The story has been told before, but bears repeating. It was 4 a.m. and Kenny McPeek had been out celebrating finishing his final class at the University of Kentucky when it suddenly occurred to him he had to get a job.
A friend asked McPeek what he loved. The answer: horse racing. Do that, the friend said, then slapped him on the back and went to bed. McPeek promptly got up off the couch and headed to the barns at Keeneland where he ended up becoming a hotwalker for Shug McGaughey.
The rest, as they say, is history. These many years later, the 59-year-old trainer has won the Belmont Stakes (2002 with Sarava) and the Preakness Stakes (2020 with the filly Swiss Skydiver) but not the Kentucky Derby.
“Hey,” said McPeek recently, standing inside a guard shack on a rainy morning at Keeneland watching his horses gallop on the all-weather training track, “a Preakness and Belmont aren’t exactly chopped liver.”
They are not the Kentucky Derby, however. And after starting this year with four prime contenders for Saturday’s 148th running of the race, he is entering his two best — Jeff Ruby Steaks winner Tiz the Bomb and Blue Grass Stakes runner-up Smile Happy. A third, Rattle N Roll, was entered this week on the also-eligible list.
“You’ve got to get lucky in the Derby, but I’ve got two really good horses going in there,” he said. “They’re both doing really well.”
Plus, McPeek is a Kentuckian. Though born in Arkansas, he has lived practically his whole life in Lexington, where he went to Tates Creek High School and then UK. At the latter, he earned a 0.6 GPA his first semester — “They wouldn’t give me credit for beer and girls,” he said — and a letter from the university saying if he didn’t raise his GPA to 2.0 he had to find another place to further his education.
“The mule in me said, ‘You’re not kicking me out,’” he said.
Looking for a quiet place to study, he discovered the library in the basement of the UK Agricultural building. He also discovered that the library was home to every back issue of the Blood-Horse and Thoroughbred Record/Thoroughbred Times. So when not cracking down on his books — McPeek got that 3.5 — he studied bloodlines. Over and over and over again.
“Today, I use it,” he said. “There’s a pattern to how horses are bred. There’s a pattern to how they’re made. And I get paid to do it.”
After a short time working for McGaughey, McPeek decided he might need to pursue his degree. So he worked in insurance for a while but it didn’t take. “I was good at it,” he said, “but I didn’t enjoy it.”
His father, Ron, a builder who owned and trained a few horses, asked his son to take care of a couple of horses. Then it was four. Then another owner asked McPeek to do the same. And by 1985, McPeek had taken out his trainer’s license. “But it took me 10 years to have a really good horse,” he said.
That was Tejano Run, whom McPeek nursed through a lung infection to a second-place finish in the 1995 Kentucky Derby. He admits now that after training a Derby runner-up on his first try, he thought he could’ve won the race by now. He did saddle the 2002 Derby favorite only to see Harlan’s Holiday finished seventh. Adding insult to injury, the owners transferred the colt to another trainer, Todd Pletcher. But in the final twist of that Triple Crown story, McPeek won the Belmont Stakes with Sarava, who at 70-1 was the longest shot to ever win the mile-and-a-half endurance test.
Over the years, McPeek has trained horses to over 1,800 wins and over $97 million in earnings. He’s had such stars as Take Charge Lady, who won over $2.4 million; Travers Stakes winner Golden Ticket; American Oaks-winning Daddys Lil Darling, among others.
When his mother became ill in 2005, he stepped back from training and concentrated on being a bloodstock agent. Then upon returning from a 2006 trip to Australia, where trainers often own their own farms, McPeek bought what is now Magdalena Farm, a 115-acre farm off Russell Cave Road named for Magdalena Weber Shely, the original matriarch of the land.
After doing some research, McPeek believes it was home of the first commercial stallion operation in Kentucky. It’s now “the core of our operation.” In 2012, McPeek added to his holdings “Horse Races Now,” an app for your phone that provides videos, entries and results from around the country.
“Finding a good horse is harder than training a good horse,” he said. “If I was going to stay in this, I knew I’d have to buy better horses than the other guys to be competitive. I think as I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten better at it.”
McPeek bought Curlin as a yearling. Trained by Steve Asmussen, Curlin is now a Hall of Famer and top sire. He bought Take Charge Lady. He bought Einstein in Brazil. At the 2018 Keeneland September Yearling Sale, he bought a filly bred by WinStar Farm for $35,000 for owner Peter Callahan.
That filly turned out to be Swiss Skydiver, who was so talented McPeek kept running her against the boys. The first time, Swiss Skydiver ran second in the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes. The second time, she became the second filly to win the Preakness since 1924, duplicating the feat achieved by Rachel Alexandra in 2009. Japanese interests purchased Swiss Skydiver at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Fall Mixed Sale last year for $4.7 million.
This is McPeek’s first Kentucky Derby since 2013, when he ran 13th with Java’s War and 16th with Frac Daddy. He’s 0-for-6 overall.
He began 2022 with Dash Attack winning the Smarty Jones Stakes at Oaklawn Park on New Year’s Day. But that colt has disappointed since, most recently with a sixth-place finish in the Lexington Stakes on April 16. Same for Rattle N Roll, last year’s Breeders’ Futurity winner at Keeneland who has yet to hit the board in 2022.
After a disappointing seventh in the Holy Bull, Tiz the Bomb has won back-to-back races on the synthetic track at Turfway. After taking the John Battaglia Stakes on March 5, he won the Jeff Ruby on April 2.
Then there’s Smile Happy, the son of the ever-popular Runhappy. Smile Happy won the Kentucky Jockey Club at Churchill Downs last November, but has raced just twice this year. Both resulted in runner-up finishes — first in the Risen Star at Fair Grounds on Feb. 19, then in the Blue Grass at Keeneland on April 9.
“We’re going to get in the starting gate, that’s what I’m excited about,” he said.
After winning the Belmont and the Preakness, what would it mean to McPeek to win the Derby? “To win two is (to be) accomplished, but to win all three would be box checked, did that,” he said. “That’s what I like about it is the challenge, the challenge of trying to do it.”
A Louisvillian in trainer Brad Cox won the 2021 Kentucky Derby. Might it be a Lexingtonian’s turn in 2022?
“I’ve got great owners who are enjoying the ride,” McPeek said. “The rest is up to a higher power.”
