John Ward, Horse Trainer
Riding His UK Experience to the Winner’s Circle.

By Martha Jackson

John T. Ward, Jr., ’68, trainer of the 2001 Kentucky Derby winner Monarchos, was offering his horses a free trip to Florida. Lots of sun, some racing, all the feed you could want, just 17 hours away from the gray skies, dull grass, and bare trees of a Kentucky winter.

But Hero’s Tribute, one of Ward’s top contenders for the 2002 racing season, was hesitating. The horse made a few steps toward the van that was to take him south, then stopped. Ward grasped the horse’s bit and pulled him down to talk in a language that only horse and trainer know. Hero’s Tribute must have heard, because then he started moving toward the horse van, Florida, and maybe glory.

Ward ought to know what it is to postpone a new chapter. He did it himself about 35 years ago, when it was time to enroll as a freshman at UK.

“I took a semester off before I began. I was riding, showing hunters and jumpers,” Ward said.
He showed horses at Madison Square Garden, among other places, continuing an education in horses that began practically at birth— or, if you factor in heredity, before. Ward’s grandfather, John S. Ward, was a horse trainer, as was his father John T. Ward, Sr. His Uncle Sherrill and family friend Woody Stephens were both trainers, and both were elected to the Racing Hall of Fame.

Though horses beat out books that first semester, spring semester did finally arrive. Time to enroll. “Ag was where I fit in, because I had diverse interests,” Ward said. He also pledged, and later became an officer in, Delta Tau Delta. The fraternity and other parts of UK life gave him, he said, “long-term friendships, bonds, that endure the test of time.”
He already had some friendships among the ag professors. “UK had an Equine Department at that time. One of the Equine Department’s professors, Kob Ryen, taught me to ride when I was 6 years old,” Ward said.
At UK, Ward also found other professors who looked at what he already knew. Then they looked at what he wanted to do when he graduated. And they bent.

“I was allowed some freedoms to keep my participation [riding and showing horses] up,” Ward said. He found the right advisor in Jimmy Criswell, who taught ag economics. Criswell, he said, “was very structured” but understood that the educational foundation Ward already had was one not to be found in any curriculum.
Ward said Criswell told him: “You take things you think will help you in later life, and at the end of your junior year we’ll see what kind of major we can come up with.”

So, Ward took sciences. He took genetics. He took ag economics, which in the end became his major. The Ag Economics Department, he said, “taught me how to be totally practical, to learn how to apply my knowledge to the business scenario and be able to survive.”

If Ward were going to put it in non-romantic terms, he would probably say that one of the smartest things he did, just a few years out of school, was to marry Donna Clancy.

Donna Clancy Ward ’64 UK alumna, described by her husband as a city girl with a “raw love” for horses, started to ride only when she got to UK. She signed up for a riding program taught by Ward’s childhood riding instructor, Kob Ryen. “When she had a date in college he would ask her what she wanted to do. She said she wanted to go out and ride horses,” her husband said. Some of those boyfriends got broken bones, but Donna Ward just got better at riding.
The Wards are business partners, and both are trainers. Their notable wins include the 1995 Kentucky Oaks, the equivalent of the Kentucky Derby for fillies, with Gal in a Ruckus, and the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, with Beautiful Pleasure, who was trained by Donna Ward.

Monarchos may have been the Derby winner that Ward trained, but he is not the only one Ward spotted. In 1999, Ward advised Japanese businessman Fusao Sekiguchi to buy a particular yearling at Keeneland’s July sale. The understanding was that the horse would be trained by someone on the West Coast, which Sekiguchi could reach more easily from Japan. Sekiguchi paid $4 million for the horse that was to become Fusaichi Pegasus, winner of the 2000 Kentucky Derby. When Fusaichi Pegasus came to the finish line, Ward said his wife immediately headed for the Winner’s Circle. Someone asked her why, since the Wards had not been involved in Fusaichi Pegasus’ training.
“We’re going to practice!” said Donna Ward, the prophet, whose words bore fruit on a sunny Derby day in May 2001.

Monarchos, a steel-gray Thoroughbred owned by Tulsa businessman John Oxley and his wife, Debby, had been purchased as a 2-year-old for $170,000 at a sale in Florida sponsored by Thoroughbred auction firm Fasig-Tipton.
Monarchos was unique, Ward said, because he didn’t run in a race until 2001 began. And then he won the Florida Derby. As the Kentucky Derby neared, the media made much of what has been called an “unorthodox” training method: Ward didn’t put the horse through full workouts, as was expected. Few knew what to make of it.

But the Wards knew, and the story is now legend. Monarchos, ridden by jockey Jorge Chavez, started at the 16th post and was in 13th position for the first half-mile of the race. But then he began to surge forward. With a fraction of a mile left, Monarchos took the lead, and finally, won the race with an astounding time: one minute, 59 and 4/5 seconds, just 2/5 of a second off the record set by Secretariat in 1973.

Ward said he didn’t put Monarchos through the traditional pre-race workouts because he has “a very good understanding of a horse’s physical and mental makeup” and knew what would work for Monarchos.
“Last year proved to everybody you don’t have to force a horse into a grand early performance,” Ward said.
Monarchos went on to the remaining races in the Triple Crown to finish sixth in the Preakness and third in the Belmont Stakes. Ward now calls taking that journey “the most unbelievable roller coaster of your life. You are on an absolute high when you win [the Derby]. You’re going as the defending champion when you go to the Preakness, so there’s all the pressure and all the attention of the world on you. In this instance, it didn’t go according to plan. But then, when you go to the Belmont, you hit this low because you didn’t win [the Preakness]. You’re trying to redeem yourself in the Belmont, which we did to an extent.”

But winning the Derby as a native Kentuckian still makes him euphoric and emotional, and it has brought him untold rewards, like meeting a couple who came up to him in the Fort Lauderdale airport. “How’s Monarchos?” they said. “We bet on him.” He has also discovered how widespread the UK alumni network is.
“It’s become increasingly evident to me, after winning the Derby, you’ll find UK graduates as Ashland, Inc. executives, IBM executives, at the head of dot-com businesses,” he said. “You’ll find UK graduates all over the world.”
He also found out UK had prepared him for the newfound fame that came with a Derby win.
“UK does a wonderful job of not only preparing a person academically, but also preparing them to meet the public,” he said.

But it’s now a new racing season. “As for Derby contenders, it’s a little early to tell,” said Ward in an interview late last year. But he is confident enough about the months ahead that he provides some names from his stable worth remembering: Hero’s Tribute. The fillies Forest Secret and Snow Dance. “We’ll have strong representation in just about every older horse division,” Ward said.

Whatever this year holds, the Wards are likely to keep their eyes focused on what is best for the horse rather than on the prize. “As long as you grasp that, then if it doesn’t work and you get beat, so be it,” Ward said.
Last year, of course, it worked perfectly. This year, as the turf warms, the grass turns blue again, and horses come home to Kentucky, John Ward may have more perfect endings ahead.

Patrick Gallagher ’02
Continuing the College Connection

By Martha Jackson

The Wards’ connection with UK continues. Now working for them is Patrick Gallagher, a Ph.D. graduate in veterinary sciences. Gallagher, a member of the class of 2002, finished his course work in August.
A Wisconsin native, Gallagher grew up with horses. His specialty is horse genetics, but Ward is teaching him how to train horses.

“This is a business that is passed down,” said Ward. He and his wife have no children, and Ward has made attempts in the past to take on a kind of “journeyman,” as he calls it, to pass on the knowledge he has acquired in his decades in the business.

“In the past, I would ask people how long they thought it would take them to learn to train a horse,” Ward said. The answers he got were something like “about two years.”
He asked Gallagher the same question.
“About 15 years,” Gallagher said.
Bingo.

He’s also proud of Gallagher’s work ethic: “He’s here at 4:30 a.m., seven days a week,” Ward said.
Ward said that those horse trainers with a college education are the most successful.
“I knew by [Gallagher’s] going through the UK doctoral process that he was exposed to a tremendous amount of knowledge that would help him grasp some of the most basic things about our business,” he said.
A higher education completed in horse-driven Lexington was another asset for Ward, giving Gallagher an understanding of the business he would not get in another doctoral veterinary program.

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