Butch Reid Finishing Off Career Year
By Dick Jerardi
So what do you do for an encore after training the Eclipse Award-winning 2-year-old filly in 2020? Just have the best year of your career.
With just a month to go in 2021, Butch Reid needs a bit more than $100,000 in earnings to surpass 2011 when his stable earned $2,275,592.
“I’d be very disappointed if we don’t surpass that,’’ Reid said.
Reid thinks Morning Macha will be favored in a $500,000 New York Stallion race to be run at Aqueduct. Eloquist runs in the Remsen at Aqueduct.
Beren has been the stable star this year, but the 3-year-old Pennsylvania bred is far from the only stakes-caliber horse in the barn. The brilliantly fast 2-year-old filly Disco Ebo just won the $200,000 Shamrock Rose at Penn National. And she is just the latest in the barn from that same family. Reid has three other full sisters or brothers in training. And has trained eight of them altogether.
“She’s pretty good,’’ he said. “I’ve had this whole family.’’
By Weigelia out of Katarica Disco, Disco Ebo, who was purchased as a yearling for $52,000 by Chuck Zacney’s Cash is King and Glenn Bennett’s LC Racing, will be pointed for the Parx Futurity, one of the five newly announced $100,000 Parx stakes to be run Dec. 28 and 29. Reid thinks he will have horses in four and possibly five of the stakes. Disco Ebo’s full brothers and sisters include Smooth B, Fat Kat, and Disco Rose.
“We’ve had a ton of them and they’ve all been moneymakers,’’ Reid said.
Reid thinks he has had around 20 horses by Weigelia. He has 22 horses in his stable at the moment with plans to take five of them to Florida while the rest remain at Parx.
What has made his 2021, with 174 starters, 45 wins 39 seconds and 22 thirds, more amazing is that he had done it all without what he was certain was going to be the stable star – 2020 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies winner Vequist. After racing just once this year, she was not able to overcome several issues and never made it back to the races. She was sold for $3.4 million at the “Night of the Stars’’ sale.
“Imagine if (Vequist) was still going,’’ Reid said. “I lost my best horse and her little sister Mainstay. They were like the superstars at the beginning of the year. And they’re both on the farm.’’
So why all this success?
“It’s all about having the right owners, Chuck and Glenn and Tom McGrath,’’ Reid said, “They got to the sales, they’re enthusiastic and they do the right thing by their horses. We give them time. Coincidentally, I’ve got a lot of fast horses this year. I’ve never won this many races with 2-year-olds in my career. I’m over a dozen, I think. Talented young horses is the key.’’
That and a great help in the barn.
“I’m lucky enough to have fantastic help this year,’’ Reid said. “They’re really done a great job. The barn is enthusiastic. It’s good when it’s going good. It just seems to build on itself.’’
Reid and wife Ginny have been in a great partnership at the barn for decades. That they are enjoying such success now is a fitting reward for all that work for all those years. And, with all those 2-year-olds running so well, 2022 will start with the potential of even more success.
