Ness off to unprecedented start, winning at career-best clip

Jamie Ness entered the 2025 Delaware Park meet with clear intentions to win his 13th training title at the track since 2011. He should have set a loftier goal.

In the first 10 weeks of the meet, Ness has earned 39 victories in 93 starts. Entering more horses than he ever has at this point in a Delaware meet, his 42 percent win rate is also the highest of his career at the track. His previous best performance through July 23 was in 2016, when he won 21 races in 57 starts.

“I consider Delaware my home track,” Ness said. “[The Delaware backstretch] was open for horsemen [year-round] for the first time, so we had a lot of horses that normally took awhile to get going. We had them ready early.”

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As if the trainer standings needed any scrutiny, Ness holds a 29-win lead over Bruce Kravets and Michael Stidham, who each have 10 victories at the meet. Ness’s success has also helped his first-call rider, Jaime Rodriguez, who holds a seven-race lead over Martin Chuan in the jockey standings with 34 wins.

Most of Ness’s success has come in claiming races on dirt. A successful bet on his horses entered for a tag at Delaware can nearly be determined by a coin flip, as 28 starters have won in 59 races. Two geldings, El Ameeq and Hardy Choice, account for five of those wins, but the rest have been one-off performances.

“We have a string of horses at three or four different tracks,” Ness said. “I have a lot of horses to choose from for these claiming races and I try to put the best one in the best spot. It’s a numbers game.”

Most tracks in the United States have a trainer that requires consideration from bettors every time they enter, but Ness’s current win rate at Delaware is nearly unmatched anywhere else in the country. He has always succeeded through strength in numbers, but at Delaware this year, he is sending his cavalry out aggressively and with unprecedented efficiency.

Ness predicted that he will inevitably cool off, that he has directed a lot of well-intentioned horses to the track early on and will not be able to sustain this. Last week, the trainer earned two victories in six starts, sending his winning percentage tumbling from 43 percent to 42. The air is thin up there.

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