'Out of business': Why is racing losing so many trainers?

Buff Bradley leaned against the rail in front of the Churchill Downs winner’s circle and peered across the main track. The longtime trainer had Tonal Impact coming down the stretch on the turf course, no threat to winning the race.

After the 3-year-old Tonalist colt crossed the wire, Bradley’s training career was over. The man best known for conditioning Groupie Doll and Brass Hat was retiring after 28 years.

“I’m going to miss it,” Bradley said in the days before his final race in June. “I’m going to be upset about having to leave it, but it’s just what I have to do.”

Bradley joins a growing list of trainers who have left the game in the past two decades.

In 2000, the number of trainers listed on Equibase as having at least one start was 9,885. In 2019, that figure had dropped to 4,958. Nearly half of all trainers, 49.8 percent, quit in that time span.

“The whole business has not been as fun for me in the last few years,” Bradley said. “I’ve been thinking about it for a couple years. Everyone said, ‘Oh, you’re just down right now, you’re just not doing as well,’ but I don’t see that changing a lot for me.”

‘Lost in the shuffle’

While the drop in active trainers has happened gradually, it has not gone unnoticed among those in the Thoroughbred industry.

Ron Moquett, who conditions champion sprinter Whitmore, said he has been paying attention to the issue for years.

“Everyone went to Walmart for everything,” Moquett said of the industry shift. “There’s quite a few Walmarts working, and the mom-and-pops are out of business."

Some trainers with large barns – such as Godolphin-backed Kiaran McLaughlin, now a jockey agent – have retired for various reasons through the years. The bigger loss of trainers comes mostly from the smaller stables. Those without hundreds of horses face different challenges, some of which stem from a change in the faces of horse ownership.

With more fractional partnerships bringing more new owners into the game, horses have been consolidated into larger barns. At the same time, the total number of starters has dropped.

Greg Harbut, a longtime bloodstock agent and buyer of horses, said it is easy for owners to overlook small trainers.

“Unfortunately, a lot of these individuals get lost in the shuffle and have been lost,” Harbut said, “as you see the last couple years with a lot of these mega-trainers getting a lot of the 2-year-old crop every year.”

In 2000, according to data from the Jockey Club, 69,569 horses started a race in North America. That same year, the top 10 earning barns collectively had 1,543 starters, 2.2 percent of the total number.

Fast forward to 2019 and the total starters had dropped by more than 28 percent, to 49,542. Meanwhile, the number in the top 10 earning barns had more than doubled, jumping to 3,120, meaning the top trainers held 6.3 percent of the starters.

“I’ve watched some people that are great horsemen struggle,” Moquett said. “Not because of their decision making or something that’s their fault. They just don’t get the opportunities.”

According to Moquett, the loss of trainers is hurtful to the horses who could have been the stars of smaller barns but instead end up in the middle of the pack of a huge outfit.

“(Those horses are) not going to get a chance to develop into a Whitmore,” Moquett said, referencing his biggest star, who was converted into a top sprinter after he finished 19th in the 2016 Kentucky Derby. “That’s the thing I get the most from other horsemen about Whitmore. They believe if he was in one of the mega-outfits, he would not have been a racehorse."

‘Worshipping a false prophet’

Several trainers pointed to an increased emphasis on win percentage among owners as one of the top reasons for the decline in their numbers.

“It all comes back to worshiping a false prophet,” Moquett said. “Win percentage, a number that can be easily manipulated.”

Win-percentage numbers can be helped by aggressive entering, where trainers run only where they are likely to win. The pressure to finish first creates problems for some small trainers who take pride in helping horses get to the highest level possible and thus are unwilling to run under value simply to win races.

For trainers such as Bradley, who did not do much claiming, a high win percentage could be difficult to obtain.

“I don’t get horses in that are already proven,” Bradley said. “You don’t know what class they belong in and what surface they run on. Mine are young, and I have to develop them, and it might take you a few starts to figure it out. ... My percentage is not going to be as good as the guy that’s claiming horses and running horses where they know they can win.”

Harbut said he also had noticed how much win percentage matters to new owners and agents as well as how some trainers have been able to influence their own numbers.

“A lot of these trainers are either going to ‘B’-circuit tracks or being very aggressive with their entering with certain horses as far as dropping them in the claiming ranks to boost up their win percentage,” Harbut said. “I don’t think that gets taken into account a lot of times. I think it’s a tool you should look at, but it’s also a double-edged sword when too much emphasis is put on a trainer’s win percentage as opposed to how they develop a horse.”

In recent years, the rise in claims also has made things difficult for smaller barns. With occurrences such as a 38-way shake at Churchill Downs in June, trainers and other horsemen and women said that if a starter runs below its value, it will be snapped up.

For the trainers with fewer horses to begin with, that could hurt their numbers even more. That makes it nearly impossible for some trainers to improve their winning percentage.

“Your barn will disappear in a minute if you run them under value to win,” trainer Michelle Lovell said. “Plus, everybody else is running under value to win the race, so it devalues the horse.”

The current claiming arrangement allows bigger barns that are not concerned about losing a horse to run them where they are more likely to come in first, thus improving their win percentage. This in turn ensures they will continue to get the lion’s share of horses.

Meanwhile, the inability of the smaller trainers to maintain their barn sizes through claiming races, coupled with larger outfits’ unwillingness to compete against themselves, has had another side effect.

Decreasing field sizes

“Many of the claimed horses leave the state, so it is difficult to fill claiming races as well as the allowance races,” former trainer and current Churchill Downs paddock judge Steve Penrod said in a text message. “More trainers with smaller stables would help racing secretaries.”

From 2000 to 2019, average field sizes shrank from 8.1 to 7.5 according to Jockey Club data. At the same time, average starts in a year per runner fell from 7.1 to 6.2.

As it currently stands, multiple trainers said that neither the big nor small stables are incentivized to fill fields.

“If you’ve got a large trainer, and he’s got seven maiden special weights for boys, he’s going to put his best horse in there, obviously,” Bradley said. “But those other six horses are not going to be spread out to other trainers where they’d be running against him. I think that’s hurt the field sizes.”

‘Help shortage’

Backstretch labor is hard to come by in 2021. The lack of employees to help trainers is another one of the main factors that could be causing the drop in trainer numbers.

It was certainly an element in Bradley’s decision to retire from training. According to him, it goes back to the bigger barns getting more horses and more money.

“You get nicer horses, so your stable’s bigger,” Bradley said. “You charge more money, your day rate is higher. Therefore, you’re getting the top owners and the money for those, and you’re able to afford the help. We’ve got a help shortage back here, they’ve gone at least 25 percent in the last year.”

Other trainers have taken to social media or other avenues to find hotwalkers and other workers with varying levels of success. Lovell said her barn has felt the impact recently.

“We’re really suffering with help, people that are experienced,” Lovell said. “We’ve trained three hot walkers in the last few months that have never been around a horse.”

Trainers also have run into problems with the U.S. Department of Labor, which levied punishments against some top trainers in New York in 2019. McLaughlin was fined, as were Linda Rice and Chad Brown, who had to pay more than $500,000 in back wages and other penalties.

“Specifically, with skilled labor that understands horsemanship, there’s definitely been a shortage in the last 20 years,” Harbut said of the difficulties for trainers. “I would say worker’s compensation as those costs continue to rise as opposed to your return.”

Lovell also pointed out some of the other costs that trainers are saddled with in 2021.

“Trainers are getting charged $25 every time they’re working,” she said. “There’s extra costs always involved, and that makes owners leave, and then certain trainers who have been working for one owner for a long time (are forced to stop training).”

‘Things are going to keep going south’

Horse racing’s loss of trainers has been a slow process, dropping a few percentage points every year until the problem reached its current state. It shows no signs of stopping, either.

During the COVID-affected 2020 racing year, 4,595 trainers had a start. Through Wednesday, fewer than 4,000 had done so in 2021.

“What’s sad is this year it’s going to be more,” Moquett said. “We’re going to probably go 60 percent ahead of the trend, which is already devastating.”

Moquett said that in his mind, the way to reverse the trend is to re-educate the horse-racing public, especially owners and fans, on the value of horsemanship as opposed to pure numbers. In his opinion, the way racing is presented does not generate lasting interest beyond the win percentage and gambling payouts.

“We introduce our industry based on gambling,” Moquett said. “If you go back and watch whenever everyone had 30 or 40 horses, when Charlsie Cantey was doing the interviews and Jim McKay was doing the interviews, it was a very different kind of show. They focused mainly on the stories.”

Moquett also suggested the industry should find a way to reward trainers who demonstrate exceptional horsemanship and the ability to develop horses regardless of level.

Other countries, particularly Japan, have horse limits in place that distribute horses more evenly among trainers. But those nations are subject to more stringent government regulations. In the U.S., any change would have to come from within the industry – and across a patchwork of state racing authorities that must be open to common reform.

“I think it’s going to have to be on the racetracks to slow down the mega-stables,” Bradley said. “If you’re the kind of person who wants that many horses, then good for you. I’m not saying anything bad about the mega-stables, but that’s what hurts us. I think, until then, things are going to keep going south.”