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JUNE 8, 2005 Joe Woodard was named TVG's TRAINER OF THE
WEEK!! Congratulations Joe!
Reprinted from the Courier Journal..
Woodard's skein hits 9 after 2 more
wins
Trinity grad calls it
'a real lucky streak'
When he got up two weeks ago this morning, trainer Joe Woodard
felt some trepidation. It was Friday the 13th.
He didn't realize his luck would change that day. He finished
second that afternoon to go 0 for 5 to start the Churchill Downs
meet, then won with his next starter to ignite what is now a
track-record nine-race winning streak.
Woodard, 37, tied Pat Byrne's 1997 record of eight in a row when
even-money favorite Native Bull won yesterday's sixth race -- an
$8,000 claimer -- by 11/4 lengths, then broke it a half-hour later
when Quick Blend ($5.20) won a $10,000 claiming race by 113/4
lengths.
Native Bull was ridden by Jesus Castanon. Quick Blend was guided
by Woodard's fiancee, Angela Owens, with whom he has a 2-year
daughter, Caitlin.
"I feel good whenever I win a race, but this was extra special,"
said Woodard, a Trinity graduate who began training in 1992. "I'd
have been happy tying (the record). But I've always been a
competitor … and I've always believed in being a winner. So I'm
really happy winning it."
After securing the tie, he said: "It's neat for us, because we
don't have a lot of graded-type horses. To get these claiming horses
to come over here and perform every time, it's tough to do. … We've
been on a really lucky streak.
"Native Bull looked like the class of the race, but all it takes
is for a horse to stumble out of the gate or get boxed in or shut
off and you get beat."
Both horses were owned by Louisville car-dealer magnate Billy
Hays, who owned eight of the nine straight winners. The other one
was owned by Ken and Sarah Ramsey of Nicholasville.
Seven of the nine winners ran in cheap or fairly cheap claiming
races, with five of those claimed out of the race.
There were 28 claims for Native Bull, who finished third in a
$58,000 Keeneland allowance race in his previous start, and eight
for Quick Blend, who was fifth in a March 12 allowance race at Tampa
Bay Downs.
Claiming races, which compose the majority of races in America,
assign a value to the entrants as a condition of the race. A claim
can be made if a licensed owner has the money up front in an account
and turns in a claiming form 15 minutes before the scheduled
post.
The 28 claims -- another four were voided -- is believed to be a
track record. When multiple claims are made, a draw is made to
determine the new owner.
Woodard, who has 14 horses at Churchill and 22 at River Downs,
scratched two horses from Wednesday's card, reporting to the
stewards that one horse had backed off his feed and that he needed
no reason for the other scratch because there were at least eight
horses in the race.
He said yesterday's first win brought mainly relief.
"I've been on edge all day, been sicker than a dog all week," he
said. "My body was starting to wear down a little bit this morning.
I was glad to get in the paddock and get the saddle on."
Hays said he is simply running horses where they belong. He says
Native Bull, whom he claimed for $25,000 at Keeneland, ran back in
the allowance race only because the racing office urged Woodard to
do so because it was a six-horse field that was weak on quality.
"Native Bull gets beat if he runs for anything else," Hays said
after Native Bull's fairly close margin. "Just because you claim a
horse for a price doesn't mean he can win for that price. We've
raised some on up, and some you have to drop to win. We really
didn't do anything we wouldn't normally have done."
"If I have a horse who wins by a sixteenth of a mile, I might
have felt I gave something away. But we had a couple win by a neck.
When you win like that, you feel like you're in the right spot."
The North American record for consecutive training victories is
14 by Frank Passero at Gulfstream in 1996. Woodard can take another
step toward that in today's first race, when he has Prison of Love
in a $10,000 claiming race.
"I don't think I could live through many more," Woodard said with
a laugh.
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