Kimmel turning his attention toward bloodstock advising
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SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – John Kimmel is one of just six people to have won a trainer’s title at Saratoga in the last 30 years. That was in 1997, when Kimmel won a race on the final day of the then 36-day meet to tie Bill Mott, who was winning or sharing the fifth of what would become nine titles.
Kimmel has won more than 1,400 races and trained 10 individual Grade 1 winners, including the champion Hidden Lake in a training career that has spanned 40 years. But, in the era of the super trainer, where a small number of trainers have the bulk of the high-end horses, Kimmel’s numbers have dwindled.
While Kimmel, 70, continues to train horses, he has also partnered with Nick Sallusto to form a bloodstock advisory business. One horse he bought, Chancer McPatrick, a $725,000 2-year-old-in-training purchase in April, won his debut last Saturday here for trainer Chad Brown and is likely on his way to the Grade 1 Hopeful.
Another horse he bought, Grace and Grit, will debut for Kimmel in Wednesday’s fifth race at Saratoga, a 1 1/16-mile turf race for 2-year-old New York-bred fillies. That filly brought $350,000 at the June 2-year-old-in-training sale. She is by Munnings out of the three-time stakes winning mare Sheriffa.
“We were hoping she would be okay on the dirt, but the more I’ve watched her and breezed her in company, I get the feeling she travels a little better on the grass than she has on dirt,” Kimmel said.
Kimmel believes a distance turf race can be easier on a first-time starter than a dirt sprint.
“They don’t have to deal with kickback, the pace scenario is much more reasonable. I think it’s a little easier on their mind,” Kimmel said Monday morning as he watched Grace and Grit stretch her legs over Saratoga’s main track. “Some of them have a tendency to get a little geared up. You can get a nice rhythm in the early part of the race and then you get a nice finish out of them.”
Kimmel hopes Grace and Grit can develop into a high-end filly like he had many years ago with horses like Hidden Lake, Flat Fleet Feet, Catinca, and Twist Afleet. In 2017, Kimmel won the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint with the New York-bred Bar of Gold.
It’s those types of horses that have been missing from his stable for too long. The lack of those types of horses has Kimmel considering getting out of training and delving solely into the bloodstock business.
“For me, doing bloodstock advising is certainly been something I’ve been doing for a long time,” said Kimmel, who has eight wins from 50 starters this year. “I didn’t take any horses to Florida so I had a lot of free time in the winter. It’s something I enjoy doing, I got a pretty good track record of doing it. That might be part of the transition process for me.
“If I ever had somebody that really was interested in sending me a bunch of quality horses … but those people are few and far between,” Kimmel added.
Kimmel said his stable numbers around 20 horses. In addition to Grace and Grit, he has 2-year-olds Vekoma Rides (Vekoma) and No Merlot (Vino Rosso) that he is looking forward to getting started either later at this meet or at Aqueduct in the fall.
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