Saturday after the Breeders' Cup, a spot where it faced practically zero simulcast competition in terms of marquee events on the national calendar.

Speculation had been rife over the past several months about whether Churchill Downs would actually be able to host turf racing for the Claiming Crown because of the fragile condition of its slow-to-grow $10 million grass course. But Mother Nature interceded on the morning of Nov. 13 by dusting Louisville with early-season snow and freezing temperatures, making it a necessity for track management to move all scheduled turf races to the sloppy and sealed main track.

As if the gray, chilly conditions weren't enough to underscore the hardscrabble nature of the claiming event, Van Berg's two wins for his ownership outfit, Grit to Glory Racing, LLC, lent additional support in the form of an appropriate name: Not only because “grit to glory” is a catchphrase that epitomizes the Claiming Crown, but because those words were also the subtitle of a biography written about Tom Van Berg's father, the late, great Hall-of-Fame trainer Jack Van Berg.

“This is the first time we've participated in it as a stable,” Tom Van Berg said of the eight-race Claiming Crown slate that featured $1.05 million in guaranteed purses, plus additional funding from the Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund. “When we heard the news it was coming to Churchill, it made a big difference on who we ran and how many we ran. I think if it was in Florida, we'd probably have taken one down there. Instead we have five in today, so [the series being at Churchill] made a big difference for us.”

Another twist this year was that the Claiming Crown races, which have traditionally been conducted under starter allowance conditions but called stakes, couldn't technically be called “stakes” this year because the Claiming Crown would then be subject to no-Lasix restrictions that are required for stakes. But even though not designated as black-type, the races for the most part retained their traditional naming to keep continuity with previous editions.

In the featured nine-furlong Jewel, the Maker-trained Keystone Field opened up with a big move off the far turn and then grudgingly stayed on late at 6-1 odds in 1:53.29 under Gerardo Corrales.

The 7-year-old gelding is now 6-for-21 lifetime for owner Three Diamonds Farm (Kirk Wycoff).

“We knew when it came up sloppy that a son of Candy Ride should handle the surface great,” Wycoff said. “I left the [Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale] a few hours ago, and it's a great sale-but winning races is better.”

One of trainer Van Berg's two wins for his Grit to Glory partnership came in the $125,000 Rapid Transit over seven furlongs. The Queens Jules (Scat Daddy) provided the most exciting finish of the day by clawing back the lead when headed in deep stretch and scoring by the barest of nostrils with Florent Geroux up in 1:25.10 for seven furlongs at 8-1 odds. The 7-year-old gelding has switched barns via the claim box weight times in 59-race career prior to earning win number 12 on Saturday.

That same owner/trainer/jockey combo teamed for a win by Petit Verdot (Vancouver {AUS}) in the $150,000 Canterbury Tom Metzen Memorial, moved from the grass to 5 ½ furlongs over the slop and reduced to a field of five after six scratches. The 4-year-old gelding forced the issue near the front end to register a length-of-stretch, head-bob victory at 2-1 odds in 1:05.52. Petit Verdot had been claimed in his last three starts of 2021 prior to a four-win campaign so far this season, with eight in-the-money finishes from 10 tries.

On a day when Kentucky-based horses enjoyed a six-win, home-court advantage, Parx-based horses shipped in to snag two Claiming Crown races.

In the off-the-turf $150,000 Tiara for distaffers at 1 1/16 miles, Out of Sorts (Dramedy) demonstrated why she's now 3-for-3 on wet dirt tracks. She roared home by 10 lengths in 1:47.34 for trainer Robert Mosco and owner John Fanelli, with Paco Lopez up at 6-1 odds.

The 4-year-old filly had been claimed for $25,000 by those connections out of her most recent start, an Oct. 4 wire job back at Parx, and Saturday's blowout win returned nearly four times that investment in immediate purse dividends.

One race later, in the $100,000 Ready's Rocket Express, Philly connections struck again, with 6-year-old gelding Hero Tiger (Hero of Order) splashing past rivals at the sixteenth pole to tally by 1 ¼ lengths in the $100,000 Iron Horse Kent Stirling Memorial in 1:11.89 for six furlongs. Trained by third-generation horseman John T. Kirby for owner Gregg O'Donnell, it was the second Claiming Crown win on the day for jockey Luis Saez.

To win the Express, the 4-1 Hero Tiger had to run down 2-1 favorite Beverly Park (Munnings), who snatched the lead on far turn but couldn't sustain his bid, fading to fourth in an attempt to win his 13th race of the year from 26 starts. Beverly Park's 12 victories in 2022 are still good enough for winningest horse on the continent honors, with his next closest rival four wins behind.

In the $150,000 Emerald, the even-money Palace Coup (Bernardini) pressed the pace and drew away late for a two-length score for owner FAS Racing (Adis Smajlovic) and trainer Joe Sharp in 1:46.40 for 1 1/16 miles in an off-the-turfer, giving jockey Lopez his second Claiming Crown winner of the day.

The one-turn-mile $100,000 Glass Slipper was won by Invaluable (Include) for owner Paradise Farms Corp. (Peter Proscia), providing Claiming Crown doubles for trainer Maker and jockey Saez. Off at 3-1, the speed-centric 5-year-old mare won by 1 ½ lengths in 1:39.84. Claimed six times in her 24-race career, from $50,000 all the way down to $8,000, Invaluable is now 3-for-7 on wet tracks and was re-equipped with blinkers for first time in two years.

Time for Trouble (English Channel) won the $100,000 Iron Horse Kent Sterling Memorial for trainer Jeff Hiles, who also owns the 5-year-old gelding in partnership with Thorndale Stable, LLC (Paul Parker). Joe Talamo engaged in a long, grind-'em-down effort before drawing away late by 3 ¼ lengths in 1:46.79 for 1 1/16 miles. Since being claimed on June 18, 2021, for $8,000, Time For Trouble has won five of eight over varying surfaces and distances, including firm and good turf, plus fast and slop on the main track, all the way up to 1 3/8 miles in distance.

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