McPeek looks to end meet on high note

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Kenny McPeek already has set a career high with more than $7.3 million in stable earnings for 2022, but he’s far from finished. The 60-year-old trainer is looking to end the September meet at Churchill Downs on a high note Sunday and sustain momentum into the upcoming fall meet at Keeneland, his hometown track.

“We’ve been rolling right along,” said McPeek. “We’ve got some really good horses right now, great clientele and staff.”

McPeek has two of the contenders in Lovely Princess and Park On the Nile in the closing-day feature, a $127,000, first-level allowance that drew eight fillies and mares going 1 1/8 miles. Lovely Princess will break from post 1 with Julien Leparoux and Park On the Nile leaves from post 5 with Corey Lanerie up.

Lovely Princess, unproven on dirt, “is a really nice filly,” said McPeek. “We’ve been wanting to give her a chance on the main track. She trains well enough over it.”

Park On the Nile has yet to replicate her eye-opening debut here last November, but McPeek said a recent start at Kentucky Downs following a nearly four-month layoff seems to have set her right.

“She’s had some little things that kept her from going on,” he said, “but she’s good right now and she really seems to like the Churchill surface.”

McPeek won’t establish a personal high for wins this year – he began Friday action with 61, well back of his high mark of 103 in 2009 – but he recently broke the earnings record he set for himself last year ($7,013,518); his former high had been $6.6 million in 2002. Also, earlier this summer he passed the $100 million milestone in a career that began in 1985, thereby becoming just the 28th trainer in North America to reach that number.

“Since we bought the Silverleaf facility in Florida three years ago, it’s really helped our young horses develop and take us to another level,” said McPeek, who currently has “a little more than 100” active runners at his disposal. “I always felt like we were capable of doing what we are right now.”

Opposing the uncoupled McPeek pair in the nominal closing-day feature are She’s Keen (post 7, Brian Hernandez Jr.), a two-back winner of a Saratoga maiden route; High Fashion (post 3, Rafael Bejarano), a 16-time starter with just one win but nine in-the-money finishes; and Outlining (post 4, Tyler Gaffalione), whose trainer, Brad Cox, appeared on his way to topping the local standings once again, taking a three-win lead (9-6) over McPeek and Tom Amoss into the meet’s final three-day stretch.

The only allowance of the day goes as the ninth of 10 races on a program that starts at 12:45 p.m. Eastern. Five races for maidens, a couple of them topping out with purses of $120,000, also are on tap.

The end of a 14-day, dirt-only meet that began Sept. 15 means there will be mandatory payouts of all wagering pools, including the Derby City 6, a 20-cent jackpot wager spanning races 5-10.

Sunshine and a high of 73 are in the Sunday forecast. After Sunday, the Kentucky circuit goes dark for four days before Keeneland starts its 17-day fall meet Friday.