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The perspective of a North Kentucky-based trainer

By Wayne Mogge
First Published: 08 April 2009 - Issue Number: 12

 I am a trainer with a twenty-horse stable, employing eleven dedicated and hard-working people who make up my staff at Mogge Racing Stables. Turfway Park has been home base for us for 15 years. But now, hard times have fallen on this Florence, Kentucky, racetrack. In the last couple of years, a certain amount of ambivalence has risen as to the future of its relevance to occupy the winter racing dates and keep the Kentucky racing circuit as we know it intact.
I grew up in Paris, Kentucky, the horse capital of the world. My father managed the majestic and historic Xalapa Farm, a working horse farm as well as a wildlife refuge, surrounded by an eight-foot high rock wall built in the late 1800s. Living on that land frozen in time, it was as if I grew up in racing’s heyday; portions of the movie Seabiscuit were even filmed on Xalapa, which has a training barn with a one-mile track. The training section was leased by Claiborne Farm in the 1970s and is where Ruffian, along with other great horses, received their earliest preparations before embarking on their racing careers. From a young age, I developed my horsemanship skills at Xalapa, where I took advantage of the opportunity I was given to use their facilities.
My family was involved with showing Quarter Horses, and while I was in high school we made the transition to racing the Quarters. We were fortunate enough to win several stakes races, including the $75,000 Breeders’ Futurity with the filly Assured to Pass, but had to travel to Illinois to find the closest racetrack. After a couple of years with quite a bit of success, I transitioned into training Thoroughbreds, which I could do more easily in this part of the country.
I started out by breaking yearlings for a few people while attending the University of Kentucky, taking the next step when Xalapa let me work with a horse that couldn’t make the grade on the New York circuit. When the horse demonstrated some ability, I acquired my trainer’s license in the fall of 1986 and entered him in a maiden race at Turfway Park. Simulcasting at that track had proven to be successful, so the purses were at an all-time high. I shipped the horse from Xalapa to Turfway on a cold, blustery night, but I can still remember the beads of sweat on my forehead as my first runner stood in the loading gate. The feeling that ...

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