With a new hobby, Ward starts another homebred in Thursday's opener
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Everybody knows Wesley Ward dominates April 2-year-old racing at Keeneland. Over the last five years, Ward has amassed a bonkers record with first-time starters in April baby races, 26 winners from 60 runners, and don’t forget that Ward runs two horses in these early-season maidens more often than he runs one. Last April at Keeneland, he won with a remarkable seven 2-year-olds.
Something has changed this year. It’s not just Wesley Ward training 2-year-old runners, but training horses that he bred and owns. Ward owns half of the eight 2-year-olds he’s run at through April 13, and he bred three of those. Wednesday’s first race, for 2-year-olds over 4 1/2 furlongs, drew 11 entrants, two trained by Ward. Satisfied Mind starts for Hat Creek Racing, but Vibora is one of Ward’s homebreds.
Ward has assembled a band of 30 broodmares who reside on his property just across Rice Road out the back side of the Keeneland property. Moreover, the Ward homebreds this year all are by Hootenanny, a multiple graded stakes winner that Ward trained. Ward owns Hootenanny, too, and was asked where the stallion stands stud.
“If you go to the end of the Keeneland grandstand and look across the road, you can see him every day,” Ward said.
Adjacent to Keeneland quietly sits a burgeoning Wesley Ward equine empire. Ward, though, calls breeding and racing homebreds “his hobby.”
“I don’t breed commercially. I breed for Turfway Park with my Hootenanny stallion. If they don’t make it to the races in the spring, I turn them out for the summer and wait for Turfway,” he said.
Ward owns the leading 2-year-old winner so far this Keeneland meet, Pinky Finger, but bought her as a weanling for $90,000. Pinky Finger, by Army Mule, won on April 7 by 7 1/2 lengths; Ward suggests she’s the best of his early-season bunch.
Ward almost certainly will win the Wednesday opener and runs two more on the eight-race card, including Saturday Flirt in co-featured race 7, a first-level turf-sprint allowance for fillies and mares. Saturday Flirt was one of Ward’s debut winners from 2024, rocketing home from eighth in a turf race to win by 1 1/4 lengths. Ward had a rough Royal Ascot last summer, and Saturday Flirt finished 10th in the Norfolk Stakes there, that June 20 start her most recent.
She lands in a very competitive spot, an overflow field that includes two European imports. Tales of the Heart runs for trainer Bill Mott and owner Resolute Racing and starts for the first time since a seventh-place finish last summer in the Group 2 Lowther Stakes. Latin Fever, who goes for trainer Mark Casse, raced once in Ireland, overcoming a very wide trip while racing around one turn at Leopardstown to beat 17 foes in a seven-furlong maiden race.
They’re all running for second if Jose Ortiz can work out a trip for Big Trouble from post 12. Not only does Big Trouble exit two stakes races at Fair Grounds, she was beaten less than a length in both and probably wins the Mardi Gras Stakes with a better trip.
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