Monday Morning Message with Jason Beem Dec. 2, 2024

Jason looks back at Churchill's final weekend of the year and the big season for trainer Kenny McPeek. 

A good Monday Morning to you all! Churchill Downs wrapped up the final weekend of their racing season and the bluegrass circuit now shifts north and east to fan-favorite Turfway Park for the next several months. There’s a lot of appeal to Turfway but to me the main one is that they run at night. It’s so rare to get a top end signal at night and I really think it’s a neat part of the season there. 

I did a column a while back about small tracks that have had times where they became fan favorites. Pompano Park, Los Alamitos, and Mountaineer were the tracks I listed and I realized halfway during writing it that all of them ran at night. I think racing at night allows for people to fully focus on the signal and it’s a bit more of a party because I think night time libations get mixed into the action of betting. Just makes for a lot of fun. 

Churchill also mixes in some evening cards and the night racing card I went to a couple years ago was one of the most fun atmospheres I’ve experienced at a track. Friday evening’s Clark Stakes was run under the lights but that was mostly because the days are short and not a late start time. Kenny McPeek continued his magical 2024 run by scoring in the Clark with Rattle N Roll. Kenny has continued to prove himself as a great ambassador for racing, something he’s always in my opinion done well with. I think this year he just has won so many big races and had so many big stars that he’s been thrust a little further into the spotlight. 

HANSON: Rattle N Roll delivers late kick to win Clark 

Kenny has already crushed his previous earnings record by almost 50% with earnings over $15,000,000 in 2024 and still a month left to go. His career win percentage is 15% and this season he’s at 14%, I think the thing is that he’s just won a bunch more big races within that 14% than in years past. He campaigned one of the top choices for horse of the year with Thorpedo Anna and won the Derby with Mystik Dan. Just tremendous stuff from a very popular trainer. 

My knock on McPeek has been that it always seemed like he had such good horses that were late two-year-olds and young three year-olds, but they’d regress as we got towards the Derby and the summer. Like so many opinions I have formed in horse racing, I don’t know if that’s backed up by fact, but somehow it just got into my head that that’s how his horses go. Hence my somewhat surprise when this weekend Rattle N Roll pushed his career earnings up over $2,000,000 with his win in the Clark Stakes. 

A look through this horse’s past performances on Brisnet shows that he’s pretty much maintained his form and speed figure numbers all throughout his career. He was very good as a young horse and I think I fell into my trap of expecting his form to tail off. Now sure he’s had races he didn’t win, but he’s generally kept the same figures and when the race sets up for him or it’s just his day, he seems to win or run big. 

So, tip of the cap to Kenny McPeek on a fabulous 2024. I don’t know if he’ll win the Eclipse Award but he certainly belongs in the conversation. But more importantly I think he’s represented himself, his barn, and our game with great positivity and love. There’s so much arguing online about what racing needs to do better at and believe me those conversations need to continue to happen. But Kenny is in my opinion one of the best representatives we have at the top level of the game and I hope his success pours into 2025. 

Everyone have a good week!