Broberg gets win No. 3,000 as trainer

Less than two months after becoming the third trainer in history to get 500 wins in North America in a calendar year, Karl Broberg has hit a milestone of 3,000 career training victories.

Broberg reached that summit Friday night at Sam Houston when Sarge’s Daughter ($2.80) won the seventh race. She was the last of five winners Broberg had on Friday.

The trainer’s strong day started at Oaklawn, where he captured the fourth race with 14-length winner Tiger Bait ($13.20). Broberg then won three races at Delta Downs with C. C. Harris ($4.60), Flyin Artie ($3.60), and Heir of Storm ($3) before Sarge’s Daughter wired the field in an optional $25,000 claiming sprint at Sam Houston under Deshawn Parker.

Broberg won his first race as a trainer on Nov. 7, 2009, at Retama Park. He has compiled a record of 3,000 wins from 12,036 starts for stable earnings of $45.6 million, according to Daily Racing Form records. He won 509 races in 2018 to join Steve Asmussen and Scott Lake as the only trainers with 500 wins in North America in a single year.

Broberg has led all trainers in North America in wins in each of the past five years. He is a 47-year-old native of Chicago and a resident of Arlington, Texas. Broberg owned horses prior to becoming a trainer.

“I actually first got into racing as a horseplayer at a young age,” Broberg told DRF in November. “I was playing the horses regularly from the day I turned 18. Oklahoma had just gone parimutuel at that time, so I was playing Blue Ribbon Downs, Will Rogers Downs, Remington Park, and Fair Meadows, and often they were running two racetracks a day, and I still was able to make it to both tracks. It just became my life.”

Broberg later opened a specialty advertising business, End Zone Athletics, and in time, that afforded him the opportunity to own racehorses. He sent them to trainer John Locke.

“I was the worst owner because I literally never left the barn,” Broberg said in November. “So, he finally put me to work. So, here I am, paying my trainer bill and working for free. I learned so much from him. Once he started talking about retirement, I made a play to purchase his assets and pitched myself to the owners he had at the time.”

It gave Broberg a larger-than-normal foundation to build from, and he made an immediate impact in the win column.

Now, just 10 years into his training career, he’s one of the few trainers to reach 3,000 wins.