By Dick Jerardi
It is one of the most exclusive clubs in horse racing – trainers with 5,000 wins. Until last Wednesday afternoon, there were just eight members. Then, in the space of 40 minutes, Jamie Ness went from four wins away to joining the club as its ninth member.
And he did in a style even he could not have anticipated. Sitting at 4,998 after winning the fifth race at Delaware Park and Parx, Ness had the favorite in race 6 at both tracks.
The Delaware Park race was actually scheduled to go off 3 minutes before Parx, but then a long delay at the DelPark gate preceded a shorter delay at the Parx gate.
So, when odds-on favorite Bold Endeavor crossed the line first at Parx, odds-on favorite Chelsea Wall was 10 seconds away from leaving the gate at Delaware. So, it was 4,999 at Parx where Ness is in position to win his seventh consecutive training title and, when Chelsea Wall stormed home well clear, it was 5,000 at Delaware where he is on his way to winning his 12th straight training title. Wins 4,999 and 5,000 were two minutes and 57 miles apart.
“It was a little chaotic,” Ness said of the day and those wild few minutes that he watched at Parx. “We knew we were getting close. There was a countdown…It happened so fast. When we were two away, there were two horses in the gate, both favorites, but you’ve still got to win. Delay at Delaware, a horse flipped over in the gate, delay here, geese on the track. I was like, well it would be cool if they both won, but what are the chances of that?”
With Jamie Ness these days, the chances are really good. He knows where his horses can win and when you keep putting them in the right spots, the numbers add up.
Ness won his first race at Canterbury Park in 1999, his 1000th at Presque Isle in 2010, his 2000th at Laurel Park in 2013, his 3,000th at Parx in 2020 and 4,000th at Laurel in 2023. He has raced at 45 tracks in the United States and Canada.
Before those 40 minutes on May 20, Ness had won race 2 at Parx.
After those four in 40, he won the next race at Delaware, giving him six on the day.
Ness joked that those last few to 5,000 “were a lot quicker than my first win. That took me like six months, I think (it was a mere three months and 32 losses before that first win). It was fun. Everybody was watching. It was stressful, really. Both had to win, both were in good spots and they did.”
Now that 5,000 is over, “we’re on to six (6,000),” Ness said.
If he continues at the pace he has set the last five years (1,703 wins from 2021-2025), Ness will be closing fast on third all-time by May 2031.
The trainer knows the names of the top 8 very well: Steve Asmussen (11,234), Dale Baird (9,445), Jerry Hollendorfer (7,777), Jack Van Berg (6,523), King Leatherbury (6,508), Scott Lake (6,482), Todd Pletcher (5,983) and Bill Mott (5,622). Only Baird and Lake on that list are not in the Hall of Fame and it’s not because of their training ability, it’s just because they have never had the opportunity to train top stakes horses or, in Leatherbury’s case, one great stake horse in Ben’s Cat.
“I guess it’s kind of surreal,” Ness said when asked about joining the club. “I kind of think: why me? It’s just we’ve been doing this a long time and been at a pretty good level for a long time. That’s what I’m most proud of, our consistency.” In fact, his 25 percent win rate is the highest of the 40 trainers with the most wins.
That two of the eight call Parx home is not lost on Ness either. Lake, in the first 10 years of the 2000s, was posting even more amazing yearly numbers (4,130 wins from 2000-2009) than Ness is putting up now. Eventually, Lake scaled back and Ness understands he won’t be able to keep up this pace forever.
“I’m getting kind of tired, to be honest with you, I really am,” Ness, 51, said.
But…
“I’ve still got a big drive,” Ness also said. “Like my wife says, I’ve got a problem, I’ve got a racing problem, more, more, more, more. My foot’s still on the pedal. I’m fairly young. I feel good.”
“Racing’s changing where everything is consolidating a little bit. It’s a little harder than it was when I started training. There was five-day-a-week racing. Most tracks are consolidating. It’s going to be tougher, but we’ll see what happens.”
“I’ve got pre teen girls. I try to spend as much time as I can with them. That takes a little bit away, but this is what I love to do. I wish I had 10 horses in every day. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it is. I love this game and I love to compete.”
So, Ness is on his way to the next 1,000 and the 1,000 after that and…
“They’ll have to drag me off the track,” Ness said. “You know what happens to old horse trainers when they quit training, they die, quit using their minds. I use my mind every day. I have a lot going on. I have a lot of employees. I’ve got a great staff. I’m in a good area, the mid-Atlantic where there’s a lot of racing so there’s no reason for me to slow down.”
So he won’t.
