Broberg joins exclusive 500-win club, to 'set the bar higher'
Trainer Karl Broberg on Thursday afternoon became the third North American trainer ever to reach 500 wins in a single season, joining Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen and Scott Lake. By the end of the day, he added a 501st score still with more than a week left to pile on the total.
The milestone victory came, as Broberg put it, appropriately, with a runner first off the claim. He works the condition books to spot horses favorably, and Summer Lovin rewarded the barn by winning Fair Grounds’ second race by 16 lengths for Flurry Racing Stables.
“At this point it’s very anti-climactic,” Broberg said. “It was fun pushing to get to the 500, but once you’re there, the race is over and now it’s just set the bar higher.”
Broberg is striking at a 28 percent clip in 2018, with the 500th score coming from his 1,800th starter. This is the third straight year in which he has started at least 1,800, but he doesn’t expect to win 500 races again, not with the declining number of events across the Midwest.
Still, Broberg said, “Anywhere we think that we can win is where we want to be a presence.”
Broberg’s horses have finished in the money in 60 percent of their starts, mostly at the claiming level. Combined, they’ve earned $7.9 million. While Broberg has never won a graded stakes race — he didn’t so much as enter a horse in one this year — he did score in Remington Park’s Jim Thorpe Stakes with United Patriot last weekend.
According to a January 2017 interview with BloodHorse, Broberg transitioned from the advertising business to training once he could afford to claim a horse, joking that he was a “bad owner” who would never leave trainer John Locke’s barn.
Broberg’s End Zone Athletics also leads all owners with 289 wins, a number he would prefer to lower in the future. That would mean he’s picking up additional clientele.
“I have no aspirations of repeating as leading owner,” Broberg told BloodHorse back in 2017. “As a trainer, I am always trying to grow and hope better horses come my way. But I’m not losing any sleep thinking about it. I just have to do the best I can with what I have.”