Penney hopes to celebrate 80 with a bang

AUBURN, Wash. – Trainer Jim Penney will celebrate his 80th birthday on the Fourth of July at Emerald Downs, and if recent form holds in the day’s fifth race, the party might take a detour through the winner’s circle.

Penney will send out two horses in a field of six. City Shadows is a candidate to set the pace, and Square Jimmer also has ample speed. The Penney barn has been hot in recent days, winning with four of its past five starters, capped by Find Your Spot’s victory Sunday in the Irish Day Handicap.

A child of the Depression who grew up on a farm in Naches, Wash., and learned how to train horses from his grandfather, A.E. Penney, Jim Penney has been winning races in the Northwest since he got his first trainer’s license in 1954. Official records list him with 1,226 victories since 1976, and Penney bagged hundreds of wins in the 22 years before that.

Penney has slowed some, a concession to six decades in a physically demanding profession. His two daughters, Kay Cooper and Jill Fabulich, are now the backbone of the family’s racing and breeding business. Cooper runs day-to-day operations at Emerald Downs, and the entire family – the Coopers, the Fabuliches, and Penney – lives on the property at Homestretch Farm, about eight miles from Emerald Downs, with their three homes encircled by a half-mile training track.

With everything invested in racing, the clan will head to Emerald Downs for Penney’s birthday. Where else would they go?

“Well, it’s basically just another day,” Penney said. “I’ve always worked on my birthday, as a kid on the farm picking cherries, and then when we came to the racetrack, it seems like we always ran on the Fourth of July. It’s another workday, but this one is a little special. Hey, it’s 80. I wasn’t sure that I would get here.”

Penney was inducted into the Washington Racing Hall of Fame in 2003. Among his achievements, he has captured the Grade 3 Longacres Mile a record five times.

“I started training when I was 21 or so, and that was the beginning of the public trainer,” said Penney, who was the first in state history to twice win five races in one day. “I am a little disappointed in the way racing is today over what were better times in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but I’ve never been sorry that I did this. I’ve had a very exciting and enjoyable life.”