By Dick Jerardi
Jamie Ness spent the early part of his quarter-century long training career leading what he called “the gypsy life,” going from state to state, track to track, meet to meet. When asked, he figured he had started a horse at around 30 tracks. Turns out it’s actually 45 tracks in 22 states and Canada.
His horse racing interest began in his native South Dakota where he graduated from South Dakota State (across the hall in his dorm, legendary NFL kicker Adam Vinatieri). His grandfather’s friend owned a horse that ran at bush tracks and the grandkids used to pile in the car to go to the races.
“We had a circuit in South Dakota, five bush tracks,” Ness said. “The last one was a place called Jefferson Park. The leading trainer was Wayne Lukas, quarter horses. Working for Wayne was Bill Mott. The next barn over was Steve Asmussen’s dad. Steve was working there too.”
Steve Asmussen is the only North American trainer with more than 10,000 wins. Mott is eighth all-time in wins, Lukas ninth. Ness, with 4,502 wins, is 14th and rising fast. Combined, the four trainers, including the two South Dakota natives (Mott and Ness), have won more than 25,000 races. If he keeps winning at his present rate over the next decade, Ness, with 1,311 wins in the last four years, could become just the fourth trainer with 7,000 wins.
In 2020, he came to Parx full time which was the perfect Mid-Atlantic fit as he already had horses at Delaware Park and Laurel Park. All he has done at Parx since then is win the trainer’s title every year. This will be his fifth straight. Only Scott Lake, with seven, has ever had a longer streak at Parx.
“Purses are good, year-round racing,” Ness said of the move to Parx. “It totally fit my program. I had six stalls when I got here.” He now has 60.
When almost everybody stopped training as the pandemic shut down racing for months in 2020, Ness did not. So when Parx reopened, Ness came out scorching hot. He has not cooled off. He won 109 races at Parx in 2020, 186 in 2021, 166 in 2022, 154 in 2023, 140 (and counting) in 2024.
Ness figures he has won around 40 training titles at all the tracks where he’s been through the years. He first began to get national notice when he was the trainer for Richard Papiese’s Midwest Thoroughbreds. He won a still-record-for-him 395 races in 2012. The previous three years, Ness won 330, 291 and 258 races respectively. Using Ness and other trainers around the country, Midwest won 2,344 races from 2009-2015.
When that job ended, Ness called it “a tough day.”
“I watched all the horses I claimed walk out of my barn,” he said.
He went from a few hundred horses to 75. He headed east and began to rebuild at Delaware Park.
Jamie’s wife Mandy McKeever (a former jockey) had two girls in 2012 and 2014. They were looking for a spot to build a business and raise a family. The Mid-Atlantic was that spot.
Now, they live on a 30-acre farm in Chesapeake City, Md., midway between Laurel and Parx and a 25-minute drive to Delaware Park.
Mandy runs the farm – the layups, the broodmares, all the book work and takes the kids to school every day.
“I don’t need to hit the lottery, I married her,” Ness said.
Mandy’s father, William McKeever, rode the terrific horse Nodouble to win the 1968 Arkansas Derby and finish third in the Preakness. He was just 16 at the time.
A typical week for Ness: leave Chesapeake City Monday morning for Parx (he has a second house 5 minutes from Parx), trains and goes to the races Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, heads home to Maryland after the races Wednesday, trains at Delaware Park Thursday, Friday and Saturday and some weeks goes to Laurel on Sundays.
During the races at Parx, Ness sits at the same table in the Horsemen’s Lounge next to the paddock. He only had one horse (a winner) in on Monday which gave him time to talk. Of course, he had 10 (three won) in on Tuesday.
Ness has his own van driver who is moving horses between the three tracks every day, depending on where they best fit. (The newest van, a little over a year old, has 105,000 miles on it). He carries a stack of past performances for every horse he has in training, matches them up with condition books and then decides where to run them. He has 120 horses between the three tracks, with another 40 horses that needed a break back on the farm.
Ness has assistants he trusts, a system that works and an infrastructure that keeps improving. When the new Belmont Park is complete, he is thinking of sending a small string up there with an assistant he has been grooming for that spot.
He has 22 mares at the farm that he is breeding and those foals are now racing for Jagger, Inc., Ness’s stable which is named after a dog he had when he first started training. He had three homebred winners at Laurel last weekend.
“I found out you take these old mares who made $300,000, $400,000 the hard way, they’re throwing runners,” Ness said.
In addition to the horses he owns himself, Ness has very supportive owners who claim, run and have tons of winner’s circle photos.
Ness has memories from everywhere he’s been. The Woodlands in Kansas City, Kansas also had a dog track across the parking lot.
“The stable area was right next to the kennels, dogs barking all morning,” Ness remembered. But it was great for the bettors who played the horses during the day and the dogs at night.
As for those 45 tracks where Ness has started horses, they are: Arizona (Turf Paradise), Arkansas (Oaklawn Park), Delaware (Delaware Park), Florida (Tampa Bay Downs, Gulfstream Park, Calder), Illinois (Hawthorne, Arlington Park, Sportsman’s Park, Fairmount Park), Indiana (Hoosier Park), Iowa (Prairie Meadows), Kansas (The Woodlands), Kentucky (Churchill Downs, Keeneland, Turfway Park, Ellis Park, Kentucky Downs), Maryland (Pimlico, Laurel, Timonium) , Massachusetts (Suffolk Downs), Minnesota (Canterbury Park), Nebraska (Fonner Park), New Jersey (Monmouth Park, Meadowlands), New York (Aqueduct, Belmont Park, Saratoga, Finger Lakes), North Dakota (North Dakota Horse Park in Fargo), Ohio (Thistledown, Beulah Park, River Downs), Oklahoma (Remington Park), Pennsylvania (Parx, Penn National, Presque Isle Downs), South Dakota (Fort Pierre, Brown County), Virginia (Colonial Downs), West Virginia (Charles Town, Mountaineer), and Canada (Woodbine, Assiniboia Downs).
Ness has not raced in Texas, Louisiana or California. Give him time. For how, he is quite content with the Parx/Delaware Park/Laurel Park circuit. And he is easy to find every racing day at Parx – at his table, to or from the paddock, in the winner’s circle.
