2024 Eclipse Awards: Kenny McPeek

Imagine having one of the crowning days of your professional life, basking in the success of a plan conceived and overseen through several months to an extremely successful, deeply satisfying conclusion.

Then, imagine it getting even better the next day.

So went the first weekend in May 2024 for Kenny McPeek.

At Churchill Downs on May 3, McPeek sent Thorpedo Anna out to win the Longines Kentucky Oaks by nearly five lengths. McPeek had come close before but never won the Oaks. Twenty-five hours later, McPeek gave Oaks-winning jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. a leg up on the colt Mystik Dan, and Hernandez gave Mystik Dan a beautiful ground-saving ride that propelled him to the narrowest of victories in the Kentucky Derby, another McPeek milestone.

:: Full list of 2024 Eclipse Awards finalists, including profile stories

McPeek became the first trainer since 1952 to pull off the Oaks-Derby double. Those two days might’ve marked the peak of McPeek’s year, but there was so much more to his season. McPeek came close to his personal best for wins in a year, notching 92, and his nine graded stakes wins tied his best year, 2002. Stable earnings of $16.27 million shattered McPeek’s previous top. And he is likely to take the stage when 2024’s Horse of the Year is announced: Thorpedo Anna stands out as an odds-on favorite for the award.

McPeek now has won all three Triple Crown races, having captured the 2002 Belmont with Sarava and the 2020 Preakness with the filly Swiss Skydiver. McPeek, who has scoured South America for racing and breeding prospects, won a Group 1 race in England with a Brazilian-bred, and who owns and operates farms and training centers in Kentucky and Florida, never will be accused of carrying on his trade by the book. McPeek writes his own playbook. The first Friday and Saturday of May 2024 etched his name, for as long as American racing persists, in the record books.

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