trainer

Last year, we conducted a popular Q and A series called 'Smaller But Still Super,' where we featured veteran trainers who have built a competitive racing stable with relatively small numbers (click here to view the archive). This year, we will highlight trainers who have already cut their teeth as novice trainers, but now have a few years of experience under their belt and are looking to make a name for themselves as they grow their stable. We'll talk about the challenges that come with hanging out your single, advice...

Howard (Howie) Tesher, a winner of 1,302 races, including several Grade I events, and a popular figure around the New York racetracks for decades, passed away Friday. He was 90  years old. According to his niece, Jodie David, Tesher passed away at the Majestic Memory Care Center in Hollywood, Florida, and had been there for about five years dealing with dementia. David said the cause of death was pneumonia. "He was happy right up to the end," David said. "There was no patient there like him. He was always grabbing...

Trainer Will Walden joined this week's TDN Writers' Room to discuss his remarkable stable that is based on substance abuse recovery.

Kyle Berryman has a lot to look forward to as he opens a new chapter in 2023. He recently celebrated six months of sobriety and, two weeks ago, his boss Will Walden asked him if he would be interested in running the stable's shedrow. "It's just a title, but it's pretty cool," Berryman said after wrapping up a busy morning at Turfway Park. "I only have maybe five months of experience working with horses right now, so I'm still brand new and still learning a lot." He may shrug off...

Angel Penna, Jr. will be remembered Saturday during an 11:30 a.m. memorial service in the winner's circle at Gulfstream Park. Penna, the son of Hall of Fame trainer Angel Penna Sr., will be honored on the same day Gulfstream plays host to the Via Borghese, a race named after one of Penna's many graded-stakes winners. The winning trophy will be presented by his late father's wife, Elinor, and his widow, Ruth.

Owner-trainer Norman (Lynn) Cash joined this week's TDN Writers' Room  to talk about his unique approach to training and owning horses and discuss the remarkable Beverly Park (Munnings), who on Monday at Mahoning Valley, will make his 29th start of the year.

Christophe Clement said he always looks forward to his annual trip to Deauville for the Arqana December Sale. It's a bit like stepping back in time for the U.S.-based trainer as he wanders the grounds that were once the setting of childhood summers spent working for his father, French conditioner Miguel Clement Sr. The youngest of three, Clement is still often called 'Little Clement' while in Deauville. "That always makes me laugh," said Clement, whose own son Miguel has a handle on their stable in America while his father is...

Angel Penna, Jr., who trained Eclipse Award winners Christmas Past and Laugh and Be Merry and was the son of Hall of Famer Angel Penna, Sr., passed away Tuesday at age 74. Battling dementia, Penna passed away in his sleep in a memory care facility near his home in Boca Raton, Florida. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Penna was an assistant to his father before going out on his own in 1980. His clients at the time included Cynthia Phipps, who raced in the colors of Wheatley Stable, her grandmother's...

A few weeks before Bell's the One (Majesticperfection - Street Mate, by Street Cry {Ire}) made her career debut, her trainer Neil Pessin set aside a few dollars to place a wager on the promising juvenile. But in the days leading up to the race, he started to rethink the idea. Every morning as Bell's the One went out to gallop, the juvenile would stop in the middle of the track, somewhere around the sixteenth pole, and refuse to move. Pessin would have to take to the track, red-faced with...

The legal fallout from The Stronach Group's (TSG) decision to ban trainer Jerry Hollendorfer from its facilities in June of 2019 moved onto the San Diego County Superior Court earlier this month, with a hearing in the case between the trainer and the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB). The hearing Oct. 8 concerned two writs of mandate that Hollendorfer filed against the CHRB constituting an oftentimes complicated and convoluted legal knot essentially surrounding which entity--the tracks or the state agency--have the ultimate jurisdiction to bar the trainer from participating in...

Trainer Todd Pletcher joined this week's TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland to discuss his impressive contingent preparing for the Breeders' Cup.

Whit Beckman would be the first to admit that his stable did not get off to the remarkably-fast start he had dreamed of when he first set out on his own last fall. Going into this summer, he had just two wins on his training record. But, the pieces have fallen into place in the past two months as Beckman has sent five horses to the winner's circle, including three in just the past two weeks. Sabalenka (Good Samaritan) leads the charge of recent winners for Beckman and now looks...