NEW ORLEANS – It rarely fails. Have more than a cursory conversation with Kenny McPeek about good horses under his care and he’ll probably mention the outline of a plan literally no other American Thoroughbred trainer would consider. Take Maximum Promise. A standard-issue conversation about the colt’s development and chances Saturday in the Jeff Ruby Steaks suddenly took a turn.
“He is pre-nominated to the English Derby, too.”
Say what?
Maximum Promise has one win from four starts, and that came in an Ellis Park dirt maiden race last summer. The colt did turn in a positive performance rallying for third last month in the John Battaglia Memorial Stakes over the Tapeta surface at Turfway Park. But the English Derby?
“My mother instilled in me to have no fear,” McPeek said, looking back upon the arc of his professional career and his willingness to buck convention. “She always gave me great advice and built confidence. She’d say, ‘Stretch yourself, son, you’ll figure it out.’ ”
McPeek has figured something out, that’s for sure. Last May 3, he won his first Kentucky Oaks with Thorpedo Anna. On Saturday, May 4, McPeek won his first Kentucky Derby with Mystik Dan. And on Sunday, May 5, McPeek awakened as if from a dream.
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“It was like, did we really do that?” McPeek said.
Only two other trainers have pulled the Oaks-Derby double and none since 1952. Brian Hernandez Jr., who has become McPeek’s go-to rider of his top stock, became the eighth jockey to win both races the same year.
By year’s end, Thorpedo Anna had won the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. This past January she was named Horse of the Year. McPeek was a finalist for champion trainer of 2024. In February, he was announced as a finalist to be inducted into racing’s Hall of Fame. And on Saturday, he makes a bid to return to the Derby with a live chance.
Maximum Promise looks like a strong fit for the $777,777 Jeff Ruby. And at Fair Grounds, McPeek starts the underappreciated Hypnus in the Louisiana Derby. A top-two finish (first gets a horse 100 points, second 50) and Hypnus will have sufficient qualifying points to get into the Derby field. Same goes for Maximum Promise. On March 15, the McPeek-trained Render Judgment finished second in the Virginia Derby. He has 29 qualifying points, borderline to make the 20-runner Derby.
“We’re not going to rule out a Kentucky Derby trip with Maximum Promise, but that horse’s future might be turf,” McPeek said.
Neither should one pencil Maximum Promise into a start at Epsom Downs in June. Trainers tend to be a reticent bunch when it comes to discussing plans for their horses, especially ambitious ones. Not McPeek. He’ll speak aloud, on the record, whatever oddball idea recently has popped into his brain – whether they come to fruition or not.
No trainer of recent vintage has run elite fillies against males like McPeek. Swiss Skydiver, champion 3-year-old filly of 2020, finished second in the Blue Grass and won the Preakness. McPeek ran her against older males in the Whitney at Saratoga the following year. Last summer at Saratoga, Thorpedo Anna lost the Travers by a head.
In 2004, McPeek sent a horse he’d gotten from Brazil, Hard Buck, to run in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot, one of the world’s most important 1 1/2-mile grass races. Hard Buck finished second. McPeek spent years scouring South America for racing and breeding prospects. And a major focus of every year remains yearling sales.
The sales, almost as much as training, made McPeek, who from the start had an expert eye for young Thoroughbreds that sold for relatively little money. Swiss Skydiver cost $35,000, Maximum Promise $60,000. McPeek got Thorpedo Anna for $40,000; she’s earned more than $4 million and might be worth a similar amount.
“The program hasn’t changed. I work all those yearling sales. I got high-end buyers, but lower and middle ones, too. I keep plucking horses out of each session,” McPeek said.
Things did change in 2019, when McPeek purchased the former Padua Farm, now called the Silverleaf Hills Training Center, near Ocala, Fla. The yearlings go there to be broken and begin early training. Dominic Brennan, whom McPeek has worked with since 1992, serves as the farm trainer. Brennan also remains McPeek’s point man at yearling sales.
McPeek, who owns another farm and training facility, Magdalena Farm outside Lexington, is vertically integrated like no other horseperson in North America. He picks out the yearlings to buy. His partner oversees their earliest training and development at his farm. And then the horses fan out to McPeek’s several racetrack divisions.
“You gotta have the right team of people. We’ve got it,” said McPeek.
McPeek didn’t buy Hypnus, a son of Into Mischief and the Grade 1-winning mare Dream Tree. The colt’s owner and breeder, Brookdale Racing (Phoenix Thoroughbreds III, the official breeder, has since been folded into Brookdale) withdrew him from the 2023 Keeneland September sale and sent him to McPeek.
Hypnus went to Saratoga as an early season 2-year-old and posted several timed workouts there in late spring and early summer before coming up with sore shins and other relatively minor 2-year-old problems. Hypnus didn’t work at the racetrack again until November at Fair Grounds, debuting there Jan. 18. McPeek regularly runs first-time starters in route races. Often, he doesn’t much care about winning, the greater goal exposing the horse to the unique demands of an actual race.
“I think they get more out of a run than overtraining them for a first race. Get a race under their belt, take dirt in the face. It lowers your win percentage, but second time out, third time out, they’re really coming together,” McPeek said.
Hypnus, however, did win first time out – and won nicely. Settling mid-pack under Hernandez, he made steady progress from the half-mile pole and sustained his run to beat a decent bunch by 2 1/2 lengths, galloping out with good energy and earning a strong 85 Beyer Speed Figure. Hypnus went to Oaklawn Park and faced a dozen foes Feb. 23 in the Rebel Stakes, falling back to ninth in the middle stages before making a run stymied by traffic trouble that began at the five-sixteenths pole and didn’t ease until the last furlong. Finally able to stretch his stride, Hypnus accelerated and nearly won the gallop-out, an unusually encouraging seventh-place finish.
“It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Hypnus punched his ticket this weekend,” said McPeek, who trained Hypnus’s grandsire, Harlan’s Holiday, and granddam, Afleet Maggie.
Maximum Promise’s two juvenile starts are pure McPeek. Debuting with a bad post in a turf route, Maximum Promise, a son of Maximum Security, dropped back to 11th in the early going before flashing home with a good run for fifth. Second time out, in a dirt mile, Maximum Promise, seemingly out of nowhere, flashed good early speed, making the lead just after the start and cruising to a 14 1/2-length victory. A hind-end problem forced him out of training, but Maximum Promise turned in a subtly solid comeback showing Jan. 18 in the Lecomte at Fair Grounds before his rallying third last out at Turfway.
McPeek, a Lexington native without much of a horse background, started training in 1985. His late mother, Ann, proffered several pieces of advice. Take the money earned from racing and invest it right away in stocks and real estate, she said. McPeek bought his first house in 1987. He has bought and sold many more, and now owns property basically everywhere he stables.
“My mom said do not put your money into pretty girls unless you plan to marry them, and don’t put your money into fast cars because they depreciate as soon as you buy them,” McPeek said. “And later, you’ll have the money for the pretty girls and fast cars.”
McPeek has put his money into buying and creating fast horses. Memories of the Oaks-Derby double don’t depreciate. Maximum Promise runs at Turfway, Hypnus about 15 minutes later at Fair Grounds. Kenny McPeek has no fear admitting he wants to get back to the Kentucky Derby.
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