Tejano Run

No one was hotter last week than trainer Kenny McPeek, who won two stakes at Oaklawn over the weekend, one a prep for the GI Kentucky Derby, the other a prep for the GI Kentucky Oaks. McPeek scored with the filly Band of Gold (Preservationist), who, at 24-1, won the Martha Washington S. Two races later, it was the colt Mystik Dan (Goldencents), who was an impressive eight-length winner of the GIII Southwest S. at odds of 11-1. That meant there was plenty to talk about when McPeek joined this...

Call it going with his gut. Literally. They cut out a whole stretch of it, and with it went much of the caution, the aversion to risk, that seems to stifle so much of the adventure in other trainers. "The truth is that when I was younger, I was probably real conservative," Kenny McPeek admits. "Early in my career, I was mostly dealing with claiming horses, with the odd allowance or stake horse here and there. Then I had a misdiagnosed ruptured appendix. It walled off and they did emergency...