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Laura Moquett’s Search For A ‘Good Fixer’ On The Eve Of The Arkansas Derby

Counting the well-mannered colt's strides as she takes him to the seven-eighths pole on a brisk Wednesday morning breeze this week at Oaklawn Park, Laura Moquett knows precisely where she wants to be. She understands how much throttle to let out and what visual markers are presenting themselves. Clocking is useful, but it is more about listening intently as she moves forward.

An accomplished horseman like Moquett relishes the routine; everyone does, but as an assistant trainer she is never shy when it comes to a good equine conundrum. In a vocation such as hers when you spend your time breaking and training Thoroughbreds to race the trade demands it.

Time

Hot Springs's own Harry T. Rosenblum, who co-owns Time for Truth (Omaha Beach) with Cheyenne Stables, has entered that well-mannered colt this Saturday in the GI Arkansas Derby and Moquett has played an integral part in 'Truth's' development.

The road to the track's signature race has not been a cakewalk. Remember, it's horse racing. A case in point, the 3-year-old was spooked during one of those routine workouts one morning, but according to Moquett, in situations like these what seems to be a problem can turn into an invitation for growth.

Laura Moquett breezing Time for Truth | Coady Photography

“Jogging backwards a rider got dropped,” said Moquett. “It really made him [Time for Truth] fearful because it was a surprise and it was keeping him from moving forward, so we needed to figure out a way to address it by teaching him not to be afraid. He figured it out with a little help.”

What Moquett did, along with fellow assistant Greta Kuntzweiler, was put a horse in front of the 3-year-old and show him how to move around obstacles. It seems like a simple fix. But it's not.

The social cues and mechanisms from the saddle come from a long line of trial and error, which are based in the fundamentals of exercise riding. Moquett knows this; she's studied it through countless hours of developing her own horseman's database. It's a hard drive full of experiences. In her line of work, you have to consider anatomy, kinesiology, a dab of psychotherapy, and most of all, a heavy dosage of patience to solve a horse's Rubik's Cube.

“You don't get on them and just steer with your hands,” explained Moquett. “It's about knowing their tendencies, listening and feeling their body movements. All of that comes from your legs and it has a lot to do with your weight distribution.”

Listening

The tried-and-true Socratic Method–asking a question and then receiving a response– works just fine in your garden-variety academic setting.

However, when it comes to preparing Time for Truth for Saturday's career-defining race, what you really need is someone who understands a horse's language.

Laura Moquett on her shedrow rounds | JN Campbell

Someone who whispers to them? Sure, but it's equally important to know how to listen. Laura Moquett is one of those listeners.

With an intuitive sense for animals which she had from a very young age, Moquett has honed her skills over the years working with Thoroughbreds around racetracks and after they have retired.

As an assistant to husband Ron Moquett, Time for Truth's conditioner, the question she asked when the Thoroughbred first arrived as a juvenile last year is the same one she issues to any member of the barn: “How can this colt move forward?”

“I like a good fixer,” Moquett said with a smile. “Maybe Ron understands that most of all, but what I am trying to do is guide energy. Horses can feel a fly, so what we do is help manage their senses by listening to what they tell us.”

Origins

Ron Moquett met his future wife on the backstretch while the two worked under trainer Bernie Flint in the mid-1990s. He understood early on what a natural gift for horsemanship she possessed and how equine athletes responded to her.

“Laura can find ways to get along with some of the toughest horses,” Ron Moquett said. “Instead of making them perform a task, her connection to them–all animals really–is just incredibly special and she gets into their psyche by adapting to their own ideology.”

Time for Truth with groom Jose Espinoza | Coady Photography

Laura Moquett says there's a complex and evolving dialogue between the horses and the humans who care for them. Grooms, hotwalkers, van drivers, and of course, exercise riders all gravitate to a certain type of equine athlete.

“Oh, we've all got a type, everyone in this barn does,” she said. “For me, I like a big-ass colt with an attitude.”

Assistant Greta Kuntzweiler agreed, but she works well with a different sort.

“Give me the nutty filly or the cranky old gelding,” she said.

Truth

As an integral member of Moquett Racing, Kuntzweiler guided Time for Truth, along with her mentor Laura Moquett, over the course of the past several months as the colt prepared for each new obstacle. Once he broke his maiden on the last day of the year, the dark bay out of the Lookin At Lucky mare Shape Shifter had to endure time off due to a frozen second half of January, which caused his workout regimen to be altered.

An unlucky stall accident the week of the GII Rebel S. waylaid his next start, but the team behind him kept him on course. Time for Truth successfully traversed the two-turn conundrum against optional claimers at Oaklawn earlier this month, which set up the opportunity to enter the starting gate this Saturday.

“Working with Laura and Ron over the years, I've learned to take on challenges one step at a time, really watch how she develops the ones who need the most help,” Kuntzweiler said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, the answer is to go forward.”

Already at Churchill Downs for the coming meet, the assistant trainer credits Moquett with teaching her everything she knows. That's a high compliment coming from a former jockey who rode competitively, and continues to evolve.

“When my business [as a jockey] began to dry up, it was time to start thinking about a new direction and watching Laura work has really helped me add a whole new dimension to my own bag of tricks,” she said.

Greta Kuntzweiler aboard Time for Truth | courtesy of Robert Yates

Tricks

Moquett began to expand said bag when she started show jumping with OTTBs–like MGISW Whitmore (Pleasantly Perfect)–who can start new careers once their days racing and breeding are over. What she learned through this whole other universe was a different kind of problem-solving, which got her to look more inwardly at the horse–like a football player who takes ballet.

“Education in the jumping has helped my training by understanding body mechanics,” she said. “That has made me rethink how I approach 2-year-olds when they first hit the track, and it also makes me think about how we communicate with our own riders.”

Moquett is especially in-tune when it comes to checking a horse's legs every morning for any issues and looking for social cues during training. Communicating those observations to her husband and also to the jockeys, like Time for Truth's regular rider Rafael Bejarano, is an essential part of the conduit of information. It only adds to a jockey's toolbox.

“Greta is the one who has done such a wonderful job of talking to jockeys and doing it in such a way that is constructive,” said Moquett. “That really shows her attention to detail. Rafael was the first to hear about Time for Truth's new ability to pass, and that will give him the confidence to make the right decision during Saturday's race when the moment comes.”

Time for Truth with Rafael Bejarano up | Coady Photography

Saturday

Can someone with Moquett's background and training history over decades of development lead Time for Truth to a win in the Arkansas Derby?

Moquett offers a practical response.

“All we can answer is the question of is our horse ready?” she said. “Everyone in this barn is forward first and what this is about is running his best race. What we have done is get this specific horse to run in a specific way. He has the mind and the temperament. The rest is up to him. I will tell you though, Saturday can't come soon enough.”

Laura Moquett might be a self-described creature of the backside much more than the front, but what she has continued to showcase with her professionalism and penchant for solving equine puzzles makes her a horseman through and through.

She will keep searching for the next good fixer or, like in the case of Time for Truth, another big-ass colt.

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Where Are They Now: Whitmore

In this new TDN column, Christie DeBernardis will tell the stories of accomplished and/or popular former racehorses who are now enjoying second careers as show horses, track ponies, etc.

Champion sprinter Whitmore (Pleasantly Perfect) and Laura Moquett's relationship goes back to when he was just a 2-year-old who refused to go around the racetrack without some coaxing. Fast forward seven years and that cantankerous juvenile is now an Eclipse winner and Breeders' Cup winner and has been retired from racing as Moquett's personal riding horse.

On Thursday, less than 13 miles from the scene of Whitmore's greatest racetrack triumph, the pair had their show ring debut in the Retired Racehorse Project's competitive trail event at the Kentucky Horse Park.

“We had some issues to deal with between the wind and sun creating some scary shadows,” Moquett said. “He looked at the first obstacle and said hard no, but he worked through it and completed the course. I was really proud of him. He kept his composure really well despite that, which was incredible.”

She continued, “He had so many groupies. It was phenomenal. They followed him from the barn all the way up to the course. They were adoring. It was really cool to see. If this gets even one person to give a horse a second shot at a new career, that is so important.”

Whitmore entered Ron and Laura Moquett's barn as a rambunctious 2-year-old and was initially owned by their Southern Springs Stables. While new owners later bought into Whitmore, one thing remained unchanged and that was Laura Moquett, who was the chestnut's regular rider and traveling companion.

“As a 2-year-old, I really had to focus on him because he was a maniac,” Moquett said. “We couldn't get him around the racetrack, not one lap, and would not go the right direction. We did a bunch of schooling on that to teach him to go forward. We kept him company, even breezing, until the last couple of years because otherwise he would stop in the middle of the track and do some shenanigans. But, with company, he did his job and ran other horses down, which is funny because it ended up being his running style.”

She continued, “Basically, if I was in town, I would be on his back every day. If we had to go out of town for a stakes race, I was his companion. Most of it was great, but sometimes he pushes your buttons and he loves doing it.”

With a stallion career off the table for the gelded seven-time graded stakes winner, Ron Moquett consulted his partners about Whitmore's future when it came time for retirement. Everyone readily agreed to leave him in the hands of his lifelong friend Laura Moquett.

“Ron had talked to the partners and everyone came to the consensus we could keep him the rest of his life,” Moquett said. “I still wanted to be around him daily, so thankfully they were totally on board. He got injured at Saratoga last summer and they said he could come back to the races, but the partners agreed he had done more than enough. I was upset when he was injured, but I knew he was going to be okay and I would get to keep him, so it was a weird mix of emotions. It was devastating in the barn for our team because he was the big horse and had that mojo everyone wants to be around.”

That injury came during Saratoga's 2021 meet and Whitmore was given down time for the rest of the year.

“We couldn't bring him back until late December and I was just too busy at Oaklawn to start him,” Moquett said. “It didn't materialize this winter and I was just trying to get his feet back in shape. That will always be a challenge. I thought there was no way we could do the RRP, though that was all I wanted to do. I thought it would be really great for his fans to see him do something else. There are a lot of people that follow him and were upset when he got injured.”

She added, “I worked with him five or six times in the round pen just doing ground work in late March. Then I hauled him to a friend's place maybe four times and did some basic under saddle work. That was about as much as I could do until we got back to Kentucky after the Derby.”

Moquett and Whitmore did manage to fit one other outing in during their winter in Hot Springs, a trip to Oaklawn for “Whitmore Day.”

“The first day at Oaklawn he was actually decent,” Moquett said. “I think he was like, 'I'm back baby!' Days two through four, I was like I might die. One of the jocks went by and was like, 'He's going to drop you.' I said, 'He hasn't yet! Don't worry, I will make it home.' He was just so excited. By the fifth day, he realized we are just going to go out there and walk. I had the outrider next to me in case. He got out there and everyone was yelling for him and he was like, 'Okay, this is for me. That's right. I get it.' I told them if they didn't get me off the track before the gates popped and we accidentally won the race, I was taking the money.”

Once they returned to Kentucky in May, the real work began.

“He is at a barn in Goshen that the mounted police use,” Moquett said. That was part of what inspired the competitive trail idea. When he first got up here, I just legged him up trail riding at first. The first time I went anywhere with him was in June to Masterson Station for a jumper/trail night. It took me like 30 minutes to get him to the course. He was terrified of all the stuff they had set up. It blew my mind too. I was like there is no way I can do this. The mounted police take their horses to Hinkle Equestrian Center in Indiana to prep for competitions. We went over there about 12 times and that helped him a bunch. He is a fairly easy horse to ride and he will only get better. I am lucky.”

Whitmore's age and experience racing at venues from coast-to-coast have aided him in his second career.

“He has been on airplanes and at a bunch of different venues with music and crowds,” said Moquett. “I think that is an advantage, especially for this class, as is his age. He is a lot more settled than a young horse is.”

As for the future, Moquett has a few ideas, but is letting Whitmore dictate the plans.

“I would love to try the hunters with him,” the horsewoman said. “But, I am enjoying every second of it and we will see what he wants to do. It's his world, I am just living in it.”

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Champion Whitmore Returns To Oaklawn With New Goal In Mind

Whitmore won Oaklawn's Hot Springs Stakes for older sprinters a record four times and if the feisty 8-year-old gelding cooperates, he'll be leading the field again in 2022.

Whitmore has returned to Arkansas, but instead of preparing for the Hot Springs, a race he won in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, the now-retired Eclipse Award winner is about to take baby steps toward a possible second career as a stable pony for Ron Moquett, who trained the gelding and campaigned him in partnership with Robert LaPenta and Head of Plains Partners (Sol Kumin).

“Our ultimate goal, right now, the short-term goal, is have him lead the post parade for the Whitmore,” Moquett said Tuesday morning. “That's our goal, Doesn't mean we're going to do it. It just means we're trying.”

Oaklawn announced in early September that it had renamed the Hot Springs to honor Whitmore, the 2020 Breeders' Cup Sprint winner, the country's champion male sprinter of 2020 and among the most popular and successful horses in Oaklawn history. The inaugural $200,000 Whitmore Stakes is March 19, a centerpiece of “Whitmore Day.” Oaklawn also renamed the Count Fleet barn, Whitmore's longtime home in Hot Springs, after the gelding.

Whitmore was retired after suffering a leg injury during a fifth-place finish in the $600,000 Forego Stakes (G1) Aug. 28 at Saratoga. A chestnut son of Pleasantly Perfect, Whitmore bankrolled $4,502,350 – 88^th in North American history through Tuesday – after winning 15 of 43 starts. Much of Whitmore's best work came at Oaklawn, where he compiled a 9-6-1 record from 16 starts and earned $1,752,600. Whitmore also won Oaklawn's signature race for older sprinters, $500,000 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap (G3), a record three times (2017, 2018 and 2020). Swift Ruler, a local star during the 1960s, is the only other horse in Oaklawn history with seven career stakes victories.

Moquett said Whitmore was sent to Rebecca Maker's equine rehabilitation and breaking facility in Kentucky following the Forego. Whitmore has normally decompressed there the last several years before returning to Oaklawn – his winter home at every meeting since 2016 – to begin preparing for a new campaign.

Moquett said his wife/assistant Laura will be trying to re-train Whitmore for pony work, which encompasses escorting horses to and from the track during morning training hours. She was Whitmore's regular exercise rider.

“I have no idea,” Ron Moquett said, when asked if he believed Whitmore knows he's not running again. “This is kind of the same schedule he's been on. We're hoping he does. We're going to feed him different. Obviously, he's going to leave every day and come back.”

Moquett said Whitmore could eventually occupy his same stall in the renamed barn and be re-trained at Oaklawn or sent to more tranquil surroundings at the track's satellite training center about 25 miles east of Hot Springs, where the trainer keeps horses. Moquett said Whitmore left Kentucky Tuesday and is now at the training center. The gelding will return to Oaklawn after Thanksgiving, Moquett said.

Whitmore was a noted bad actor at two and gelded before his first start. Although he mellowed with age, Whitmore would buck and kick before loading into the starting gate for some races.

“We couldn't get him around the track as a 2-year-old, so he's changed a whole lot,” Laura Moquett said the morning after Whitmore won the 2020 Count Fleet. “We can actually train him now. He's softened his edges a little. He still has the tattoos of the barbed wire around his arm, but he has like a heart and mom on there as well now.”

Ron Moquett said Whitmore will now be going back to school, with his wife as tutor.

“Go out there and watch training,” he said. “Ride up there and sit there at the end of the day, when nobody's around, and watch a couple of horses train and then come back home. After a while, the hope is, he understands that this is what I do. I don't go train. Not go around kicking stuff. Laura will be on him. Laura's horse.”

Another former Ron Moquett trainee, Meanbone, successfully transitioned to pony work following his final career start in July 2020. Meanbone, a 9-year-old Silver Train gelding, worked as Moquett's stable pony during the 2021 Oaklawn meeting.

“We're just going to start like we did Meanbone,” Ron Moquett said. “Remember, he's a pony now and these other horses that we've re-homed and made ponies – we're going to try to do it with Whitmore and, hopefully, it sticks.”

Moquett said his wife would be aboard Whitmore to lead the post parade for the Whitmore Stakes, which is the final major local prep for the $500,000 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap (G3) April 16. Whitmore ran second in both 6-furlong races in 2021.

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Sprint Champion Whitmore Retired

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY-Some 15 hours after he suffered a career-ending injury, Whitmore (Pleasantly Perfect) was being Whitmore Sunday morning. Acting like he was quite ready to run in another Grade I at Saratoga Race Course, the 8-year-old was positioned in the front of this stall, alert, active and on the prowl for a carrot or a piece of candy.

During the gallop-out past the wire of the GI Forego S. Saturday afternoon, jockey Joel Rosario noticed something didn't feel right and pulled the champion up. As a precaution, he was vanned off, taken back to trainer Ron Moquett's barn and examined. The X-rays showed a minor injury, an apical fracture in his lower left foreleg. Moquett promptly decided that the Forego, the 43rd race of Whitmore's distinguished career, would be his last.

“He would easily come back and run,” said Laura Moquett, who trains the stable with her husband and is Whitmore's exercise rider. “The vet that took the pictures last night was basically like, 'He'll come back and run like a 100%.' But Ron immediately said, 'No, he won't. We're not doing this.'”

About 100 yards away from where Essential Quality was being saddled for his victory in the 152nd GI Runhappy Travers S., the Moquetts were in the midst of the bittersweet period. Their life-changing horse, a fan favorite who won the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint and an Eclipse Award last year and earned over $4.4 million, was finished with competition. But he was safe.

Ron Moquett checked on his ornery gelding before dawn Sunday and headed back to Kentucky and then on to Arkansas, as planned. Laura Moquett was at the barn, handling interviews and welcoming people who wanted to stop by, see Whitmore and thank him for the memories. She said her husband was dealing with the injury and retirement.

“He's sad, but he's really also relieved and happy that he's fine. That's the key,” she said. “We love racing, but we love horses before we love racing. As long as they're fine, we don't get too worried about whether they run again or not. That's the key to racing right? It's a very short window.”

Laura Moquett said she was distracted by the incident in the stretch of the Forego when Firenze Fire savaged eventual winner Yaupon and took her eyes off Whitmore. As she began running down the track to where Whitmore was being tended to in the first turn, she realized he was not in serious trouble.

“I saw him walk like two steps,” she said. “When they were trying to hose him off he was kind of walking in a circle. As soon as I saw him take the two steps, I was like, 'We're good. He's injured, but it's nothing catastrophic.”

Her long-distance analysis was correct. The X-rays showed the fracture at the top of the sesamoid.

“It's just like a little piece, where his suspensory attaches,” she said. “They may not even choose to take it out. It's not in the ankle. It's the two bones on the backside. It's where the suspensory is attached, so when they stand they've got structure. It's connecting his foot to his back of his leg.”

The X-rays were sent to Dr. Larry Bramlage at Rood and Riddle in Lexington for review and to determine whether surgery is needed.

Regardless, Laura Moquett said that when Whitmore's recovery is complete she will enter him in the Retired Racehorse Project (RRP) to be retrained. She expects he will learn to be a jumper in the show ring. She said she was not sad Sunday morning, “because I'm going to have him. Now it's just the next career, right? He's going to have a little layoff and then he's going to start his new job. So that's just a different structure.”

While Whitmore will stay with the Moquetts, his disposition may preclude him from working in the stable.

“He kicks a lot, so I don't think he'll be a pony,” Laura Moquett said. “He's not a biter, but he is nasty with his hind end. I don't know if he'll be able to do pony work. We'll see. I would love to have him on the track every morning. It would be so fun. If he goes on to be a jumper, I'm basically the only one that'll be around him instead of having all the guys keep tabs on him and stuff. They'd like to keep him around, so it would be cool to have him be a pony.”

Ron Moquett purchased the unraced 2-year-old named Pleasant Mel in a private sale for $37,000 and renamed him Whitmore after one of his high school teammates. Whitmore did run in the 2016 GI Kentucky Derby, but came out of the race with an injury. Since his return to racing several months later, he has been a sprinter.

Whitmore won 15 times and finished in the money 33 times. His victory in last year's Breeders' Cup Sprint at 18-1 carried him to the Eclipse Award.

Laura Moquett said that when her husband announced Whitmore's retirement Saturday night on social media, the reaction was immediate and intense with fans wishing him well.

“That's so cool,” she said. “They love him because he's just a hard-knocking guy that tries hard every time. He hurt himself and finished fifth and a Grade I, his last one. That's kind of incredible.”

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