Louisiana trainer Bourgeois feeling right at home in Kentucky

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Lost amid all the Triple Crown hoopla in recent weeks was this behind-the-scenes development at Churchill Downs: Keith Bourgeois is here for the first time.

Bourgeois has been a perennial leading trainer in his home state of Louisiana for nearly 20 years, but with his third and youngest child having graduated high school this week back home in Lafayette, he decided a change in scenery wouldn’t hurt.

“I’ve always wanted to come to Kentucky, but the timing was never right,” said Bourgeois, who is celebrating his 54th birthday Sunday. “I’d had kids in school and didn’t want to leave.”

Bourgeois brought his son and assistant Grant along.

“My son got interested in horses, and probably because of him and because I’ve always wanted to experience some of the bigger tracks around the country, well, here we are,” Bourgeois said.

Bourgeois left no horse behind in Louisiana and has 16 at Churchill. It wasn’t too long ago that his stable regularly consisted of 100 or more horses. Bourgeois produced big numbers, peaking in 2009, when his 192 winners cracked the top 10 among all North American trainers. Every year from 2001 to 2010, competing almost exclusively at the four Louisiana tracks – Evangeline, Delta, Fair Grounds, and Louisiana Downs – his stable won more than 100 races while averaging 146 wins a year, and he usually ranked in the top 25 nationally.

In more recent years, those numbers have tapered off, impacted in part by a six-month suspension he served from November 2010 to May 2011. The penalty stemmed from a 2008 positive test returned on one of his horses for the tranquilizer fluphenazine. Bourgeois fought the ruling vigorously, to no avail, and the scope of his stable has gradually changed in the five years that have ensued.

“I’m focused more on quality than quantity nowadays,” Bourgeois said with his heavy Cajun accent. “I’ll never carry 100 head again. Something like 25 to 30 is a nice number.”

A rodeo professional and Quarter Horse trainer in his younger days, Bourgeois began transitioning to Thoroughbreds in 1988. He has won 31 stakes, most of them restricted to Louisiana-breds, but has never won a graded stakes. His career totals entering this week stood at 2,339 wins for nearly $33 million in stable earnings, so clearly he has knocked out a decent living with a caliber of horse that rarely makes headlines.

“I’m still going to have cheap horses because I like them and we’ve had success with them, but you’re always looking to upgrade,” he said. “We’re in the [claim] box every day, looking to maybe get some of the higher-priced horses.”

Bourgeois said he intends to stable at Churchill through November, shipping to other tracks when Churchill isn’t running, before returning to Louisiana for the winter at Fair Grounds.

Starting with Madelyn’s Wild Max, an April 24 winner at Keeneland, Bourgeois already had three wins and five seconds from his first 11 starters on this circuit, with none placing worse than fourth. He has one entry for Sunday: Cat’s Destiny, a last-out winner at Evangeline, is a top contender in the seventh race, a $5,000 claimer at seven furlongs.

“We’re off to a good start,” he said. “I think I’m going to like it here.”