Equine Jack Van Berg gives namesake's clan a day to remember

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Tom Van Berg has never experienced a day quite like it. Nor will he ever again, most likely.

“I still can’t comprehend it,” Van Berg said Monday, nearly 72 hours after he enjoyed the greatest day of his off-and-on training career. “It went about as well as a day can go.”

Van Berg sent out back-to-back winners early Friday at his home track, Churchill Downs, just before the Breeders’ Cup races got under way. That was big enough. But the first winner was a 2-year-old colt named Jack Van Berg, named in honor of his late father, the legendary Hall of Fame trainer. The second was a horse who showcased the younger Van Berg’s training acumen when thrashing a solid field of allowance milers.

Jack Van Berg, the colt, paid $30 in winning race 2, and Casino Star paid $59.40 after winning race 3. The only regret Tom Van Berg had – if this even counts – was not betting on either horse or a rolling double that paid $972.60 for $2.

“I really thought they were both in too tough,” he said.

Casino Star was claimed by Van Berg in April for $25,000 and now has won 2 of 4 starts while more than paying for himself.

“He had some quarter cracks that have really bothered him, but now he’s past it,” he said.

Van Berg, 49, was cognizant of the import of what he undertook last fall when assuming the stable led for decades by his iconic father. Jack Van Berg died in December from complications of cancer at age 81 and had become too ill to manage his stable. His lone surviving son, Tom, stepped in, and has done a highly commendable job, starting off by winning 11 races at Oaklawn Park while still coping with his personal grief. Of further note was the fact that Tim Van Berg, Jack’s other son (and Tom’s brother), died in California in April 2017, eight months before his dad.

Of course, this entire backstory is well known to all the Van Bergs who were in attendance here Friday, including two of Jack’s three daughters (Tom’s sisters) and assorted extended family members. When the colt named for Jack Van Berg led past the eighth pole “and came past us, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house,” Tom Van Berg said.

“You couldn’t ask for a better storybook ending,” he said. “It’d basically been 30 years since Dad won the [1988] Breeders’ Cup Classic with Alysheba [at Churchill], and the horse named for him wins like he does on Breeders’ Cup Day, right here at Churchill. And then the next horse wins. It was almost unbelievable, really.”

Further dramatizing the impact of the occasion was that a camera crew from the upcoming documentary, “Born to Rein,” was following the Van Bergs around. The film centers on the most accomplished Nebraska natives in racing history – John Nerud, and Marion and Jack Van Berg – and is scheduled to debut next spring.

“It was a day none of us will ever forget,” Tom Van Berg said. “I think the big guy is up there still pulling some strings for us.”